A couple hundred years ago, it was common medical practice to ‘bleed’ a patient to improve their health.

Nowadays, most of us would say “That doesn’t work!” (or maybe just “yuck…”).

But there are mistaken beliefs in almost every field.

A couple hundred years ago, it was common medical practice to ‘bleed’ a patient to improve their health.

Nowadays, most of us would say “That doesn’t work!” (or maybe just “yuck…”).

But there are mistaken beliefs in almost every field.

It’s always enlightening when I talk to people about what they believe they need to do to build a business. There are all kinds of theories out there about what’s useful.

So I’ve put together 5 of my favorite ‘Don’t do this!’ tips – are YOU doing any of these?

There’s a caveat that goes along with this list: This list was constructed with the assumption that your biggest goal is to increase revenue in your business, or decrease the time you spend to create revenue. If you have tons of money, and you don’t care how many clients you book in the next year, you can ignore this list. Of course, if that describes you – you’re not actually building a business, you’re funding a hobby 🙂

5 Things To Not Do:

1. Creating, not connecting

This means working on something that won’t bring in clients. If you’ve spent the last 4 weeks bemoaning your lack of clients while you put the finishing touches on 27 blog posts, you’re spending time creating new things that you don’t need, rather than connecting with people you need to talk to who might hire you.

2. Avoiding something you don’t know how to do

AKA ‘The tech is too hard’. Do you need to put a CTA (call to action) on your website, but you’re not a web designer? Depending on your site, you can get someone from a freelance site like fiverr.com or upwork.com to do it for you. AKA ‘The tech is too hard’. Do you need to put a CTA (call to action) on your website, but you’re not a web designer? Depending on your site, you can get someone from a freelance site like fiverr.com or upwork.com to do it for you. 
I recently discovered in suggesting this that the person I was suggesting this path to didn’t know how to engage a freelancer, and so was delaying getting something done. That’s OK, you can google ‘how to choose a good freelancer on fiverr’ and you’ll get step by step instructions. 
I don’t usually suggest learning things from googling them, especially marketing because there’s SO much bad advice out there. But learning how to hire someone from a freelance website to do a $50 job for you? Use the resources of the magical internet.

3. Perfecting something that’s not proven

Similar to #1, if you’re spending weeks and weeks polishing your freebie/lead magnet, you’re putting too much focus on something that isn’t yet proven. Go try to give it away. Go offer it to people. Remember connecting in #1? Connect with people and offer your freebie. If they want it, it’s worth polishing. If they don’t, you’ve just saved yourself a ton of effort.

4. Working to get better at your craft

It’s great to continue to improve how you do the wonderful work that you do. However, if you’re not making enough money to sustain your business, and feeling busy and overwhelmed, getting better at your work is like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. It’s not likely to affect the final outcome.

Instead, get better at marketing and sales, so you can do the work you love to do.

5. Doing the easy things first 

Your to-do list every day probably has over 10 items on it. That’s OK. But if you look at the list, and gravitate toward the easy items on the list, you’re cheating yourself and your business. 

Almost always, the most difficult things to do (emotionally) are the ones that bring you the most money.  Reaching out to people, sales conversations, making yourself visible through taking chances. Are you constantly choosing the easy path first?

So now that you know what not to do, what should you do instead?

3 Things You SHOULD Do Instead:

1. Prospect for places ideal clients hang out and interact

Do you know where to find your ideal clients online? If you have defined your ideal client well, you should be able to track ‘em down. So are you hanging out there, and seeing how they interact, what they say, what they complain about, and the solutions that they’re seeking? If not, start today!

2. Prospect for people who have the same target audience but different offers

These people are your idea referral partners. They are looking for the same people you are, and in many cases they may already know some of those people. Your offerings are non-competitive, because they do something different than you do. Reaching out to people like this can result in multiple new client referrals!

3. Prospect for speaking gigs (virtual) where someone else has the audience

If you start a podcast, you have to build the audience. If you speak on someone else’s podcast, you’re speaking to an audience that they’ve already created. Whether you’re speaking to Facebook groups or podcast audiences, getting in front of someone else’s audience is a great way to build your own, and get clients rapidly.

What are the most important things for YOU in the next year? Take my 4-question survey here, and grab the ‘Million-Dollar Audio’ recording!