3 Things You Need To Focus On To Grow Your Business In 2024 (what to leave behind)

You can spend all the money you want on fancy tools and courses, but if you really want to see your online business grow in 2024, you're going to need to stop worrying about testing and finding these tools and stop buying courses that you think are going to be the easy button or the solution to your money in your business. As I look back on the last year in my business, which was the first time in seven years that I've not been profitable, I'm realizing that the seven years I've been spending money on things I shouldn't have been. And if you are new here, I love to be completely transparent with my community, sharing the good, the bad, the ugly with business. And so that is why I'm sharing with you that I have not had a profitable year. I am not going to lie about that. I am not going to hide that. But it's taken me to this point, my eighth year in business, to hit this milestone to slow down, take the time to analyze my business, what is and isn't working, and figure out where I'm actually losing my money. And after taking that time, it's come down to three things that I need to do to turn this boat around. Hit that like button now if you want to hear what three things I'm going to be doing to change the trajectory of my business in 2024. Now, I talked a lot in detail on what I spend in my business every single month in this video right here. And I also shared why my business is unprofitable this year due to a major change. I highly encourage you to watch that video because after taking the time to go through my expenses, I was able to cut about 65% of my expenses. And that allowed me to figure out the only two things that I should be doing personally in my business to start making more money. So the very first thing that I did that you need to be doing if you want to have a better business year next year is taking time to financially forecast or finance forecast. Listen, my coach has been telling me about this for years. And every time a spreadsheet goes up on the screen or we start talking about a spreadsheet, my eyes glaze over. I am not a lover of spreadsheets. That is my husband's deal. That is his job. And for so many years, business was good. So I didn't really have to worry about that because I had enough money every month. I was in the green every month. And at the end of the year, plenty of money. So figuring out my financial forecasting for the following year just wasn't a priority because things were great until this year and about a few months ago where things got to the point where I had to make drastic changes. If I wanted to ensure I could keep my team, my full time employees on board with me. I had to take the time to look at the numbers, even though it's so incredibly uncomfortable for me and it's not my zone of genius and it's not what I want to be spending my time on. But I had to determine what could I realistically be selling in the future to see if my team could stay. So I'm gonna put on the screen real quick what my financial forecast spreadsheets look like and what it's allowing me to do is breaking down what I made last and projecting what I think I'm going to be able to make in the following year, tying in potential launches that I have and also the expenses that I'm planning to have in the following year as well. It also gives me a revenue look at what each offer I have in my business is generating and how it has grown from year to year. When I took the time to do this, this gives me important information to see what is or isn't working, as in what offer is actually growing and what offer is dead in the water. And because I was money, I never took the time to look at this to help me zone in on the program that was the most profitable, that was making me the most money for the least amount of expenses. So because my services, my YouTube production agency, generating about 60% of my revenue, when I made that pivot at the beginning of this year, I hadn't clearly looked at the financial forecast to see how quickly I could make up the money with another program. Now I just assumed because things had gone well in the past that yes, there would be a lag to get my revenue back up to where it was with services. What I had not taken into consideration is what expenses needed to be cut so I could make that pivot a lot faster and not stress myself the F out. And because I had removed 60% of my revenue, it was also expenses that I could cut as well. Because my team was focused on the agency side and because they had time free up, we could actually take over some of the work that we were paying contractors to do. This is where most business owners get in trouble by not looking at my financial forecasting. I didn't realize the math wasn't mathing. This has become now one of my biggest goals, not only for myself, moving forward but for all of my coaching clients to truly understand their numbers. So when they come to me with an idea of a launch or they come to me with I'm not making any money right now, or we can look at the math and we can determine where clearly we can focus on what's going to give us the biggest bang for our buck when we focus on one particular thing. What is the most profitable thing in your business? Right now? All of my coaching clients get this financial forecasting spreadsheet as well as extensive training on how to use this spreadsheet not only to plug the numbers in, but to make educated decisions on what you should be doing next in your business. If you know you've got to get your numbers and your business finances in order and you're anything like me, like, it's kind of uncomfortable. I don't even know where to start. You can apply to my coaching program and get this particular spreadsheet, the training as well as myself as input and feedback to help you really map out your financial forecasting so you know what you can expect in the following year. You know, if you can actually outsource and get a virtual assistant, you know, based on the numbers, what you can make in quarter two and what you can prepare for in quarter three, when summer tends to be a slow month for you, by having this spreadsheet filled out in the help along the way to do it, you're going to feel a lot more comfortable making decisions. Yes, I do focus on YouTube strategy, but I'm talking to business owners and if I help you build a YouTube strategy that sends you traffic to your business, but there's a hole over there, your funnel's not working, your finances aren't right. It doesn't matter how much traffic I can get from YouTube over to your business. I can't help you have a successful business if we're not working on all of this together. That's why YouTube coaching and business coaching is all included in in my program. So if that sounds like something that you need moving into 2024 and you're ready to make a big change in your business, you can apply@trinalittle.com apply. I will read it. I will reach out to see if you're going to fit. We cannot take everybody because like I said, this is very high touch. I'm looking at your financial forecast, I'm providing you feedback. And so if you're a good fit, we will reach out, let you know and tell you what the next steps are. The second biggest problem That I saw that was causing my business not to grow is offer optimization. And what that means is the ability to just focus on one offer and make it better. Can anybody else relate to wanting to create a new course or a new program or a new service? Because we're excited about it. The thing is, every time you create a new offer or a new course, you're giving yourself more to do. For example, this year alone in 2023, I released a new low ticket offer. I did a virtual summit affiliate launch, I did an entire virtual conference that was like four days and 20 some interviews with people. I launched a course, I did a three week live workshop series. All of this is new funnels, new emails, new promotional content, new automations. Every single time I did this, I just added a buttload of more work on top of myself. And the reason why we generally do this is because one offer didn't work how we expected. We get scared, so we think we need to do something else because that one's not working. But what I came to realize this year as well as I figured out how to optimize things and focus on the right things, is I wasn't reading the numbers again. I wasn't looking at the funnel numbers. I wasn't looking at is the offer actually working? So, for example, in the past couple of months I've been doing a live workshop, profit per view. I love doing this workshop. It's been doing great for me. I was hoping to get more people into my coaching program through it, but it's been fine. So my marketing director and I decided to. We know challenges work well for us. So we decided we were going to do a challenge to see if we could get more applicants to our coaching program through our challenge. When I talked to one of my coaches about that, she was like, why? I said, well, because I think it will work. And she goes, how do you know it will work? If we look at your profit per view numbers, we see your sales page is above average, conversion rates, your show up rates to your workshop are above average, your application rates from your workshop are above average, and you're closing calls above average. We know that is working. The only problem that you have right now, Trina, is a traffic problem. You need to get more people to that sales page because we know everything in that funnel works. If you start to work on a challenge, you don't know what the numbers are going to be and you're going to be creating a funnel, a sales page, emails, promotional content, content for that whole week of challenge, all of that when you already know this workshop, the numbers are working, you just need to get more people to that page. Even though I felt that it wasn't moving along as quickly as I had hoped, and I started to get spooked, my numbers, when I looked at them, were all great. The only number that I needed to work on was getting more people to that sales page. The thing is, if you have something that works and you just make small 1% increments every single week or every single month, it's getting better, it's converting more, and you're making more money. The other problem that happens when you're jumping from offer to offer to offer, and you're not optimizing one specific offer, you're not getting brand equity out of that offer. You're not going to get people to recognize that offer. You're not going to get the case studies and the testimonials to talk about everything that offer has done for them. So when you jump from offer to offer to offer, you're kind of diluting your brand equity on all of your courses and programs instead of just focusing on one. By going through this exercise, I realized There are only two things that I need to focus on going into 2024. Two things. I'm going to be focusing on figuring out Facebook ads, and I'm going to be showing up more on YouTube, in Instagram, as in doing more social media organic content. That is all I have to do. There is no new launches in the future for me now. These numbers that I track are all, again, part of a spreadsheet inside of my coaching program. All of my clients get the spreadsheet. One of first assignments that we ask you to do as a client is start filling out these metrics. And we want to see obviously how well they're converting. But as you start to send YouTube traffic to it, we want to make sure these funnels are converting. Because what's the point of helping you build a YouTube strategy to send people to those funnels if we know they're not converting? And as you're building a YouTube strategy, if you're constantly changing your offers and we're building this evergreen content, where are they going to know where to go? Because if you talk about an offer that no longer exists because you did it for six months, you're like, next thing, you're really missing out on maximizing your opportunities here on YouTube. And so, again, as a client of mine, these are two big things that we focus on, the financial forecasting and the funnel metrics. So we can ensure YouTube is working. Your numbers are there and you are converting. Now the third thing that I came to realize as well going through this is I'm not selling every day. This is something that my coach talked about and a friend of mine, Christina Scalera, talks about. It's about showing up every day, deciding to sell. And we tend to get a little when we hear that, right? We don't want to sound skeezy. We don't want to be that person popping in your inbox saying, hey, I checked out your Instagram. I think you do a really good job if you follow my strategy. If you just sign up for my program, we'll make your YouTube channel or your Instagram make you more money. And you're like, ooh, who taught you to do that cold call or that cold outreach? Selling makes us uncomfortable. But in my example, I need to sell more of my paid workshop profit per view to get more people in my funnel, to get more applicants, to get more clients in my coaching program. So the best way to start thinking about how am I going to sell every day is think about the different revenue generating activities that you can do. And this is something my coach Julie Chanel taught us or talked about at my Mastermind in Miami in November. And some of the things she listed that that are going to be revenue generating activities that you can sell are writing an email to your email list talking about your offer and why they should join YouTube. Instagram. Selling directly on YouTube and Instagram. You heard me already talk about profit purview and talk about my coaching program to apply. Showing up and selling, running ads. Maybe you aren't there yet, but that's an option to show up and sell. Networking with potential customers, whether that's going to events or just talking to them, commenting on their posts on Instagram, following up with leads that you just haven't yet. Maybe you sent them a proposal and they never responded back to you and you're like, I don't know, I should reach out to them. Reach out to them. They could have totally forgot. Participate in events or pitch podcasts. Get in front of somebody else's audience and talk about the great stuff that you offer and what you teach and show up in groups, whether Facebook or Slack or forums, provide value and connect with people there. Those are revenue generating activities you should be focusing on to sell every day. So as I said earlier, knowing these three things, I realized I needed to spend my time on Facebook ads. I need to spend my time showing up on Instagram, which I've been avoiding for like three or four weeks now and you take my time pitching to podcasts, asking if I can be guest experts in people's community. That's really all I need to be focusing on showing up and generating traffic. I don't need to create a new offer. I don't need to create a new launch style. If you are looking to get really crystal clear on what you should be focusing on so you don't feel so burnt out because maybe you're sitting there thinking 2023 was rough. I was in that position until about a few weeks ago when I finally had this clarity and I honestly didn't know if 2024 was in the books for me in my business. Being able to look at these numbers, having my copy coach as support in knowing this is all I need to focus on in 2024 and these are the goals that I can hit. Because of my financial forecasting spreadsheet and my funnel tracker spreadsheet. I'm now excited for my business. I'm motivated. I know what is totally possible and if you want to get to that point, this is exactly what we work on Inside my coaching program Now I know I've talked about the YouTube coaching experience. The great news here is my coaching experience. It's the YouTube coaching experience and my 10 count replay experience. Business coaching. I realized this year particularly that I can't do one without the other. I can't help you build your business if you aren't getting traffic from YouTube and I can't help you get traffic from YouTube that converts. If I'm not teaching you business, you've got to make sure that you know your offer is optimized. You've got to make sure you know your finances and you've got to have a plan to show up and sell every single day. If you want to have support, you want to have accountability, you don't want to feel alone doing this because I know what that feels like as well. If you want to find other people to potentially collaborate with, I encourage you to apply now to my coaching program at trinalittle.com forward/apply. We will be wrapping up applications for the year very soon because my team and I go on dark mode and spend time with our family at the end of the year. But when you apply, you're not committed to anything. We will review your application. We will determine if you are going to be a good fit for this program or not. If we think you are, we will reach out to you. Not everybody is accepted because this is such a high touch program that I can't bring everybody. I don't have the time to actually help everybody. So once you get your acceptance email, we will jump on a call and if it feels good to you, you are going to get access to two coaching programs in one. Basically two for the price of one till the end of this year. If you have any questions, if you have any concerns, if you want to reach out to me, feel free to drop a comment below or go ahead and email me trina@trina little.com because I know entrepreneurship isn't easy. I know this last year was a hard one, and I'm really hoping that I can show you new ways and new strategies to have a much better 2024 and not feel so overwhelmed and stressed. Here's the 2024.