I’m so tired of seeing “this isn’t your basic ___.”
So what if it is? It’s probably freaking helpful af.
Somewhere along the way, “basic” became a bad thing in the online business world.
We started seeing “not your average coach,” “not your average strategist,” “not your average marketing advice.” everywhere
That doing things the way old-school business people did them is somehow embarrassing.
Old-school business people are still in business.
There are insurance companies that have been in the same family for 40, 50, 60 years.
There are hometown banks people choose over big institutions, generation after generation.
The reason they’ve lasted is because they got results, treated people well, and didn’t burn themselves to the ground chasing whatever was new.
So if someone called my business basic? I’d say yes. Thanks.
My business is boring so I can lead a really exciting life.
My (unpopular) opinion on business
I don’t fall in with the “your business should LIGHT YOU UP” crowd.
I don’t think you have to be lit up by the things you do to earn money.
You should be lit up by the humans in your life.
By the experiences you’re having.
By the way you spend your weekends.
Your business can be the thing that funds all of that.
That doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy what I do.
I do!
I enjoy my business because I get to help other really rad humans realize their dreams.
The nerdy technical stuff? I also enjoy that.
But the things that I enjoy the most are the change I get to make for my clients, and the life this business has built for my family.
What a “boring business” actually looks like to me
A “boring business”, for me, means I don’t wake up with my hair on fire.
It means I can FaceTime my niece in the middle of the day.
I can show up for something at my daughter’s school whenever I want to.
I have respectful relationships with every one of my clients.
It means I produce quality work on a timeline that works for everyone involved.
I work where I want to work. I work, for the most part, when I want.
There aren’t massive highs and devastating lows. I’m not chasing growth at breakneck speed where my nervous system has to pay the price.
A boring business is a safe business.
What Makes a Boring Business Exciting
If my business isn’t the thing lighting me up, what is?
My family. My friends. The actual living-of-my-life part of my life.
I don’t care to be doing something thrilling every minute. I just want to be available for the people I love.
A profitable, boring business gives me the freedom to move at my own pace.
I don’t have to chase trends. I don’t have to panic about what’s hot on social media this week. I get to think about my life and the people in it instead of what some random person on the internet is doing.
But, like, let’s be so for real – I get FOMO. It’s an internal battle sometimes, but I really don’t want to be running anyone else’s race.
I’d like to walk my own path.
When I think about the life I want, it includes the ability to spend quality time with everyone I love — my husband, my daughter, my sister, my mom, my dad, my nieces, my nephews, my friends.
It means going on vacation when my kid has space in her schedule.
It means dropping everything at a moment’s notice when someone I love needs me.
It means having the freedom to say no to a project when the person asking has values that don’t line up with mine.
Why a Boring Business is Right for Me
This path chose me, it’s been part of me all along. You see, I come from a long line of women with spreadsheet brains. My mom cemented my love for math early on.
When I look back one of my earliest memories of being pumped to do math was when my mom was helping my sister learn how to add and subtract negative numbers. My sister is 7 years older than me, and I reallllllly wanted to answer those questions, instead of letting my sister do it.
The numbers thing followed me everywhere after that.
I was a retail store manager, where you use math all day, every day.
A wildfire eventually gave me the time to go back to school for an associate’s degree in accounting.
That led me into ad management right at the beginning of the iOS debacle.
And ads led me into marketing measurement.
Because here’s the thing → if you can’t track what’s happening, you can’t be a good steward of your funds.
I realized if I knew how to measure my own marketing and run my own ads, I’d always be able to market my skills.
And so my obsession began.
Why measuring your marketing is part of the boring business equation
Here’s where my whole “boring business” thing loops back to what I do for a living.
When you understand your data, you get to build a boring, stable business.
Without data when things feel a little shaky, you’re way more likely to chase a shiny object, copy somebody else’s strategy, hop on a trend, or pivot because somebody “homegirl killing it on the internet” said this thing works better.
Knowing how to measure your marketing means you get to make decisions based on YOU.
Your business. Your circumstances. Your capacity. Your goals.
I want you to know there’s nothing wrong with being boring.
When you’re a “regular” human living a regular human life, all the shiny lives online can make you feel some kind of way.
Most people are having “regular” human experience.
Wtf is “regular” anyways…
If we talked about it more openly, it would probably feel a lot less lonely.
Build your business however you want to build it.
Don’t worry about what anybody else is doing. Don’t try to cram yourself into a box!
If the vibes are vibin’ let’s be friends on the ‘gram!
And if you’re ready to get the marketing measurement piece of your boring business sorted, you can check out my services here.
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