The 5 reasons you’re not consistent in your business (& how to tackle them)
This year I have completely blown up rule number one in my business… consistency.
I was great at this rule last year - showing up every week with a new blog post & email to my list, reviewing & tracking my business data regularly, using a weekly rhythm that worked, but this year… not so much.
In fact, not at all.
So almost 3 months into the new year I wondered down to my local boulangerie, ordered a strong coffee and a Pain au Chocolat aux Amandes (as good as it sounds & enough energy for at least a month of blogging!) and asked myself why.
Why after having nailed consistency for a whole year in my biz in 2022, that I haven’t at all in 2023… and here’s what I learnt.
Quick note before I jump in, consistency matters. In fact I’d go as far as to say, that it’s the most important thing you can do as a small business owner, freelancer or solopreneur.
The majority of small businesses fail in the first year, because they don’t keep at it, they don’t follow through, they’re not consistent. Just imagine how many incredible potential businesses lost due to them just throwing in the towel a lil’ bit too soon… let’s make sure that’s not you.
Or me for that matter!
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The 5 reasons you’re not consistent in your business
1. Not prioritizing
I think this first reason is probably the biggest barrier to consistency for small businesses.
Tell me, does this sound familiar?
You had a plan for the quarter, but after a couple of weeks, and a good amount of toilet scrolling on the ‘gram (we all do it) you’ve got another 20 fabulous ideas that your competition are doing, and you’ve added them to your list.
Your boyfriend also had an incredible thought last night that you’ve spent the morning researching… and you suddenly realized that you forgot to write this week’s blog post…
…and now it’s Friday evening & you’ve got Lisa’s hen do (that’s a bachelorette for the American’s at the back) this weekend.
Or maybe you never set priorities. You’re so desperate to make your biz work that you’re doing ALL OF THE THINGS! Because, you have to! You can’t afford for your biz to fail.
Time for some loving truth talk… When you try to do all the things, you end up doing… none of the things.
Or, if you do do all of the things, you tend to do them badly… or partially.
Meaning no impact on your biz (in fact sometimes it’s even a negative impact) and so much time lost.
So, as someone that deeply cares about your biz, wants to make it successful, has a zillion ideas, how do you prioritize?
Make a list of all the things you COULD do, and then score them on this simple matrix - impact, and input (how much business impact they’ll have & how much you need to input to do them - time & money/ other resources). Those that are high impact, but low input are the ones that you should put at the top of your list.
From those that are top of your list which will bring you the most joy & feel most aligned to your business objectives? Those are your shortlist.
Then finally, choose a maximum of 3. Yep, 3 for the whole year! Ok, ok you can choose 4 if you really want, but ideally the smaller the list of priorities the better this will work.
Need some help working through your priorities? Grab my free annual reflection document for the exact process I work through (it doesn’t need to be done in December!) you can start right away… oh, and you can do it more than once a year if you want too!
But what happens if I have a fabulous idea, or new opportunity in July, and I’m setting this list in March?
OK, here’s the deal… you can keep a list of ideas/ opportunities on the side - every time you see something on Pinterest, or a friend gives you a fabulous must-do idea, note it down in your planner, or google doc.
And then schedule a point in time (not more often than quarterly if you can) to reflect on your priorities, and if you decide you want to add one, you have to remove one that was there before! It’ll make you much more critical of new ideas, if you have to remove something to accept them into your plan.
2. Working at 100% is a barrier to Consistency
This is what happened to me at the end of 2022… I’d been working super hard, had a pretty good rhythm going, but was at my maximum capacity…
And then, life happened. I lost both my grandmas in 2 weeks, and suddenly I had my family to support, funerals to attend & help with and of course grief to deal with.
My 100% didn’t allow for life to happen. Even a cold, or unexpected challenge like a car breakdown would have kiboshed my plans, and sent me into later nights, more weekend work, or dropping balls.
What happened is, I didn’t take the time to reprioritize, I just kept going, and got more & more burnt out, and eventually I stopped being consistent with the things that were most important to my business - my weekly email to my list, blogging, my self development.
So lesson learnt - your priorities, the must dos in your business shouldn’t take up more than 80% of your capacity (even better if it’s 60%!).
That other 20% of your time can then be used as extra time to focus on one of your priorities if you want, or to do less important things, or just as buffer time for you, so that when life (inevitably) happens, you have enough time to soak it up without it impacting on the consistency of your priorities.
3. Not being ahead of yourself stops you being consistent
One of the best ways to stay consistent is to always be ahead of yourself.
This especially works well with things like marketing - blogging, youtube videos, podcasting, emails to your list, social media etc. But can also work in other areas of your business like client work, or even order fulfillment.
Instead of doing everything on the day, or in the week it’s due, here’s your challenge to get ahead of yourself by a couple of weeks, or even a month.
It has a bunch of benefits!
Firstly - when life happens, you’re not scrabbling around getting this week’s content sorted, because you already did it, you can instead, deal with the issue, and then get back ahead next week. No stress!
It also allows you to think more strategically about things - like connecting blog posts to one another, or creating really strong processes to replicate common client tasks instead of doing them afresh each time.
Sometimes it can be tricky to get ahead, so make sure to use tools to help! Here are seven of my fave timesavers for small businesses!
4. Planning that reflects your priorities
If your priorities aren’t reflected in your weekly planning we got a problem!
Those 3 things you want to spend most of your time, energy and effort on, should be what you see blocking your calendar, or asana.
But that’s not always easy!
So here are some common pitfalls & tips to avoid them if you’re finding it difficult to plan to consistently work on your priorities:
Getting distracted by your inbox?
Check it once only, at the end of the day. This gives you a limit on the time you can spend on the emails in it, and if anything’s super important you can add it into your plan for the next day in advance, knowing you did that intentionally instead of reacting in the moment.
Struggling for time?
If other - non priority tasks are taking up your time consider these 3 questions.
1 - Can you just stop doing them?
2 - Could you do them more efficiently (create a process/ system or purchase a tool to save your time for example)
3 - Could you outsource?
You can buy an hour of time from a VA for around $25, and you may find that allows you to focus on the things only you can do, whilst knowing that those other things that were getting in the way of your key priorities are well looked after.
Switching tasks?
Batching is a business productivity buzzword… and for a reason. Batching is the process of doing a number of the same task all in one go. For example, writing out the structure of blog posts, or recording Youtube videos, or creating emails for your list. Instead of doing these one at a time, you set a morning, afternoon or even whole day, and bosh out a bunch of them. You could even do all of your work on XX for the month in one day, and then know it’s done.
Why does it work?
Let’s use the analogy of laundry…you don’t do it every time you have a dirty sock… imagine how inefficient that would be! Having to take the sock to the machine, adding the liquid, setting the programme, waiting for the machine to run, taking the sock out and hanging it up! You wait until you have a machine worth of dirty clothes & then do all your washing in one go.
Batching blog posts, or client proposals or email writing is the same. You get into a flow, so your work is more efficient. You have the right programmes/ information or resources ready and don’t need to keep switching. You’re less likely to be distracted.
5. Lack of useful accountability
When you work for yourself… you have the best (or worst) boss in the world! you decide!
It’s often easier to be accountable to external sources than to ourselves - in my case, I have a tendency to prioritize client needs, seeing their requests as my main accountability source as opposed to the priorities I have in the business that might be just as (if not more) important but are less urgent (and I don’t have someone to email me about them so it’s easy to put them on the back burner!)
Now, in my biz, my clients are my top priority - I will always get back to them quickly, take the time to go the extra mile & get so much joy from their successes! But they’re not my only priority, and I have to make sure the other things I’ve committed to in my planning, also have accountability attached to them.
Struggling to set up an accountability framework? Find a business buddy who will check in to see if you did that thing you’ve been putting off, or set up your day so the less urgent priorities (the ones we tend to leave on the back burner) have to be done first, before the more urgent things (it’s incredible how you’ll still get everything done!)
Or even set up a reward system for yourself so that when you do something you tend to put off, that you get something lovely in return - a nice coffee at your fave spot, or a Friday afternoon off… whatever will help you stay accountable!
So, there you have it - the reasons you’re not consistent in your business, and how to overcome them.
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