Intro by Skip Cohen
I’m a huge Sarah Petty fan. She never stops sharing relevant content. Plus, she finds great lessons in so many of the things we do all the time. From our garage right down to that one kitchen drawer that seems to be a magnet for everything miscellaneous in our lives, we’re regularly sorting and purging.
Sarah’s taken the concept to a new level, and when you follow her on a regular basis, you learn she always walks the talk! Her blog “Joy of Marketing” is packed with ideas to help build a stronger more efficient business; increase brand awareness and establish a more consistent pattern in finding balance in your life.
The summer is already half over. Before you realize it, the seasonality of the fourth quarter will be on your doorstep. That makes NOW the time to be “cleaning out your garage.” Don’t get caught saying to yourself, “I should have started planning earlier!”
Or as my wife, Sheila likes to say, “Don’t should on yourself!”
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Momentum is something we all want (and need), but often, we have no idea where to find it or how to get it!
So today I’m going to share a tactic I learned while purging my garage to help you access it quickly and consistently.
A few days ago, I realized that for YEARS I’d been telling myself I would clean out my garage. But honestly, who wants to spend a weekend deep cleaning their garage? So I thought I would do a little each day, bit by bit until it was totally cleared out.
That sounded good in theory until one day the mess got so bad that we couldn’t even park our cars in there. I knew something had to change.
My son just got an out-of-state job and wanted to make sure the garage was clean before he moved away (how sweet is that?). So now was the time. We needed to just get it done!
Our first step was to order a dumpster… which is no small feat. They bring a GIANT truck and dump it in the middle of your driveway, so it blocks the traffic.
Plus, they charge you. A lot.
You don’t want it any longer than you have to have it. So the day it was delivered, we started throwing junk away.
The lesson?
Big action leads to big momentum. In business, just like in life, it’s easy to get overwhelmed and stuck, and we end up just leaving all the clutter in our brains.
When I started my business, I had the same mindset as I did with my garage. I was going to just do little things little by little, and eventually, I’ll have this really thriving business.
The problem was, that I wasn’t willing to spend the next 15 years sorting one little pile in the corner of a giant garage. So, I sat down and made a BIG change that led to all kinds of momentum.
Here are two easy ways to take action that generates the momentum you’ve been looking for in your business (and life).
1. Use The Marie Kondo Method: Marie Kondo has a book called “The Art of Tidying Up.” In it, she talks about how as a kid, she would come home and empty a drawer and clean.
She’d get that little drawer perfect and then she’d open the next drawer. She’d find that there would be a few more ponytail holders that needed to go in that first drawer and found herself multi-doing.
That’s when she realized that it all has to be pulled out and scrubbed at the same time because otherwise we just shuffle things around.
Many entrepreneurs fall into the same trap. So many things in our business garages aren’t serving us. Until you dump it all out on the floor, you’re just shuffling things around, moving boxes back and forth, and getting nowhere.
While working on our garage, having our son there was very motivating (because he was pushing us to keep going). In the same way, having a coach in your business is critical.
You need someone in your life to help you empty the entire garage of your business and just keep the things that work.
2. Give Yourself A Deadline To Get It Done: Renting the dumpster and paying that money made us do the work. We had skin in the game.
We could have cleaned that garage for free, but until we gave ourselves a deadline and we had money going towards that dumpster every day, we had 10 days to get it done.
I want you to look at your business as a whole. If you were to dump it all out in the ground, what’s working?
What’s the clutter that just needs to go?
What are the things you’ve picked up along the way, but you’re not using?
When I first started teaching photographers, I wanted them to know everything I’d learned in 24 years.
But then they would get overwhelmed and locked up.
I realized that I needed to make it very simple, and that’s why the students in our Boutique Breakthrough workshop get so much done. We empty your entire business garage and scrub through every part of it in 60 days.
Imagine if you had a business where everything had a place and you knew where everything went!
Join us in a program where we will Marie Kondo your entire boutique portrait photography business and leave you with this gorgeous, clean garage that’s ready to build the life you love.
This is your time before the busy season.
