There’s a sentence I hear from business owners all the time. In fact, I’ve heard it so many times that I can usually see it coming before they say it.

“I know. I really need to start doing more video.”

This is usually followed by some version of, “I’ve been meaning to,” or “I’m going to get serious about it next month,” or my personal favorite, “As soon as things slow down a little.”

I never laugh at that last one, because that would be rude. But I do smile.

If you own a business, you already know why. When exactly are things going to slow down?

There’s always going to be a client who needs something, an employee with a question, an email that needs an answer, a project that took twice as long as you expected, or some completely unexpected problem that lands on your desk at 9:12 on a Monday morning. We keep waiting for this magical week when the phone is quiet, the inbox is empty, everyone behaves themselves and we can finally sit down and work on our marketing.

I’ve been in business long enough to tell you that I’m not sure that week exists.

And yet, I completely understand why marketing keeps getting pushed aside. The work you’re doing today feels urgent. Marketing usually doesn’t. Nobody is standing in your doorway demanding that you record a video before 3:00. Your Facebook page isn’t going to call and ask why you haven’t posted lately. YouTube won’t send someone to your office to confiscate your camera because it’s been sitting untouched for three months.

Marketing is very patient that way.

Unfortunately, so are the results.

I Don’t Think This Is a Motivation Problem

I’ve spent a lot of time talking with business owners about why they aren’t creating the videos they know they should be creating, and I’ve become convinced that most of them don’t need another motivational speech.

They already know video works.

They know they should be showing up more consistently. They understand that potential customers are looking them up online before they ever make contact. They know that having a library of helpful videos gives people an opportunity to learn from them, get comfortable with them and begin trusting them before the first conversation ever happens.

Knowing isn’t the problem. Doing it is.

That’s an important distinction, because we tend to treat inconsistency like some sort of personal failure. We tell ourselves we need to be more disciplined. Next week we’ll block off time. Next month we’ll finally create that content calendar. We buy a tripod. We download an app. We make a folder on our computer called “Video Ideas,” which is where perfectly good video ideas apparently go to retire.

For a week or two, we’re enthusiastic. Then the business gets busy again and marketing quietly moves back to the bottom of the list. Three months later, we feel guilty about it.

I don’t think guilt is a particularly effective marketing strategy. I also don’t think the solution is necessarily trying harder.

Sometimes the problem is much simpler: you’re trying to make yourself responsible for too many things. READ THAT AGAIN.

At Some Point, “I Can Do It” Becomes a Terrible Business Strategy

One of the strange things about owning a business is that you become very good at figuring things out.

Need a new piece of software? You’ll figure it out. Need to update something on the website? Give you enough time and a YouTube tutorial and you’ll probably get there. Need to make a graphic, write a caption, edit a video, create an email, fix the printer and somehow get the Wi-Fi working again?

Fine. Apparently, you work in IT now too.

Being resourceful is practically part of the job description.

But there’s a point in the life of a business when the question needs to change from “Can I do this?” to “Is this really where I should be spending my time?”

Those are two very different questions.

I could probably learn how to do a lot of things I currently pay other professionals to do. That doesn’t mean I should. I don’t hire people because I’m incapable of learning their jobs. I hire them because their expertise allows me to spend my time doing mine.

Marketing deserves the same consideration.

Yes, you can learn how to edit your own videos. You can research YouTube SEO. You can spend an afternoon figuring out thumbnails. You can create your own content calendar, write your own blog posts and remember to repurpose that video you recorded three weeks ago.

But if you’ve been telling yourself for the better part of a year that you’re going to start doing all of those things and they still aren’t happening, maybe we need to stop pretending the answer is another free Saturday.

Maybe the answer is help.

What If You Didn’t Have to Think About All of It?

This is the part of marketing that I don’t think we talk about enough.

It’s not just the time it takes to record a video or write a post. It’s the amount of mental space marketing takes when you’re responsible for all of it yourself. Does this sound familiar:

• You’re driving home and thinking, I haven’t posted anything this week.
• You’re in the shower and suddenly remember a great video idea, which you promise yourself you’ll remember later. You won’t.
• You see a competitor posting consistently and immediately think, I really need to get better about that.
• Then someone tells you that you should be on a platform you’ve barely heard of, and now apparently you need to worry about that too.
• That constant background noise is exhausting.

One of the things I love most about working with clients is taking some of that noise away. We can sit down together, talk about what’s happening in their business and figure out what actually makes sense for them. I can listen for the stories they don’t realize are content, help them decide what deserves their attention and create a plan so they aren’t starting from scratch every Monday morning.

They still have to show up. I can’t magically crawl through the computer screen and be them on camera, nor would anyone want that.

But they don’t have to carry the entire process by themselves.

There’s a huge difference between knowing, “I need to make more videos,” and knowing, “Here are the videos we’re making this month, here’s why we’re making them, and someone is helping me get them finished and out into the world.”

One feels like another item on an endless to-do list.

The other feels like a plan.

Your Marketing Doesn’t Need More Good Intentions

We’re getting close to the end of the year, which is always when I start hearing people talk about what they’re going to do differently next year.

January has a magical effect on us. We buy planners. We make goals. We decide this is finally going to be the year we get organized, drink more water, clean out that closet and become the kind of person who prepares healthy lunches on Sunday afternoon.

And for business owners, marketing almost always makes the list.

• Next year I’m going to be more consistent.
• Next year I’m going to finally start YouTube.
• Next year I’m going to do more video.

But before we make that same promise again, I think it’s worth asking a slightly uncomfortable question.

Wasn’t that the plan this year?

If it was, don’t beat yourself up about it. Instead, get curious about why it didn’t happen.

Was it really because you didn’t care enough?
Or were you busy running your business?

Did you genuinely have nothing to say?
Or did you have plenty to say and no idea how to turn it into a consistent strategy?

Did you need more information about marketing?
Or did you need someone to help you actually get the marketing done?

Those answers matter because January doesn’t automatically change any of them. If the same person has the same responsibilities and the same amount of time, adding a shiny new planner probably isn’t going to solve the problem.

Trust me. I wish planners had that kind of power. I own some very nice ones.

Maybe This Is the Year You Stop Doing It Alone

This is something I’ve come to believe more strongly the longer I work with business owners: you should be involved in your marketing, but that doesn’t mean you have to do all of your marketing.

In fact, I don’t want to remove you from the process. You’re the part I need.

I need your stories. I need your knowledge. I need the questions your customers are asking. I need the way you explain something when you’re not worrying about saying it perfectly. I need the little bit of sarcasm or humor or enthusiasm that makes you sound like you instead of every other business in your industry. That’s the good stuff.

What you may not need to be doing is figuring out what to record, editing it afterward, optimizing it for YouTube, writing descriptions, deciding where else it should go and remembering that you haven’t posted anything to LinkedIn in two weeks. That’s where I come in.

Queen Bee Consulting has changed over the years because I’ve realized that the camera was never really the hardest part for most of my clients. The hard part was taking everything they know and turning it into marketing consistently while also trying to run a business.

So that’s what I help with. Not by turning you into a content machine. Not by making you sound like me. And definitely not by chasing every trend the internet tells us we should care about this week.

I help you figure out what you should be saying, how video fits into the bigger picture and how we can make the entire process easier to maintain. Because your marketing should still sound like you.

You just shouldn’t have to do all the work alone.

One Last Thing…

If you’ve said, “I really need to start doing more video marketing” at some point this year, I’m not going to give you another list of reasons video is important. You already know.

Instead, I want you to ask yourself why it still hasn’t happened.

And if the answer is some combination of I don’t have time, I don’t know what to talk about, I don’t know what to do with the videos once I make them, or I just need someone to help me get this off the ground, then maybe we should have a conversation.

Because we still have time before January.

And I’d much rather help you end this year saying, “I finally did it,” than start another one saying, “This is the year I’m going to.”

If you’re ready to stop putting video marketing on next month’s list, let’s talk. We’ll figure out what makes sense for your business and go from there.

No big sales pitch. Just a conversation.

Those tend to be where the best things start anyway. Contact me today so we can set this up.