I was having the conversation with my brother Jay (@CultureBoundBookStore Cultureboundbookstore.com) earlier and we came across the topics of scaling and relationship equity. As someone that's grown and ran multiple successful pages/businesses he was sharing that a lot of people that looked to run ads through his pages were always looking to grow but not take the time to truly scale their business. Compounding for success will take us further than growth. Growth has a cap.
What happens is you have these people looking for 50, 60, 70 thousand followers to come instantly but don't know what to do with that. Their page isn't in order for that let along their business. Now you're dealing with these growing pains. Maybe that one ad brought you the followers you wanted but now they're leaving because lack of page appeal, it's not aesthetically pleasing, you don't have a consistent posting regiment, it's not clear what you do, your link is broken or because the heavy activity, link is blocked and you don't know what to do from there. Maybe it went really really well and these people are looking to buy, you just have a landing page and not an actual store or site, you can't send invoices, people want to talk to you but you don't know how to consult. Having a running capable store is more important than the LLC. Great, you're a government filed business but can't close. You have no funnels in place.
Staying on running up followers, maybe they're playing the ratio game and going for quantity, great you're running up follower numbers but how? Do you know what brought this audience to create a system and duplicate it.
Now let's go here, the percentage of engagement being views vs likes vs comments vs who actually clicks on the link vs who sees the price vs who pays the price are less than 1% often times. I wrote before of possibility vs probability. The possibility is high, but probability is low. Many aren't aware of the different types of buyers. As products in this microwave era, many are attempting to rely on impulse buyers. They're not taking the time to realize there's different consumer psyches. So with the following numbers obtained, do you have all in order needed to make sales. This is actually why I stopped attempting to grow as fast I was. Technically I was making sales, but not SALES!!!. I was growing a following base, and as Jay mentioned earlier, a lot of people hit follow just because they want to continue to watch. They like the image of, in my case, an articulate clearly knowledgeable 21-24yr old multi-author speaking on mental health. It was a good look but people weren't buying with the ratio and rate to my following growth. With all I offer I had times where I only made a couple hundred that month. That's with 7 physical and eBooks, over ten image designs on different merchandise, graphic design web development services, consultations, webinars, and someone who charges to be booked for interviews. I needed to focus on how I to cut that ratio down and as we all strive for, theoretically 1:1.
Next, because they're looking to jump right to a place of success, they didn't develop nor create relationships. One big thing I did was scheduling a call before working with a page. We're doing business. Business involves phone calls and meetings for people to be on the same page and provide and get the most value of a service with who they're working with. That's even how I met Jay. The slow burn allows you to observe and overstand what's happening in your business so it can truly advance.
For a lot of people growth means they do one thing, one time, and get one big result that'll sustain them for life. It doesn't work like that. When I was first learning and caught onto the business of social media, I grew over 20k followers in about six months. I had a system that involved pitching and talking to page owners, hearing what their page was about, hearing their goals, sharing my intentions and about me; now people who run some high 6-figure pages my mans. I have their personal numbers, we share happy birthdays, exchanged business, they came through my class, I ran plenty of ads with them and the relationship we've grown, they followed back and whenever they see something they like they'll share me. Now as I'm working my way back I have the equity with them that I get perks like discounted rates, welcomed to go live with them or takeover the page and go live to promote myself, same-day post, some told me just send them a book or help them with their book, and at times just posted my stuff from pure love. You don't get that jumping right to a certain pinnacle. Instead you get ego and you better hope you never fall from grace. Because they never need to work with you again. I've spent money at times solely to keep relationships. Bit my tongue to not burn bridges.
Kanye is a great example of that. Because the quick success in the fashion lane, he didn't have the relationship equity for his business. I heard a few instances where he mentioned being above someone because he had money, but relationships are a greater leverage than money. At one point you'll need assistance and/or someone to vouch for you. Who's words hold weight that you posed an impression well enough they'll do so; that you come to mind when opportunities are presented? Who's willing to assist you in a drought? If and when assed out I have people I can take out loans or get favors from because our relationship. I.E my print guy. At one point in like 2019 I was on my last- maybe $100 at one point. I told him my situation and he let me open a tab. I gratefully ran up a few hundred fairly quickly and was able to sustain because the relationship. The full profit from the sweatsuit sales those couple weeks kept me afloat until I get to a solid ground and now could look to progress.
Lastly and most importantly, learning business. Most people aren't business minded people. A lot of people just don't work well people. They lack charisma, aura is off, too emotional, don't know what business truly is, ideas aren't as good enough, work ethic isn't enough, all the more reasons to take time to learn the how. How does marketing work, how do ads work, how to network, who and what's the best platform for you, should your face be a part of your business, what are the best site developers for you, manufacturers, who and what's your competition doing, what is your most engaging post, what your best funnel system, what are your go-tos, who's the primary consumer of what you have and who are you targeting, when is your audience most active, when and why do you have the dips in engagement, how do you increase your value? Then the back-office stuff like accountant, taxes, ROI, debt to income, budgets, mentorships, workshops, networking events, who to work with from designing a post template to who to promote through, trends, high and low seasons for your market, automation, delegation, hell do you even know who how you work best? What routines allow you to perform at your peak?
It's important to scale and not just look for a growth. Allowing the time to be and trusting divine timing allows for a person to hit the obstacles, sit in them, overstand them, then eliminate them. I spoke on in Write My Pains Away that I would rather my difficulties be early than late. I was listening to the Joe Budden Podcast and their guest shared wise words shared with him. It was that you're going to eat noodles (Ramen) at one point, it'll be when you're older or you're young. Taking time and scaling sets you up to last. Growth takes you to a wall. Scaling takes you to bricks. Sure, you can hit a lick and grow fast, but can you handle and manage 0-100?
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