this game feels rigged

I’m sitting across from a freelancer who offers digital marketing services, and she’s feeling the ✨2024✨ of it all;

I’m doing everything I’m supposed to be doing. I’m showing up on LinkedIn, I’m networking, I’m going to events, I’m growing my socials. I’m doing everything right! It should be working! But I’m not getting clients.

I know how frustrating it feels to be given a scavenger hunt to success— and to sprint around doing everything right:

✔️ Learn new tools

✔️ Post every day

✔️ Warm email

✔️ Write fresh content

✔️ Wait no, remix old content but use AI

✔️ Network

✔️ Cold email

And at the end, when you’re exhausted from running around doing everything you were told–– you ask for the gold star and…

Nothing. The shiny success you were promised is nowhere in sight.

The game feels rigged.

I’m doing everything right! It should be working!

I hear the frustration and the anger, and both are absolutely valid. However, the one part that gives me pause is the conviction.

I’m doing everything right!

Here’s the thing: If these were the right tactics for your business, you’d see results. When we think we’re doing “everything right,” we’re often just doing everything right for a business that isn’t our business.

Who created the everything right list, anyway? Blog posts, LinkedIn gurus, self-proclaimed coaches, HubSpot, perhaps Neil Patel?

My friend, in The Year of Our Lord Moo Deng, of course it isn’t working.

So, how do I find what’s right for my business?

1. Don’t focus on what should work— focus on what has already worked

How have your happiest customers found you? What have historically been the ways you land the best new clients? What would it look like to ignore the noise of what you’re supposed to do, and just focus on scaling one of those channels over the next 60 days?

2. See failure as feedback

This is a mantra in Growclass— failure is feedback. Failure isn’t good (toxic startup nonsense) or bad (toxic academic nonsense).

Failure is just information you can use to improve. Looking back on your graveyard of failed tactics, what can you learn? What can you definitively stop doing that will open up space to double down on things you know have worked?

3. Whole ass it 🍑

Put down the three social accounts you’re trying to post to every week. You can’t build SEO content, become a LinkedIn influencer, be great at email, and grow on Instagram simultaneously.

You can’t do it all well. The internet is littered with half-assed marketing. Choose something you can whole ass, and focus.

P.S One marketer pushing back on this *gestures above* nonsense is Growclass Mentor Brendan Hufford. His stuff is great— take a peek!