3 "boring" business tasks to STOP avoiding asap

You don’t need to have it all together to run a successful business. But if you’re dreaming of growth, there are a few unsexy things you’ve got to stop ignoring.

✨ Episode Summary:
In this episode, Jenna gets real about the behind-the-scenes tasks that most early business owners avoid—but shouldn’t. Because while your business can still grow in the chaos, you’ll thank yourself later for laying the groundwork now.

Mentioned in this episode:
🧠 Strategic Stories: The $10 Instagram story challenge that’s secretly my best-selling product
👉 https://magicmarketingmachine.com/strategic-stories 

Tune in to hear:

• The dead-simple organization trick that will change your email marketing forever
• How ignoring your numbers (even accidentally) can sabotage your growth
• Why incorporating your business sooner rather than later can save you serious money
• The real reason “messy” doesn’t mean “unprofessional”
• A story about 400 sales that happened without a single promo (and what that taught Jenna about checking the data)

This is your permission slip to stop feeling behind—and your gentle nudge to clean up a few key areas so you can scale with more ease.

🎧 Listen if you’re ready to:

• Treat your business like it’s bigger than it is
• Ditch the drama and lean into the data
• Set yourself up for the growth you know is coming

✨Tap here to watch a FREE masterclass on “How To Get Clients From Instagram (without wasting hours glued to your phone)"

https://parkdale-republic.lpages.co/evergreen-webinar-registration/

Tap here to get your free Posts That Sell Template (This caption got us 10 sales calls in 3 hours)

https://parkdale-republic.lpages.co/10-sales-calls-new

🎉 Tap here to work with Jenna inside Magic Marketing Machine (or MMM+)!

https://www.magicmarketingmachine.com

Music by Jordan Wood

Hosted by Jenna Harding (Warriner), Creator of Magic Marketing Machine

Transcript

If you are newly in business, you're in your first couple gears and you like... Jenna Harding (00:11.702) and you wanna treat your business like it's already bigger than it is, like that's always what I've tried to do, right? If you have five clients, act like you have 10. If you have 10 clients, act like you have 100. Always be thinking into the next iteration of your business and what needs to change, what would change if it were bigger and then start making those changes now. That's actually some of the best business advice that I can give you, even though it's a little bit cryptic. So the first few years in my business, Jenna Harding (00:40.682) everything was really a mess and that was fine and that I still made tons of money. So if you feel like your business is a mess then don't worry about it like honestly and that's maybe a little bit controversial business advice because I've had people try and shame me about my business's mess. I've had consultants come in or Jenna Harding (01:01.422) You know interviewed OBMs who have commented on certain things that are a mess and I don't know if it was just them trying to get me to hire them but when I got the amazing operations manager that I have now she came in and said Jenna Everything will always feel like it can be tidier. Everything will always feel like it can be organized more organized. That's what this is about Jenna Harding (01:26.156) Like you're, you never look at the back end of your business and go, yes, everything is perfect. Even think of it like a linen cabinet, right? Do you guys still say linen cabinet? I pride myself on my closet in the hallway that has all the house linens in it because I feel like that's one of those like... Jenna Harding (01:43.99) one of those things that when you don't have it, when you're living in bachelor apartments and you're in college and you're living with your first boyfriend in a tiny apartment in Toronto and that sort of thing, like you never have enough space for a linen closet. It is such a luxury. So as soon as we moved into our house and I had a closet full of like towels and sheets and maybe an extra pillow, that became my pride. And I'm the only one that's allowed to organize it because I'm the only one that can do it right. And it's like a whole thing. So even though... Jenna Harding (02:12.526) Sometimes the linen cabinet is perfect and all the linens are folded the right way and they're all organized and the pillowcases are with their matching sets and your extra duvet case is like perfectly folded and not scrunched up into a ball. It's not gonna stay like that because you use the closet. Things are always coming and going, new things are getting added. It's an impossible standard to think that it's gonna stay tidy. Jenna Harding (02:42.634) always. And if I sound a little bit intense about this closet thing, it's because I started by talking about those people that shamed my business. I'm taking it out on, the closet a little bit. I'm taking it out on, this recording now. Anyway, it's allowed to be messy, but if there's a couple things that I can share with you that you can start organizing right now so that when you inevitably grow into a huge giant business, because you are going to, this is going to work. Jenna Harding (03:12.16) It is going to work. More clients are coming, more money is coming, more team is coming. It's all in the works, hon. Okay, it's all in the works, my love. Okay, so if I could tell you a couple things to organize now. Jenna Harding (03:27.234) Here's what I've learned. One is your email marketing, whatever software you're using. I had never even heard of this, your email, so, okay, one, I had never even heard of these words before, but it's naming modalities. If you've ever heard of this, great, you're farther ahead than me. Naming modalities. So I name stuff, like if you looked at my Google Drive, my folders would be called like, Jenna Harding (03:57.196) legal stuff or contracts or ideas I have. Like the names of my folders are all kind of silly and self-explanatory. I might, same in my like email marketing software, I might have a tag called people I met at expo or people who downloaded freebie or product possibly. Like for people that I thought had might have a product based business instead of a service. So anyway. Jenna Harding (04:27.232) what a naming modality is, is to not do that. So instead of just to randomly make up names or make up names that like are sentences describing what the folder or the document or the product or the tag or the sequence or whatever is, everything gets, everything is titled in the same way. And I had one person working with me at one point and I did not jump. Jenna Harding (04:53.07) who introduced naming modalities to me and I did not jump on it right away because the way that she wrote it, I found really scary. So she would do everything in capitals and there were codes that I didn't understand and underscores. And so I really pushed back on this whole idea for like an additional year and I wasn't organizing things because the way that these naming modalities were written, was like, it was scary and it made it so that I couldn't find anything ever. Jenna Harding (05:20.46) But my new ops person has naming modalities that were a lot more intuitive to me. And then I learned they don't need to be codes. They don't need to be scary. They can still be relatively self-explanatory. They just all align. So for instance, all of the email sequences I have in kit, if it's an opt-in sequence, it says in square brackets, whatever those are called, I'm sure they have a name opt-in, then the name of the ops. Jenna Harding (05:48.32) If the tag is tagging someone because they've purchased any of my products, it would say paid dash name of product, paid dash name of other product, et cetera. So I don't know if you're a really visual learner like me, then that was probably kind of hard to understand just from hearing me say it, but give it a Google, organize your folders, assume you're going to stay in business for many years, assume you're going to make lots of money and have lots of people and lots of products come through and start getting that stuff organized early. Jenna Harding (06:17.356) I'm not saying spend thousands of dollars or weeks on it, just, you know, a little bit more Virgo energy than I initially gave to anything that I named. Jenna Harding (06:32.078) Next up, know your numbers. Know your numbers. I am a huge fan of the Amy Porterfield podcast and Amy Porterfield and she talks about this a lot, know your numbers. And basically you want to know what selling, what the conversion rates on different pages are. If you have a freebie or an opt-in or a lead magnet, that's all the same thing. Just call different names by the way. Jenna Harding (06:55.842) You wanna know the conversion rate of the people that are opting into it and from there, how many of those people are buying from you, stuff like that. Numbers, right? Stats. And I had heard her say this a million times and I thought I knew the rule, but man, sometimes us like multi-passionate creative generator personality types, if anything is boring, Jenna Harding (07:24.588) like naming modalities or knowing your numbers, we end up avoiding it, all right? Right? Are you the same? So because I didn't have a regular thing in my calendar that says every two weeks check all these numbers or every one month check all these numbers, I didn't. And I started making assumptions about my business not based on data. And I've heard people say before like, Jenna Harding (07:54.37) And I can't even express enough that I have been taught all of this a million times. Like one of my old coaches used to always say data over drama, but you don't think you're the drama. You don't think it's me. I'm the problem, it's me. We don't think that way. We don't believe we're the drama when we're being the drama. So I was running my business on vibes, not realizing what my most successful products were. Jenna Harding (08:19.246) And oh Nellie, was I ever wrong about what was going on in my business? Let me give you an example. It's 2025 right now. In June, my husband ran up a report of how many people had bought each and every one of the products inside my business. And I have this product called Strategic Stories, the five day Instagram challenge. It's so fun. It's this mini course. Jenna Harding (08:46.21) takes you about 10 minutes a day to watch for one week and it tells you exactly what to post. You learn why stories get engagement and how to make your stories get more views. And then by the end of the week, there's like a bonus day. So that once you've spent all week following the challenge and nurturing people in your stories, then you get to sell to them. And people have had crazy results from this. Some people use it every single week. They've told me they use it as a framework for their stories, like moving forward. it's Jenna Harding (09:15.182) people have told me they get sales from it. People have told me they have more engagement than ever before on it. So it's a beautiful little product and it's only $10. And I, I often add it as like a bump offer or trip wire or like all scattered about, but it's 2025 in June, six months into 2025, I had not actively promoted strategic stories to my knowledge at all. Maybe a couple Instagram stories, but if you're looking into me, chances are you're going to, Jenna Harding (09:45.198) come upon it at some point. You might listen to a podcast episode, an old post, something like that, or see it as a tripwire. Anyway, we have sold, at that point we had sold 405, 405 strategic stories programs in 2025. It was my most popular product. Over 400 people had bought this without me promoting it. Jenna Harding (10:11.638) And that's like, I don't know, is that a flex? I'm really just kind of embarrassed that I had no idea. So now I'm starting to talk about it more because I'm like, my goodness, how did I not notice people love this? It's working for them. It's easy. Jenna Harding (10:26.636) Sometimes I just picture a room of that many people, like picture a room of 400 people. my goodness. Actually, last year I spoke at an event and there were 400 people in the room. So I can very clearly picture that. And I didn't even know that entire room was sitting there waiting for me. That entire room existed when I didn't know it. anyway, actually it will be below this episode. If you want to hop into strategic stories and post every day for a week, know exactly what to do in your stories and possibly make some money off of it. Jenna Harding (10:56.16) It's down there waiting for you. Know your numbers. Jenna Harding (11:28.106) Here's another one, and I'm in Canada and I don't know the rules where you are, but I do wish I had done the boring work of incorporating my business sooner. Jenna Harding (11:41.588) I waited to incorporate my business. We had a couple really big sales months when I was still a sole proprietor and it ended up costing me a lot of money. Can't go back, not upset about it. It is what it is. I'm happy to pay my taxes to support my community and support my country and that is actually true. But it wasn't the savviest decision I've ever made. It was far from it. So I thought that incorporating was going to be this like scary process and so I avoided it. Jenna Harding (12:11.424) Jenna Harding (12:11.684) And in the early days of my business, I didn't have the belief that I'm trying to like shove into your brain right now about how big your business can possibly get or maybe it's already huge and it's gonna get even huger, right? I think I just wasn't thinking that way and so I didn't do it and then I had to scramble to do it when dollar bills were being thrown at me. So Jenna Harding (12:49.63) So there you have it, three things you can do right now to treat your business like it is bigger than it is and assume success is imminent. And hey, if these three things are things you've already done or you're already super aware of, I still would like to leave you with the nugget of the concept. If you had a hundred more people sign up to work with you next month than you were expecting, what would need to change to make that work? What would you need to track? What would you need? Jenna Harding (13:17.99) start preparing for that future and then when it arrives on your doorstep you won't nearly be as stressed plus you'll be laying the groundwork to get there so my business advice for you today have a good one and I'll see you in the next episode