Welcome to another episode of Silence is Golden where we share invaluable tips for your WordPress business.
This week it’s all about spending more time in your genius (aka. your sweet spot) so that you not only grow your business but you'll also enjoy the work you're doing. We also bring the latest news in the industry including an underwhelming rebrand from Evernote as well as an announcement from the founder of WPBeginner.
Let's dive in, shall we?
Watch the Video
Stuff That Happened
At the 5.20 minute mark, we find out what’s been happening in the industry news.
Google Creates Pizza Brand to Test YouTube Ads
Google has been testing ad effectiveness by creating a fake pizza brand called Doctor Fork. They used stock footage to create 33 ads and then served them up on YouTube and reached 20 million impressions. Check out some of the interesting findings in this article.
Ever Better: Refreshing the Evernote Brand
Evernote’s “big” rebrand looks like they have pretty much just changed the colour of the icon. They created this video about the rebranding process which is quite interesting, but Simon’s opinion is that “what they have created in the changing colour department, they are lacking in the product department.” He is waiting for feature upgrades features and interface improvement.
Syed Balkhi Launches A WordPress-focused Growth Accelerator Fund
Syed Balkhi, the founder of WPBeginner, has announced a growth accelerator fund aimed at helping companies focused on WordPress prosper. The fund will provide between $100K-500K to a small group of selected companies. Find out more from WP Tavern.
Let’s Get Unstuck
At the 14.55 minute mark, Troy helps Simon get unstuck.
Last week’s show was about preparing your business for hiring which motivated Simon to hire a Shopify developer which he says is working pretty well so far. What Simon wants to know is how to support his awesome Virtual Assistant to manage the new employee?
Troy tells us that he has just recently hired an employee in the Philipines who he is training up to be his PA, but he is nervous about this because he doesn’t actually think he is a good manager. He is good at leading, but not managing because it takes a lot of brain power to manage and he prefers to save that brain power for thinking big and creating strategies.
Troy's advice to Simon is that he needs to lead the team and liaise with one person. So Simon should liaise with his VA and get her to think about things such as:
- What does a successful Shopify Developer look like?
- What are their key areas of responsibility?
- What do successful outcomes look like for this person?
- What numbers will the new employee be responsible for?
It's the responsibility of your employees to organise their own workflow to fit in with the organisational structure. They then need to document their workflow so that someone can help out when they’re on holidays or easily take over the role if the employee leaves the company.
You can’t run a company as well as being the expert on every small task. Your job is to create the vision and then lead the team making sure that you hire people who are skilled and even more importantly, that they are of good character because as Troy says …
Hire character. Teach skills.
The Golden Nugget
At the 24.05 minute mark, we dig into the gold nugget – 0perating in your genius
Operating in your genius means finding that thing that you do best and adds the most value to your business. When you're operating from there, everything in your business flows better and you enjoy what you do.
Troy says that the only clients you should work with are the ones where you can maximise your chance of hitting a home run.
Why?
- You will end up with happy clients which = referrals
- You feel good about your work
- Working in client services is always going to have its challenges, so to get through that pain you might as well enjoy what you’re doing
How do you ensure you work with these “home run” clients?
- What skills are you good at and what do you enjoy doing at work?
- What are you passionate about?
- Is there an overlap between these two? Can they be combined?
- Who stands to benefit the most from you being in your sweet spot?
Simply put by Troy:
Life is too short to do sh*t that makes you unhappy
One of our members Jonathan asked:
What do you do when people come to you for implementing the solution they want when you’d rather do the strategy and empowering people to implement?
Troy says to use the Go Wide Go Deep method. Start asking a lot of questions about why they think that this is the right option. You will find holes in it pretty quickly and when you do, it will make them think about things that hadn’t considered and realise that you actually do know more than they do.
One of the topics that they talk about a lot in the Maverick's Club is how to package up your knowledge into a product that customers can engage with. One of the fundamental things is that if a client comes to you with their own solution that they want you to execute, then you're competing on price. However, if you have a product that you can offer them that includes strategy, then they’re hiring you as a strategist.
Speaking of Mavericks. At the 32.45 minute mark, we cut to one of our Mavericks, April, to hear how the San Diego workshops were for her. Thanks for the awesome words April. We love hearing about people killing it in their business.
What Made the Wee Come Out?
Elementor still makes Simon excited because it's getting easier and easier to use. However, at the same time, due to the fact that it is so easy to use now, you need to think about how you can add extra value to your client. Such as, how you can help clients get new leads or increase sales as well as focussing on messaging, branding and the user experience.
Troy's wee came out this week when he discovered a new theme called Page Builder Framework. It is a theme specifically designed for Elementor or Beaver Builder which Troy says is super quick and easy and definitely worth taking for a spin.
We also have something else exciting for you – In next week's show, we will have a special guest who is going to help you achieve your goals! So your challenge until then is to see if you can catalogue your time because we are going to focus on what you want to achieve and how to get rid of the stuff that doesn’t matter.
Next week’s guest is going to be great guys – don't miss it!
Tool of the Week
RescueTime helps you understand your daily habits so you can focus and be more productive. It automatically tracks your time so you don’t even need to log projects. You then get a weekly report so that you can see where you have spent your time unproductively.
Wrap Up
So that's it for this week. If you haven't already, make sure you are signed up to the WP Wednesday to stay up to date with all the latest news and tech in the WordPress space.
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