Don’t overlook the obvious!
I’m noticing this week that my brain’s looking to over complicate things – What I do know is our brains are wired to look for problems and so they get all antsy when things look way too obvious! It’s like my brain says – it can’t be that simple right? WRONG!
The example that pops for me is when I see my clients thinking about starting out in business and they know they need to make sales to bring in the money. After we have bust the myth about ‘sales strategy’ the conversation then moves rapidly into – ‘And, I’ll need some stuff….The complicating brain kicks in and goes – yup, you’ll need a brand first, then some business cards, Oh! and a website, where clients can order online, and then a payment gateway AND of course you’ll need a CRM tool to track prospects and an automated email system AND AND AND….’ Brain goes into overload, a small nuclear explosion happens in your head and you back off from that sales strategy and put it back on the ‘too big, too difficult’ pile.
Does that sound familiar?
In fact, if you look at your business you probably only need a handful of active clients to get started (one is often good enough!) then all you actually need is a list of phone numbers and to be ballsy enough to pick up the phone and start a conversation with potential clients.
When I first started out as CEO of my own thing, I had my phone list and whatsapp and that was about it – I messaged 10 of my contacts every day and asked if they were interested in coaching (or maybe knew someone who was) and then I wrote down on a spreadsheet who I’d spoken to. That was it – no brand, no headed notepaper (I still don’t have any!) No website needed, no business cards and absolutely the only thing which resembled a CRM was a list of names on a spreadsheet. See, SIMPLE!
More often than not, simple is what’s needed. When you ask yourself the question – what’s the simplest thing I could do here it’ll give you great results and stop you’re brain creating all that drama to keep itself busy.
