In today’s episode, I’m talking about how you can move forward from the spaghetti stage of business.
When I say spaghetti stage, I mean that time in your business when you feel like you’re constantly throwing spaghetti at the wall and trying to see what sticks. You’re not necessarily feeling like it’s particularly strategic or effective in getting you to your business growth goals as quickly as possible.
Here for the links referenced in the show notes?
Quarterly Plan on a Page free template: tashcorbin.com/qplan
Grab the Heart-Centred Business Planning System: tashcorbin.com/planner
Share your thoughts on the #PinnedPod post in the Heart-Centred group: CLICK ME
If that is something that you’re feeling at the moment, or you would like to know how you can ensure you get out of spaghetti mode as quickly as possible, this is going to be the episode for you.
Let’s dive in!
Generally, when we start an online business in particular, we all start pretty similarly.
We all start by playing with different things, experimenting with different things, and trying different things out. Ultimately, we’re throwing a bunch of spaghetti at the wall.
Not everything’s going to stick, so you’re just throwing as much at it as you can.
However, at some point, you’re just wasting time, energy, and the chances you have to really scale up and grow.
How do you get from that spaghetti stage and being in this constant state of experimenting, to the point where you know what your strategy is, you know where to focus your energy and attention, and you know what is going to reliably and predictably create results in your business?
That’s what I’m going to walk you through today…
1. Have CEO dates
This might sound a little frivolous, but it is so powerful.
CEO time is the time in your business when you’re looking at your numbers, you are reviewing strategically, and you’re making those important decisions.
If you don’t have CEO time blocked out regularly, pop those CEO dates in your calendar so that you can protect that time.
For a lot of people, their CEO time is when they’re working with their business mentor. They may be a monthly date with their business mentor, and then a little weekly self-led CEO date.
Your CEO time is really critical to taking a step back from the day-to-day and seeing:
- What are the numbers telling me?
- What insight am I getting in relation to my results?
- Where are my leads coming from?
- What is my reach on social media?
- What am I putting into my business?
That is CEO time – when you actually stop and look at what the numbers are trying to tell you.
Step number one is to make sure that you are consistently engaging in CEO time. I recommend booking regular CEO dates – whether that be solo, with a business mentor or with a mindset mentor.
Really give yourself the opportunity to look at your numbers and what they’re telling you.
2. Organise the marketing in your business into a client attraction process
If you’ve ever done my 5-Day Client Attraction Challenge, or you’ve been through any of my training on the startup and growth stages of business and marketing, you’ll likely have heard about the client attraction process.
It’s the terms that I have used to describe the journey from someone finding out about you to buying from you and you delivering.
That client attraction process gives you the structure through which most people go through that journey from finding you to being on your mailing list and nurturing a relationship and then identifying as a lead and buying something.
When you break it up in that way, it allows you to look for where you’re putting in a lot of time and energy for little return.
Where are you ignoring them in that process? What are the bottlenecks?
This gives you that clarity of where you need to be putting time, energy and attention, and where you could stand to lose a bit of that workload.
For a lot of us, when we’re trying to come up with things to grow our business, our number one thought is to get in front of and reach more people.
For most people, you don’t have a reach issue. You actually have a nurture, lead generation or conversion issue.
By breaking your marketing into that client attraction process and looking at those layers, you’ll be able to see if that’s the case for you and reallocate some of those things.
Recognise that reach is the most time-intensive and expensive part of your business. If that reach isn’t resulting in paying clients, then ultimately you’re wasting your time.
Just by having a structure of a client attraction process and understanding what goes into each layer, you’ll be able to see that imbalance, and you’ll be able to stop throwing everything at it and instead know what’s going to work.
3. Tune out fear-based gurus who give you FOMO
The reason why that guru is telling you 5-day challenges are THE most important way for you to get clients and they’re the ONLY way you’re going to get clients is because (surprise surprise!) they sell a course on how to run 5-day challenges.
The reason why someone tells you you MUST be on Instagram, you MUST be doing reels, etc., is because they teach you how to do that in their program.
They are attached to that strategy for you because then you’ll pay them money.
Most of the online courses I see out there that are teaching people how to market are mostly focused on reach alone. They don’t contribute to the bottom line of the business with the same level of predictability as actually nailing a good lead generation strategy or nailing your entire client attraction process.
A lot of the messaging that we take in on social media is specifically designed to make us feel like we must do what this person teaches.
Of course we get all caught up in believing all of that! They have a vested interest in collecting information and stats that make it look like it’s a must-do strategy for your business.
Any statistic can be bent to support any kind of argument.
When you realise that every single person giving you free advice on the internet has a vested interest in presenting that information in a certain way to make you feel like you’re missing out on something, then it actually creates this great ability to scroll on by and not buy into it.
One of the big things that people say about being in the Take Off program is that when they get caught up in that shiny object, they can bring that strategy to me. And because I know their niche, their business, and what they’re already working on, they can be confident that I can give them more informed advice about whether that strategy is the right fit for them or not.
We had a big influx of conversations about tripwires AGAIN in the Take Off program just a few weeks ago.
For most of the people who were talking about it, they weren’t at that stage of their business yet. It actually wasn’t the right decision for them.
I was able to advise them against that (if applicable) based on what they’re working on, what they’re already doing, and how their client attraction process is structured.
The things that they were told about why they needed tripwires actually weren’t true.
Putting tripwires in place would actually delay the short-term income growth that they were on the fast track to achieving in their business.
That is a big benefit of having a core mentor or a couple of mentors that you can have those conversations with because any of that fear-based stuff that comes up for you and any of that FOMO can be ignored.
It makes a huge difference in your business when you have a mentor who you can speak to about different strategies and get that informed insight into whether it’d be a good fit for your business or not. It means that you’re a lot more resilient to some of that fear-based stuff.
If you want to get out of the spaghetti stage of business, stop listening to guru after guru who has a different opinion on what different reach strategy is the non-negotiable reach strategy for people online these days.
They have a vested interest in getting you stuck in the spaghetti stage because they want you to buy their course on how to do reels, 5-day challenges, TikTok, etc.
Of course they’re going to tell you that you must be using that strategy.
Learn how to tune them out and get clear on who you’re listening to right now and where you go to work out whether it’s the right fit for your business or not.
5-day challenges aren’t the right fit for every single business. But the person who sells the 5-day challenge course will tell you it works for every business.
Who do you go to for that discernment? Who do you go to for that rigorous discussion and conversation about whether that’s the right path forward for you or not?
This leads me to my fourth tip to get out of the spaghetti stage of business…
4. Have a mentor
Find a mentor to help get you out of the spaghetti stage of business.
There are certain times in your business journey when you need that extra set of eyes and advice. Not just a coach who asks you whether you think it’s right for you or not.
It’s not a pure coaching relationship. It’s a mentorship relationship.
There are times in your business where you need to work with a mentor.
I have worked with mentors in those times in my business when I’m stuck.
The times when I’ve resisted working with a mentor, I’ve simply stretched out the time that I stay stuck where I am. And when I finally invest and find someone to work with, that’s when the growth happens.
Having a mentor will help you to refine your strategy, to really focus on what’s going to move you forward, to keep those shiny objects at bay and to keep you on track.
For a lot of us, the reason why we want to throw out a strategy is not because it’s not working. It’s because we’re afraid it will work. It’s because we’re seeing some signs that it is working.
In those times, there are some upper limit stuff that’s happening for us.
If you’re finding yourself in that spaghetti stage of business and you feel like you’ve been staying there a little too long, then it may be time to consider engaging a mentor.
Whether that be in a high-touch mastermind, a one-to-one relationship, or a high-touch group program, you just need something where you can get some discernment, they learn about your business, and they can give informed advice about what might be the right fit for you.
Then the final thing that will really help people get out of the spaghetti stage of business is…
5. Start having a plan moving forward
I know the word “plan” can feel very boxing and stifling for some people. It creates visions of 42-page templates that no one ever looks at once they fill them in.
That’s not the kind of planning that I’m talking about.
The more you’re in the spaghetti stage of business where you have less predictability around what’s going to work in your business and what your clear strategy is, the shorter-term your plans should be.
I don’t recommend you set up a two-year plan and map out on a week-by-week basis exactly what you’re doing for the next two years.
That is not going to be a productive use of your time, because in four weeks’ time, something will happen, something will change and everything from then on gets thrown out the window because you’ve got to really focus on refining from there.
When it comes to planning, I think it’s important that you find a way to plan that feels like it’s got enough structure that you’re sticking with it, but it’s got enough freedom that you can be responsive to what’s going on and what the numbers tell you.
I do have a free planning template that I highly recommend you check out.
The doors are also currently open to the Heart-Centred Business Planning System.
I want to give you both the free Quarterly Planning template and the opportunity to come and join the Planning System.
For some people, just that free template is the level of structure they’re ready for right now.
It just gives a bit of clarity around what the focal points are for this quarter, what the key strategies are, and what some of the milestones you’re working towards are.
That may be enough for you because you don’t have that sense of predictability in your business yet. You don’t have that clarity on your two best-performing lead magnets and when you should focus on each of them.
If you don’t know that about your business, then you don’t know what you’re going to be focused on. You’re going to have to experiment with a few things.
You might try a few things that don’t work.
We don’t want to commit to doing them for a year in case they don’t work out when you first launch.
Having a short-term plan at first and then moving into the longer-term as you get more predictability in your business is a way to move out of the spaghetti stage of your business.
When you’re working with a plan, you are progressing towards a goal rather than just throwing a bunch of different actions out there and seeing what works.
One of the great things about my planning system (if you choose to come and join us in that one), is that it’s not just about creating the plan. It’s also focused on reviewing and measuring so that when you go into the next stage of planning, you’ve got data and insights to help inform that decision-making moving forward.
You can check out the Heart-Centred Business Planning System here: tashcorbin.com/planner
You can also find the free Quarterly Plan on a Page template here: tashcorbin.com/qplan
I hope to see some of you join us in the Planning Posse! It’s a year-long experience because it takes practice and refinement to create and implement a planning system that works for you over time.
You’ve got to build it to your strengths and what’s going to work for you.
It’s not a hard-and-fast thing, it’s actually helping you to find the right structure of planning for your business and personality type.
It is a really powerful opportunity for you to step into that more strategic growth in your business.
If you have any questions about joining the Planning Posse, feel free to slide into my DMs on Instagram or Facebook, or send an email to support@tashcorbin.com.
Make sure you check out the #PinnedPod post in the Heart-Centred group for this episode! On that post, you can share your a-ha moments, questions, and actions that you’re going to take moving forward: CLICK ME
Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of the Heart-Centred Business Podcast.
Until next time, I cannot WAIT to see you SHINE.
