You can have a lot of things going right in your business and still not be getting the results you want.
You could have a great product, a sales page that converts pretty well, emails people actually read, and customers who are happy with what they bought.
And still not be making nearly as much money as you’d like.
When that happens, it’s really easy to look around and see everything that could be better.
Maybe your website needs updating. You haven’t posted consistently on social media. Your welcome sequence could use some work. You could create another product. Your sales page could probably be stronger.
There’s almost always something you could improve.
But that doesn’t mean all of those things are actually holding your business back.
And I’ve been realizing that’s a really important distinction.
Something Can Be Imperfect Without Being the Problem
I am REALLY good at noticing things in my business that could be better.
Give me a sales page that’s converting reasonably well, and I can probably find 14 things I want to change on it. Show me a product that’s already selling, and I’ll think of three bonuses I could add. Give me a perfectly functional website, and suddenly I’ll decide something needs to be redesigned.
But making something better doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to make my business better.
Let’s say 100 people visit my sales page and five of them buy. I could spend a week trying to get that page to convert a little better.
But what if only 100 people are reaching the page each month in the first place? Maybe the bigger opportunity isn’t squeezing another sale or two out of those 100 visitors. Maybe it’s getting 500 of the right people to see the page.
On the other hand, if thousands of people are seeing my offer and almost nobody is buying, traffic probably isn’t the first thing I need to work on. Same business goal. Completely different bottleneck.
That’s why I’m trying to stop asking only: What could I improve?
And start looking for: What’s putting the biggest limit on my business right now?
Think of Your Business as a Path
I’ve started looking at my business as a really simple path:
People find me → Some stick around → Some buy → Some buy again
Obviously, there’s a lot more going on inside a real business.
But I like this because it gives me somewhere to look when I’m not getting the results I want.
Start at the beginning. Are enough of the right people finding you?
If very few new people are discovering your business, you may have a traffic or visibility bottleneck. If plenty of people are finding you, move to the next step.
Are some of those people sticking around? Are they joining your email list? Following you? Reading more than one article? Taking whatever next step makes sense in your business? If lots of people arrive but almost everyone disappears, that’s useful information.
Then: Are the people who stick around buying?
Maybe you have a growing email list and engaged readers, but very few people ever become customers. That gives you another part of the system to investigate.
And finally: Are customers buying again?
If you’re constantly finding new customers but every customer buys exactly once, there may be an opportunity there too.
You don’t need every number to be perfect. You’re just looking for where the flow seems to slow down the most.
Look for the Biggest Drop-Off
This is where last week’s conversation about treating progress as data becomes especially useful.
Instead of immediately deciding why something isn’t working, I can look at what’s actually happening.
Maybe I think I need more traffic. But then I look at my numbers and discover that plenty of people are visiting my website. They’re just not joining my email list.
Okay. That’s a clue.
Or maybe my email list is growing steadily and people are opening my emails and clicking my links, but they’re not buying. Another clue.
Maybe people are buying one particular product but ignoring another one. Clue.
Maybe people buy from me once and then I barely give them another opportunity to buy anything. That’s a pretty useful clue too.
I’m not necessarily going to know exactly what the problem is just because I found the drop-off.
But at least I know where to start looking. And that’s a lot more useful than randomly improving things and hoping one of them makes more money.
Don’t Confuse the Result With the Reason
There’s another part of this that I think is important.
Finding the place where people are getting stuck doesn’t automatically tell you why they’re getting stuck there.
If people aren’t joining your email list, that doesn’t automatically mean your opt-in offer is bad.
It could be that the wrong people are finding it. Or that the call to action is difficult to find. Maybe the page is painfully slow on mobile. It could even be that the offer really isn’t appealing.
You don’t know yet. The result tells you where you might need to investigate. It doesn’t necessarily give you the diagnosis.
That’s why I don’t want to find a bottleneck and immediately come up with 17 ways to fix it. (Although that’s absolutely my instinct.)
Try One Thing
Once I have an idea of where my business is getting stuck, I want to treat what I do next as an experiment. If I change five things at once and my results improve, I don’t know which change helped. (Believe me, I know this from experience!)
If nothing improves, I don’t know which ideas didn’t work. So I’d rather ask: What’s one thing I can try?
If I need more of the right people finding my business, I can try one new way of reaching them. If people are visiting but not joining my list, I can test one change there. If subscribers aren’t becoming customers, I can try one way of improving that part of the path.
Then I watch what happens.
Did it help? Did nothing change? Did something happen that I wasn’t expecting?
All of that gives me more information. Then I can decide what to try next.
The Bottleneck Can Move
And here’s something I think makes this whole idea feel a lot less intimidating: I don’t need to find the one problem with my business forever. There probably isn’t one.
If I get significantly more people finding my business, traffic might stop being the biggest constraint. Great!
But now maybe I discover that a lot more people are visiting my site, but hardly any of them are joining my email list. So that’s where I look next. Improve that, and maybe suddenly I’m adding subscribers much faster, but sales aren’t keeping up.
Now I have a new clue. The point isn’t to finally reach some magical state where every part of the business works perfectly.
I’m pretty sure I’d be waiting forever. 🙂
The point is to keep looking at the business I actually have, figure out what’s limiting its growth now, and make that part a little better.
You Probably Don’t Need to Fix Everything
I think that’s the part of this idea I like most. There will always be things I could improve in my business. But I don’t have unlimited time, and neither do most of the people reading this.
So I don’t want to spend that limited time polishing something simply because I noticed it wasn’t perfect.
I want to know whether improving it is likely to change anything that matters. Where are people getting stuck? What’s limiting what comes next? What’s one thing I could try to improve it?
Then I’ll see what happens.
Because maybe growing a business isn’t about constantly finding more things to fix. Maybe it’s about getting better at finding the one thing that’s holding everything else back…and working on that first.
Is Making More Sales the Part That’s Stuck?
If you’ve looked at your business and realized that making more money from the audience and assets you already have is one of the areas you want to improve, Fast Money Boosters can give you some ideas to test.
It includes 20+ practical ways to bring more money into your business. And just like I said above, you don’t need to try them all. 🙂
Pick one that makes sense for your business, try it, and see what happens.
