Small habits, quiet systems, and methodical planning

They say 20% of your efforts create 80% of your results.

So this week I decided to see if I could actually figure out what my 20% is — the things that quietly do most of the heavy lifting while I waste time on everything else.

I decided to look into five key areas (marketing, sales, design, development, and website care) and wrote down five things I do regularly in each… Then asked myself “If I could only keep one of these, which one makes the biggest difference”.

Marketing: Consistency.

There are a million ways (SEO, social, newsletters, referrals, giveaways) to get your brand seen. And I don’t think it’s that any of those do or don’t work, it’s that none of them will work if you’re not showing up again, again, and again.

It’s not flashy, but being consistent builds trust, naturally trains you to get better at it, and keeps you top of mind.

Sales: Empathy

I wouldn’t have used that word until I read Jennifer’s post this week, but she nailed it. And that concept has been key to any deal I’ve closed. When I took the Sell by Helping course and swapped “sell” for “help”, my confidence and close rate both skyrocketed.

There are a million people that can arrange text, images, and buttons on a page — but there are very few that will sit down and actually listen to what the customer is saying.

Design: User Journey

It breaks my little designer heart, but the experience of a website is much more important than the aesthetics. Where’s the visitor trying to go? What do they need next? Is anything in the way?

Spending significantly more time on that before I paint a pixel (in the discovery phase) has made the process easier and the end results much more successful.

Development: Simplicity

It’s temping to flex your muscles and build out complex systems to solve problems when you’re developing websites… but gobs of code and piles of plugins ends up being a tripping hazard.

“Simple” isn’t always easy to do, but simplicity makes it faster to build, easier for clients to use, and more flexible with things inevitably change.

Website Care: Proactive

For years I relied on a system to remove malware — to fix the things that would break. It was great to solve the problems, but preventing them is so much less stressful.

Patching vulnerabilities before they are exploited, updating plugins early and often, and speaking to clients regularly has prevented so many of those evenings pulling out my hair trying to put out fires.

What was interesting about this exercise (which I recommend you try) is that the stuff that matters the most isn’t the loudest, flashiest, or most complicated. It’s the small habits, quiet systems, and methodical planning.

I’d be super curious to hear what you come up with if you give this experiment a try. Post about it in the group?