Welcome back to Plan Like a Boss. This week we are going a little off script. For season two, I had every topic for the entire quarter scripted out on what I was going to talk about. But you know, sometimes things come up, and well, that changes. So I am working my way through a program right now to up my YouTube game. It's something that I've been wanting to do for quite some time. It's a pretty expensive program, and I didn't have the money or I didn't have the time. And now, do I want to invest in it right now? Probably not. Do I have the time to do it right now? Probably not. But I have to make the time because this is an important step that I need to do to take my YouTube channel to the next level. So I'm investing in myself. And I always tell my clients, you know, I am constantly doing some sort of continuing education so you don't have to, so that I can help you along the way. And as I've been working through this program, I came across something really profound. The person running the program said, the best person that you can serve is yourself two years ago. And that really got me thinking, wow, you know, that's so right. And then I had to think, who was I two years ago? Where was I two years ago? I couldn't even begin to tell you. So now I am a planner junkie and I keep all of my previous planners. So I went out and got out my planner from 2024. I probably should have looked at my planner from 2023 as well, but I didn't. Let me tell you, in 2024, I was a mess. I was a complete disaster. I was desperately trying to get my business going. I was overwhelmed. My business had started to really do okay, but it was stuck. I was not gonna hit that next level. And no matter what I did, it didn't seem to work. I needed help. I was trying to do too much, but I was scared to hire someone. I was scared to put that money into hiring help. Um, spoiler alert, I did hire help. We'll get to that in a minute. I was also putting my focus into way too many things. I was trying to focus on building my blog and having a Pinterest strategy to send people to my blog in addition to SEO, pitching to podcast so that I could be seen and so I could get backlinks, developing a brand new YouTube channel from the ground up without really having the knowledge on how to do it. Um, diving into Facebook ads, etc. I was trying to do everything and it just wasn't working. And I was constantly pivoting to try something new. Every time one thing didn't work out, oh, the Facebook ads, they didn't really bring me anything. Okay, I'm gonna try this instead. I'm gonna boost some Instagram posts. Oh, well, that didn't work. Well, I need to pitch more podcasts so I can get out there that way. What I needed to do was sit down and look at what wasn't working. And this actually happened again very recently. I was in a call with my mastermind group, and I decided that I needed a Patreon. I wanted to do a Patreon. That was a great way to monetize my YouTube channel. And luckily, one of my mastermind biz besties stepped in and said, you need to simplify. You don't need to try to do too much. And I just kind of sat with it, and she was absolutely right. And as I did some journaling and reflection on it, it hit me. I was trying to dive into another thing instead of figuring out what I needed to do to make my current thing work. And that was pretty powerful. It's like I had this fear of what I was working on failing. So instead of diving into it and really taking a look at its inner workings and how to fix it, I would just move on to something else. I would start something new and that would be fun. And I have learned so much in the last two years, more than I can even get into in this podcast episode. Because let me tell you, this podcast episode would be probably 12 hours long or more. But we're gonna hit the basic points. The first thing I learned is you have to hire help before you feel ready to. Because here's the thing: you're never going to feel ready. And you know what? That investment was scary. And I did what I do best. I went all in. I hired an assistant and I hired a video editor. That was expensive, that was a lot of money. But all of a sudden, I was buying back 12 hours a week of my time just by hiring her. I hired an assistant and I had her start working on a Pinterest strategy. I quickly learned Pinterest was not the route for me to go. So instead, I moved her into a social media strategy, helping me get some of that content out, helping me answer questions in my DMs. That also bought back so much of my time. And I was slow to hire. I made sure I hired someone who knew what she was doing. I cannot tell you how much that opened up for me. It lifted this huge weight off of me and allowed me to really do what I do best, and that's create. So don't be afraid to spend money because you have to spend money to make money. And by hiring that assistant, I was bringing in many more leads than I would have been able to do on my own. Don't be afraid to hire because you are going to be getting that money back as long as you hire smart. The next thing I learned was that I needed to narrow my focus. I was all over the place, but I was never mastering anything. Now, I still do a lot. I still have a blog, I have a podcast, I have a YouTube channel, I have Instagram, I have TikTok, I have a membership, I do one-on-one coaching, I still have my private music studio, which I love, and I still teach part-time at university. But I have built those slowly over the last few years, one at a time. My blog was already in place in 2023. I just had to keep content going on it. And I've streamlined how I do that using a product called AirTicleer, and I'll link AirTicleer down below. But I needed to not do everything and focus in on doing one thing really well. So, what did I do? I started experimenting with social media and how to get content out there. I took the same SEO strategy I used on my blog and I applied it to social media. Once that visibility started to really multiply and my follower account started to grow and my DMs became engaged, then I moved on to YouTube. And for YouTube, it is still a work in progress. I did get my channel up, running, and monetized within six months, and I qualified for the YouTube partner program within a year. And it's all because I narrowed my focus. Now I want to take it to the next level, so I'm honing all in on YouTube right now and narrowing that focus even more. I ditched Pinterest. I got rid of it completely. And then this year I started the podcast. I added it in, but not until I had systems built out to where I know my blog is going up with this system, my social media this way, YouTube this way. I am a one-woman agency and a well-oiled machine. I was not that two years ago. Two years ago, I thought my head was going to explode. I had too many things happening all at the same time. Now I have systems for those things that make them work for me instead of me working for them. So narrowing my focus was a huge, huge impact. And I also reapproached how I looked at failure. Every failure that I had, and let me tell you, there have been many. And if you are an entrepreneur and you're just starting out, let me tell you there will be many. And I guarantee you I will have many more. But sometimes you have to look at what you have and dig into it and go, what's not working? What can I do to make it work? And if a pivot is needed, you need to be able to pivot. But first, you need to look deep within your systems and see why something is not working. Now, I'm getting ready for a big pivot over the next few months, which is awesome, and I'm super excited about it. But I didn't just dive in and go, this isn't working, I'm gonna pivot. I doubt I dove into what I was dealing with. Um, I'll tell you, it's my membership. I dove into my membership, my SEO membership, and I looked at it and I realized what works well with it and what doesn't work well with it. And it's gonna be pivoting over the next few months. I'm super excited about it. Uh, I haven't announced it publicly yet, except that I guess I'm announcing it publicly right here on the podcast. I am getting rid of the membership itself, and it is gonna be reformulated into something much, much better. And it's gonna serve so many more people, and I'm super excited about it. Keep an eye on my Instagram because I'm gonna be announcing it, and I'm gonna invite everyone to follow me along on my journey as I create this new program. You can kind of get inside my head and see what I'm doing every day to build a program from the bottom up. And the final thing that I really took away from this whole experiment of looking back at me two years ago is sometimes you need to go back to the basics when it comes to marketing. I think with marketing today, there are so many ways that we can market. We have text messaging, we have AI, we have auto phone calls. Um, someone has approached me about coming onto the podcast, and I believe I'm gonna invite him on, so look forward to that. But he has created AI robots that do handwritten snail mail. There's so many different ways to market. It is just, it's insane. But when it comes down to it, good marketing always involves one thing: it involves building a relationship with your clients and customers, which is something I always try to do. It's about making sure that you know what their problems are, because if you're not solving their problems, they're not there to help you. I wish I had someone two years ago that could step in and take scattered me and look at everything I had going and just take it like a puzzle and start putting it together for me. But that's something I had to learn on my own. And it's something I will not make my clients do on their own. We get in there and and do it together. So you need to build trust, you need to build relationships, and you need to have empathy with your customers. You need to understand where they're coming from because if you don't understand their problems, aka you didn't have their problems, then it makes it a lot harder for you to relate to them, to help them improve. When something is not working in your business, trust me, I have been an entrepreneur for over 20 years. I am 48 years old. I'm like your business mom. When I see something that's not working, I can instantly identify it and say, hey, we need to take a look at this. We need to see how we can pivot this to make this work better. But when it comes to marketing your business, it all comes down to the basics, the same basic marketing techniques that have been around since the 1800s, because those are the core of everything. If you don't have that understanding, that trust, that empathy, and that ability to meet people where they are, then you're not going to be successful. Now, this turned into more of a coffee chat, mom talk podcast episode, but that's okay. I think this is important. It's an important conversation to have. So now I want you to tell me, I want you to look back at yourself two years ago. I'm challenging you to do that. Go back to old planners, notes, journals, or just try to think back. Where were you two years ago? And look at the growth that you have achieved in two years. And I want you to think about how much you can grow over the next two years, the next 10 years, the next 20 years. Let me know in the comments what is the thing that you are most proud of overcoming, and what is the thing you want to do better next time. So I hope you've enjoyed our little mom chat. And until next time, keep planning like a boss.