I’m genuinely bored of saying and hearing “I don’t have enough time.” My life is busy, and so is yours, but the reality is that if something matters enough to you, you will find the time to do it. Not having the time is nothing but an excuse.

For example, if you really, genuinely, absolutely want to get fit, you will find the time to exercise. If it is your burning passion to learn a new skill or language, you will make use of every spare minute to practise. And if you really believe that marketing will help your business, you will make the time to do the work.

I know lack of time is a real issue, in particular for small business owners. By saying “yes” to one thing, you invariably say “no” to something else. That’s fine! You shouldn’t be saying “yes” to all the things. But if you’re saying “yes” to growing your business through marketing, then you have to find or make the time for it.

It’s not just time

A shortage of time is only part of the problem. The challenge with making marketing work is compounded by several factors, such as not knowing where to start, feeling overwhelmed, or simply having lost your marketing mojo.

I get it.

Even though marketing is something I know and love, my own marketing is far from perfect. I know those lulls all too well. You only have to look at how sporadically I blog to see how inspiration ebbs and flows.

I absolutely know that more regular blogging will help my business. Sharing my knowledge helps people, while reminding them of me and showing that I I know what I’m talking about.

But when I only rely on feeling inspired or motivated, I will always find excuses (no time!).

Instead, it’s about:

• Being clear about your goals

• Understanding how marketing activities contribute to you achieving them

• Being indistractible (my word of the year)

• Being comfortable with the concept of progression over perfection

Progress, not perfection

About nine minutes ago, I sat down to write a blog post so I could tell you about #MakeYourMarch - a challenge I’m running every day in March on Instagram Stories. I gave myself 40 minutes to write and publish it. You’re reading it now.

Without this time frame, I’d have dithered over the topic and the angles, or over-analysed words and sentences in the same way I’d have done if I were writing this on behalf of a client.

But now, with the time frame, it means I’m taking action and getting something done. Because it’s more important to share this info that could help someone (which is my “why”) than to let my personal tendency to be so extra take over.

#MakeYourMarch

To help other small business owners take action with their marketing, I am going to run a special challenge called #MakeYourMarch.

Every day in March I will post a task on Instagram Stories. Each task will take less than ten minutes to complete, though you can of course spend longer on it!

A commitment of just ten minutes a day every day in March will mean you will end up spending around five hours on your marketing next month. By doing this, you will have advanced your marketing activities by 31 small steps. You’ll end the first quarter of the year in a much better place than you were on January 1st or even where you are now.

It’s about taking action. After all, if you want to get ahead, you need to get started!

My hope is that people will see that by doing one small thing every day - ideally making this a habit - they can really push their businesses forward.

No more overwhelm, no more excuses.

Doesn’t that sound good?

All you have to do to take part is follow me on Instagram. If you’re superkeen, you can also turn on notifications for Stories (here’s how) if you want an alert when I post (think carefully before you do this though as I do post a lot of other things too!).

Let’s do this! #MakeYourMarch

(In the end it took me well over an hour to get this post sorted, thanks to a couple of phone calls and other distractions. I’m far from perfect!)