Help!!! I love what I do, but I am drowning in overworking! I want my life back.
It’s time to get out of the water and become the captain of your ship.
Have you ever thought of a sea captain and a CEO having anything in common?
Surprisingly, there are more similarities between the two than you may think. A sea captain and a CEO are both responsible for guiding their respective teams to reach their goals, often in complex and unpredictable conditions. They must be organized and decisive, capable of making quick decisions to ensure the success of their teams. This blog post will explore the surprising similarities between a sea captain and a CEO and how these similarities can lead to successful outcomes.
Decisiveness
A sea captain and a CEO have one key trait in common: they both need to be decisive.
To be successful, a sea captain needs to have the courage and confidence to make quick decisions that are often life or death.
A CEO must also have the conviction to make decisions quickly. The decisions made by a CEO can also have a massive impact on the success of their organization, so it is essential for them to have the same level of confidence and courage as a sea captain.
Furthermore, sea captains and CEOs must also be able to make decisions with limited information. On a ship, the captain often must make decisions based on incomplete data, while a CEO may have to do the same with the limited available information. This ability to think on their feet and come to a reasonable conclusion is essential for both.
Clear vision
A clear vision is essential for a sea captain and a CEO.
A sea captain needs to have a plan for where they are sailing and how they will get there, considering all the environmental variables, like weather and tides.
A CEO needs to have a clear vision for the future of the business and how to get there.
Both must have a vision that is achievable yet challenging and that they can communicate with others to inspire and motivate their team.
Delegation
When running any successful business or seafaring vessel, delegation is key. A sea captain and a CEO need to be able to delegate tasks effectively to ensure the highest level of efficiency and productivity.
When a sea captain delegates tasks, they need to ensure that everyone on board is well-informed and has the skills to complete their assigned tasks.
Similarly, a CEO needs to be able to assign and delegate tasks to achieve their organization's goals. They need to be able to select the right people for the job, ensuring that the necessary skills are present and that each team member understands what is expected of them.
By delegating tasks, a sea captain and a CEO can maintain control over their business or vessel while allowing others to take responsibility for specific duties. This is essential for any successful business or seafaring venture.
Critical functions
A sea captain and a CEO have the same need to recognize that many essential and critical functions need to be carried out for their venture to be successful.
In the case of the sea captain, they need to understand the weather patterns, the local geography, and the ocean currents. They must understand the complexities of the vessel and how it needs to be managed for safety and efficiency.
A CEO must have a comprehensive understanding of their industry, the competitive landscape, and a deep knowledge of their own company.
In both cases, it is critical to understand what functions need to be carried out for success to be achieved.
A sea captain must also be able to anticipate potential problems before they arise, such as bad weather or an unexpected course change. This is the same for a CEO who needs to plan and anticipate potential issues with their business or in the market. A CEO must also be able to identify weaknesses in their organization and address them quickly. In both cases, understanding all the essential and critical functions that need to be carried out will help them make quick decisions and adapt to changes as needed.
Systems and processes
Sea captains and CEOs alike understand the importance of establishing systems and processes to ensure success.
For sea captains, this means having a well-planned navigation route with plenty of backup plans in case of unexpected weather or obstacles. It also includes having emergency protocols in place to ensure everyone’s safety.
CEOs understand that their business needs an established set of procedures to deliver results efficiently. Projects can become chaotic without a clear structure and organized processes, leading to delays or outright failure.
Sea captains and CEOs must take the time to plan out the systems and processes necessary for success. Doing so will provide them with the confidence needed to navigate any challenge that comes their way.
Use data to make decisions
For a sea captain, this means considering weather reports, historical accounts of past voyages, and real-time readings of their ship’s condition. They must also be aware of how their decisions will affect the rest of the crew on board. All this data helps inform the captain’s decisions so they can navigate their vessel safely and efficiently.
CEOs must rely heavily on data to make decisions. This includes thoroughly analyzing the company’s financial performance, market research and competitive intelligence, customer feedback, and more. By leveraging data in their decision-making process, a CEO can better understand their current situation and make educated decisions to keep their business running smoothly and maximize profits.
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One of the most damaging things a business owner can do to themselves is to get so caught up in busy work that they’re working all the time yet not making a profit. It’s especially easy to get dragged down the social media rabbit hole, and before you know it, you’ve spent an hour or two talking about how cute that doggie is in the window.
We all know that’s not work, but it happens to the best of us. The best way to ensure that the work you do is effective is to use the data you collect about your audience, your products, and so forth to guide your goals, inform your tasks, and then schedule every action you will take in your calendar, so you know what you’re going to do each day and for how long.
- Write Out a Daily Action List – You can use a calendar or software like Basecamp.com or Trello.com to organize your daily action or task list. The list should be organized with the money-making tasks, the most challenging things up top, and then anything else should be for later or for someone else to do.
- Include Breaks in Your Schedule – No one should work 24/7 without a break, and neither should a business owner. Set up your day with chunks of work time that include decent breaks. You should try to get up and walk every 90 minutes for about 5 minutes if you are sitting a lot. You should also eat your meals and stay hydrated.
- Focus on One Thing at a Time – When you look at your task list, it’s essential to focus on only one thing at a time. If the task list says to upload and schedule 30 memes to your Facebook Group, all of which have calls to action for your latest promotion, you should do that all at once.
- Put Money-Making Tasks Up Top – A money-making task is anything you do that can directly put money in your bank account. So those 30 scheduled memes that all have calls to action that take your audience to a sales page, or get them on your list, or otherwise move them closer to earning money from them, is imperative to do first each day.
- Start with the Hardest Tasks First – Everyone has a task they don’t like doing, but if it’s a money-making task that you must do yourself, then do it first to get it over with. You may not like the task of uploading all that marketing collateral to your affiliate program, but this is a direct money-making thing because your affiliates will make you money from it, but this could be outsourced to someone else. That Facebook Live you need to do to tell everyone about your new promotion though no one else can do that because your business is your face.
- Delegate Non-Money-Making Tasks – When non-money-making tasks get in the way of your money-making ability, it’s time to start outsourcing what you can. At first, it might not even be business related. Mopping your floor makes no money for you, so why not get your spouse, child, or housekeeper to do it? Then you can focus more time on making money.
It’s easy to get caught up in simple busy work, particularly anything to do with social media, instead of learning more or working on harder marketing tasks. The best thing you can do is set up regular breaks so that you can do something that isn’t money-making throughout the day and focus better when doing those important money-making tasks.
When doing something, stop and ask yourself if it’s on your list, if it’s a money-making task, and what would happen if you did not do it or had someone else do it. If nothing will happen negatively, then it’s not an important task to do right away. You can do it later but focus first on the most critical tasks, and the way to determine that is to ask whether it leads to a paycheck or not.
As you learn about all the smart marketing habits that you can do each day that will boost your business income, understand that all these marketing habits work together. When you stack the smart marketing habits you learn about together, you’ll increase your results exponentially. For example, each marketing task doesn’t really live on an island alone, it works in conjunction with another marketing task.
Let’s look at how all this works together:
Marketing Collateral and What to Stack
- Product Sales Page – If you already have a sales page, you can always work on improving as you go. One thing to think about is what content will be needed to give someone a reason to click through to the sales page? What are some of the ways you can tweak it and improve? As you learn, try changing just one small thing at a time on a duplicate and run split testing to see if you can improve your ROI.
- Lead Magnet Landing Page – If you are promoting a lead magnet to build your list and market the main product, what type of content will link to this lead magnet page? Once you create the page, you must market the page. Try promoting on social media, in email messages, and in blog posts. Plus add a pop up to your website promoting the lead magnet.
- Educational Blog Posts – When you take the time to write and publish blog posts to help your SEO and to bring more traffic while educating and engaging your audience, think about how that post affects other aspects of your business and the ways you might get more eyes on it. Then do it.
- Social Media Blurbs & Posts – If you are posting social media blurbs, they need to have a reason for existing. Are they going to link to the lead magnet page or a blog post or the sales page? Why? How can you make it more exciting? Maybe you do a serious of “live” tips on your FB page and then turn them into ads to get more eyes and clicks.
- YouTube Videos – When you make a YouTube video for something, what is the purpose? If you are making a video with the intent that people will click a link, you’ll have to ensure you speak the call to action, plus use text overlay to emphasize the CTA. Then you’ll have to market the video to everyone via your blog, social media, email, and perhaps FB ads.
- Live Facebook Videos – One method of getting attention today is to “Go Live” on Facebook. Try doing “Tuesday Tips” or daily live Q & A before, during, and after any launch effort. After the recording, you can download, edit, and upload to YouTube, or you can promote the video on FB to get more eyes on it.
- Facebook Remarketing Ad – One very simple thing you can do right now is to go to Facebook and grab your pixel and put it on your site. Then whenever you are running a launch, run remarketing ads to the people who have visited your site but did not buy anything.
“Unity is strength…when there is teamwork and collaboration, wonderful things can be achieved.” -Mattie Stepanek
Now that you know the benefits of obtaining help, it’s time to start building your support team to help boost productivity. It’s your passion, your vision of your life and your goals but you might not have the skills or even the desire to do everything. Instead, you want to build a support team that works for you and your vision.
You can effectively build a support team, in many ways.
- Assess your strengths and weaknesses so you know what you need help with.
- Look at the parts of your business, personal and professional that need more help. Maybe its in the accounting area or customer service in your business is lacking. Maybe its your home that needs help, like repairing and painting.
- Find people who believe in your vision and are professional. Search for people who are willing to contribute and commit.
- Look for people who have the skills you need. You might need customer service people, marketers, technical designers, lawyers, managers or something else. It’s important to know what the specific roles you need filled are and the skills needed for them.
- Seek out people that are knowledgeable in their field and don’t need much training from you. This makes assigning work easier and more effective.
Filling your support team roles can be financially impossible right now but still possible by using alternatives to hiring employees. If you are ready for employees, however, begin by building your support team with people who have broad skillsets.
Other ways to build your support team include:
- Outsourcing is different from hiring someone to work solely for you. Freelance contractors own their own businesses. They frequently offer specific, specialized services. Once you hire an independent contractor, you won’t be there every step of the process as they work on your task. Instead, they take complete control over completing the task and delivering it. You only provide the info and access needed for the job.
- Free up your time for more productive tasks. Hire a housekeeper to come in once week or so. Hire someone to do your landscaping. If you need home repairs but are reluctant to do it yourself, hire a contractor to take over the job.
- Collaborate with others. Collaboration involves two or more people working together towards a shared goal. You work together to complete the project. You make decisions together and brainstorm ideas. You build a team by having others you can go to when you need help coming up with a project or how to complete a project.
- Trading services/time is a way to save time and money while building your team. Let’s say you need some graphics created for your new ebook. You don’t have the time or skills to do it yourself. However, you are a great writer. You can trade your writing skills with a graphic designer who needs some web copy written. Later on, you can work with this person again on other projects.
Building your support team isn’t just about hiring employees. It includes outsourcing to others who have the skills to do specific tasks, collaborating with others on projects, hiring someone for something specific or trading services with others.
As you check up and analyze your marketing efforts, one thing to keep in mind is whether the effort is worth it or not. If you’re spending 1000 dollars and 12 hours creating a marketing campaign on Facebook and the ROI is not as high as you would have liked, should you do it again, should you do something else? What if it did work? Did it work enough? Let’s explore how you can choose which marketing habits to keep and which marketing habits to drop.
It’s All About the ROI
Your return on investment is the most important consideration for any of the marketing habits you’re developing. For example, if you worked for 90 days posting a new blog post every single day, all of which had CTAS, what was the payoff from that effort?
90 Blog Posts either encompasses time or money or both. If you paid someone to do the posts, you’ll want to record how much you paid. If you did them yourself, you’ll want to put a value on your time. Next, add up all the sales you made directly related to the 90 blog posts.
If you determine your return on investment is three times your expense, you’ll probably be happy about that. But what if you determine that you broke even? Is it still worth it? It might be. But what if you lost money? Then is it worth it? The only way to know is to look at your SMART goals to find out what you were shooting for. If your ROI paid all your expenses and gave you income to boot, then it’s probably worth it.
Understanding the 80/20 Rule
Another way to figure out what is working and what is not so that you can drop it is to use the 80/20 rule. The 80/20 rule states essentially that 20 percent of the work you do will be directly responsible for 80 percent of the results.
Let’s say that when you have a product launch, you always do the following:
- 10 Blog Posts
- 7 Emails
- 10 Social Media Updates to Each Platform
- 1 Facebook Remarketing Ad
- 1 Google Remarketing Ad
- 3 YouTube Videos
- 1 Launch Webinar
- 1 Webinar for Any Affiliate Who Asks Up to 10 (first come first serve)
As you go through and analyze everything, you discover that most of your money came from the 5 webinars you did with your affiliates. If 80 percent of your sales came from those five affiliate webinars, is there really any point in doing the remarketing ads? You’ll have to drill down and analyze each thing to find out if it’s worth it to you.
In most cases, you’re going to want to do less work for a larger return. It might seem hard to let go of those few sales you get from the other work, but the truth is, if it’s not paying off, you should not do it. Remember to work smart and make everything you do count. If something is not producing a return on investment that you desire, find a new way to do it.
