You Are Right Where You Need to Be

April 21, 2023

Whether you’re someplace in the middle, or you’re barely treading water, I just want to take a moment and get you some much needed breathing room by sharing a few spots I’ve been working on cutting the clutter. 

I love ideas. It’s my greatest strength and my greatest weakness. If you’re like me, you love to listen to podcasts for ideas, you download stuff for ideas, you search the internet for ideas, look at social media for ideas. 

Ideas energize me, and they make me feel like there’s so much opportunity out there. 

But, if you’re like me, you get all these ideas, and get super excited about them, then can’t stay focused on anything longer than a goldfish.

While all of these ideas are super exciting and motivating, they don’t actually lead to the outcomes I need. 

You Don’t Always Have to Do More

Ideas, while they are exciting, make me feel like I need to do more. 

Sometimes, I can’t do more. Sometimes I can only do what I can do. I know you know what that feels like. 

Those are the moments where I have to step back and realize what I’m doing right now is exactly enough. The time I have is enough. I am right where I’m supposed to be, and you are too. 

Being where I’m supposed to be, doesn’t mean I can’t be better. It just means sometimes I need to sit and marinate in the spot where I am and work on the ideas I currently have before I can take on new ones. 

Be Who You Are

If you’re a small business and your marketing looks like you’re a small business, that’s okay. 

I’m not saying it should be hideous or generic. Any marketing worth investing in should be a reflection of you and a reflection of your business. 

If you’re not a Fortune 500 company, or you haven’t existed for 5,000 years, and you’re not bringing in millions or billions of dollars in revenue, don’t feel like that’s what your marketing should be like.

We hold ourselves to those standards sometimes. We seem to do it especially in the times where we feel strapped for time and like we’re treading water. 

Who You Are is Good Enough

I want to tell you if you’re not a Fortune 500 company, you don’t need to have videos that look like they were produced to the nth degree. You don’t need photography that looks like you’re a multibillion dollar company, or a website that looks like a Fortune 500 company. That’s not what you are. 

You are something else and it is okay. 

There are buyers all over the place who can’t afford to work with a Fortune 500 company. 

If they come to you and you look like you’re something you’re not, then they’re going to leave because they’re not going to connect with you. You’re not going to be what they need or perceived to need. 

So, be exactly who you are. 

Match Your Label to You 

It’s the same reason discount foods look like discount foods. AND I LOVE myself some discount foods. You can look at the shelf, grab them and put them in the cart knowing they’re going to be the least expensive thing on the shelf. 

Those brands are selling to the people who want the least expensive thing. They know their competitive advantage is price, so they make sure you recognize them through their labels. 

By the way, please don’t change your labeling just for the sake of change. 

I always feel like Delores Umbridge from Harry Potter when I say things like that. “Change for the sake of change shall be prohibited!” And I really don’t want to go down sounding like that harpy. 

BUT even necessary change is confusing to your loyal customers. Something to be navigated carefully.

For example, recently, Velveeta changed their label. Now it looks almost exactly like the generic brand. Which is terrible, because I end up with a $7 block of cheese instead of a $3.50 block of cheese. So I’m a little peeved with Velveeta for blowing up my cheese-buying universe. 

Find Where You Can Readjust Expectations

Instead of constantly feeling like you need to do more, I want you to ask yourself where you can cut the clutter and focus on doing something better. 

You don’t need to have 45,000 different social profiles. You can just be good at one. Then,  once you’ve mastered one, you can be good at two. You don’t need to do it at all. 

Your Pace is Fine

Forgive yourself for not growing lightning fast. 

There are so many speakers who will stand up and be like, I grew my business lightning fast. This is how you do it –  you have to work a billion gajillion hours, and then you’re going to be so amazing. 

In reality, you’ll be completely worn out. You will have absolutely neglected your family. Then you’re going to have a complete emotional breakdown. That’s what they don’t tell you. They just tell you, you’ve got to work real hard and grow lightning fast. I disagree. 

Take the Time to Figure Things Out

Sometimes when you’re working with a really limited budget, you need to grow slowly. You need to learn your lessons along the way and not completely erupt yourself. 

You can grow slowly and figure it out as you grow and build the most amazing and sustainable business out there. 

You don’t have to do it huge and fast. You don’t have to, even though people tell you you should. I didn’t do that. You don’t have to do it either. 

You can give yourself permission to not grow 50% this year. You can give yourself permission to just stay right where you are. 

Steady is Good

That’s been my goal for some years. It’s not to make more money. It’s just to do what we do and be more efficient at it than we were last year. You don’t always have to grow. 

If you’re swimming because you just want to grow, maybe you need to take a step back and say, is that really important right now? 

Because you are where you are right now, and that’s where you’re supposed to be. 

Make Small Changes

If you do want to make adjustments, I want you to ask yourself this question, what could you do differently to have a slightly different outcome? 

I just did this in my marketing. I put all this energy into it, and it didn’t work. I belly flopped. 

When you find yourself in similar situations, look at it with a fresh set of eyes (once you can let some of your anger go because it didn’t work). Ask yourself, is there a different way I could go about it? 

You don’t have to start all over again. Try to reimagine it as something else. Could you give it a different name or a different graphic? 

You Don’t Need More Stuff, You Need to Know Who You Are and That’s a Journey

If you’re beating yourself up, because you think you don’t have a fancy enough logo or fancy enough business cards, here’s the deal. You might not need a fancy logo at all. You might not even need a business card at all. 

One of my least favorite things is when people come into my office and tell me they need to have a brochure before they can go sell anything, or before they can start asking for donations. 

You know what I tell them? I tell them, “No, you don’t.” 

You don’t need a brochure. You need to know why you do what you do. You need to know who you are, and why you’re better than the rest of the competition. You need to know what your customer needs, and how you’re going to deliver it to them. 

What can you take off the list?

Maybe you don’t need all of those things on your list right now. 

It’s okay to mark something off the list that’s been there forever. 

Just because you made the decision you were going to do it at one point in time, does not mean it was the right decision. It was the right decision for you that day, but today’s a different day and you don’t have to make it again. You can check the box and move on without ever having done it. 

So, if you need to get something under control, I want you to look at the number of things you have to do and get rid of some of them. 

I know it sounds completely insane. But sometimes getting rid of some of those things means you can give yourself space to be right where you are and get better at that.

Remove the Clutter 

If your email marketing isn’t working, maybe send less emails and focus on something else. Or, send an email to your list and ask them if they want to be on it anymore. Or, don’t ask at all, and take everyone off the list who hasn’t opened the last 10 campaigns. Get rid of them.  

Because here’s the deal. You have people on your list who love you, and you have people who are outliers. You don’t need everybody right now, you just need the people who are closest to you.

You have no idea how much better your open rate and your click through rate will be if you get rid of the outliers. 

You just need the people who love you. 

You need the people who share your values and your mission. They’re going to be your supporters, and you can support them and champion them. Don’t worry about everybody else. You can get rid of them. It’s okay. You can send less emails, it’s okay.

Get Rid of What Doesn’t Serve You

If you have FOMO like me, I want you to unsubscribe from the podcasts that don’t serve you. 

The ones you haven’t listened to the last 20 episodes they’ve dropped. Because you’re their outlier. You can always re-subscribe when you have time to listen again. 

I also want you to unsubscribe from those text messages that keep popping up on your phone and distracting you. Just reply, STOP every time you get one. Then delete the thread from your phone. 

You don’t need it. You can get back on that list whenever you want to. You don’t need more things and more sales pitches to be coming at you. Just clear out the clutter, you don’t have time for, and unsubscribe from email lists too. 

If you’re an outlier, you don’t need to be on their list either. 

In a way, you’re really doing something good for their list by jumping off of it. You’re not supposed to be there right now, you’re supposed to be where you are. You need to clean up the space so you can work and do your best work. 

Don’t download that extra thing you think is going to give you all the ideas right now that you think are perfect for future you. No, you only need the things for current you right now.

You can save it and put it in the someday folder, but you really don’t have to download it at all. It’s just one more thing for you to consume. It’s just one more idea that’s going to potentially influence your decision making and distract you from what you’re supposed to be doing right now. 

Done is Better Than Perfect

If you have everything you need right now to do your job and make your decisions, then you need to do your job. Because perfection is your worst enemy. 

My friends, done is better than perfect. Stop taking in all the stuff and get out of your own way. Make a decision about whatever it is you’re working on. 

From that decision, you’re going to learn something, whether it be that you should have done it another way, or that you did it amazing. You can’t know until you actually do it. 

Fight Paralysis by Analysis

You know, I love my brother, but that man, I swear, he analyzes stuff to the nth degree. Once he had so many options for how he could put a fence up around his house that he never put up a fence because he couldn’t decide the right way to do it. He gave himself too many options, and couldn’t make a decision. 

When really, what you need to do is go out, find the information you need to make your decisions and then do not read anything else that doesn’t serve you.

Get it done instead. Then allow the universe to bring you the other things you need to make it better after you get it out there. Can you do that? For me? 

Create Space for Yourself

These are the gifts I’m giving to myself right now, that I have been giving to myself since I started almost drowning in work in January. The universe handed me a card I didn’t think I was going to be dealt. 

I know you face the exact same thing in your organizations every single day. The only thing we can do is create space for ourselves. That means getting rid of the clutter. We don’t need to be outliers, and we don’t need to have outliers either. Go through the things that distract you every day, get rid of texts, get rid of the emails, unsubscribe from podcasts, don’t let yourself download anything else that doesn’t serve you. 

Keep Moving Forward

Make a decision to work on the thing you know is right, and be good at it right now. 

Make it better right now, instead of trying something different. Instead of agonizing over the thing you might want to do in the future, focus on what you can improve now. 

I want you to know that you are amazing, and you do amazing things. Even if you got a curveball this year, it’s okay because you can make a decision, and you can be better exactly where you are. 

You don’t have to be any bigger if you don’t need to be right now. You don’t need to try some new marketing crazy mumbo jumbo. You don’t need to have any more employees. You can be a rockstar exactly right where you are. 

Use the information you have right now to make the best decision that you can possibly make. Keep moving forward.