EPISODE 75 OF THE MARKETING SOLUTIONS PODCAST: A NEW SEASON IN BUSINESS

Sonya:
Hey, everyone. I am back after being MIA for around five weeks. Truth is that things have been moving crazy fast in the past few months, and I even managed to take a holiday, my first ever without my laptop since starting my business. This was a massive achievement for me and a bit of a pinch me moment because when I got back, everything was humming along even better than when I left. There've been a lot of other things happening behind the scenes in my biz too, so I thought it would be nice to do a mini episode on all the updates, and of course, the lessons and mistakes I've made along the way.

Sonya:
Welcome to The Boom Your Biz podcast, a podcast, the movers, the shakers, and even bigger action takers in business. I'm your host, Sonya McIntyre Reid, and each week I'll be exploring the question of what really makes businesses and organizations thrive. I'm on a mission to educate, empower, and inspire business owners and myself along the way. What a rollercoaster of a ride the past few months have been, but hey, isn't that what business and life is about? It's always a bit of a roller coaster. The biggest news at Linchpin, our agency, is that, drum roll please, I now have a business partner. It is honestly not something I ever thought I'd do. Growing up I wasn't really a team sport kind of gal and it's been the same in business, but I've got some huge goals and I realized I wasn't able to do this without help.

Sonya:
So my business partner, he's an absolute gun when it comes to marketing strategy, particularly in the paid media space. Think Facebook and Google ads for both service and e-commerce businesses. He has years of experience at incredible agencies and has built a beautiful rapport with our existing clients and team already. Since him coming on board, our business has doubled practically overnight because it has allowed me to step away from the tools and client account management and focus on growing the business.

Sonya:
Previously, I had a bit of a block and almost a sense of anxiety whenever a new opportunity rose because I wanted to take it but I was worried we wouldn't have the manpower or female power for delivery, or mainly that I didn't have the bandwidth to manage the relationship and energy for another client. I'm an introvert, and if I have to answer the phone calls and emails all day, I'm totally drained. I was also finding that my patience was wearing thin. I think this was the combination of feeling like I was never really able to switch off and I guess the burden of the business and key relationships being totally on me. Now it doesn't all rest on my shoulders, it is a totally joint effort, which is a bizarre feeling.

Sonya:
And along with that has come some not so pleasant legal issues. Behind the scenes for months now we've been waiting with bated breath the next letter to arrive, going back and forth with lawyers almost weekly. I won't say too much more about it because it's not fully resolved yet, but hopefully in a few weeks time, it will all be over. This really did rock my confidence a bit though and I completely stopped posting on social media or adding podcast episodes or even posting on Kiss and our agency accounts as well. But now it is full steam ahead. We're shaking it off and all guns are now blazing. Is that what the saying is? I'm not sure. Anyway, for my business partner and I, this has been a totally new scenario, and so we've been equipping ourselves with as much information as possible to really accelerate things with our business.

Sonya:
A book that we've both been reading that has really helped in this transition is called Rocket Fuel by Gino Wickman and Mark Peyton. It talks about the concept of having a visionary and an integrator. A visionary is defined as the person who had the original great idea, conceived the company, continues to look to expand the business, and pushes ideas forward. He or she tends to be the founding entrepreneur, is a great leader with lots of big ideas, is a relationship and sales person, and is a creative problem solver. Unfortunately, he or she can also create chaos, has limited patience for details, gets distracted by shiny stuff, and wants to implement every single one of her ideas immediately. Well, if that doesn't sum me up in a nutshell, I'm not sure what does.

Sonya:
An integrator on the other hand is the person who thrives on putting systems and processes in place to bring order to the chaos. He is a great task master and manager, is good at holding people accountable, creating consistency, and integrating the leadership team. Enter my new business partner. Essentially he comes along and dots all the I's and crosses all the T's and is incredible at it. For me, it has been really tricky stepping back and not micromanaging the day-to-day of the business as much.

Sonya:
Prior to me having a week off, I was a follower on all of my team's ClickUp tasks. That's the project management tool we use, and that means that every time that something was completed or overdue or a comment was added to a task, I was immediately notified. And so I was across every action being taken in the business, often that would mean I would jump in on things halfway through, ultimately being the bottleneck, and leaving my team feeling like they didn't have ownership of things. I really felt like I couldn't help it. Letting go of control was hard because I've spent the last nearly five years building this business, and as cliche as it sounds, it's my baby. Plus I'm the face of the business, and at the end of the day, it is my reputation and my name on the line as well.

Sonya:
But can you guess what happened with me having a week away and not doing that micromanaging? The team took total ownership and the quality of work produced and their ability to move projects forward solidified relationships with clients and really wow, completely blowing me away. Never have I ever attempted to have time off and come back to next to nothing to catch up on. Usually, I'd be totally snowed under for weeks following a break. Honestly, I could have cried and actually, I did have a bit of a cry with how proud I was. But it also left me feeling like oh crap, they do so great without me. What is my role here now? And it's simple. I need to focus on growth, marketing, and finances. For years, I've been wanting to create courses, hold more workshops, work on our podcast, and more, but it always gets pushed to the side so I can focus on the existing client work. I no longer need to do that.

Sonya:
So for me, it's a total mindset set shift from focusing on where we are now to where we want to be in six months time and what needs to be put in place to make that happen. I'm also spending a lot of time looking at our systems and processes and seeing what the team need in order for things to run smoothly as we do scale. Because as anyone will tell you, as you scale those tiny problems just become a heck of a lot bigger.

Sonya:
In the last few months, our team has also expanded. We have some new graphic designers being tried by Paula, who has been with me since almost day one. We have a junior web developer assisting us on minor updates and landing page builds. And we have a new Google ads scan and a couple of Facebook ads scans. This week we also have a new team member starting to support our incredible Elizabeth who looks after our projects, copywriting, and social media management. Her workload for the past few months has been hectic and we need to support her to ensure that our company is a burnout phrase zone. Because if you took a look at us 12 months ago, you would see burnout happening everywhere. And while these people far from being with us full time currently, as in these new team members coming on board, it gives us a chance to train them in our processes and increase their hours as our contracts and clients increase.

Sonya:
In the past I've always been in a position where I've had to learn the work and then scramble to fulfill it. And honestly, this is just the reality of small business. Particularly, when you go from being a freelancer to switching to an agency model. We've had some great opportunities lately that have really helped with cashflow putting us further ahead than I expected to be. So when I took on my business partner, I actually guaranteed his salary for 12 months to get us up and running, and that meant I anticipated it would be months before I would actually be able to draw a consistent salary myself.

Sonya:
But as of the 1st of July, for the first time since starting my business, I'm actually an employee of the business enduring a weekly salary. And I'm paying myself super, and I feel like that is honestly a huge achievement. I think people look at us and other businesses on Instagram and say the contracts and clients they're landing and think it's all super smooth sailing financially, but for the majority of small businesses, this is not the case. So for me to be able to sit here and celebrate paying myself weekly, I'm beyond excited. You really do have to celebrate those small little milestones, whether or not it is hitting your first $10k month, or having to register for GST, or changing your business structure from a sole trader to being a company. They're all big steps along the way.

Sonya:
So what's next for us over the next few months? Well, we're focusing heavily on refining our systems and processes to really set us up for scale mode. We've narrowed down a handful of industries we want to focus on and then these are the ones we've been really crushing it for. So they include the beauty industry, professional services, e-commerce, and the construction and trades industry. We've also been doing some fantastic work for hospitality when it comes to organic social media, but these poor guys have just been robbed so much by COVID around the last 18 months, which is why we are not going to niche at this point in time because we need to make sure we're diversified.

Sonya:
So if there are COVID restrictions or some sort of change that affects one industry greatly, I know it affects everyone at the moment, but for hospitality for example, our customers have to stop trading. That's why we're sort of spreading ... We're spreading the love around right now and we're doing it in a way that we have a handful of clients in each niche, which isn't ensuring that we really are delivering them the best results as well.

Sonya::
And I think the fact that we've got to the point where we can be choosy about who we work with is also a huge achievement. When I first started, and actually up until it's done this year, I really felt like I had to take on anyone that wanted to work with us. Queue me ignoring a ton of red flags. Now I still make mistakes and take on businesses my gut tells me not to, but I have a clause in my contracts now that state we can cease the contract after three months. Now this not only works for the client, but it also works for us. So we're just not vibing, no harm, no foul. And actually, I'm going to do an episode soon on how to fire a client without burning bridges. It is a lesson that took me years to learn it, but my gosh, it feels good. Life is too short to work with people you don't like and if they're giving you serious anxiety every time you see their name pop up on your phone, it is time to let them go.

Sonya:
A huge priority for us is also getting our new website live. Because we have so many clients sites being developed at the moment, as is always being put on the back burner, but given the growth I want us to have over the next six months, our marketing needs to become a priority. This will go hand in hand with developing some really strong case studies for our chosen industries I mentioned earlier, and using them as part of a digital advertising campaign. Once this is set up and running, I'll do an episode on how it all works in case you want to implement something similar for your professional service-based business. It's a great strategy for that industry or also the B2B market as well.

Sonya:
And if you're listening to this podcast and would like to be a guest on the show, please let me know. Contact hello@KissMarketing.com.au. Send information about who you are and what you would like to talk to me about on the podcast. If you're a business interested in getting to know more about how our agency Linchpin Digital can help you, reach out to the team at hello@LinchpinDigital.com.au and they'll organize a time for us to chat to see if you'd be a good fit for us. And finally, have you joined the Boom Your Biz Facebook group yet? I share extra tips and interviews within the group and it gives you an opportunity to ask any questions you may have about marketing and business. I've put the link in the show notes, but you can also just type in Boom Your Biz in the group section on Facebook and it will pop up. Thanks so much for listening, guys. Until next time.