EPISODE 35 OF THE MARKETING SOLUTIONS PODCAST: The one gamechanger for my business in the last 12 months
Sonya McIntyre-Reid:
Hello. Today, I am welcoming back Sarah from Gilbert House. So, Sarah, I call my work wife. We do our little sprint days, so I'm sure you've seen her on my Instagram. Hi, Sarah, how are you?
Sarah:
Hey, mate. How you doing?
Sonya McIntyre-Reid:
Oh, I'm good. I'm so excited to have you on here again, and just an excuse to have a bit of a Zoom catch-up in isolation.
Sarah:
Little bit of an iso chat, and it really boosts my ego for you to be like, "Hey, I want to talk to you about the stuff that we talk about all day." Makes me feel good.
Sonya McIntyre-Reid:
No, it's good. Sometimes, I think when we are doing our little sprint days, we should just have a camera or something recording us, because I actually feel like we have very good conversations that we can never sort of repeat again. We kind of forget what we've actually said. And all our good points.
Sarah:
100%. And it would be a more boring version than Gogglebox. Watching us work would just be the driest thing going around, too. Instead, everybody has to listen to us talk about it.
Sonya McIntyre-Reid:
But, to be fair, we do have great snacks and wine at the end of the day.
Sarah:
Obviously.
Sonya McIntyre-Reid:
And that's actually what we're going to be having a chat about today, and that is our marketing sprint days. So, we, when we first started doing these, tried to come up with a sexy name, and we just failed and gave up, really, didn't work.
Sarah:
Well, I feel like "marketing sprint" sounds really start-up, really profesh. And by giving it a name, as opposed to "Sarah and Sonya sit down," which is just, for two people that work in marketing, that's terrible, but by giving it a name like "marketing sprint," to me, it made me feel more efficient, more professional. I'm like, "Oh, we're sprinting today. Can't do any of that," as opposed to just working on my life admin.
Sonya McIntyre-Reid:
Kind of like when you put jeans on, instead of trackies when you're working from home.
Sarah:
Yeah, mate. This is exactly the same. This is the work pants of [the day].
Sonya McIntyre-Reid:
Excellent. So, we came up with these days, what, like 12 months ago now, I reckon?
Sarah:
Yeah. Yep.
Sonya McIntyre-Reid:
I think it would be 12 months. And Sarah and I were both at pretty similar stages in business. We met at our amazing coworking space, One Roof, which I'm hoping comes out with another iteration soon, because it was just the most incredible community of like-minded business owners working at a fantastic space in Melbourne. So we connected, and I think we'd both had a lot of chats where we both felt like we needed to move [inaudible] in our businesses, but it just wasn't happening. We were getting bogged down with client work. We were being paralyzed by indecision. We would hit a point where it was like, "Oh, I need to bounce ideas around," or "Is this stupid? Or is this not?"
And so, we decided to set aside one day a month, where we would lock ourselves in a room at the office, and have a day working on our business. So, I thought today, we could actually talk through the process of what we did for these marketing sprints, because I've had so many questions from people. And I'm like, "I don't know. We lock each other in a room." Oh, that sounds weird. We lock ourselves... Sorry. We lock ourselves in a room with a whiteboard and all that.
Sarah:
It's super normal, guys. Like it's really normal, it's not as weird as she makes it sound.
Sonya McIntyre-Reid:
Oh, my goodness. So, I guess, let's start with, for you, where were you at before we started doing these sprints? Why did you feel it was important for you? I mean, I've touched on why I felt like I needed it.
Sarah:
For me, I was mostly spinning my wheels, just every day... Obviously, working very hard for my clients and wanting to do good things and impress them, and any spare moment... because, as a small business, any spare moment, obviously, I didn't direct towards myself, I directed towards them in the hope of showing them how good I was doing. But I was just building up this sort of backlog of all this stuff to do with my business, like all the stuff... I had to hire a bookkeeper... All these things that are to do with your business that come to promotion and work funnel and all that [inaudible] stuff, that you just...
It's kind of like the life admin. All the shit bits that you're like, "I'll do it on the weekend." When the weekend rolls around, you're like, "Couldn't think of anything worse than rebranding. Or giving myself a new logo. Or making that calendar process more efficient." All that stuff that you're just like, "I'll do it later," but you never do it later. So, our sprint days turned into those days for me. So, I manage social media and I do a lot of marketing, obviously, for my clients. I started doing it for Gilbert House on our sprint days, because that was the only time that I made time for it.
Sonya McIntyre-Reid:
Exactly. And I think it sort of comes back to that saying of "cleaners have the dirtiest house." I feel like, often, marketers have the worst marketing. You sent me a profile the other day... Someone was running an ad talking about how they had built followings of millions of people on social media, and we went to their Instagram page... They didn't even have a single post, and they had 17 followers. Like...
Sarah:
I thought that was epic. The fact that they got... Not got away with it, it's showing success, but... We've produced ourselves in this marketing space to be like, settle your own stuff first, before you go out and tell everyone how good you are, because the first proof point is that everyone will go back to your page. And you go there, I'm like, "Ooh, I wonder who these guys are. Are they near me? What do they do? Why are they different?" You go to their pages, there's nothing there!
Sonya McIntyre-Reid:
Exactly.
Sarah:
There's a profile picture and a bio. I was like, "Cheeky." I liked it. They're either a new business testing the water, which could be a cheap, smart way to do it, or they're... I don't know. I can't explain that. I don't know what's happening then.
Sonya McIntyre-Reid:
Yeah. Yeah, and I think as well, these days for us, it's not just about working on marketing. It could be systems and processes, which means that when we are doing marketing, we can take on more clients as a result of that marketing, and we can scale. So, I think a lot of the time, that we just keep moving on without doing these things. We need to have another sprint day, because I need to get my accounting software sorted. And I have been putting it off for weeks, so...
Sarah:
If I'm...
Sonya McIntyre-Reid:
Let's lock one in.
Sarah:
It's the terrifying... And I hate bookkeeping, I hate all that sort of stuff. It's really not my scene. The ATO scares the bejesus out of me. And, if they're listening, I'm really scared of you guys, so... I'm trying to do everything correct, I overestimate everything, so come at me. But it's all the sort of stuff that you put to the side. You're like, "Ugh, it's too boring. I'll get it later." And you don't, because some of it is too boring. Or you do it every day for your clients, and when it comes to you, you're either like, "Ugh, got to do another one," or you have no idea how to manage yourself to run your own part of your business. I don't know if that makes sense.
Sonya McIntyre-Reid:
I'm going to add a fourth point to that as well, it could be that you haven't set aside that deep work time to actually put the brainpower behind it, either.
Sarah:
100%.
Sonya McIntyre-Reid:
But if I find that I'm like, "Oh, it'll only take me 10 minutes," and, yes, it might, but sometimes you need that brainpower of going, "Okay. I have this chunk of time. This is the one thing I'm focusing on, and I'm going to do it and there is nothing else happening today. This is it." And, literally, I have sat down in these sprint days, and things that I thought would take me all day have taken half an hour. I'd smash them out. And it's been that moment of, "Oh, my God. Why have I been staring at this on my to-do list for four months?"
Sarah:
And the anxiety that builds around it, like you put it off, you're like, "That's going to take forever." And you push it out, and you push it out, and you push it out, and it weighs on your mind. And you wake up in the night thinking about it, all that sort of stuff. It's always on every list you write at the start of the week.
And then, you're right. You sit down to do it and it took you, with all your focus on it, 30 minutes. And you're like, "Oh! Oh, I'd set aside half a day for that, so I guess I'm done." Go get yourself a gingerbread from the corner.
Sonya McIntyre-Reid:
Time to drink some wine. So, I think the point of this as well, though, is that we have structured these days, without even realizing it, to actually be really enjoyable to do these shit tasks that we've been putting off. So, let's walk through how we've actually been doing them. Obviously, at the moment, at the time of this recording, we're in isolation. So, it hasn't happened recently, but before the world was taken over by COVID-19, this is what we were doing.
So, we'd lock in, say a month in advance, a day, usually mid-week. Never a Monday. Sometimes a Friday. I don't know about Sarah, but Monday's like my fire-fighting days. There's always stuff going on. I'm so busy, clients all want everything on a Monday. So I just do not, like that's out of the question for me. So, Wednesday to Friday would be an ideal day.
We would book out a room at our coworking space, had massive big table in middle, it had whiteboards all over the side. And we would sit down, and the first half an hour, I think, we would allow to go through client emails, change our voicemail if we needed to, add an email auto-responder. And actually map out a checklist of what we were going to have achieved by the end of the day. And I think this is really important, because this is a public declaration. This is what I am doing today. And we have to hold each other accountable on that, as well.
And another thing that we did that I think was so smart, on our behalf, is that we would also pre-order lunch. So we would set our lunchtime, it was usually an UberEATS delivery from misschu. And at that time, UberEATS had introduced...
Sarah:
True, shout out to misschu, we love you!
Sonya McIntyre-Reid:Yes.
Yum! At that point in time, UberEATS had actually just introduced an option to pre-order ahead. So you could set your delivery time. So we knew when we were having lunch. From there, this is like our initial setting up of the day, we would go and get coffee, because absolutely essential. So we'd mapped out the day, we'd taken care of clients, put on the auto-responder, just to sort of set some boundaries. And then, it was time for coffee.
From there, we would then break it up into what... We'd have maybe two hours of deep work, in between getting that first coffee and our lunch. And I don't know about you, but what I would achieve during those two hours was mind-blowing. I think I was fresh in the morning, I was ready and raring to go. Having someone else there that was also working your little butt off held me accountable. So for me, that was sort of my prime time. What about you? Are you more of a morning person?
Sarah:
That was your prime time. You were a weapon, like you would just like... And we would write them up on the whiteboard and we'd be held accountable. We sort of set it to like three things. Sometimes, we were ambitious and set five things for the day, but usually, just the three. And watching you cross stuff off really ignited the [inaudible] moment in me, and I was just like, "Ooh! Ooh! Competition! She's crossing shit off, I need to cross shit off."
So I'd watch you firing away on the keypad, and I was just like, "I'm going to do the same thing." So I turned into this mini-weapon, because being accountable to myself's not always the best. And so, you're very inspiring, Sonya. Just even being in your vicinity, I was like, "I'm going to do a lot. I'm getting a lot done."
Sonya McIntyre-Reid:
Do you know what? I think we were both in the zone. And I'm a very competitive person, so I was like, "Right, I'm doing this. I'm getting this done."
Sarah:
Also, the confidence to dominate you, being like, "Ha-ha! Three strikes out from me." I'm like, "I've done so much," and you're like, "I'm still stuck on one." And, well, I was like, "All right. Let's talk it through. Let's talk it through."
Sonya McIntyre-Reid:
Exactly, right? And I think that that was something that was really important as well, that both of us were sitting there, being like, "All right, I've hit a dead end here. I don't know how to approach this. Should it be like this? Is this a stupid idea? Am I wasting my time on this, or should I keep going?" I think that was really, really, really helpful for me. And I know [crosstalk]...
Sarah:
As some...
Sonya McIntyre-Reid:
And I think...
Sarah:
Well, yeah. As sole traders, I find that very helpful. I think we helped craft each other's emails at one point. You're like, "I'm thinking of saying this," or I was like, "Is this too aggressive? Or am I being assertive enough?" The balancing. The juggling act a woman plays, being too aggressive or too passive. But, you were able to be like, "Oh, I think just point out the key facts here, here, and here." So we crafted each other's emails for so many of those things on stuff we felt a little bit... What do you say? Eat the frog. The whole... I don't want to do it, but just bite it and just do it. Go ahead and do it. And we were there to support and shape each other's stuff, because we understood, one, the content, because we're both in marketing. But, two, we understood enough about sort of the place we were at with each of the clients that we could support accordingly. It was invaluable. It was great.
Sonya McIntyre-Reid:
Absolutely. So we would have lunch. And then we'd do probably another hour and a half. And then, usually this was time for like a little hot chocolate, maybe another coffee, and gingerbread. So the little...
Sarah:
Gingerbread.
Sonya McIntyre-Reid:
...health foods store around the corner sold not very healthy, freshly made, gingerbread men. And they were amazing. Exactly what we needed.
Sarah:
They were!
Sonya McIntyre-Reid:
That little sugar pick-me-up in about 3:00 in the afternoon.
Sarah:
In spite of the fact that they were gluten-free, dairy-free, fun-free, they were actually quite good. Good spice mix in those.
Sonya McIntyre-Reid:
Oh, were they? Gluten-free?
Sarah:
Yeah! Didn't you ever wonder why they were so soggy? Like they were a bit wet and damp?
Sonya McIntyre-Reid:Oh, I would say chewy. But, hey, each to their own.
Sarah:
Chewy! They were the soggiest...
Sonya McIntyre-Reid:
They were delicious.
Sonya McIntyre-Reid:
Not really painting a good picture, but they were amazing. And then we would come back and we'd probably... I'd say, we'd probably have another [inaudible] after that, so... Definitely, full steam ahead in the morning. All in all, I'd probably say we had a solid four hours of actual work time during these sprints, which honestly, I think, if you are going full steam ahead, you're using that brainpower, it's that deep focus, that's all you can manage in a day. Let's be realistic. I'm talking, we're not doing any sort of adminy tasks here, we're not being interrupted by phone calls and emails and things like that. This is total focus. Let's say around four hours, do you reckon?
Sarah:
Yeah. I would. But, yeah. Yep. The deep focus. Other work got done or we set our mindframes up to do other stuff, but of the deep work, yeah.
Sonya McIntyre-Reid:Yeah. For sure. And then, I reckon we'd probably hit about 4:30, between 4:30, 5:00, and it was wine time. So, we would have a little mini-happy hour afterwards, where we might have another little snacky-snack, or we might go around the corner to, I don't know, a wine shop, and grab a bottle of wine. Or we might go and grab a cocktail or a drink somewhere afterwards. The luxury of being in Melbourne and being able to just walk anywhere and do that, before corona. And that was kind of like our debrief at the end of the day. At this point, our brains were pretty fried, but I'd say we were pretty fired up.
Ooh! Wait. Prior to this though, we did sit down at the end, sometimes over a glass of wine, and actually go through what we'd achieved the day. Mark out what we were going to get done before the next sprint. And then set our date for the next sprint, as well. So... You go.
Sarah:
That's all right. It was... What did you just say? That it was good setting up the dates. Oh. Setting up the dates and having a task list of accountability, because you'd follow me up days later, or at the start of the next week, being like, "Did you do that thing? I saw your first post, well done." You'd posted on your own page, good. That sort of momentum kept me going for the next couple of weeks until we booked the subsequent one in. It was just... The accountability continued. It was great.
Sonya McIntyre-Reid:Yeah. Yeah, I think, obviously, we need to start doing these again. So... For me. That wasn't... Honestly, I definitely need to.
Sarah:
[inaudible] It was to me.
Sonya McIntyre-Reid:
It wasn't, it wasn't.
Sarah:
I have not posted on my page in many months.
Sonya McIntyre-Reid:
Oh, dear. So, what has our sprint days allowed you to achieve? What can you attribute to our sprint days?
Sarah:
Well, I ended up setting up about a month worth of content, like I created a whole bunch of content. I was getting very creative. And I scheduled it all in, I downloaded an annual calendar app. And I was able to get on top of hiring a bookkeeper and finding out the system flows, and I set up all the structures of my folders on my things, so all my client folders. It still relates to all the stuff I do for my clients, but it wasn't client work. So, setting up structures in folders, I reckon saves me minutes every day. And when you're working nine hours a day, minutes count. It was so legit. So, setting up basic structures that I'm sure many businesses have, but me as a sole trader, I was like, "Well, this is how I'm doing it," but I set it up for real.
Sonya McIntyre-Reid:
Amazing. And again, that goes back to those systems that are then going to allow you to scale as well, which I think is really important. So, for myself, I was just trying to have a little brainstorm last night around what I actually achieved, and I was like, "Oh, wow. Got through a lot." So I redid my website. I got a photo shoot done. So, on one of our sprint days, we actually did a trade of services, which I completely forgot about. So, Sarah did an incredible photo shoot and made me look amazing. Go check out my website for the photos. Nearly every single image on there was taken by Sarah. And then I went through some website troubleshooting and Facebook advertising for an e-commerce client of hers. I set up some new freebies, as well.
Mapped out my membership site and this is something... This has been my big thing that I've been talking about for 18 months to two years. And I just never took any action on it. I still haven't finished it, but at least now I've started it. And it was kind of like this gigantum, that's not a word, task that I was like, "Where is my business going? What's the bigger picture? What is the point of all these workshops I'm doing?" Oh, I got my podcast off the ground as well.
Sarah:
That's right!
Sonya McIntyre-Reid:
Oh, my God.
Sarah:
That's where this came from! That's right!
Sonya McIntyre-Reid:
I started doing my own social media again. And I set up a new email marketing tool, so ActiveCampaign, as well. So, yeah. Lots and lots that we got through. Question. Okay, so obviously both of us are so dedicated to our clients. How did you find cutting off clients for the day? What did you sort of put in place to set those boundaries?
Sarah:
Yeah. I think the first sprint we did, I was really nervous about it. I was like, "They're absolutely going to know that I am absent. They're not going to know where I am, and they'll want something." I think we did our sprint on a Friday or something, I was like, "Ugh, something will go wrong and I'm going to have to work on the weekend." Literally, no one noticed. No one cared. No one emailed me. There was no frantic or weird calls or anything like that, so I really blew that up in my head and it was actually fine.
But then, after that, after I got a bit of confidence from that, I started making these, I thought, were really funny out-of-office replies. So for anyone that emailed me, they got a GIF or a meme or an emoji being like, "Hey, I'm improving myself today. Out-of-office. See you Monday." And the more sprints we did, the sassier I became with those. And some of my clients came back to me, they were like, "That was really funny." I was like, "It was funny." That's just me thinking I'm...
Sonya McIntyre-Reid:
Oh, my God. You had a riddle in one, didn't you?
Sarah:
I had a which one?
Sonya McIntyre-Reid:
You had a riddle.
Sarah:
Oh, I did have a riddle in one of them! What was it?
Sonya McIntyre-Reid:
I don't know, but the answer was a map.
Sarah:
I'll find that. I'll try and find that riddle. I'll tell you what it was, it was like... Yeah.
Sonya McIntyre-Reid:
Oh, my gosh. If you could find any of those responders that you did, that'll be so funny, I'll post some on social media. But it was gold. I am not as funny and sassy as Sarah, so I did not do that. I think I actually had mine set as "I'm at a conference," because I could not let go of that anxiety. So I think you did better than I did.
Sarah:
You were uber professional. You were uber professional.
Sonya McIntyre-Reid:
I was not uber professional. I did forward my phone, though. I had got a virtual receptionist messaging service called Alltel, so if you called through, rather than getting my voicemail, you'd get someone that answers a phone that pretends they're Kiss Marketing's receptionist. Actually, I think that causes more problems than just having a voicemail, because people are so confused and like, "Who's this? Darren? Who's Darren?"
Sarah:
I called you once and some lady answered. She's like, "Hello, you've called Kiss Marketing. This is Jess." I was like, "I'm just calling for Sonya? I was here to call her about something I saw on TikTok?" "Can I take a message for you?" I was so embarrassed, I was like, "No thanks! I'm fine! I'll call her later!" I was so embarrassed I called to talk smack with you about TikTok. And a receptionist answered because you're so professional and I should have been working during business hours, but I called you about TikTok.
Sonya McIntyre-Reid:
Oh, my goodness. That is so funny. Anyway, I've stopped using that answering service, because I feel like it just throws people off. It confuses them. Oh, my dad calls, and he goes, "Just put Sonya on." "Oh, I'm sorry, sir. She's not available right now."
Sarah:
They don't know it's Papa Reid and they're like, "Wow. You had a very aggressive man call."
Sonya McIntyre-Reid:
Ah, yes. That would be my father.
Sarah:
My father insisting he talks to me.
Sonya McIntyre-Reid:
How funny. All right. I might sit down and just do up a little process. I know we've sort of rambled on, gone here and there and everywhere. Hope this gives people a bit of an idea on how to do their own marketing sprint day. I think key takeaways are, set your lunch time and make it fun. So, good food, wine at the end of the day, and set some really achievable goals for the day as well. Do you have any other tips you want to add to that list?
Sarah:
Small steps, don't overcook it. Don't put too much pressure on yourself. Set yourself one task to do that day and do it, you'll feel great. And then the next time you do it, increase.
Sonya McIntyre-Reid:
Amazing. All right. Thank you, work wifey, for coming on. I will link to your social media profiles, if someone wants to go and have a stalk of you, so please...
Sarah:
I better post something.
Sonya McIntyre-Reid:
...posting on social media.
Sarah:
I haven't found any friends, Sonya! Don't send them anywhere!
Sonya McIntyre-Reid:
Oh, my God. Thanks for coming on, Sarah.