Decluttering Your Life and Business To Create Space for Explosive Online Growth This Year

If you could come up with one guiding word or phrase for 2024, what would it be?
In this episode, Sonja Crystal Williams shares how her own focus on the word "space" is shifting how she approaches life and work, and how your guiding word might inspire you to forge an exceptional year.

As the new year has arrived, Sonja shares how she has been decluttering her home. But her decluttering hasn't been just about a simple spring cleaning; it's been about making room for growth, success, and leading with a clear mind.

Sonja shares has she has tackled both cluttered cupboards and a cluttered mindset, discovering along the way how this process of decluttering is crucial for personal and business development. Tune in for an enlightening discussion on the power of creating space—both in our environments and in our minds—and how this simple yet profound act can lead us to a path of greater achievements.

Together, we'll explore the importance of intention-setting as we navigate the year ahead. We'll also talk about aligning our actions with our mindset to turn aspirations into realities.

Whether you're a seasoned business owner or a professional climbing the career ladder, this episode is packed with insights on preparing for and seizing the opportunities that this year has to offer.

Preparation for your brand includes starting with conducting an audit of your visual brand messaging with some help from our free Social Media Planner. 

Transcript

Sonja Crystal Williams: 0:13

Hi everyone, I'm Sonja Crystal Williams, your host of the 10 Minute Marketing podcast, so welcome. We are in our third season, happy to be here, and we are kicking off into a new year, and I don't know about you, but this year is flying by already, not going slow. Lots going on, lots to do, and I have personally launched into this year, I would say, in a bit of a physical and mental decluttery, right. Like I had a lot going on in 2023 and it was a great year. It was a great year and I capped the year attending a weekly -- well, actually bi-weekly, it was bi-weekly meaning twice a week -- twice a week a coaching series led by a friend of mine that I was invited to attend. And that really got me thinking a lot about habits and behaviors and things like that, areas that we all tend to and want to focus on, and I spent a lot of time reflecting toward the end of the year and all the way into silence and rest at the start of 2024. The result of that has been a physical purge. I've been getting rid of stuff in my house, clearing drawers, clearing cabinets, going through clothes, completely getting rid of clothes that I don't wear that have been in my closet and letting go of the idea that, oh, but I might put it back on. I probably won't, so I'm letting it go, and that's what the start of 2024 has looked like for me. Now, why is that important? Because for me, as a business owner, that physical, the removal of some of those physical items is representation of the creation of space and coming into the year with the idea or the thought process that there needs to be space available for me to grow and manifest the things that I want to manifest in my business. So today's episode, I want to walk through a couple of things. One, just general stuff we think about as a business owner, and then what that looks like when we stream that into how we need to approach things in terms of our online presence.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 2:41

Each year, for myself, I try to come up with a word that represents what that year is going to be about for me, and I think I've come into this year with the word "space. Last year, my word was listen, and I can't remember what it was the year before that. Ok, but I want to challenge you to ask yourself that same question what is your word? Maybe it's a phrase for you, but I try to do it as a word. What is your word or your phrase for 2024? What is that thing for you? And I want you to think about that, like, really well, I'm laughing at my notes here because I took some good notes just on things and thoughts and that whatever that word is sets the tone for where you might be going throughout the entire year. Because if you set that word and you take it in subconsciously, consciously, you feel it, you breathe it, you become it. Right, then you are going to have the most phenomenal year, if that is what you are hoping for. So I am wishing that upon you and hoping that you have a good word to describe and manifest exactly what you want for yourself.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 3:58

Now let's get down to our businesses. Ok, because we have to be in the right mind state to manifest things in our business, and then we have to physically do the work as well to put ourselves in a position to take advantage of those things as they come to us. Right, you know what's that saying. You know that there's preparation. You know there's no such thing as luck. Right, there's just preparation and opportunity at an intersection together. Right, something like that. That's how the saying goes. So now you need to prepare yourself for the opportunities that lie ahead the rest of this year. When we think about our businesses at the end of last year, that, ideally, is the best time to be planning and thinking ahead about what you want your 2024 to look like, whether that's in your career, if you're a working professional, whether that's in your business, if you're a business owner, right, you need to be thinking about those things. And if you're a, even in your career, if you're a working professional, planning ahead, for you know whatever is going to be happening within your department, even for the work that you do. But reality is that doesn't always happen, right? Or we plan to a degree and then we get into 2024 and we still need to think about what we're going to do.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 5:17

Okay, as it relates to your online presence, I want to encourage you to start your year with an audit. Okay, do an audit. And here's a little catch okay: don't just do the audit by yourself. Recruit someone to help you that has an outside perspective, maybe even slightly opposite your own of your business. Now, to some degree, maybe you might want to have two people, in fact someone who has a slightly different view or take, and then someone who may align with who your ideal audience is. Then yourself, okay, because when you do this audit, the idea behind doing that audit is to look at what's going on in your business from a bird's eye view. That bird's eye view should be looking at all of your major channels. Look at your Facebook account, look at your Instagram account, your LinkedIn, your Pinterest, whatever social media channels you're on. That's a decent starting point. Your website really is the foundation, so that also might be your starting point.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 6:27

Do those channels align with each other? Might be one question that you need to ask. Do these channels align as you're looking at? Do they align? Are they branded well? Does each channel represent my color scheme from a visual branding standpoint? Are we using the same group of fonts and colors and similar designs across these different channels? Ask yourself these questions right now, when you're in the audit phase.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 7:00

This is nothing more than an evaluation. You're not attempting to solve the problem yet. You are just asking the questions that need to be asked to evaluate those two people that might be helping you out. They should be able to look across all those channels. What, looking through maybe your past 15 or 20 posts on whatever social media channels seem to serve you the best. Does that align? Does it align with your offers? Does it align with your message and what you're trying to communicate with people? That's really important. Do that? That's homework.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 7:40

Other part of your homework as you continue to audit we said websites, we said social media channels you also need to be auditing your email campaign. If you're running ads, audit your ads, even if your website audit your SEO. How do you rank in terms of keywords and things like that? Do people fill out forms to get in touch with you? Are they buying things on your website? These are things you need to be asking yourself. Then, even on your website and on your social media. We talked about the visual brand, but then there's the brand that's not so visual, which is again your tone, your voice, your message, how you communicate with people. Is it time to refresh these things? Do I need to hire a copywriter to revamp my message? Do people understand, when they land on my website, what I do? If they clicked on any one of my social media posts, do they have a feel for who I am and what I do? When I say that, I meaning an entity, your brand, your organization or the one that you represent. Think about those things. Then, after you do the audit and here's what I encourage people to do: do your audit on a spreadsheet.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 8:54

One column might be listing out all those things. You find that maybe we could be doing this a little better. There's always opportunity for improvement, I promise you. Even if you have the most amazing business, there's something you're going to find when you do that audit or when the other two do the audit on your behalf. Then you might have another column, a step two, where you do begin to problem- solve. Okay, I just noticed that on my Instagram account, we're releasing images using four different fonts and the red that we use in Instagram is not the red in our logo, so it's not cohesive from website to Instagram and Instagram to LinkedIn, right? So how do you change that? And that might need to be in your solutions column. Now I'm gonna stop there on just how you do the audit and leave you with check out the link in this podcast, because I do have lots of articles as well as a guide to how you can audit.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 9:58

Okay, and then, once you audit, you need to move into planning. Okay, and I also have a link I'll drop for a planner as well. And when you are planning okay, planning phase you need to be walking through each network and really thinking about month by month, or maybe it's even week by week. For you, it just depends on your organization. But think about, if I were to look ahead throughout the whole year, kind of promotions am I gonna be running? And if it's not, promotions doesn't have to necessarily mean discount, okay.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 10:32

So a lot of people think that when we're talking about this from a business standpoint, we're just talking broadly about you need to have an offer and that offer could just be a free guide okay, it could be a discount. It could be a new group that you're launching, a new Facebook page, a new Facebook group, a private podcast. Think about what are the things that are achievable for me and or my team to launch in 2024 and use that planner to map out what those offers are. And if you wanna get real fancy, set some goals attached to those offers. I'm rolling out this new lead magnet, this new e-book. How many emails do I wanna get if I'm using that to grow my email list? I'm launching a new audio summit. How many emails am I gonna get from that summit?

Sonja Crystal Williams: 11:26

And try to think of a goal that's achievable for you and then measure the success. Measure the success, use that same planner just to kind of map the success so that, month by month, you have a page turner or it might be on your computer a guide to really take you through what that success can look like for you. All right, so the guide that I'm gonna drop, I'm gonna drop a link, and the one that I'm gonna drop is gonna be a freebie, but it's only free to a limited number of people and I'll still have it available after that, but it might not be free. All right, so make sure you check that out. All right, so you audit and then you come up with whatever that plan is gonna be. The end with having a plan in place where you again are tracking month over month. Am I successfully moving along with whatever the goal is? And hopefully, as you are moving along and as you are planning, it's in alignment with your word of the year. All right, all right. So that's all I got for you today.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 12:30

Thank you so much for listening. Remember, do your assignment. I would love to hear from you. Drop me a DM. Let me know how it's going along. Are you doing an audit? What kind of things made you say huh, or I never thought about that before. When you really go through and take that bird's eye view of your business's online brand and presence and start thinking about that, and when you do look and again you start coming up with the solutions, don't think that you have to do it all alone. Find the right people and the right teams who support you through the process so you can make it happen for yourself and so that your business can continue to hopefully impact the lives of the people you serve. All right, I'm Sonja Crystal Williams. Thanks again for listening. Until next time she got meu check it out, slow down.