The Time It Takes (Part 3)
This is the third post in a short series about three hidden timelines in your business:
The Marketing Timeline
The Build Timeline
The Business Focus (or What the Heck Am I Actually Doing?) Timeline
Understanding these timelines, if you’re on one or more of them right now, and where you are can impact the decisions you make, the way you manage your resources (time, energy, money, skills), and the viability of your business.
As a reminder, my recognition of these timelines is derived from personal experiences and observations after more than two decades in marketing and business having worked and conversed with hundreds of service providers.
If you want to catch up, check out The Marketing Timeline and The Build Timeline.
Okay, time for timeline #3.
The Business Focus (or the What the Heck Am I Actually Doing?) Timeline
This is the time it takes to narrow your scope to a defined set of solutions for a specific clientele and feel true alignment between vision and action. This leads to strong positioning and high levels of productivity, profitability, and joy in your business.
My first attempt to be full-time self-employed was a total disaster.
I made all the mistakes you would expect a naive 23-year-old to make. It didn’t last long and thank God someone hired me to be their employee instead.
It would be another 5 years before I would try again.
In my first real business (graphic design studio), it was 3 years before I was ready to hire someone, 4 years before I was making an income that could support someone besides myself.
Those early years in business (or months as was the case with my failed first attempt) were spent trying to find my find footing.
I was hungry for the work and had minimal criteria for what makes a good client.
I was cutting my teeth on everything.
In hindsight I see how I was operating reactively, responding to opportunities coming in, rather than proactively steering my course.
It wasn’t until the later years of my previous business that I started to dig into the questions: “What do I really want to DO? This work is great and all but where’s my sweet spot? What’s my niche, my focus?”
For me the answer was to leave that business and start the one I have now, Paraphrase Communications.
Even with a clearer understanding of what I wanted to do, it took me five years to find my stride. I just kicked off year 8.
I’m sharing my experience because it’s very common for the first few years in business to feel sorta fumbly, like “what the heck am I even doing????” and the sister question "should I just go get a job JOB?"
You are going to feel like you don’t know what the heck you’re doing a lot of time.
You are going to go through a stage in the Business Focus Timeline where you have way too many services. Your messaging is confusing and generic because you’re trying to be all things to too many people. You’re in constant pursuit of the nirvana of knowing exactly what your niche is and everything about your ideal client within it.
You don't know what you don't know, and one day you realize you never will. So you keep plugging along as piece by piece everything starts to come into sharper focus.
Much like the Build Timeline, the Business Focus Timeline is an inevitable part of entrepreneurship.
Do you think anyone who goes into business has it all figured out right away?
Yet I have seen countless people in their early days spending way too much time trying to do exactly that—figure stuff out instead of just going for it.
They take endless classes and courses. They create loads of content, much of never shipping. They procrastinate on reaching out to people. They hardly ever ask for the business.
They talk a good game but they never truly play it.
There are quite a few F words in business and the mac daddy is Focus. With Focus comes a new level of flow, freedom, and fun all of which usually result in an uptick in finances.
The only way you get to the late stages of the Business Focus Timeline is put yourself on it—in all your confusing, messy, kinda-winging-it ways.
Here’s how to stay in motion through the Business Focus Timeline:
View everything in your business as one big experiment (wise words from my friend and marketing guru Ilise Benun).
Have patience with yourself.
Commit to a daily writing practice—this habit has accelerated the crystallization of my own business focus and unique perspective like nothing else and I cannot overstate its impact.
Put more offers out there more often—like spaghetti at a wall—to quickly find out what sticks and what you don't like doing.
Surround yourself with other business owners who take action instead of make excuses.
The Business Focus Timeline is the most introspective of the three timelines.
You'll have moments of eureka, periods of flow, as well as Dark Nights of the Soul.
If you wallow in the early stages, if you allow yourself to stay all tangled up in indecision and second-guesses you'll never get to experience the great rewards to be had along the Timeline.
It may be a singular experience, but you never have to do it alone.
My goal is to help clients articulate their ideas, develop their unique voice and perspective, and communicate with words that sound like them because the words came from them.
This is about you gaining deeper clarity about the value of your work and feeling emotionally connected to your offers—effectively selling yourself first which in turn makes you way better at selling to others.
It's about me helping you move forward despite not feeling ready, even when don't yet have all the details figured out, and without full visibility for what lies around the corner.
If you’d like to work with me, I recommend booking a call so we can discuss what kind of support would suit you best given your goals.
Read up on the other hidden timelines in your business