Working extensively is not always going to help you succeed. I got reminded of this after a conversation with someone who recently started virtual assistance.
She started over 6 months ago, and she’s been trying 5 freelancing platforms, doing email and social media cold outreach, applying on job boards, and posting organic social media content, yet she still has no clients.
But this is what she missed: out of everything she tried, she only got a few responses from 2 freelancing platforms. Instead of doubling down on what showed the most potential, which in her case was those 2 platforms, she continued chasing dozens of strategies at the same time.
I see this with many business owners I work with too. When growth stalls, instead of doubling down on what is already working or what has shown the most potential, they focus on introducing new strategies that sound exciting.
But the problem is, there are new ideas every day. Go on YouTube and you’ll find endless “game-changing” strategies that look shiny and inviting. And when what you’re currently doing starts feeling repetitive and boring, you jump to try the less boring thing. Before you know it, you’re trying dozens of different things without making meaningful progress in any of them.
This has become a pattern I recognize very well, and I often give this advice to my clients and students:
When you feel stuck, look at what has already shown potential and double down on it instead of chasing new ideas that simply sound interesting. Because the illusion of being efficient or productive by doing too many things rarely delivers meaningful results.
I have a client with a coaching business, and the highest-quality leads they get come from YouTube Lives. But because doing YouTube Lives became boring, the business slowly replaced them with YouTube Shorts, Reels, content calendars, content tracking, community posts, and many other things that never showed the same level of potential.
And I see this more times than I can remember.
Especially now with AI, every day there’s a new idea promising better results. But at some point, it doesn’t matter how good an idea sounds, if you don’t identify what has already proven to have the highest growth potential, everything else eventually becomes noise.
I understand that you want to enjoy your life, and you shouldn’t spend all your time doing boring work forever. But when you’re at the stage where nothing is working yet, sometimes that’s exactly what you have to do.
Figure out what moved the needle, no matter how small the result was, drop the distractions, and focus on pushing that thing further.
You can eventually reach a stage where you no longer have to do too many boring things. But if you avoid the boring things from the beginning, you might never reach that level.
So take a minute to think about it:
What is the one thing that has shown more potential than anything else in your career or business-building efforts?
Figure that thing out, and go all in.
Cheers 🥂
