Wheel of Progress™

Do you ever feel stuck? Do you ever feel like you’re just working harder and harder and harder every single day in your business, but nothing’s actually getting done? Like there’s no forward progress at all? At best, you’re running in sand, and most days, you’re getting nowhere. You can’t really look back on the day and say, “Oh yeah, that actually got done.” Does that describe you at all? If that’s where you are, we might know why. We want to tell you a story that will really open your eyes to something.

Let’s pretend for a moment that this is you. Yes, right next to that blue arrow.

Right now, you’re not so happy. You’re not happy because what you really want at the end of the day– your proverbial “pot of gold”– is over there. On that other side of the mountain. With a deep chasm of space in between.

You’re over here; your pot of gold is over there. You’re frustrated because this pot of gold is the reason you started your business in the first place. Whatever that “pot of gold” is for you, that’s what you want. Your goal of growing your business. It’s the reason that you’ve worked so hard day in and day out.

If you’re going to go from where you are to your pot of gold, what do you need? You need a bridge!

Most days, that’s what we’re doing at work. We’re trying to build bridges to our pot of gold. Maybe you say, “Okay, I figured it out. I was reading a blog post the other day, and what I really need to do is get good at this Facebook advertising thing.” You start building your Facebook advertising bridge, but then along the way something happens. You read another blog post and you talk to a friend or a colleague and they say, “No, no, no. Facebook advertising is great but everybody knows what you really should be doing is content marketing. Yep. Content marketing. You should be blogging and things like that.”

You stop building one bridge, and you start building another. Then somewhere along the way, about halfway through the construction of that bridge, you say, “Nope, it’s not about that. What I need to be doing is Pinterest,” or, “No, no, no. I need to do retargeting,” or, “You know what? I’ve heard about these things called conversion funnels, and I need to get a funnel for my business.” And you start building a funnel bridge.

You end up with lots of half-built bridges. You start something, you tinker with it, you start something else and tinker with that. Before you know it, you have bunches of half-built bridges that are wasting resources and aren’t doing anything for you.

Here’s the problem with a half-built bridge. It takes a lot of work to do that. You’ve got lots of time and investment in resources and money and talent and skills and all these things built into those bridges. But they aren’t really getting you to your pot of gold. In fact, half-built bridges are actually more dangerous than if there were no bridges at all.

Here’s the really crazy thing. At OnYourMarketing, we’ve identified 73 potential bridges that you could be building to grow your business. 73! It’s no wonder you’re confused. It’s no wonder that we get shiny object syndrome so often. It’s no wonder we jump from one thing to another.

And because there’s a lot of choices out there, that’s the reason the problem isn’t really about information. Business growth isn’t about attaining and acquiring more information. In fact, you have a lot of information. How many books have you bought in the last 12 months? How many webinars have you attended? How many events have you gone to? How many consultants have you hired? Growing your business is not really about information! It’s about implementation. Information without implementation is going to lead to a bunch of half-built bridges. Growing your business is about picking the right bridge and building the bridge completely.

We help local service companies not just start bridges, but finish bridges with a relentless focus on helping them reach their pot of gold. We have a method that conquers half-built bridges and turns them into built bridges– we call it our Wheel of Progress™.

We start with figuring out what is your pot of gold. What is your vision? What is your mission? Why are you doing this? In our experience, a lot of business owners forgot the reason that they got into business in the first place. Figuring out what that pot of gold is– that’s goal number one.

Once you’ve clarified that pot of gold, we dive into strategy. We love what Michael Porter, the super smart Harvard business school professor said about strategy: “The essence of strategy is deciding what not to do.” Our first strategy is to look at the big picture, and then figure out which bridge you should build first. And not get distracted by all the other bridges that need building. What’s the one big thing that’s really going to move the needle for your business?

That first bridge is different for every business, but here’s what’s not: once you’ve built one of these bridges, then you get to take the gold that’s over there. You get to take the additional momentum, resources, the business growth, whatever this led to– whether it was more customers or more revenue from the customers you have, or getting the customers you have to come back, whatever the benefit from the bridge that you built– and you get to walk across that bridge to the other side. And you get to bring some of that gold back. And now you get to . . . build another bridge.

The initial strategy is about picking which of the 73 bridges you should build now. It’s not about just doing one thing and being done, but it is about focus. It is about saying, “This is the one thing that I want to do now.” Then, making a plan and building it. Oftentimes, the reason you have half-built bridges is because maybe you don’t know which bridge you should be building first. You don’t know with absolute certainty that, “Yes, this is what I should be working on right now.” Sometimes, since you don’t know what’s first, you get distracted by all the bright, shiny objects. Sometimes you know the bridge that you should be building. You just don’t know how to build it.

Whatever the case, it’s our job at OYM to get you unstuck. It’s our job to say, “Let’s build this bridge, and here’s how we’ll do it. This is the big plan over the next quarter that we’re going to execute on as a company, and this is how we’re going to do it. This is how we’re going to get there. This is how we’re going to build that bridge.” Then we come back again the next quarter, and we do it all over again. Here’s the next bridge. Here’s the next bridge. Here’s the next bridge.

Quarterly, we are coming up for air and reviewing our strategy, reviewing the bridge from our last implementation. Reviewing what progress has been made, optimizing for improved results, and what team training is needed to keep the bridge intact. Then we start the cycle over again, tackling the next bridge. Bridge by bridge.

Let’s get started helping you build a bridge to your pot of gold. Don’t put it off any longer, schedule a free consultation now.