Sometimes it’s simple

If there’s one thing that everyone says about their Thing is that they WISH they’d known what it was BEFORE. And I can see the logic–as surely if you’d known what your Thing was before, you wouldn’t have done all the other things you had (well, all the ones you didn’t like at least!). And it doesn’t matter what age you are when you work out your Thing (I’ve worked with people in their 20s through to their 60s), the frustration is always the same–if only I’d known this before…

When it comes down to it, there is really only one person who stands between you and your Thing and that’s you.

Of course, you can get help to find your Thing—help to shape it, help to package it, and brand it, and sell it. But only YOU can decide to do it—actually go out there are do the Thing.

It’s about jumping in with both feet to do your Thing and knowing that that’s what you’re here to do. There is no “Ohh, I’ll dip a toe in”—that’s never going to convince anyone… if you’re not 100% certain, then why would anyone buy from you?

So there’s doing your Thing in the BIG sense and there’s doing your Thing in the “How you do it right now” sense. When you realise these are different, you’ll see that there’s no problem if you don’t want to do your Thing any more, as you’ll most probably be meaning this in the “I don’t want to do the work I am doing right now any more” sense.

Multitasking is overrated–and yes, I know as a woman I shouldn’t be admitting this! but it’s true. There are some things that go together well: I like to work with music on sometimes and I definitely like to run with my tunes blaring in my ears.

But I still have to remind myself that multitasking with my work time is never going to create the best results.

Here’s what I see a lot… people marketing recipes: the ingredients for a cake – the step by step pieces you need.

But what a cake lover is more interested in is the finished article – what a cake lover buys is a CAKE! I get a lot more excited looking at a slice of carrot cake than I do a bag of flour, eggs, sugar, some carrots, a wooden spoon… and yet this is what I see a lot of people are ‘selling’ – the ingredients.

Selling online can be as straightforward as adding a PayPal button to your website, but if you’re looking to manage a full catalogue you really need something more sophisticated.