The other day I took my son to the woods for a picnic. I’d left it a bit late in the day so by the time we got there we had 45 minutes until we needed to leave to get my daughter from school. It was a HOT day. The sun was beaming and there was lots of choice for nice spots to sit on the grass. I picked a lovely shady place so he could lie on the picnic blanket and look at the leaves and unpacked. He played with some toys for a few minutes and everything was idyllic. Then he started crying. He cried for the full 45 minutes we were there. During that time I cuddled him, jiggled him, stood up and walked about with him, bounced up and down, put him in the wrap, took him out the wrap, changed his nappy, offered him milk three times, put his legwarmers on incase he was getting chilly in the breeze, waved toys at him, sang him songs, patted his head – you name it I did it. I also managed to eat my sandwich and a bar of chocolate (I was starving, this was a late lunch) and pack up all the toys, fold up the picnic blanket and walk in a bouncy please-stop-crying way back to the car.
Where he stopped crying.
This is the baby who HATES car journeys. We need white noise to get us from A to B – and bravery. Unless he’s asleep.
Sometimes it feels like you try EVERYTHING and nothing works. Maybe you’ve sent emails, picked up the phone, shown up at networking events, played around in power editor ’til you’re blue in the face, spent a fortune on adworks, made videos, distributed leaflets, spent HOURS on Twitter, blogged and blogged and blogged… and nothing’s working. We’ve all been there right?
This is why it’s important to look at WHO you are trying to serve and WHAT you offer them. There’s no point churning out loads of info randomly without knowing these things.
For example, my main audience is female self employed entrepreneurs – usually (but not always) Mams. I offer them confidence in their business and also help their potential clients to have confidence in them by making their business look incredible and communicate the right things to the right people. It took me a while to work this out… but now I know what I’m doing it means that everything I do can be focussed towards those people.
I wrote a blog about this a little while ago which comes with three ideas to help you work this out. Check it out here.
If you know who to speak to then you’ll find it much easier to find out where those people are and how you can best talk to them. You don’t have to try everything. Instead of talking to “everybody” you can email the right people, speak to the right people, go to the kind of events where these people will be be, target your Facebook ads right down, make videos which will appeal to your audience, design and deliver leaflets which speak to your ideal client and only go to where they are, speak to the right people on Twitter and create blog posts which they can relate to.
I’m pleased to say that there has not been another time like our failed picnic and we’ve had many more successful picnics since!