Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Foreign Hi there, I'm Wendy Hill, and welcome back to another episode of Confessions from the Home Office.
[00:00:11] And today is a special edition of the podcast because I'm celebrating my 20th anniversary of being in business. My business was formed February 1, 2005. That was so long ago.
[00:00:26] So today's episode is what I've learned after being in business 9,125 days. But actually it's been 9,126 days because I'm doing this the day after the anniversary. So I can't believe it's been 20 years. But then, of course, there's some days where I have felt every hour, every day, every minute. But I would rather be a business owner than take on all the stress of and just all the things that come on with having a job. So I'm just wired to do my own thing. So today I'm going to share a couple of confessions about working from the home office and owning my own business for the past 20 years. I'm pretty direct about things. I don't think any of these are new things that you've never heard of, but this has just been my experience. These were the top 10 when I was typing all this out and thinking about it the other day. These were the. These are the 10 that. That came to mind right away. So here we go. Number one, not every business needs to scale dramatically. You know, I see all these online courses and I see all these people that work from home and switch over to just doing digital products, and I've dabbled in that. And I think it's really cool.
[00:01:36] I'm not someone who wants to scale to something really big, you know, And I know never say never with things, but I like to keep things lean and I like to keep things operating efficiently. And I feel like the more and more people I have, that's just gonna create stress for. So when I go to sleep at night, I want to sleep really hard and have crazy dreams about something I was watching on tv not being worried about making a payroll. So I already have contractors, but contractors work when there's work to be done, not just like an ongoing payroll. So if we've got a little more work than normal, they're getting paid. If we have less and I may not need them as much, that's not as much of a stressor. So for me, I've never really wanted to scale a lot and have a lot of people on a payroll. Now that my kids are out of the house, maybe that'll be a different thing. Maybe starting year 20 and going forward, I'll change my mind. But right now, I like the way things are.
[00:02:29] So number two, I titled this one. I kept thinking of different ways, how am I going to title this? And I'm just going to say, no more jerks. So one of the most valuable lessons that I've learned is to work with nice people. And nice people don't have to be all, you know, in, you know, like cheerleaders and always happy all the time, but nice, polite, professional people. So over the years, I've had clients that tried to be very intimidating or they were rude to their staff members, or they were rude to a contractor that worked for me or, you know, or to me. And that just doesn't work anymore. So, you know, it used to cause a lot of stress. And then you're always worried, are they going to send another email? Are they going to send another text? Are they going to constantly keep trying to change the agreement because they watched another webinar or they heard another idea?
[00:03:20] No. And that's fine if people want to make changes with things. But I'm just, you know, after this long and knowing how many nice people are out there, I have really, really good clients. I am very, very fortunate.
[00:03:37] I'm much better at vetting people from the, from the beginning. And if something starts not feeling great or I'm seeing some things with them working with their team, just going to wind things down so there's no need to have that stress in our lives.
[00:03:52] So number three is turn off your brain. But not for not too long. When I worked in agencies, I got excited on Thursdays because the next day was Friday. And then I wasn't going to have to do anything for two days. I could just do whatever I wanted.
[00:04:09] Now I take off usually sometime on Friday afternoon. I don't work on Saturdays. And then starting back sometime on Sunday, I start digging back into things a little bit. But it's, you know, the phone's not ringing, the emails are not coming in, or I'm not really checking the emails, but that's when I get ready for my week. I do not want to feel like I've been shot out of a cannon on Monday morning. And still sometimes I do feel like I'm being shot out of a cannon if there's an early meeting or you wake up and a dog sick or something's going on. But I try to go ahead and get a little bit ahead ahead. And I've talked about that on other episodes of try to work ahead. And then you're not always playing catch up and getting ahead and turning my brain back on on Sunday is a good time for me to do some research, do some planning, look for some ideas. When things are kind of quiet. I'm not talking about working five hours on a Sunday. Once in a while I'll have to do that if there's just a lot going on, but just plugging in for like an hour, hour and a half. I am amazed how much I can get done and ready. And then Monday is not stressful and then you can do that a little bit on Monday. Tuesday is not stressful. So it kind of creates this pattern. So I don't really believe in just like shutting down, not doing anything for a long time because in this business, with what I do with marketing consulting, you will get behind so quickly. Other people may be able to do that, but I enjoy what I do. So I kind of like firing up my brain again on, on Sunday and getting ready for the week. So number four is you can't keep doing the same thing. So especially in this business, technology changes and social platform change and then you know, Instagram wouldn't change the size of their post on the grid. There's, there's always something going on and you have to stay up with it. Education is a huge thing and I feel like education is a huge thing no matter what industry you're in, when you're self employed, you know, have a small business, that type of thing. So I'm all about constantly having courses ready to go, to listen to, to watch. If you don't have that in your budget to do that, go to YouTube and if you're like, well, anybody can post anything on YouTube. How do I know if it's right? Check out several sources. I'm amazed how much free education is out on YouTube and that it's really good. And then you know, I'm a, I'm a course hoarder. I buy a lot of courses and have them all the passwords and everything stored. I always have something ready to, to go and to learn.
[00:06:37] But if you can also swing it, go to a conference, join a mastermind. You don't have to be in a huge $50,000 a year mastermind. You could form one with some other people that live in your area or do something online. Just a couple people that want to get together and talk about things. Maybe they know different things about your industry.
[00:06:58] So I feel like you can't just keep doing the same thing. And I know a lot of people say you need to niche down and only do certain things. I, I don't believe that. I feel that if something comes along your way, and it may not be something that's really in area of expertise, but there's other things behind it that are, or it could lead to something really great. You need to figure it out. So just saying this is all I do, this is all I do, this is all I do in this industry can really limit you and, and slow your business way down. I feel like you've always, you always have to be evolving.
[00:07:35] So the next one is number five is talk with your family and your friends about your business. I'm not saying dominate the conversation, I'm not saying lead every phone call, but let your family and friends know what you do and the type of clients you work with and what you're looking for. You'll be amazed the people they run into or if they're having a conversation and something gets brought up, they might remember, hey, I might need to introduce you to this person. So, you know, I don't think you have to share everything. I was pretty open with my kids growing up about revenue, gross profit, trying to teach them how to budget. I don't know if that worked well or not, but I kept a pretty open book about things and talked a lot about, hey, I'm looking to grow, you know, I want to get another smaller client or I want, you know, this is the type of client I'm looking for. And six years ago, my son pitched my services to one of his employers when he was in high school and set up an, and set up an introductory meeting. And he's very shy, but he was, he felt like this was somebody we need to work with. And I'm still working with him six years later. So thank you, Austin for that. So you just never know, diversify. I feel like that. Some consultants say I have four clients and this is my retainer, this is what I do, and that's it. And if that works for them, that's great. I feel like for me, I need several types of clients. I need like the bigger full service client, a medium sized client, and then maybe some smaller clients where I'm just helping them with one or two things, maybe more on the tactical execution size side. I do that because if somebody has to go away or retires or get sick or there's a change at corporate, there's not a panic because there's other things there that's just worked for me. And I feel like that you can spend a lot of time spinning your wheels looking for new business in consulting just because you're busy working a lot too. And so for me, I've learned to diversify. And I would say that if I were telling someone starting out or have been in business for a while to maybe mix things up a little bit, and that way you're not as stressed if there has to be a change.
[00:09:44] Number seven seems something very obvious, but it's something I've noticed over the years is be prepared and be on time. I go to meetings all the time where another partner or consultant shows up and they're late or, oh, this happened, they can't come for another 30 minutes. And I know emergencies happen or they show up and they're like, oh, I left my laptop in the car. Don't do that. So if the conference call is or the Zoom calls at 11, make sure you're on a minute or two before. If the meeting's at 11 and you're presenting, I'd get there at 20 till. So I feel like I probably don't have to really say this to anybody, but it's just something that I realized that being on time or being a couple minutes early really makes a huge difference.
[00:10:27] Keep your emails. And I know that people out there are going to say you're crazy. I'm one of those people. I have over a hundred thousand emails in my Google and my Gmail inbox. And I know a lot of you are twitching and, and you know, gonna break out in hives over here and that, but I can find anything. So if a client comes back to me and Sundays, hey, in 2019, remember we were working on this with this vendor, we've had a problem. I sent you that contract. Do you have it? I've got it. You can keep things filed in folders if you want, if you're one of those zero inbox people. But I'm a girl, I've got it, I've saved it. I've probably remember where exactly kind of where it was, timeline, you know, looking at the dates and everything.
[00:11:14] But keep your emails. Especially in the marketing world, somebody's always needing something they sent to you last year or six months ago or maybe two years ago. Keep it if you want to keep it filed or you want to keep it in one big huge inbox. I have some folders, but not a lot.
[00:11:31] But hang on to that stuff. People will appreciate that you have it and you'll be glad that you have it. You may need it for something else.
[00:11:38] So number nine is if you're ready to quit. I want you to think about why and then think about, do you want to go back to the commute? Do you want to go back to the boss? The possibility of having teammates that may not be aligned with what you do, and are you interested in having your income capped? So if you answered no to any of those, turn off the laptop, go to bed, get a good night's sleep, start over tomorrow. Maybe don't work in your house tomorrow. Maybe go to a coffee shop or go somewhere else and think about, hey, I've got this flexibility and freedom and try to identify what is it that's really bothering you and work on that and get back at it. And so number 10 is something that's also pretty obvious is keep building your network. I've realized this is something. I know a mistake that I've made over the years is if I've been really busy with something else.
[00:12:33] My daughter had to have three hip surgeries. Total fiasco.
[00:12:38] I knew I wasn't out networking enough because I was just doing the work, making sure that clients were handled, growing those and dealing with my daughter's hip issues and all her surgeries. You got to work networking back in there. If you can't get out and network, getting back out on LinkedIn and connecting with people was great, but when you can get back out and network, that's. That's even better. I think face to face is great. But I will say this, don't let networking dominate your time. You know, a couple of months ago, I started this thing where I was going to go visit all these different groups and went to like four different things in a week. For some people, that may seem light. For me, that was a lot. And I felt like I was behind and I was stressed. And three out of the four weren't even really good fits for me. I met great people, but you just have to be careful with that. But always keep building your network and get on the phone and follow up and call people that you haven't talked to in a while. I did a lot of that the past two weeks and learned something new from every person that I talked to. And it was, it was, it was great. So always keep working on that. So those are my top 10 lessons that I've learned from being in business 20 years. And that's it for this episode of Confessions in the Home Office. So you can find this on YouTube, you can find this on all the major podcast platforms like Apple, Audible, Spotify, Pandora, all those things. Like subscribe, Follow, Share, comment if you see this post on social media, share it with somebody. That would be fantastic. And I will be back next week. See ya.
