“I am super busy. Every day I mean to get onto getting my website sorted and marketing my business, but I spend each day fighting fires, and it never gets done. How do I find the time to market and still do the work?”

I was having a mentoring session with a brilliant local small business that had started the month before COVID hit.

My client was like many small business owners. They delivered exceptional service every day. Each day was spent serving clients and dealing with a thousand calls on their time.

At the end of each day, they collapsed in a heap exhausted, and all the things that they had wanted to do to grow their business went on the back burner.

As I explained to my mentoring client, this is not a problem if you are happy with the clients you have and the money your business is making.

The problem kicks in if you are a boom/bust business, where you don’t have a consistent supply of clients, so you go from flat to the floor with wall-to-wall clients to nothing in two seconds flat.

You then spiral into desperation marketing where you throw everything everywhere in a scattergun approach, all the while hoping that you get to keep the doors open and that clients will magically appear again.

My client had a different issue: The clients she was getting through your door generally were not the clients she wanted. The clients she was getting were lovely, but they wanted services that her heart wasn’t in or generated low profits for her business.

When you are in that situation, too many of those clients leave you resentful and burned out.

Marketing helps your business get the clients you want when you want them.