I've heard a lot of horror stories about working with people over the last 12 years. Stories about virtual assistants. Stories about web designers. Stories about social media managers, copywriters, and coaches. I've also heard plenty of horror stories about clients....
Most new business owners treat business-building like a Choose Your Own Adventure book. There’s the backbone of the story—the plot points that have been chosen for you. You know that you need to have something to sell, a customer to sell it to, and a plan for...
Whether or not you're looking to build a team, you've already made your first hire: you. As the business owner and likely the go-to person for just about everything, you are employee #1. Unfortunately, for all of our talk about making our own schedules, choosing the...
Entrepreneurship sure can be lonely. We put a lot of pressure on ourselves to go it alone, figure it out ourselves, and generally handle it. Getting help—whether that looks like building a team, plugging into a support community, or partnering up with someone...
I met Podge back in 2019 and was immediately struck by her thoughtfulness and humanity—both in life and business. Podge helps business owners and organizations make better hiring choices, manage their people well, and build humane cultures at work. She’s the founder of Small Business Co-Pilot and hosts a monthly free round table discussion called The Manager’s Huddle.
Podge and I talk about why managing has gotten the rap it has, how we can make our teams our business’s #1 asset, and what it really takes to prepare to hire.
This month, we’ve explored finding customers and building an audience—which are not the same things.
Every business needs to find customers. But not every business—not even most businesses—needs to build an audience.
Yet, so many small business owners get hung up on building their following counts or email lists instead of doing the things that actually lead to sales.
The drive to build an audience partially comes from the false belief that “scale” is the universal goal for all businesses.
Many successful businesses never scale—or they don’t scale in terms of serving thousands of people instead of tens of people. They might scale in terms of efficiency or price or team—but scaling up one or all of those things does not require you to build an audience.
But everywhere you look on social media, someone is telling you that you have to scale.
As Maggie Patterson put it, they’re serving you poison and then selling you the cure.
Now look, if you’re excited about scaling up or you’ve found success with scaling up, wonderful!! I personally love the idea of serving at scale and enjoy speaking to an audience.
But I also recognize that this is the best way to build a business for only a teeny tiny segment of the business owner community.
A stronger, more sustainable, more effective way to build a highly profitable business is to…
wait for it…
Stay small and do things that don’t scale.
Today, I have 3 more stories of people who are serving and building in a really impactful ways without building an audience in the way you might have been taught.
You’ll hear from messaging consultant Dr. Michelle Mazur, branding expert Amy Walsh, and leadership consultant Nancy Hess.
Every choice we make has a trade-off. When I decide to lace up my running shoes and log 4 miles before work, I’m trading another 45 minutes in bed for the energy I get from moving my body before I sit down at the computer. When I choose to knock off a couple of hours...
I hear from a lot of small business owners who say that they want to build an audience. They want to increase their followers on Instagram or get more views on YouTube. They want more subscribers on their email lists or have more people tune in for their live streams....
I have a reputation for being a decisive, proactive, making-things-happen kind of person. I’m quite proud of this. But really? It’s a facade. What others admire as fearless action-taking is just careful branding. I’m actually an anxious reactor. Oof. Even though I...
More work doesn’t equal more money. More offers don’t equal more money. More marketing doesn’t equal more money. More lead magnets, more email subscribers, or more followers don’t equal more money. And, the flip side is also true. Making more money probably doesn’t...
Host of What Works
Tara is a podcaster, small business community leader, strategist, and speaker. She’s been helping small business owners build stronger businesses for over a decade.