The Vicki Kotris Podcast

Episode 53: Why Time is Our Only Teacher & Our Biggest Shepard to Success

• Vicki Kotris

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Time is a relentless teacher, shaping both personal growth and business success in ways we rarely anticipate. As I navigate the joys and hurdles of being a first-time mom, I see the same principles at play in entrepreneurship. This journey demands patience and a long-term perspective to truly flourish, much like the story of a client who bravely transitioned into an educator role. Overnight triumphs are rare, and building something lasting requires understanding the rhythms of time, the seasons of business, and the necessity of consistent marketing efforts to lay a foundation for enduring success.

Consistency is the unsung hero of transformation, whether you're molding a business or reshaping personal habits. Just as in fitness, where commitment over time leads to visible results, the same applies to marketing and business strategies. Prematurely abandoning efforts due to a lack of quick wins is a common pitfall, but true success often emerges from the slow, cumulative power of persistent action. Join me as we explore how the steadfast commitment to regularity and the wisdom to appreciate the passage of time can unlock extraordinary growth in both personal and professional realms.

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Speaker 1:

Hello and welcome to the Vicki Kotris podcast. I am your host, none other than Vicki Kotris. I'm a retired corporate girly, two-time six-figure founder who's obsessed with brand building, sales generating and digital marketing. My mission with this podcast is to share the lessons I've learned, to help you make more magic and money with your own marketing efforts, and to feel inspired to continue on your own journey as a creator and entrepreneur. Here I'll share real life strategies, marketing tips and mindset shifts that have helped me go from cubicle to creator. This podcast is for business owners, creatives or those just looking for a little more sparkle in their day, so let's kick off this week's episode. Hey guys, welcome back to the podcast.

Speaker 1:

Today I want to talk about something that has me all in my feels and maybe you can relate to it in some way, but it is something that I cannot stop thinking about and I think it is so topical and relates so much to marketing strategies and building businesses. It is time. The reason why I'm in my feels right now is because I had a baby last year and we are coming up on the first year of his life, his first birthday that we are celebrating, that I am planning a party and probably stressing out way too much and overthinking way too much, but it's because I just want it to be such a special and important memory, which it is. And one of the things that I look back on this past year has nothing to do with my son. He is wonderful and smart and funny and cute and everything in between Everything. A little chubby 11-month-old should be. But when I look back, what I really start to think about is what I have learned and what I have gained in the past 12 months.

Speaker 1:

I'm not that same person that I was 12 months ago. At this time, I even remember having a breakdown right before he was about to be born, because I didn't think I had enough clothes for him to come home, to which there was such a simple solution. But I just felt wildly unprepared and that was the one thing that I picked out as to why I wasn't fit to be a mother because I didn't own enough long sleeve onesies. So, again, I could also talk about the lies that we systematically or programmatically tell ourselves through just the loop of our own minds, but instead I'm going to talk about the interpretation of time and how it applies to business. So when I look back on my time growing as a first-time mom and my son and how many first-time experiences he has. I look back and say, wow, I have learned so much along the way that I am no longer the same person. He certainly isn't he has a tooth poking through that. I'll tell you that little gummy bear didn't have 12 months ago. He still looked like a little turtle from when he was born, and so that's a really beautiful thing, and it's crazy to me how fast time goes and how slow it goes. There's a saying for parents that the days are long but the years are short, which is so true, because when you're in it some days you don't know how you're going to get through it, and then you look back and a whole month or year has passed, which is truly how I feel, and that is the same with building a business.

Speaker 1:

I'll tell you my recent example. So I'm working with a client and she is branching out into a new world. She is moving from providing services directly to into an educator role, where she's actually teaching and educating other people on the service that she's offering, and so something that's new is building out a long-term strategy. So she is offering these educational courses. She is brilliant. She is wonderful and so captivating when people are consuming her content or talking with her directly. So it's not her that's the problem.

Speaker 1:

What becomes the problem in every business is figuring out how to scale, and I think that we all have these giant expectations that things are going to change overnight, that we are going to flip a switch after we've created a product or launch our service and now that it has launched itself and unleashed itself into the wild, everyone is going to buy it, everyone is going to love it and we are millionaires overnight. I love that story. I love that story for you, I love that story for me, I love it for my clients and anyone who has tried something new, who has created something and put it out into the universe. What I know to be true is that that is not true at all, and I hate to burst everyone's bubble, but from someone who is a three-time founder, what I know is that things do not change overnight and no matter how much blood, sweat and tears you put into a launch of a product, a new service, a new product, a new course, whatever it is, fill in the blank.

Speaker 1:

Whatever it is that you are putting out into the universe overnight you may see some rocks turn over. So in my client's case, she had an incredible amount of people on a wait list who then converted as soon as she launched her course Incredible, but it does take strategy to keep that going. It doesn't happen overnight. You can't stop the wheel. So in her case, what we're doing is we're looking at a communication and digital marketing strategy that extends just that, you know, one month launch period, because any business owner will tell you, anyone that owns a large scale organization I'm not even going to say large, I'm going to say a business that continues to consistently make revenue.

Speaker 1:

It doesn't mean there's not seasonality in every single business. We all weather the storm. Sometimes our sales are higher in the summer versus the winter, sometimes in March versus April. I'm not saying that those things are not completely normal, because they are, but what I'm saying is that the businesses that thrive are the ones that understand that seasonality and put a foundation or a plan in place so that they can better weather the storm. And that fun little word is called marketing.

Speaker 1:

If you are living in today's world, you better be on social, you better have a Google listing, you better have some kind not even a website, but you better have some kind of online presence to better connect with your audience that is searching for you today. And so when I talk a lot about digital strategy, what I'm talking about is understanding that it is a long-term play and it always will be. And the reason why I say that is because even in the viral world or universe that we live in today, where you could post something on your phone this morning and then by lunchtime, a million people can see it, those million people that are seeing it may not see it tomorrow, may not continue to follow that content, and so it is up to you to continue to put things out there that create engagement, that foster community, that educate people on your products, or else you are just going to be a flash in the pan and it's easy to blame everything else on the outside oh, this didn't work, this didn't work, and that's okay. But as long as you are continuing to talk about your products, to talk about what's coming up, you will be able to weather those storms and create a long-term sales strategy, sales and marketing strategy.

Speaker 1:

I think it's also really important to put achievable goals in place so that you don't get discouraged when you don't see things changing overnight. For example, if your focus is that you want to get two new clients by the end of the year, then I would work my way backwards and say what can support that? Do you have an email list of 300 people that you can consistently send emails and updates to every single week? Black Friday is coming up. Do you have a service or product that you can include in a promotion that's going out? Are you posting on social media often enough to where new customers can find you, or interested parties that maybe didn't purchase before can see what you've been up to and we can convert them into customers? Setting those goals for yourself are going to give you that inspiration that you need to continue to grow your digital marketing strategy.

Speaker 1:

And when I say digital marketing, I talk about what is email, what is social and what do DMs all have working for you to convert followers or prospects into actual paying customers? And for some of you that are listening, you might say Vicki, I mean I am fine, we are good, we have customers, I feel great. I have never met a business owner who says I can't do a little bit better or doesn't have expansion goals into a new market or a new product group, or maybe would be transitioning from a service business to direct to consumer, or however you that you envision your business. There are always ways that you can use marketing strategies to help you get there and help connect you with the right audience right? So when you look at the idea of marketing, of a sales plan, of growing your business, I really encourage you to make realistic goals for yourself of what feels good, what would make you motivated and continuing to grow your sales or marketing channel. That could be number of customers, that could be number of followers, that could be growing that email list.

Speaker 1:

And then let time do its thing.

Speaker 1:

Let all of your efforts compound into some serious, serious growth.

Speaker 1:

Don't knock your head up against a wall. If it doesn't happen overnight, it doesn't happen next week, next month or next year. You have to stay focused on all of the things that you're doing on a daily or weekly basis to get you there, and then you will start to see those rocks seriously turn over and continue to grow your customer base. The worst thing that you could possibly do is stop your efforts because you feel like they're not working. That goes with anything and I guarantee you even anyone who's ever gone on a workout plan or a diet plan and you're like, oh gosh, look, I've been working out nonstop, every single day for a month and you're like I don't even see that scale move. And then all of a sudden, it's like your metabolism changes, your body changes and you really start to see some of those more physical changes in yourself. I think this is marketing, reflecting physical shape, physical life, because certainly we can see the same in business strategy. So go out, get there, keep at it and very excited to watch you continue to grow.