Show Notes:
We can’t truly welcome 2021 without looking back at the year that was. 2020 was massively polarizing as it has been difficult for most people yet surprisingly rewarding in some aspects for others. Depending on what industry and niche your business is in, 2020 has hit us each differently.
Whatever the case may be, there are experiences to be valued and lessons to be learned as we reflect on the past year. We can grow stronger and wiser by revisiting both our mistakes and successes, defeats and victories until we come up with a comprehensive understanding of who we are and how we can move forward in 2021.
Change. Process. Train. Help. These are just some of the lessons I learned and will drop on you in this episode.
Prepare. Activate. Refine. Simplify. Hopefully after listening to this episode you’ll feel empowered moving into 2021.
How these all fit in together and tie in with your goals for the coming year – that’s entirely up to you. I’m giving you my personal lessons learned and my ah-ha moments and I hope you can walk away with your own ah-ha’s.
Share-worthy Quotes:
“Change is inevitable and can creep up on us fast and alter our lives completely without our consent.”
“On being active in social media, I’ve realized that posting about my personal life creates a strong relationship with my audience.”
“Updating and refining your processes never ends. That never stops. And if it does, you should be worried because you’re probably outdating everything you’re doing.”
“However you can simplify your life and get help so that you’re a happier mom or a happier wife, or just a happier person in general – do it and don’t feel guilty about it.”
Get the Transcript here:
Episode 10 – 5 Lessons Learned in 2020
Yes, it is that time of year. Again, it is the end of 2020, where we all feel this urge to plan and review. What’s been working at the end of the year to deep dive into the data to see what was, and wasn’t working while also, really just wanting to relax with our family during the holidays. Unplug from the online social media noise and just be no expectations, no timelines.
Just be still. While I did that over the last few days, it was really nice to have about four days where I did not look at a computer and did absolutely no work, but had time to reflect. And I had some “aha” moments while reflecting back on 2020 that I truly felt some of you might resonate with and be able to, well, one know that you’re not alone and to possibly walk away with some “aha” moments yourself.
Now, there were a lot of little things I noticed during 2020 that could have definitely been better or been done differently, but there were five main lessons I felt that were on my heart to share. And that some of you could really walk away with some motivation moving into 2021. So lesson one is to be prepared for change.
As we all learned with 2020. Change is inevitable and can creep up on us fast and alter our lives completely without our consent. I know I got nervous when COVID hit about my agency and what this meant for us and what would happen in the next 30, 60, 90 days. You know, not to mention my own personal life, trying to run my business while my kids were sent home.
Sent home to online virtual schoolwork. And so this is me trying to run a business and help my daughter with her math and her reading and help my son with his math, which he’s now in sixth grade at, well, I guess then it was fifth grade. Which, I’m sorry, but when you started going to fifth grade math, it starts getting a little, a little difficult, not too difficult, but a little difficult, and, you know, it, it was, it was rough and it was rough on a lot of us.
Right. I was. So now in August, I was, my kids actually went back to in-school per in-person school and I was definitely sad to see my kids go back just because we were so used to having them back home and spending all that extra time with them. It was kind of odd to have them leave the house for once.
However, once they went back to school, I think we were all a little bit happier and more calm because. I think we realized at that point we were just spending way too much time together. But thankfully for myself and the agency for the business, it had a different effect on us. I think that maybe some people, we actually got really busy.
We got a lot busier. I wasn’t expecting that. Again, I was very nervous. So, my summer months are actually usually a little bit slower and I love that I do that purposely. I pretty much turned out most of our ad spend. So anything coming in is just referrals at that point. And I love it because my kids are at home.
You know, usually only the summertime this year was a little bit different. Usually, my kids are home during the summer. My team has her kids home. Vacations are happening. I do an annual beach trip to North Carolina, where I like to try to unplug as much as possible during that timeframe, but this year was so super busy and we all felt it at the agency.
I even ended up having to work a bit while I was on vacation. We couldn’t hire fast enough because we weren’t expecting the growth, right. The surge in clientele, which also means that our training process for new hires got rushed, which led to areas that we immediately saw was broken and had to be fixed ASAP.
So, you know, I think for me, the lesson learned is just being prepared and taking quick action to ensure that you are set up for success. No matter what happens. And that’s what I want everyone to walk away from this episode with. So that’s lesson number one to lesson number two for me. Personally was not being active enough on Facebook and Instagram or just on social media in general. I’m not posting enough content or really in my case, really any content.
I was able to build my agency successfully. With automation really? I just had a lead magnet that I ran automatically. And I did that before I even quit my corporate job guys. I, I started a lead magnet. I had a tripwire, I then had retargeting ads to book- A Call with The Agency – and that has ran for a very long time.
And that has done very well and has brought us in the clientele. Plus along with just my, me getting involved in masterminds and kind of networking and building my, my reputation there and, and just, you know, building friendships along the way. That doesn’t really well for me, where I have not needed it.
And haven’t really relied on social media as far as organically posting about my life. I always found it really awkward, which some of you probably do posting about your life. I feel super weird trying to post pictures of my day and what I’m doing. And I’m like, nobody cares. Like nobody cares what I’m eating today or that I’m outside on my patio, looking at the mountains, like who cares?
But okay. But what I noticed and what I’ve realized is that what that does is it creates a relationship with my audience. And so the last couple of months in 2020, I’ve gotten a lot more visible. I’m posting, you know, business-wise. Yes. Because I wasn’t even really doing a whole lot with that.
Again, everything I do is automated. But now I’m posting more business-wise content. I’m posting more personal content, and just getting more visible on a daily basis and, you know, yes, it’s a little bit awkward. So if you’re feeling awkward about doing that kind of stuff and I would recommend like, just keep doing it.
It does get easier. I’m also recommending to batch it cause I have not been batching. And so that has made it almost a little stressful every day. Like, oh man, I got to go live. I got to do this and I don’t want that. So I’ve gotten last month out of the two months. I started batching, which was so much easier for me now.
And so what this does guys is like for me personally, it has. It has increased conversions. It has increased just that credibility and no like trust factor. So people that have been solely following me are now seeing me get visible and they’re contacting me. I’m getting messages. I’m getting people active in my group more.
We’re getting more calls and people saying they were following me and listening to my podcast. I recently launched this podcast. And so, I just want to say, like, for me personally, not posting enough content for business and personal was a big one. So, and it’s something that I preach to all of our clients, that content is King, but I’ve always just focused on agency.
And now that I’ve been doing a lot more consulting and, and more coaching, this is going to be huge. This is so huge in that space. And so, yeah, that’s, that’s a big one for me. The third lesson I learned was process, process, process, process. You know, process and building our team process in how we deliver to our customers, process.
I mean, literally keeps me up at night. I will sometimes be laying down and thinking of, of a way to make our process better and how to change an SOP. And I take out my phone, which I shouldn’t have in my room. I know, and I start writing notes on there. I just can’t help it. You know, analyzing how we onboard new clients.
To deliver results to reporting to our creative team process to our sales process. I actually had spent a few days with my traffic manager. I flew her out. She’s in Canada and I flew her out to Phoenix where I’m at for a few days. Oh gosh, I can’t remember. Was this August? Maybe it was, maybe it was August.
I can’t remember when so that we could redo all of our processes. We sat down and a really nice hotel and just had our laptops up and just read it. Process after process dove into our delivery and how we can make things better. And guess what, even since then we’ve redone them quite a few. We’ve, we’ve done quite a few of them actually.
And we still see so many need to be updated and changed because things are constantly changing and refining and being tweaked for the better. So, but the processes are what allow us to run the business. And Moodley with clear expectations on all parties, ours and the team. So, you know, I, I tell my team all the time, it’s the literally like a staple.
I think of what I say. If you see a process that can be automated or simplify to make your job easier while still getting the task done. Tell me. And if it makes sense, we will make that change immediately. So updating and refining your processes may never end, that never stops. And if they do, you should be worried because you’re probably outdating everything you’re doing.
So the process was a big one for me. The fourth one, fourth lesson for me was recruiting and the onboarding training process for new hires. You know, I didn’t get into business to do hiring and training and onboarding and all the HR kind of stuff. But you know, that’s a big piece of a business. Whether it’s just hiring a virtual assistant to hiring, you know, a sales team or a salesperson, to, you know, whatever your business is, an OBM or for me, an ad manager. hiring is never-ending.
It will always need to happen in your business. Some more often than others. For me, it happens more often than not. And if you don’t do it right the first time, if you don’t do it right, it literally can cost you thousands. I’m slow to hire and slow to fire. And that’s probably been my weakness.
I just, I don’t know if this is the reason why, but one thing I’m always told is I’m too nice. And so I’m just, you know, I always try to give everyone the benefit of doubt and, and I will not blame any time I let someone go. It’s always fully on the person. You know, if I let somebody go, it probably mostly the person, but I always say, man, we did something wrong in our process.
We did something wrong. And how we onboarded them on how we trained them and we set up unclear expectations or whatever it was. And so, you know, we need to fix it. So hiring a pro and, and, you know, the whole training process is huge. We actually just did a shift in our agency, which brought us through like, the hiring process again, in a new way.
We split out, split out our ad managers. So our ad managers would be the media buyers and they’d be the account manager. So they would talk with the clients, update the clients. They would give, you know, talk about strategy. So they would help the client strategize, what to do with their campaigns and their overall marketing.
And then it also is media buying, running the ads and doing all that stuff. And so we did, we did actually split that out into two different positions. Media buying and account management, just because we knew that they were very different expertise is right. Very different knowledge bases and different people.
And so that kind of put me right back into like doing this again. I knew how to hire my ad managers, like the back of my hand. And this year when we split these positions out, it’s very different people that you’re hiring because they’re very separate positions now. And so this was like a big learning curve for us and it kind of put us back, you know. I very honestly went through, a couple of people pretty quickly because I knew that we weren’t looking for the right people.
We weren’t exactly. We didn’t know exactly who we were looking for. We didn’t have the right. I’m really good at it when I bring people in. We do like a testing process and we really try to make sure that they have the expertise that we need. I didn’t do that very well. And so I’m learning. And so, I think we’ve got it down a lot better now, and we’ve got some people in place and right now it’s, it everything’s pretty amazing.
But that was big. So my lesson is to hire fast. Fire fast, but also really make sure you spend the time on your process for your recruiting, your onboarding training, so that, you know, I’d love to get to a point where I say, you know what. And it’s happy. You know, I love, I love it when I not love, I don’t love letting anybody go trust me.
I pretty much cry every time I hate it. But I’d love to be able to say like, I let them go and our process was on point and it wasn’t our fault. Like, you know what I mean? I don’t want to ever let someone go and be like, man, like our process could have been different and we just didn’t set them up for success.
So if you’re, if you brought like an, an executive assistant on, or you brought on a virtual, a tech VA, or you brought, have you brought on a salesperson and you feel like they’re not working out, I want you to just take a minute. Take a minute and look at yourself, look at your process. Look at you, provided them.
Are you really clear on exactly what needs to happen? Is it laid out very clearly where the expectation set upfront? I think that’s a big one for most people, and I know that was a big one for me. So, that was, that was, that was a big lesson for us. And then my, my last one, probably my biggest one, that’s more personal, is simplifying and getting help.
So look, we can’t do everything. I’m not a super mom, right? I’m on top of running a business. I’m a mom and a wife. And unfortunately, I can’t be a super mom who does everything. It just can’t happen. Now I always improve upon this every year. Like year after year, I’m always trying to simplify and get help.
But there’s always room for improvement every single year. Because easier you can make your life, which in means less decisions you make, less chauffeuring of kids, less doing things that you absolutely don’t love. The better person that you’re going to be in a happier. You always say happy mommy, happy kids, you know, like happy wife, happy life type thing.
Which is true. As when I’m a happier person, I’m a happier mom. Then my kids are happier. My husband’s happier. So things personally for me, you know, we had a lot of things going on. Like as most moms and parents do, we have sports, both my kids are in sports. We had school pickups and drop-offs. We don’t go to a local school down the street.
So it’s a 20 to 15 to 20-minute drive depending on traffic. One way, 15 to 20-minute drive back, and then you got to do it again in the afternoon to pick them up. School lunches, dinners, cleaning, not to mention, trying to put in that time there to spend quality time with your kids and husband outside of the things you just have to do.
So, yeah. I used to enjoy cooking back in the day because my son was allergic to dairy and eggs and Trina. So I really didn’t have much of a choice, but to cook things because most things are really hard to find that he could eat. But now he actually outgrew that and he’s 11 now, he outgrew that.
Oh, gosh, it was eight or nine somewhere around there. And so, now, like I just, I don’t really want to cook anymore. Not to mention, I don’t have the time to cook. I don’t want to spend my time cooking. I had to do that before and now I don’t want to, so I’d rather find a place to bring us a fresh-cooked meal.
Twice a week. And there’s no shame in that. I don’t feel shame to do that. Now, I, you know, I don’t have nannies and I don’t have, you know, all the other stuff. Like I don’t have any names or like a home. Some people have like full time, like house people. I don’t have any of that. And it that’s my own choice.
But you know, even then you shouldn’t feel bad, like whatever you choose to do to make your life easier and better, you shouldn’t feel bad about. So I definitely don’t have this guilt of like, I have the guilt. Cause I, you know, I didn’t spend enough time with my kids and whatnot, but not because I’m not, I can’t be a super mom.
I already know. I can’t be a super mom. So the way for me to spend more time with my children or to get more work done, right. The more stuff I can do in my business, the more money I can make. That means I have to order a meal to be delivered to my house. Then that’s what I do. You know, if that means, I make sure to find carpooling for my kids.
So that we’re not spending twice a day, you know, 30 to 40 minutes a day, carpooling kids. That that’s what we do. And that’s what we have we carpool with, with another kid, from, you know, kid parents from school. So it, and if that means that, you know, I make a double batch of spaghetti on Monday. Oh, cheap spaghetti.
And we can have it for a couple of nights. Cause it’s easy-peasy and then the next night I’m like, “Hey guys, have cereal tonight for dinner. Mom’s not cooking.” I don’t feel like a crappy mom. You shouldn’t feel like a crappy mom. Doesn’t have to be all fancy meals. I don’t care what anyone says. They’re not going to die.
Cause they had cereal one night. So really I’m always trying to find ways. Simplify and get better. And so for me, it’s about getting more of those cooked meals, the carpooling, cleaning. So like I still, I cleaned my house. But you know, I love getting someone in to clean the house every once in a while.
And I, you know, I love that actually, we just bought, a depot where they call it a depot, I guess, a little like Roomba, whatever kind of Accu thing on the ground. Actually, I was just on my last, tech lady gave me lashes done. And she says they called their depot, their house cleaner. Cause she’s like, that’s her house cleaner.
That’s what clean. She’s like, it’s so amazing. And I love it. I thought you know what? Instead of us feeling like we have to vacuum all the time, we have five animals in this house. Holy moly. There’s a lot of animal hair everywhere. I can’t help it. This has been such a blessing in disguise and it just kind of runs around the house.
And so it’s simplified my life a bit. Feel the need to have to vacuum all the time. And I feel really good knowing that something’s happening without me actually having to do it. So however you can simplify your life and get help so that you’re a happier mom or a happier wife, or just a happier person in general, do it and don’t feel guilty about it.
So those are my five things guys. So be prepared for change, being more active on social media, processes, and making sure that you have those in place. Really refining your recruiting and onboarding training process for new hires since that’s never going to go away, and then simplifying and getting help. So that you can be the best version of you possible without feeling guilty. So that you can get more done and just be happier.
Those are my five lessons learned. I hope those were helpful. I hope you got some “aha” moments. I hope you know that you’re not alone. And I’m excited to see what happens for me in 2021 and it, you know, if I can continue. With these lessons learned and, and keep improving upon them. So, thanks guys.
Thanks so much guys for listening and I will see you guys in the next episode. Bye.
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