BOSSES understand the true power of Consistency – it is a critical component to building and growing your business. It allows for measurement and accountability and helps to establish relevance and credibility. Are you up to our 30-day BOSS Challenge? Commit to one thing you will do each day for the next 30 days that will help to grow your business. It doesn’t have to be monumental – just something realistic and manageable. Finally, let’s all be accountable to one another – Sign the form below to show your commitment! And we’ll be sure to check in on you along the way! How about taking it one step further? Let us know if you’d like to be on the show to tell us about it and we’ll set up a time to chat! Go forth #LikeABOSS!
Takeaways
Quick Concepts from Today’s Episode:
Consistency helps grow your business.
You have to hold your feet to the fire to create consistent routines.
If you don’t write it down, it doesn’t exist.
Your daily routine should help you achieve your larger goals.
If you choose tasks that are realistic, you’ll be more likely to complete them.
Make a goal to complete in 30 days, and then spend time every day doing a sub-task for this goal.
We’re all dealing with COVID brain. Everything you thought you could do this year, might not happen.
Create realistic expectations.
You are the first priority. Take care of yourself.
30 days is a powerful timeline that can create exponential results.
Being able to break a goal into a daily routine makes it chewable.
If it’s a priority, you can always find the time.
Physical fitness helps to refresh your creative mind.
Make a list of three things you want to do every day, and then review these goals every night.
Take 15 minutes with a physical notepad to “download” your day and evaluate your progress.
One of the most powerful parts of the marketing process is creating consistency with important tasks that make up a bigger objective or a goal.
Take a look at your tasks and ask yourself, “How does this get me to where I want to go?”
If you do something for 30 days, it should become second nature.
Like Gary Vee says, “Consistency wins.”
Perfectionism is a trap. Good enough is truly good enough.
For the month of September, do something every day to grow your business #LIKEABOSS.
Anne’s Challenge Goal: 30 minutes creating content for her blog.
Pam’s Challenge Goal: Live streaming every day
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Share ideas with your own network ++
Referenced in this Episode
Direct links to things we brought up ++
Find out More About Gary Vee
Sign up for the challenge at bit.ly/30DayBOSSChallenge
Visit Anne’s Blog for her updates
Recorded on IpDTL
Badass Editing by Noah Scheffey
Full Episode Transcript
>> It’s time to take your business to the next level, the BOSS level! These are the premier business owner strategies and successes being utilized by the industry’s top talent today. Rock your business like a BOSS, a VO BOSS. Now let’s welcome your host Anne Ganguzza.
Anne: Hey everyone. Welcome to the VO BOSS podcast. I’m your host, Anne Ganguzza, along with the amazing Ms. Pamela Muldoon. Hey Pamela.
Pamela: Hello Anne. [laughs]
Anne: Oh my gosh, I’m a little bit crazy today. You know, Pamela, among all of the other things I try to do every single day –
Pamela: You’re a busy lady.
Anne: Yeah.
Pamela: You have a lot going on.
Anne: I’ve been trying to be really good about creating a blog post every week. And I was really good for maybe a small amount of time, but I’m finding it very tough to keep it consistent. And I’ll tell you what, I was actually getting some really good results. Like people were responding well when I was consistent and posting my blog once a week. It was great, and now I’ve kind of lost it. And I think maybe it’s something we can talk about in terms of how BOSSes handle tasks in trying to grow their business, and the fact that the consistency aspect that I found to be so right for my business and really helped me to grow my business, I think we should talk about that.
Pamela: I would love to. I would love to talk about consistency.
Anne: Yeah.
Pamela: My guess is that you were seeing a really nice uptick, kind of an exponential uptick of activities.
Anne: I was, I was.
Pamela: And then you stopped, and then you probably saw it go off a cliff.
Anne: Pretty much.
[Pam laughs]
Anne: I feel like such a loss actually because I’m like every day all I can think about is the fact that I have not updated my blog. And it just, it’s like a concept like “Anne, come on. You know, you’ve got to get it together.” And it’s not a good feeling, actually.
Pamela: No.
Anne: You know? [laughs] So.
Pamela: It’s funny, we almost, it’s almost like a form of self-guilt, right, that kind of creeps in, yeah.
Anne: I know, I beat myself up over it.
Pamela: I would like to talk about that. I think it’s probably one of the most powerful parts of the marketing process or even just business in general is creating consistency on important tasks, or important tasks that make up a bigger objective or goal. There’s a lot of logic to it, but for some reason, without that accountability or holding our feet to the fire, man, creating new habits, creating new consistency and routine, one of the most challenging things to do.
Anne: Very much need time management here.
Pamela: Yeah.
Anne: To help me with that. I find though I’ll say, you know, one thing for sure is that, one thing that keeps telling me I have failed to yet post my blog again is the fact that I use a calendar. I pretty much live and die by my calendar right now.
Pamela: Yes.
Anne: I really feel that if I didn’t schedule something into the calendar, it just can’t get done. What are your thoughts about that?
Pamela: I think there’s a lot of truth to that, absolutely. It’s, if you don’t write it down, it doesn’t exist kind of philosophy. Right? And I think too, when you think about all the activities, because everything, when you were to open your calendar, you tell yourself everything is important. I think it’s also taking a look at all of the tasks and kind of asking yourself, how does this get me to where I want to go, right?
Anne: Sure.
Pamela: How does this activity drive to something bigger, or that type of thing, or even doing like the opposite, right? Like you want to create some kind of bigger objective with say your blog practice, right, or tactic, and then coming back to that daily routine is going to help you get there. It could be a combination, right, of not only writing it down, make sure it’s in the calendar, but also having that big goal in front of you to see what you’re trying to push towards, if that makes sense. Yeah.
Anne: You know what, Pam? This is like an epiphany for me, because what I do have in the calendar is the fact that I need to publish the blog every week. I have a different day of the week, and it says publish blog. However, I realize hello! that I’ve not scheduled time in my calendar to actually work on it on a daily basis or whenever I can.
Pamela: The publishing is the easy part, Anne. [laughs] It’s called clicking a button.
Anne: You got to have the content to publish. And so wow, Pamela, such a simple thing, but I do need to allocate time for that.
Pamela: Right.
Anne: And I think my whole, in my brain, if it’s not on the calendar, I just don’t have time for it. But I’ll tell you, I think I can squeeze in some time, even if it’s like, I don’t know, maybe 30 minutes a day. I think over the course of time, I would be able to really get something done. I want to make sure I’m not overtaxing myself. That’s for sure. I want to make sure it’s realistic.
Pamela: I think that’s probably one of the most important elements here, such a key point, Anne, is you know, I don’t know – well, yeah, I do. I’m a pretty Type A personality, and I tend to hang out and attract those that are kind of in that similar mindset.
Anne: Hello.
Pamela: Anne Ganguzza.
Anne: Hello. My name is Anne Ganguzza.
Pamela: With that being said – [laughs]
Anne: A Type, Anne Ganguzza.
Pamela: Which usually equates to “I bite off more than I can chew” kind of thing.
Anne: Oh yeah.
Pamela: Like you get it all done, but I don’t know about you, but I’ve had this conversation with myself, where I’ve said, “Pam, if you would actually choose tasks that were more realistic, perhaps you would feel better at the end?”
Anne: [laughs] True.
Pamela: I think that’s a part of it, right? So there’s the, what would the end look like for you? What are those goals that you did, you know, consistent activity for a 30-day timeframe, what is it you’re hoping to achieve? It could be an increase in engagement, an increase in whatever your CTAs are.
Anne: That’s what I’m hoping. Yeah.
Pamela: There’s something you’re shooting for, but you’re right, if you were to pick a 30 or 60-day time every day consistently and put a little mini task or a subtask, you know, write the first draft –
Anne: Sure.
Pamela: – and then the second day, edit the draft, you know, whatever you think those tasks are that make up the full week, so when you press a button, which is the easiest task of all [laughs] yeah, I think there’s very much something to be said. I’ve made that note myself. These last couple of months, you know also we’re dealing with, I call it, Covid brain a little bit, where I swear everything I thought I could do in a normal year, I’m still trying to be that person, and that’s not necessarily the case. So I have to really focus, and I have to keep creating more of a realistic expectation and being very honest with myself –
Anne: Good point.
Pamela: – on what realistic is defined, right, or how it’s defined.
Anne: That’s so important that you bring that up, especially now during this time, I was just talking about that in a presentation about how to build your business in a post-Covid world. A lot of it is too, the very first thing is you are the first priority. You have to take care of yourself. So yeah, if you’re going to be setting goals and accepting challenges for “what are you going to do every day to grow your business,” you have to be realistic. Because it can’t end up making you feel bad about it. However I think it will allow you to see the possibilities. And actually if you think about it, there’s so many 30-day challenges out there, not even just how to grow your business, but there’s 30-day challenges everywhere like in fitness. As a matter of fact, I think there’s probably a 30daychallenge.com somewhere. [laughs]
Pamela: Right, right. It’s creating new habit, right, routine? I think there’s something powerful about that timeframe where the result is exponentially different enough. You see the results so differently that that’s the momentum that gets you into the second 30 days. Right? So, and I even think about just breaking things down. A lot of folks are looking to, you know, grow their database, or drive new leads for example. And a lot of times, we might tell ourselves “I want to get 200 new leads in my database in 30 days.” What does that actually look like on a day-to-day basis, breaking that down? And then instead of looking at it as 200, you’re looking at it as five a day, three a day. Being able to break something down in a daily routine is so much more chewable.
Anne: I agree. A lot of times, I remember when I first started in voiceover, and I was trying to track my auditions, and what auditions I did, and how many I did per week. In my head I had done much more. Then when I started to record how many auditions I was doing – you know, I was like, “oh no, I can do 30 by the end of this week” or whatnot. And when I actually started to write it down and record it, I then found out like I’m not doing 30, I’m doing like, I don’t know, 15, and maybe it feels like 30, or whatever it is. I think the daily record of it, the recording of it really helped to lock me down into, first of all, great time management to figure out how long does it actually take me to do that, and then how much do I need to allocate to reach my goal? So I think the daily writing down or the daily tracking of it is a good thing. So.
Pamela: Yes, yeah. And I did just, I have my calculator here, Anne, so I took the 30 divided by the 200, right? That’s 6.66 for the listening audience.
Anne: Oh my.
Pamela: Don’t know what that means.
Anne: What a number. Yeah.
[both laugh]
Anne: But it seems like a realistic number on a daily basis.
Pamela: Right, six to seven. If you said, I’m going to add six new names to my database, and that’s reaching out through LinkedIn or whatever your scenarios are that you’ve built up over time to connect, does that feel more feasible? And definitely saying “I’m going to connect with six new people today” sounds a heck of lot more doable than “I want to have 200 by the end of the month.” Because I don’t know about you, Anne, but when I said those goals as well, and I’m 15 days in and I’ve done very little activity, I still try to go for the same goal within less time, right, which now I’ve added more anxiety to the inconsistency process. I’m packing it all on, you know, in terms of expectations for myself which are just not realistic.
Anne: Yeah, yeah. And then all you do – at the end you beat yourself up over it. So I think if you do the daily thing, and you’re realistic about it, it can be very, very manageable. I know that not so long ago, I kept trying to say “I’ve got to, like, get in better shape,” right, because this pandemic, there’s no exercise here. So I finally said, and we moved to a really beautiful area, and I finally said I’ve got to be able to walk sometime. My husband kept saying, “why don’t you just go ahead, get up early and walk?” And I’m like, “I don’t have time.” But in reality, Pam, I do have time. There was – I think if it becomes priority, and this is – you really want to grow your business, you really want to reach that goal, whatever it is, that fitness goal – and by the way, if you’re more fit, you can run your business better, by the way. [laughs]
Pamela: Yes, yes.
Anne: That really helps. It helps to really refresh your creative mind and your business mind as well. So yeah, I think really allocating the time, having a good calendar system. I’ll tell you, I just use my Google calendar. I live by my Google calendar, but the fact that I can schedule time in there really, really helps.
Pamela: Yeah, I think when you see it, it becomes more real. I’ve also redeveloped the routine personally just in the last probably I would say month or two where every morning I’m making my to-do list in the morning, or I’m making that list of three main things I want to tackle for the day, but even more importantly I take kind of a pulse check at night. I pull out that planner that I use, and I open it up. And I give myself, you know, that realistic, did I get it done, did I not get it done? Kind of thinking, if I did get it done, great, I can check it off. Always feels good. If I didn’t get it done, really asking myself, why didn’t I get it done? And then of course you start to see what you move over every day, and just that making time to see how you’re spending your time is also a really telling process to create more consistency of the activities that are going to actually make a difference.
Anne: Here’s a question, Pam. Now I have a digital calendar, however I also have a notepad, right? That’s where I write my to-do list. And I have really thought about let’s do the whole digital thing where I can – I like that checking and crossing off of things that I’ve done.
Pamela: Yes.
Anne: So for me, old school Anne likes to actually have a little pad, which is my to-do for the day, where I can physically scratch off what I have accomplished.
Pamela: It’s funny you bring that up, because I had moved everything to digital, and I realize that when I did that, at some point, I stopped engaging with my daily tasks, in a really kind of smart way. I mean I could type them out, but –
Anne: Sure.
Pamela: – there’s something about pen to paper. Right? It just makes a difference. So yeah, I have actually, I ordered the old school planner process –
Anne: Look at that.
Pamela: – a couple of months ago, and have reignited that in my life as well, because I want to be able to just sit, you know, at night on the bed or whatever and just kind of have that 15, 20 minutes of just downloading my day.
Anne: Less screen time.
Pamela: Yeah. Exactly. I don’t want to look at the screen. I think that’s because, with Covid, I’ve upped my screen game a little more than – I mean I already was bad in screen because I was already working from home, but because our social calendar has become fairly nonexistent, we’re spending even more time in front of screens, I think.
Anne: Yeah, agreed.
Pamela: So I’m trying to be very cognizant of not doing that through this power of creating my, not only my to-do list, but my goals and just kind of reintroducing in a way some of those old patterns of how I used to do things, and I don’t want them to be digital, at least for the time being. I’ve changed that as well.
Anne: So let’s throw out some ideas of things we can think of that –
Pamela: Yes.
Anne: – we can grow and enhance our business. I’m going to start off by saying obviously we’ve been talking – you’re the content queen, right, content marketing queen. I’m going to say yes, let’s put it on our to-do list to create some form of content, and it doesn’t have to be like, don’t make it a big, lofty goal. I would say, you know, maybe do a, I don’t know, a one-minute video on Instagram, or you know, post something on Instagram every day, do an Instagram story. Maybe do that every day, something small that you can then repurpose through other social channels. I’m gonna – I’ll tell you what, I’m going to take the challenge right here in front of everybody. [laughs]
Pamela: Uh-oh, drumroll.
Anne: I’m going to say that I am going to allocate – well, I’m not going to start it quite yet, but let’s see. I think we should start something in the beginning of a new month. So.
Pamela: I’m that kind of person, right? I like to start things in this kind of –
Anne: Yeah.
Pamela: Things are new and fresh.
Anne: And I want the BOSSes to play along with us. So how about this, Pam? I, for the month of September, for 30 days, I’m going to make time in my calendar every single day to focus on that blog. [laughs] Focus on the blog writing because I want to get back to my publishing once a week.
Pamela: Yes.
Anne: But I’m going to allocate the time, which is what I missed doing before, I’m going to allocate 30 minutes, because I don’t have an hour, but I’m going to allocate 30 minutes in the mornings to working on those blog posts. How is that?
Pamela: When you’re committing to 30 days, and you’re talking about –
Anne: 30 minutes a day.
Pamela: 30 minutes a day, is that, does that include seven days a week for you?
Anne: Well, I work six days a week. Pretty much seven, but I’m going to say that I’m going to do it six days a week, because my real work week I think is Monday through Saturday.
Pamela: Yeah, yeah. I just want to make that little caveat there.
Anne: Yeah. Some people don’t.
Pamela: You’re still putting forward activity, right, even if one of those days is a day of rest, or a day of kind of – I think too, with something like the blog, your day of rest so to speak, and I have quotation marks for those of you in the back who can’t see, could also be when you’re thinking of ideas. Ideas are, I don’t know about you, but I come up with my best ideas on my walks, or you know, when I’m kind of disengaging.
Anne: Oh yeah. Absolutely.
Pamela: Even if it’s not formal, you may still be doing it every day. [laughs] Yeah.
Anne: That is my goal. I’m taking a challenge. We’re taking the 30-day BOSS challenge. What about you, Pam? Are you going to commit to something?
Pamela: My gosh, you’re going to make me commit.
Anne: I am.
Pamela: Okay yes, I almost hyperventilated there. I always get nervous when I have to be accountable to somebody for some reason. But no, if you can do this, I can do this. I’ve been thinking about this one a lot. I’ve been tackling this idea of doing more video in terms of getting my message out, and I have some hangups around that because I’m an audio gal, but I want to commit to 30 days of live streaming for my business in the month of September.
Anne: Wow.
Pamela: I have to get the details kind of figured out in my brain, but I’m thinking it’s going to be on LinkedIn and/or Instagram in terms of where I do it.
Anne: Oh cool.
Pamela: Yeah, but I just, and I think – you know, it’s just like you said, me saying that, I think I started sweating a little bit.
[both laugh]
Pamela: I’m going to be honest with you because I –
Anne: I got a, I got a little, my stomach turned a little bit when I said I was going to do writing, because writing is not one of my favorite things to do. I think that it takes me a long time to do it. I enjoy once I finish it, but to actually do it, it’s not one of my favorite tasks to do, but it’s something that I have to do.
Pamela: And I tend to fall in the perfectionist trap. Right? I know that done is better than perfect. I can embrace that as a concept, but I really struggle sometimes, and I think with video and this idea of live streaming, what’s holding me back is I’m never quite good enough, right? I’m never quite ready, so then I just don’t do it. So my big push is if I get over myself, and I just commit to doing it, granted I’ll put some prep in terms of what I want to say, but if I just get myself to do it, I need to get over this hurdle of perfection. It has to happen for me to be able to do that. And I think another piece, like you mentioned breaking down 30 minutes every day and just taking a task or a subtask of the bigger task, that’s kind of how I see with the live streaming is, it’s not about doing a 30-minute show on LinkedIn. It’s a couple of minutes, right, just getting on, providing a tip, checking in with your audience, saying hello, whatever the case is, and then eventually it just becomes second nature. That’s my hope and my goal.
Anne: Well, I think the main theme here to really be aware of is consistency. We do every single day. And it’s funny because I was actually just listening to Gary Vee of course. On my ride to and from my errands, I like to listen to Gary Vee. He talks all the time about how consistency wins, right, just being consistent.
Pamela: Right.
Anne: You’re right, I’m also a perfectionist, so I’m like I can’t release that yet, because it’s not perfect. Getting anything out, I’m going to say, or completing that task in a consistent manner, getting it out there, especially when you’re talking about content marketing or whatever it is that you’re going to do to grow your business really, really helps to spread the message, helps people to know who you are, and I think more often than not, people are so much more forgiving. Like for me I’m like, “oh my God, I made a grammatical error, and that’s now – they’re going to just look at that and rip me apart.” But in reality like I have to get over myself, like you just said –
Pamela: Right.
Anne: – and not be so vain. People aren’t thinking about that. They’re, you know, getting the content as a helpful piece, and I don’t think they’re going to critique my actual, you know, grammar and writing, unless I make a spelling error. But hey, we’ve got all sorts of things for that these days, so there should not be an error that goes out.
Pamela: It is, that perfectionism is such a trap, I think for so many people. It doesn’t mean not doing well.
It just means that sometimes good enough is truly good enough.
Anne: Yeah, exactly. Guys, I think – okay, so Pam, you’ve entered the challenge?
Pamela: I have, live streaming for 30 days. Oh my gosh.
Anne: Live streaming for 30 days, and we’re going to be following you, because there needs to be accountability.
Pamela: Yes.
Anne: We’re going to follow you on LinkedIn and/or Instagram, and I’m going to spend 30 days with working on writing my blogs, and hopefully that will result in the publishing of blogs once a week again. That’s my challenge. I’m taking that in front of all of you BOSSes, and Pam. So you guys, we want to invite you also to come in on the 30-day challenge. Since we both believe it’s important that we actually write this down, we document it, I actually have a form that you can fill out to enter the challenge. The form is located at our bitly link at bit.ly/30daybosschallenge. So if you guys want to take the 30-day BOSS challenge, basically you’re going to just sign a contract and tell us what you’re going to do for 30 days, and then we’ll check in on you guys in a few weeks, and then ultimately we’ll have some of you share your experiences hopefully at the end of September, so we can all kind of have accountability to one another.
Pamela: Awesome. That would be great, yeah.
Anne: So –
Pamela: I would love to hear how the BOSSes out there are implementing 30-day consistent daily activity. I think we can all learn from each other, and what a great win at the end of the 30 days to be able to share that.
Anne: Absolutely, absolutely. So yeah, guys, remember that’s bit.ly/30daybosschallenge, and of course we’ll be publishing that on all of our social channels as well as giving you an email for those of you who are signed up for our mailing list. Go to voboss.com. You can sign up there and you’ll get all the information. Let’s do this, BOSSes. I’m into it.
Pamela: I’m in. I’m all in. Oh my gosh, I’m nervous, but I’m all in, Anne. [laughs]
Anne: Me too, me too. We will all support each other along the way.
Pamela: Yes.
Anne: Speaking of support, I’d like to give a huge shout-out to our amazing sponsor, ipDTL. You too can connect and take the challenge like a BOSS, and find out more at ipdtl.com. You guys have an amazing week. Let’s start this challenge September 1. Fill out the form so we know you guys are in on it with us, and we’ll see you next week.
Pamela: That sounds great. Thanks!
Anne: Bye!
>> Join us next week for another edition of VO BOSS with your host, Anne Ganguzza, and take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at voboss.com and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies, and new ways to rock your business like a BOSS. Redistribution with permission. Coast-to-coast connectivity via ipDTL.
[outtakes]
1
Anne: Hey everyone. Welcome to the VO BOSS podcast. I’m here..!
[both laugh]
Anne: I don’t know where that came from.
[both laugh]
Anne: Yes, I’m here. Okay.
[both laugh]
2
Pamela: Okay.
Anne: Sorry, okay.
Pamela: Oh my God. The heat, the heat in this small room is getting to me. [laughs]
Anne: Me too. Okay, here we go.