Episode 423: What's the next best first step?
In this episode, Fiona explores the importance of taking small steps to move forward with your business ideas. She also shares her own experience of launching a course. Tune in!
You'll Learn How To:
Challenges in starting new projects
Importance of taking the first small step
Example of using Instagram to gauge interest
Encouragement to take action on business ideas
Advice for businesses facing low sales
Importance of building your brand during downtime
Get in touch with My Daily Business
Connect and get in touch with My Daily Business:
Welcome to episode 423 of the My Daily Business Podcast. Today is a quick tip episode, and I feel like I could have used this tip many times in my business, I have learned the hard way, but I'm going to share it with you. Before I get stuck into that, I want to let you know that the Group Coaching wait list is officially open for the next round of group coaching which I think is starting at the end of August. Just head on over to mydailybusiness.com/groupcoaching and you can sign up there if you're on the waitlist and then you end up getting into Group Coaching, then you get a bunch of perks, extra time with me, all these other things. It's worth getting on the waitlist, even if you just want to see what it's all about, get on the waitlist because you'll be the first to know when we officially open. You can do that again just at mydailybusiness.com/groupcoaching.
Before we begin, I'd like to acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians on these lands that I record and run group coaching and do all the other things in my business. And that is the Wurrung and Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. And I pay my respects to their elders past and present and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded. Let's get into today's quick tip episode.
I am recording this on the day that I have just wrapped up the very first round of my How to Get Your Book Published course and coaching program. That ran for six weeks with live coaching every single week. We had such a beautiful group of people. I know some of them listened to this podcast, so thank you for making the first round just so wonderful and warm and just a lovely group of people who came together to talk about the book that they want to get published and work through my course, How to Get Your Book Published and turned up week after week. We went through everything from the book proposal to how to pitch to a publisher, through to the marketing, writing, the book, permissions, legal requirements, all the things that I wish I had known, even though I had a pretty good understanding of book publishing.
But I still going through writing my first book and my second book, and I learned so much. In this course, we have publishers come in and tell you what they're looking for exciting pathways if you do the course as well. We just wrapped that up and I was saying thank you to everyone today. It was just such a nice group of people. But today I was thinking about that course because ages ago I decided to do this course because so many people had said how did you get your book published? Or How did you get a book publishing deal? And then how did you get a second book publishing deal and can you teach me? I have done a range of one-on-one coaching sessions with people about this. I thought, why don't I turn some of that into a course?
But this is where a lot of us get stuck. I got stuck. I was like, “I should do a course.” I probably thought that a year ago. And then I kept thinking about it. People kept asking, but I didn't go any further with it. I just let it sit there and I was like, maybe one day I'll do it. Or there's so much work involved in that and I've got all these other things going on. Instead of thinking, what is the best first step? Eight months after I had started thinking about it, I decided that the best first step I was fed up with like thinking, am I going to do this? Am I not going to do it?
This is how a lot of people think about lots of parts of business, especially launching something new. And I thought, what is the best first step? Maybe I should tell people about it. that's what I did. I put a post on Instagram stories saying, “I'm thinking of doing this, would you be interested in signing up?” I think we had about 19 people sign up for the waitlist, and not all of them went forward with it, but we put it out and just having that reception so quickly, it was like, there are people interested in this. This is going to be something. That first step was a post on stories. It was not designed in Canva or anything like that. I think I just put a picture of my first book and then some text saying, “Would you be interested in this?” And a link to how to sign up.
I don't even know if we had a link, might've just been sent me a DM. I think it was a reply to this story. It was as basic as it gets, but it was the first step. And then because of the feedback, it was like, we're going to do these. Then we sent emails out to people that we were interested built. It has a time in mind, a lot of the people couldn't do the right time anyway. We had a lovely full group and went through it. And then each week I would create the content for the course in the week prior, and then people could have a couple of days to look at it if they wanted to. We also did say that this is the beta testing group, so they got a discount.
But it was also just amazing to get people's feedback as we went. Also realized that it's not that much work to build this out. I say this stuff to people all the time, I'm constantly answering people's messages about this. I'm just putting that into a format that people can then watch in their own time and then turn up to the coaching calls. what it taught me was that I could have sat on that for like another year or just not done it at all. One of the lovely people who went through the course said to me, I love that you just took action and you did it. But I wouldn't have taken any action if it wasn't for that first small step, that first best step to what is one way to just get it outta my head and out into the public arena.
Based on the feedback, I will decide whether I go forward or not, instead of either sitting there and not doing anything about it, or the flip side, building the whole thing and then launching it and having crickets. If you are sitting on something in your business right now, and it's been something that's been niggling or an idea that you've had for ages, instead of just continuing to procrastinate on it, consider what is the first step. Is it like me putting out the most basic Instagram story tile ever? Not thinking that through, but just being like, I'm sick of my stuff. And sitting here thinking about, I could do that and not doing anything about it, I'm just going to post and see what happens. Which then that first step was like a domino.
As soon as one thing was done, that Instagram story, then I got the DMs, then we emailed, then we figured out a date and time, then we put a sales page up on the website, then we collected money, then we built the whole thing in Kajabi week after week. It wasn't all built in one go just using our Canva templates. I even used Canva to record this this time. It was all pretty minimal. And now it's done. The course is there. If anyone is reading, anyone writing a book, I was going to say start a podcast. We have a course for that as well. But if you want to write a book, we've got the course there, we will be opening it up again, the course is always there, but if you want the coaching component as well, I think we're going to be launching that in September this year, again for the second time.
You can find all the information at mydailybusiness.com/courses. But none of that would've happened if I hadn't just decided to post an Instagram story or take whatever that first step is. If you're sitting on stuff, take this as your sign of what is the first step. What is something small that is not going to take much time or effort from you, but gets the ball rolling without that, believe me, I could have spent another year thinking about this or maybe just never done it at all, and then be watching other people do things and think well, I could have done that, but I didn't. That would be the difference I got going because I started with a very small, effortless, almost step that was as lazy girl as you can get. If that is you and you're reading and you're like, there's that thing I wanted to start, whether it's a podcast, whether it's a different type of marketing channel, whether it is a new collection altogether, whether it is hiring somebody, maybe you just need to hire somebody part-time in your business, and you've been talking about doing it for ages, but you haven't gone and had a look on Upwork, gone and had a look on like a jobs site, asked a couple of people who they use and get going.
Just start. Just do the very first easy next step. That is it for today. And if you're in Australia, we're literally about to get into a new financial year. This is a perfect time to get things rolling, to get things moving in your business. I know a lot of people are experiencing this at the moment, and if you've got low sales or things aren't looking up to the way that they usually would be, don't freeze. That's probably the worst thing that you can do. What you want to do is then spend the time, if you've got downtime at the moment on building your brand, on doing these things, on getting stuff rolling, getting the small steps happening so that they add up and they snowball, and suddenly you've got somewhere with whatever the idea was that you had.
Please take this as your sign to get going. Start with a small step. What is one small thing you can do towards whatever it is that you're trying to create? Because as I said, I've just wrapped up the six weeks of coaching with these beautiful people. Some of them have already started their book proposal. It's exciting. I can't wait to hear more about this from them. I can't wait to be invited to their book launches. And none of that would've happened if I hadn't just done that very first basic step of posting on social media. If you want to look at this in text format, you can find that over at mydailybusiness.com/podcast/423. If you enjoyed this in any way or maybe it's prompted you to just do something today, I would love it so much if you could leave a review. It just helps other people find this podcast. Thanks and I'll see you next time. Bye.
