Narrow Your Marketing Focus When Everything Feels Urgent: Live Coaching
Your inbox is full of marketing advice, and your social feed is full of new trends. Every platform has a tip, every course has a must-do, and you still don’t know what to work on this week. Pattern designer Leanne Parsons of Devoted Quilter came to a live coaching session on the Hey Tori! podcast with exactly that problem: four separate questions and no clear order to tackle them.
What you’ll learn in this post:
How to pick the one marketing problem bothering you most right now
The two questions that show which activity makes money and which could make more
How to schedule the rest so it stops nagging at you
How to protect your focus with one repeating block on your calendar
Connect with Leanne:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/devotedquilter/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DevotedQuilterDesigns/?ref=NONE_xav_ig_profile_page_web
Website and Blog: https://www.devotedquilter.com/
Who Is Leanne, and What Does Her Business Look Like?
Leanne lives in Newfoundland, Canada. She has been quilting since 1997, started her blog in 2013, and found her way into the online quilting community from there. Design work followed, first on her blog and then for magazines. In her words, she “gradually transitioned from it being a hobby to a passion and then now to a business.”
Today her business has several parts. She has 52 patterns in her shop, which quilt shops can also order. She runs the Stash Artists membership, which is about fifty people right now and offers patterns made from fabric you already own. She teaches guild lectures and has one on-demand workshop, paper piecing with freezer paper. She also works a morning shift, so her business time is mostly afternoons.
That’s a lot of moving parts for one person, and it’s why she came in overwhelmed.
Why Does Every Marketing Option Feel Urgent at Once?
Leanne arrived with four questions: growing her email list, growing on social media, growing wholesale sales to quilt shops, and knowing where to put her focus. Tori’s read is that this is common right after someone starts coaching. People reach out because they’re stuck on a lot of things at once.
Which Problem Is Bothering You Most Right Now?
Tori’s first question was simple: which of these is bothering you most? Leanne chose wholesale. In her words, she was “definitely having trouble letting quilt shop owners know that I exist.”
Pick your own answer the same way. You don’t need the most important problem yet. You need the one that keeps coming back to you. That one tells you where your attention is already going.
What Is Actually Making You Money?
Tori then asked Leanne what part of her business is making money right now. For Leanne, the answer was her membership, followed by her Etsy shop.
Write your version down. Don’t guess. List the things that have brought in money in the last few months, in order. If you can’t tell, that’s your first clue. You may be spreading your energy across channels that aren’t producing sales.
Which Activity Could Earn More With More Attention?
The next question narrows things down: if you focused more time on one thing, which would make you more money? Leanne’s answer was her email list. She had noticed that promoting her membership by email brings in more people than posting on social media does. Growing the list would be the most effective way to grow the membership.
That’s the point where the other options start to fall away. Tori called it working backward. Once you know your focus, the rest of your marketing has a job to do. Social media, wholesale, and collaborations either support the list or wait their turn.
What Do You Do With the Things You’re Not Focusing On?
This is where most people struggle. They pick a focus, then feel guilty about everything they’re not doing. Tori’s answer was to give the other items a date.
Wholesale was Leanne’s biggest worry, but the work that matters most for it depends on the H+H show calendar. Tori suggested reaching out to distributors now, asking whether they plan to meet at the show, and doing the big push before the show in May. That gives Leanne about seven months to prepare. Knowing exactly when she’ll work on wholesale frees her to focus on the list in the meantime.
Give each item a calendar date, and it stops nagging at you all day.
How Do You Protect Your Focus Once You Choose It?
Once you’ve chosen your focus, you need a place for it in your week. Friday afternoons were already Leanne’s project time, so Tori suggested making social media the first thing she does after lunch on Fridays. One hour, three posts, on the calendar. Leanne uses a paper planner, and her rule is “if it’s not written down, it doesn’t happen.”
Tori also pointed out that you don’t need fresh content every week. Pattern posts are easy, because the photos and videos already exist. Pick one pattern each week, share it with some music, and move on.
By the end of the session, Leanne described the relief this way: “It’s good to have a plan instead of just feeling like I’m winging it.”
Hey Tori Takeaway
Three steps to narrow your focus this week:
Name the one thing bothering you most. Pick one marketing problem, not four.
Ask two questions. What is making money right now? Which activity could make more with more attention?
Put everything else on a date. Write down when you’ll work on each remaining item, then take it off your to-do list until then.
If you’ve been trying to do everything at once, the Digital Marketing Magic Coaching Program is built to help you sort it out. We start with your foundation, identify where your focus belongs, and build a plan around your real schedule. Members get a personalized roadmap, live coaching every month, and access to our custom AI tools. The best first step is a free 30-minute strategy session to narrow down your next move. Book your free strategy session.
About the Author: Tori McElwain is a digital marketing coach for quilting and creative businesses. With 24+ years of quilting experience and a Master’s degree in Education, she helps quilters attract more students, sell more patterns, and grow their businesses online, without losing the joy of creating. She’s the author of “Workshops Unleashed” and cohost of the Quilting on the Side podcast.
Comments