Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: I'm Bridget Lyons and I worked with Alex. So the way he knows me is I was running.
I called it a PR agency, but it was more PR consulting. And I really wanted to create a productized agency around the podcast booking services that I had sort of stumbled onto and been one of the pioneers in the space. And so I wanted to systematize the approach and build a team and create a company that I could maybe potentially exit someday. But definitely at the time wanted a company where I could travel full time. Time.
And gosh, that was five years ago. So since that time built up, the company weirdly closed it, then sold it, which is so backwards.
I know. And then now I'm not traveling full time anymore. I am housebound. I'm doing, like, what I would call management coaching and consulting for small agency founders who have suddenly found themselves leading teams and not knowing what to do, because that's my journey. So I'm sure we'll talk about that a lot.
[00:01:07] Speaker B: I love it.
[00:01:08] Speaker A: Yeah, that's it.
[00:01:10] Speaker B: I think you're shortchanging yourself in one regard, which is you're also writing some interesting stuff on Substack.
The last article that you wrote was so good that I pledged. I made a pledge, I subscribed, which I can't.
[00:01:25] Speaker A: I don't have pledges turned on because it's too much pressure.
But I thought it was so fun.
[00:01:32] Speaker B: And you like when you. When I make a pledge, I always stack it up next to the equivalent dollar amount in another form of entertainment. And so, like, the equivalent dollar amount might be like Netflix, like half a Netflix subscription or something else. And I was like, this is so good.
How frequently are you writing at the moment?
[00:01:52] Speaker A: It comes in burst. So I'll write like a couple of bigger, meatier pieces in a month and then maybe take a month off and then write a couple of pieces. So I'm not pushing myself to do a weekly schedule because I am doing more. I think of these, like, long form, almost like essays than blog posts. They take a little more time to write and think through and research.
[00:02:16] Speaker B: I think that having the schedule can also just hamper creativity a little bit. Like when you're on deadline and you've got to get something out, that pressure sometimes doesn't allow for the ideas to just surface themselves.
[00:02:30] Speaker A: Yeah. And I have found that one of my, like, life lessons about work is that I have to trust my own process. That, like, no, you're not, in fact, lazy and your procrastination usually has a purpose. And so when I'm Writing.
There's a lot of, like, going back and tweaking and rewriting that I engage in, especially with a bigger piece. And it's just how I'm surfacing the holes in my own arguments as I'm going. And if I try to rush that process, then I put things out that are half baked. So I feel like, you know, I'm not writing, like, five ways to kind of pieces of content, and it just takes a little bit more time to let that simmer.
[00:03:09] Speaker B: If you publish something that you're not comfortable with, will you post it and then pull it back? Do you do that?
[00:03:16] Speaker A: I think if I've ever done that.
No.
I have edited things sometimes that are. Live a little bit.
Think I've ever taken something down?
[00:03:37] Speaker B: I do it about once a week. It's a habit I've gotten into because I'm like, all right, I'm really going to push the envelope with this one. And then I, like, publish it late at night, and I wake up the next morning, I'm like, oh, I don't know about that one.
[00:03:51] Speaker A: Wait, where are you posting these things that you can't. I don't even think I know.
[00:03:56] Speaker B: So I've. I've been on LinkedIn a bit, and LinkedIn, my goodness. Like, I. It's. I don't know, it's like, to me, it's like, obviously, like, quite noisy. There's a lot of folks following, like, particular formulas, and I feel like I got a bit distracted. So I've, like, looked at one. Like, I've. I've seen some posts that I've created that have, like, done really well in terms of impressions. And then I'm like, oh, it's so, like, dopamine enriching to get some impressions. I'm going to chase that. But that stuff is usually pretty vapid, and it's like, someone else's idea, and I'm just, like, quoting Brian Chesky or something. And it's a bit of a slippery slope. So.
[00:04:36] Speaker A: I struggle because social media and just, like, the blogging feedback loop is really bad for my mental health.
And I. Before I started my first business, I was, like, blogging on the side while working at a PR agency. And that's how I formed all the relationships and, like, the contacts to launch a business.
And so. And that was like, you know, the days when Twitter was young and you made your, like. I have, like, best friends that I met on Twitter. You know, like, I'm so old. Oh, my God, I feel so old saying that now.
Um, and you would, like, guest blog on other people's sites and sometimes they'd even pay you for it. You know.
[00:05:16] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:05:17] Speaker A: And so I came up that way. And what I found, it wasn't even the dopamine hits. It was walking around my day narrating my life as though it was going to be a piece of content as I was living it.
Do you ever do that?
[00:05:33] Speaker B: I'm going to start doing it. And in Morgan Freeman voice as well.
[00:05:39] Speaker A: And I just found that, like, I couldn't live my life and turn it into lessons in a healthy way. And when I went out on the trailer, so many people were like, why don't you do YouTube? Why don't you blog about this? We want to follow around. And I was like, so in case this actually goes up, people listening. I lived two and a half years and a fiberglass trailer. So it was like, I like to call it van life with a bonus truck, mostly off grid.
We had solar panels, you know, taking showers outside sometimes, that sort of thing.
And I was running my agency while doing this, and people were like, you need to put this on YouTube. Not realizing, of course, how much work something like that is. That is itself. I couldn't run an agency and have a YouTube, traveling, running an agency. But the other part is like, I just wanted to live my life. I was hiking and like, oh, my God, I spent so much time in a hammock. And I just didn't want to have that, like, narration.
Although maybe for Morgan Freeman, I would have enjoyed that of what I was doing while I was doing it.
[00:06:45] Speaker B: Okay, so let's jump into that. So I remember, I think maybe 2018, 2019, ish, we connected and you had this goal of living, like, everyone comes to me with very different goals and I'm always, like, fascinated what people's goals are.
And yours was along the lines of, I want to live in a van, I want to travel in national parks.
So talk to me about, like, that goal and then how the business was intended to support that because you have a bit of a, like an agency background and you've been hands in a lot of stuff. So, yeah, let's take it from there, I think.
[00:07:23] Speaker A: Yeah. I got into the location independent, like, movement really early again, so old. I was at the first, if you know what this is, World domination Summit, the very first year it was put on. Actually, the first five years I was really into that community and really wanted to have this, like, location independent, you know, laptop, laptop lifestyle, as they say.
And I was Working agency. I was married, my husband was working like a banking job, you know, a corporate job.
And we made this deal because I really hated working in an agency. I really hated my job.
And I said, I'm going to pursue starting my own business and you're going to do your banking thing as long as you like it. And then I'll have a business that can support us traveling full time when you're kind of ready to take a break from that.
And that was our deal.
We made that deal around 25 years old.
And it took a decade for him, more than a decade, a decade for him to be like, you know what, I'm burnt out, I need a break.
And at that point I had been working freelancing for quite a long time. I had left the agency life behind a long time and had been building up an income. And so when we worked together, I was really in this pivotal transition point where I was like, this is real, this is happening.
But too much of what I'm doing really relies on me being on calls. Like I was doing these 90 minute discovery calls at the beginning of every project which if anybody runs like a creative marketing, pr, ad, whatever agency, it's kind of common, right? You're in these deep calls, getting people's thought leadership out of them so you can transfer it into the work.
And I was like, if I'm going to be doing this off grid thing, I can't be available like that. I'm going to have times where for six hours on a Tuesday, I'm going to be driving across Nevada with absolutely no access to cell service or I'm going to be camped out in public land. So it's called in the US Bureau of Land Management, blm. So the other thing that means, and it's public land, there's a lot of it outlet West. Often there's cell towers, sometimes you can even see, so you can have some cell reception to get Internet with, but it's not always really reliable and your uploads are really bad, so your video is bad. And so I was like, I can't be me. And I didn't know how to make that piece of it happen. Like, I'd hired people before, they'd worked with clients before, but I was always involved in what I thought was this really critical upfront part of the strategic, you know, setting the direction for the clients, getting to know their work and then sort of handing it off once the plan was done. And I had to figure out how to get myself out of the process. So That I could do my, you know, get my part of the bargain that we've been building for, for 10 years.
[00:10:27] Speaker B: Interesting constraints, like connectivity as a constraint, video quality as a constraint.
Like, if that like, really forces you to think through what the model is. So what had to change for you to be able to go from being in the mix, being in the weeds, getting on these calls, being the, like, doing the song and dance up front, all the stuff that you needed to do to like, create the value that you're creating. What had to change?
[00:10:58] Speaker A: I remember we did this exercise, Alex, like so early on and you were talking.
The question you asked me was like, what breaks when you have 20 clients or 50 clients or a hundred clients?
I was like, the entire model, everything breaks. What are you talking about? I just. That was devastating question for me. And that was really what it was. Because the thing that broke was like, me, you know, like, I had been working with like three or four clients at a time with these deep dive projects before I was doing like people's book launches, maybe doing some PR around that, or like these projects. And so I could deep dive with them, get to know them really, really well, construct the plan. And then I would have an assistant who was, you know, I trained up and doing the pitching and I would hand that off. But I had a lot of oversight of them too. And I was doing all the client calls, so I couldn't do any client calls. That was one of the constraints I made. I basically said, you are like the salesperson.
Because I'm quite good at sales calls. And I just think when you're starting your business, it's hard.
I don't think offloading sales is a good idea at the start. So I was going to hold on to the sales calls, I was going to hold on to the marketing and like, because I've been doing that.
And then I was going to do team building. I was not going to do any client relationship management or project management at all. The only thing I would be doing is training and enabling the team to do that and then like reviewing their plans. But we did a lot of async kind of work that way. So, like, everything about how I engaged with the clients once they signed had had to be rethought.
[00:12:41] Speaker B: Do you remember the first thing that you let go?
[00:12:51] Speaker A: And like, is this a trick question? Do you remember the first thing I let go of?
[00:12:55] Speaker B: The reason that I ask is because it's such a big hurdle, like, it really is such a huge hurdle. And I'm sure you see this with the advisory that you do, but when you have, like when you are all singing, all dancing, do all of the things in a consulting business, and then there's a part that you have to say, okay, I'm not going to do that. And you got to kind of let it go.
There's like. The reason I ask is there's a process behind that, I think so.
[00:13:22] Speaker A: I was in a really good position that I had hired somebody as an intern who'd been working with me up to this point. So I had somebody who I trained, I think for a year, if not more, and she was really quite skillful. And so she was working with me. I might even have had another person at this time.
And so handing off wasn't quite as hard because I wasn't hiring people brand new. And another weird quirk of mine, and I don't know if I would recommend this, is I always hired account people. I never hired, like backend support people. So whenever I had hired, it was always people working with clients in some capacity. So it's kind of comfortable with that. Like, I always wanted people I hired to be revenue generating.
Um, and I think the, the big thing I remember having to confront was the onboarding process. That 90 minute call where you paid us, we started working, but it's our big kickoff call where we get to know you.
And I spent a lot of time thinking about what was the way to do that call. Was it putting somebody else in that same situation, so just swapping me out for the person who is working for me or somebody else, or was it reimagining the call? And I decided that what we were going to do was actually trial doing more of like a form, like an intake form where somebody would fill out a doc and then if we had questions, we'd go back to them and that's what we ended up doing. So it went from being me leading a call, not to just hand it over to somebody else, but having an intake form. And then down the line, what I found is that there was sort of something missing in terms of like, the clients couldn't always answer the questions the way I needed them to without somebody there to prompt them. So I added a private podcast where the intake form was in three parts, because I developed the sales process where I said, there's sort of three things that we need from you to make a successful podcast outreach program. And so the intake kind of corresponded to each of those elements. And then I had a private podcast of these, like quick 3, 4, 5 minute episodes that sort of explained different parts of it and why I was asking. So it was like, listen to this episode, then fill out this section. So it was interactive in that way, but nobody was required to be there live. And then it would go to their account lead and then that person would review it and then follow up with questions if they needed to.
So I think that was actually one of the first things I did work on, even though it was hardest because it was like a non negotiable and I. It was like the one in like, if I can't crack this, this whole thing won't work.
[00:16:17] Speaker B: I love it. You productized yourself. You took that thing that you were doing and sat with it and were like, okay, I need this information to make this a successful engagement.
How do I like, I like, I love the visual of that because when you're so used to having your arms wrapped around it and you're like, okay, I bring them in and I, you know, get them fired up and we talk about some stuff and I do all of this busy work behind the scenes and then, you know, somehow magically come up with this plan. But like, there's this like, this, like this kind of boundary that you put up, which is like, here's what I need from you. You go and do the work, bring it back to me, and then we've got a good input to start.
[00:16:57] Speaker A: Yeah. And I will tell you, when I did this, I didn't think it was going to work.
Like, I put it out there. I feel like this is your influence that like, just do it, you know, you like, just do the thing. Like, I really did not believe that this was going to work and that we were going to get good results. But I really do have a belief in a business where you should try experiments and it's not that big of a deal. Like, oh my God, we get so in our heads about, like, we have this process and we can't change it. It's like, do a small experiment, take 10% of your clients and do it this other way. And like, let, like, I, you know, I told people up front, like, I'm changing the way I'm doing things. Are you the first few clients? Oh my gosh, it's all coming back. The first few clients, I told them I was changing my process and I said, would you prefer that I do this in a call with you or would you mind filling it out in this document form? And I gave them the option up front until I was sure that the document would work. And so they were consenting to it. They knew what they were in for was no big deal for anyone and it worked great.
[00:18:04] Speaker B: Yeah, I think they're safety, like process is safety in some regard. If you've got this thing that works and you've worked really hard to get to that place where something is actually working because there's like a lot of trial and error to get there.
And then you introduce something new. This is why the emotional piece of this, I get all of it, I get all of that inertia that's created. But at the same time it's like, yes, that is all true, but what's the worst thing that could happen if you change it?
The worst thing that could happen is someone doesn't want to do it. And in your case, you've got the backup process that you already did, so you can still get the outcome and the result. So it's a nice way to, I guess, manage the risk and also just keep the thing, keep it moving.
Now that was the first step.
Talk me through, talk me through where you grew from there. Like, how did things progress? And this will probably go on a bit of an adventure around the park here, so to speak.
[00:18:59] Speaker A: Yeah, so in the program you had us do like a quick and dirty, like sales page, right? And it was like you put out an offer.
And in my case, I don't remember if we all did this. It was kind of presented like I presented it to people, my network, as a beta offer. I still remember the spreadsheet you had us fill in. Like, how many people did you reach out to? How many calls have you booked?
And so I did, I went through that process. I ended up signing up, I think, just like three people from my network for this initial offer. It was like a six month program that we started with at an insane rate where I was losing money. Like, what was wrong with my brain? But whatever I got the insight I needed.
So that was in 2019. I signed up these people, I trialed them through the process.
[00:19:47] Speaker B: And.
[00:19:48] Speaker A: And at this time, I'm sure I still had like clients ongoing too, from the work I had been doing. So it wasn't like my only three clients. We did these three clients. We took them through the process. So, you know, they did the onboarding the way that we said that I said they would. It was very like systematized, productized from start to finish. So what I ended up coming out with is that when you came to work with us, it was a creative output. Right. We were building pitches for people, we were booking, booking them onto Podcast interviews. But the deliverables were really consistent and the timeline was. So you'd come in, you get onboarded through this process, within two weeks, you'd get a program back from your account lead. That was a real strict guideline that we had to turn our time of two weeks to present it to the client.
I made the choice that our clients review the pitches because we weren't meeting with them. So I wanted to make sure everything was correct.
So they would review their pitches, give us any tweaks, we'd work through that with them, and the team would start reaching out to podcasts on their behalf. And I had already been working in this space, so I also developed a cadence for how many pitches that we would do for folks each month. And that was something that we were sort of reporting on. And a lot of my folks ended up dividing it and doing it weekly. But that wasn't really a requirement. It was like each month you have these targets and benchmarks to go to.
And I based them on a client I had had before who is like such a specific client avatar. And this was a risky decision, but it turned out to be a great one.
So she was a client I'd been working with, and when she came to me, she said, you know, I don't have a ton of time for pr. I just want a couple of really high quality interviews. I don't want you booking me on 10 podcasts every month that have no listeners. I'd rather have two good ones.
And so that was sort of our model. And that's what I told people. I said, we're going to try to get you two or three really good interviews every month. Just because they're booked in a month doesn't mean they're going to happen. I ended up having to do a lot of education on timelines that month. I mean, so I knew, because I had data, how many pitches we had to send out to make that happen.
So let's say we wanted to book you on two interviews, and generally we needed to send out 20 pitches. So the team had this whole dashboard that I built in Airtable where they would pick out who they were pitching, they would log them into airtable. There were check marks if things there were things were booked if things went out. And then we could track the data over time, over the years to see how everything was working and, like, report that back to the client. And everything became like this. Like, actually, I had. My team members would complain to me and say that they wish we had more meetings by the End because, like, everything was asynchronous.
Who on earth has ever had that problem, by the way?
[00:22:49] Speaker B: I mean, that's the pendulum swinging from, like, I need to be in everything. So, like, if something is on fire, call me. Otherwise I'm going to be in the desert.
[00:22:58] Speaker A: They were begging me for slack and I would be like, here is why we don't do slack. If you can make a case for it, I'll implement it. No one ever did. We never had slack.
[00:23:08] Speaker B: Whoa, whoa, Bridget, you, You, you took it to the next level from. Yeah, that's a, that's a massive transition. That's huge.
[00:23:16] Speaker A: We did one. I did do one to ones. I did weekly one to ones with every single team member.
So we did have. And we did a staff meeting, but other than that, no meetings.
So it was all very like pro. It was very like you put in the database and then it spits out a report. And I could see, because the other issue I had was how do I manage my own anxiety as the owner, as a person who has this reputation built up for a decade now of my own, like, I had so much anxiety that my team wouldn't handle those relationships with the kind of care or wouldn't get the results, you know, all of that.
I think like a startup in a place you already work in is kind of hard because you have this emotional connection already and reputation.
So I had created this dashboard too, for me. So, like, if I Woke up at 2 in the morning with anxiety about, like, how's this client doing? I could just pull up this dashboard and see in real time, like, oh, this many pitches were called for at this point. This is how many actually you had. This is how many interviews I would have expected. This is how many they had. So I could check in real time across any of our clients, how they were doing and dig into it.
So that was a big piece of it too. Of like, yeah, just managing, like, what kind of reporting and information I needed to feel like I could actually be so unreachable, to be honest. Right.
[00:24:44] Speaker B: Like, well, it's peace of mind really. And like, you don't, you don't know when you're going to need that reinforcement or that peace of mind. But if you are up at 2am, like sweating it, then it's almost like a part sleeping pill. You're like, okay, things are where they need to be. I can get some more sleep now. I could.
[00:25:06] Speaker A: I mean, have you ever done that? Bolted awake and been like, oh, my God, how is. Did this happen? Or Whatever. And you're just like, I have insomnia problems, so that might be a personal problem.
[00:25:17] Speaker B: I mean, in the early days of WP Curve, I couldn't turn my mind off it because there was only so much I could physically push. And then I'd get physically tired, but then my brain would still be running at nighttime. And so I'd wake up in the wee hours of the morning, write out a bunch of stuff, and then go back to sleep, and then wake up again, write out a bunch of stuff, go back to sleep. I think it's relatively. Well, it's common between us. I don't know if everybody else has that. All right, so you went full systematized now about the trajectory of the business. How did that, how did that track? Like, it sounded like the process was set, steady, started to go pretty well.
[00:26:00] Speaker A: Well, my beta project came to the end of my first clients in December of 2019.
I sold my first full on clients and launched the business, like, in December of 2019.
[00:26:18] Speaker B: So.
[00:26:18] Speaker A: So right before the pandemic shut everything down.
So, you know, it went great. It was fantastic.
[00:26:30] Speaker B: Your tone says so much more than your words.
[00:26:34] Speaker A: Life was amazing. That was super fun for me.
[00:26:39] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm with it. I'm with it.
[00:26:42] Speaker A: That's also the time where we were hitting the road. So this whole time that I was in this beta, I was like renting this apartment in North Carolina and.
And then we had let go of our lease, we had put a deposit down. So we bought this trailer, my husband and I, up in Canada, like, they make it for you. So, like, we put our deposit down, we sold our Subaru and bought a pickup truck because you can't tow with a Subaru. I mean, all of this In December of 2019, like, it happened. So I think I was lucky because if we had waited, we wouldn't have been able to afford a truck and a trailer.
We were supposed to pick the trailer up in April and like, the whole world shut down. Right. So we had gone. I'd gone out hard, launched the business.
I can't remember now. I would have to look it up, how many clients I had, but I think it was around 6. You know, it was like some people resigning from the beta trial, some new people.
Yeah. Picked up a few clients, had two people working for me, one of them full time. That person been with me for a while. I think she'd been full time by then and one part time, and everything was going really great. And then everything shut down with the pandemic and so I'm a bleeding heart, right? So I email my clients and I'm like, I know things are really hard for you. If you want to be your contracts, let me know.
A couple of people did that.
[00:28:15] Speaker B: And let's pause on that. That, that was the thing I remember. I read because I just a bit of background. I've stalked everyone. Like, I've kept my eye on everyone, see how everyone's going. I can't help it. I'm just interested. And it's so cool to see people, you know, progress or not progress or whatever happens. But I'm just like, so proud. And so I was digging around on you and I saw this article and I can't remember, I think you did an interview with a woman. I can't remember her name. But in the, in the blog post, it talks about how when Covid hit you almost immediately, like reached out to clients and said, hey, if you want to opt out and get a refund because you were charged, was it Angel? Were you doing like annual plans or something like that?
[00:28:59] Speaker A: Yeah. So people could sign up at that time for either four months or a year, and then they paid monthly, but they were under contract for the full amount.
So they had, you know, at that point they would have been paying under contract for a year.
[00:29:15] Speaker B: And I mean, like, practically speaking, the enforceability of that, if someone wanted to back out, then like in, in, you know, you'd go to like small claims court or arbitration, do something to get that money back. If, if you were on the other side of this pendulum, right? You're on the, you're on this side, which is like, I get it. It's different, difficult now, you know, you have an opt out if you want it.
I have to commend you because there are so, so, so few people that I know. Like, I could count them on my hand. Who would like, when everyone else is like, and this is what happens in crisis. I think everyone like kind of constricts and they grab on and they hold on for dear life. And it gets very like, you know me, like, I got to look after myself and cover my back.
And I read that and I had a moment. I was like, good grief. Like, the amount of how difficult that must have been for you to see, looking at your goal, it's right there. And you're like, okay, what's the thing for me to do that is appropriate or feels right?
Endless kudos. Endless.
I was so proud. I was like, what a. What a human being. Like, holy, that's amazing.
[00:30:34] Speaker A: Thank you for not calling me, like, sometimes, like, am I just a sucker? You know? But I just.
You.
I don't know. Being in integrity with my own values is, like, my number one thing in life. And whenever I don't know what to do, I always know the right thing to do, and I just, you know, try.
It's hard.
[00:30:59] Speaker B: It's a very difficult thing to do. And, like, we're talking about an environment that's upside down.
Panic, strife, people don't know what's happening, Economy shutting down, people are getting sick. Like, the natural instinct is to just grasp on and hang on for dear life and see, like, what can I get and do all of that. So there's, like.
I look at that in a broader sense, and I'm like, there's, like, a level of, like, faith or trust or some sort of thing that's working with you. But if anyone. Like, if you can take away anything from this podcast, anyone listening, how you respond to a moment of crisis is going to. This is how you get to know yourself as an entrepreneur, in my opinion, because these things will surface, and you've got a really difficult decision to make. And your judgment and your decision may not wash with everyone else, and maybe 95% of people or 98% of people wouldn't do it, but you gotta back your conviction, and you kind of own the responsibility and the consequences. So I cannot. I was just, like, I was blown away by that. I was so.
I was just so impressed. So, yeah, like, well done.
[00:32:05] Speaker A: Thank you. Yeah, and I was lucky. Like, only a couple people really took me up on it at the time. So, you know, but it was. It was rough. And I have. I always keep, like, a.
Just a savings, like an emergency fund for the business, just like I keep one of my personal finances. And so when I did that, I also made the decision that I was gonna hold on to the team members I had, because the way I saw it was, we don't know what's happening. I have folks who are trained up. And so I had enough Runway, I guess, to make it through July.
And I was like, I can keep payroll. I can keep everything going through July. Let's just do that, and we'll kind of see what happens.
And I stopped paying myself, so I was paying everybody else. This is kind of when we talk about lessons learned, like, Jesus, I'm always like, just don't pay yourself. Pay everyone else. It'll work out.
It's a lesson I've stopped doing.
But at that time, I didn't make that choice. Because I thought, well, if this starts growing again, like, this is a good model. I'm really excited. I'm finally doing the thing I feel felt really good about what we were doing and the reaction I was getting telling people I was doing. And so that was a choice I made. And, you know, sometimes I joke that I'm like a super manifester, but the things I ask for are too small because I always make the goals I set for myself happen, but they're always like, really realistic. So of course, like July 1 or June 30, we get a client, right?
And that's when things start.
It's like, why couldn't I have said may or something?
It's like a blessing and a curse, you know?
[00:33:58] Speaker B: I mean, yeah, you, you get it done and you don't go. You don't like go 10 or 20% over. You just like right on the money, like right on the day.
[00:34:07] Speaker A: Oh.
[00:34:10] Speaker B: I can relate. I'm with you. I'm with you. I think there is, it's, at that point there is some benefit in setting goals that are realistic. Because if you set, if you go way too far out and you don't have an emotion, like, I need to have conviction that I can accomplish the thing that is out there, like the longer term goal. And if I can't like logically convince myself, then there's no way I can like go through the emotional ups and downs of trying to run through walls to get there. Because it just doesn't. I just feel like there's like some sort of dissonance that comes up where it's like, you start working on it, then you're like, it's not really that realistic maybe. And you just get into no man's land and don't do, you know, don't take forward action, don't take backward action. Just start like analyzing and thinking about alternatives. Like it's a trap.
[00:34:59] Speaker A: Yeah, there's like a saying that. I don't know where I heard this, but it's just like you can't outrun your nervous system, you know, it's like maybe, I don't know. Did you say that? I've heard it somewhere and it sticks with me.
[00:35:12] Speaker B: I mean, I don't know if I did, but if I did, I'll claim it, but it's probably not mine either. So that's a good one. I like it.
Okay, so stop paying yourself.
[00:35:24] Speaker A: Hold on to our clients, do the work. And then in July of 2020, things start taking off. And the way I remember this Time from July to December of that year is. It was like riding a wild stallion and holding on for dear life.
Things grew. We went from, like, that six clients that we started the year to down and then up to 20 by the end of the year.
So, yeah. Which, I mean, that doesn't necessarily seem like a lot of growth. Right. But when you're used to working with four people or something, like, that's a lot to handle.
[00:36:06] Speaker B: Just on that point, 6 to 20. So how did you feel like through that window of time? Was that. Was 20 the target? Was that where you were driving towards? Did you hit that target on the nose?
[00:36:17] Speaker A: That's a good question.
I mean, I do feel like that was a number in my head. That would have felt amazing, right? Like, oh, my God, this is really working. And I mean, it was so much growth because what happened was people in Covid, they pulled back, right? They were like, okay, let's pull back, figure out what's going on.
We're not doing anything. And then, because what I was doing was all remote, it was replacing people's marketing, networking. So instead of going to a conference, you'd go onto a podcast.
Like, any in person networking was replaced. And so people were showing to sales calls. I didn't have to sell anything. They knew what they wanted. It was just, is it me or someone else?
And that's amazing. Like, that was an amazing moment, but it was also a big challenge because.
Because I hadn't been paying myself, and I wanted to, like, make it up.
I didn't want to hire, and I didn't want to spend any money. So it's funny, because I had this instinct in the beginning, but then at that point, we. The team was really burning out and maxing out, and I just wouldn't do anything about it, you know, I wouldn't hire.
I know.
I know it was bad.
[00:37:46] Speaker B: I mean, it makes sense. It's reflexive, right? So you've gone from, like, famine to feasts. Yeah, still famine mentality.
[00:37:55] Speaker A: Like, well, and I thought that it would just dry up, you know, I didn't think that it would keep going. And, like, if there's one thing I did wrong in this whole business, it was like I restricted our growth at that moment. And I had a team member that next year, like, flame out pretty spectacularly, left in a pretty spectacular way.
And I decided to stabilize the business by taking a pause on taking new clients and hiring and onboarding people during, like, this was like, the next spring into the summer. So the summer was historically a slow Period. For us, anyway. So it's like, I'm going to take this time to bring people on.
And that was the last time I had to learn this capacity lesson that I have learned so many times in entrepreneurship, which is like, you always need more capacity. Like, you cannot ever allow yourself to hit the ceiling. And, gosh, I have run up against that so many times and took that experience of that growth to really get it.
[00:39:08] Speaker B: Let's dig into it. It's a good one.
So it's the opposite way to think from when you're starting out, which is you kind of beg, borrowing. Not stealing. We don't steal. But begging and borrowing to get clients.
And then you're like, okay, do I have something? Is this real? Is it legit? At some point, hopefully there's a thing that goes off and you go, wow, this is a real thing. Like, I have a business, and this can scale.
But then you're into this different zone, which is like, growth happens, and then you're kind of hanging onto growth. And you use the metaphor of, like, a wild stallion, like, riding that and hanging onto it.
Challenge is you still got to kind of guide it and kind of steer it. I don't know. Like, yeah.
[00:39:54] Speaker A: And you've got to keep marketing, which I didn't do.
[00:39:57] Speaker B: Huh.
[00:39:58] Speaker A: Huh?
[00:39:59] Speaker B: Is that because you got pulled in?
[00:40:01] Speaker A: Because things kind of flatline right later.
[00:40:04] Speaker B: Okay, okay, Okay.
[00:40:07] Speaker A: I just, like, I, like, let all the steam out of the engine at that point, and I didn't have. People would come, you know, I did have a lot of success telling people, like, well, we're at capacity, but we can bring you on in a couple of months. And I would take a deposit. And so that worked, like, yep. Sometimes I work with people now, and they're like, can we do a wait list? Or what do I. I'm like, yes. Like, people say all the time, like, this works better for me anyway because I.
I need time to clear out space to do this. And. And I would give them the onboarding ahead of time. So I'm like, you can do all the onboarding it can take. You know, take as long as you want so they have something to do.
I can think of one person who ever backed out in that time frame. Like, people, you know, it was no problem. So it wasn't like, I completely just shut everything down.
But, yeah, I kind of let some steam out of our growth, and we never hit that full mark again because I was running the team, I was running the business. I wasn't marketing enough. And, like, that Kind of COVID bubble we had of demand. Eventually a year later kind of popped. And I had just spent so much time first dealing with all that demand and not satisfying it, and then working with a team and not doing enough marketing that things just kind of like slowed down.
[00:41:31] Speaker B: Did you find yourself getting pulled in, back into the system and back into the process? Is that what was kind of taking your time up or where was your time getting used?
[00:41:41] Speaker A: No, when I hired people, because what I was working in was a new industry. I had to do a lot of intensive training upfront with people. Because if you worked in public relations and you did other kinds of media outreach, you usually didn't approach podcasts in the right way.
So the kinds of things that traditional PR people do for media don't work with podcasts.
And then I found myself often hiring people who worked inside podcasts, so people who are podcast producers or bookers. And I would hire them because they understood what it was like to get pitches and then sort of train them on how to do the pitch process.
And so I wasn't getting dragged into the client client delivery, but I was spending a lot of time developing training materials up front. And so I did a big hiring batch in like this spring. Now we're like in 2021. And then we kept growing, actually. So in that fall, so I hired two people then, and then I hired two more people in the fall.
Hiring people in pairs is like the best, by the way. So much more efficient than hiring one at a time. Oh my gosh.
So that worked really well.
But I was just.
What do I say?
Well, the truth, I was like, I didn't want to market and I never hired a marketing person. Right. I mean, if you want to know like what the real problem was, it's like I just didn't want to do the work of the marketing and I never put money into off giving that to somebody else. So I think things probably would have been fine if I had actually just like hired a part time person to turn my podcast interviews into blog posts and do all those things. And I just, I never did.
[00:43:36] Speaker B: Was there something about marketing that you didn't enjoy? Can we dig into that a little bit? This is, this is useful.
[00:43:44] Speaker A: Like, I hope this is helpful for other people.
What I want to say about this, something that I've recently come to realize is like, I'm very good at writing at like this, right? Like giving an interview, teaching content.
I'm very, very strong if I know what I'm selling. So in the startup phase, not as much at a sales call. Our close rate was incredible. Like, most of our clients, through the history of the company sign on for a year after one meeting with me, like, the next day, and we had clients come from SEO and do that. So, like, I can do both of those things.
But marketing is. It's like the bridging of the gap, right? It's the, like the sales page, it's the sales webinar or whatever. It's like, it's like getting people from this, like, I'm interested thing here into that call.
And I don't know how to do that. And I don't think I really realize that that's like a. Like a different skill set or that that was a skill set so much that I was missing. I knew that I don't like writing, like, landing pages and stuff. So, like, I never did any, like, ads. I never, you know, I dabbled it because I just didn't want to do all that stuff.
And I. And I'm kind of terrible at it when I do it. Like, I don't think. Did I answer your question? Maybe I didn't do.
[00:45:22] Speaker B: You know, is it because, like, I would argue that you're like a smart cookie so you can figure these things out, is there's like, when you sit down to do marketing stuff, what happens? Are you, like, I'll go towards something that I'm more interested in or, like, we've got enough in pipeline where I can close a couple more and then make up the difference and then, like, push that down the road. Six. Six weeks or something?
[00:45:47] Speaker A: Well, one. It's boring to me.
Writing something where you already know the answer is painful for me. Like, so, like, the kind of writing you have to do for SEO, the kind of writing you have to do in a sales page, like, like the essay you talk about that I was writing about. There was like, kind of a book review, kind of a case study when I sat down to write that, I didn't know where I was going to end up. And that's probably why it took so long, right? I had. I was, like, thinking through something in the process.
But when you're marketing something, it's like you already know where you're going.
And so there's that. I think it's just boring. And then the other part of it is that, like, I want to teach.
Like, I want to tell people. I used to have people show up to my webinars because I used to do webinars, and I like to do them, and they'd be like, I talk to them later and they say, oh my God, thank you so much. After your webinar, I went and launched my own program. Like, they never hired me because I would give away too much.
And I just never learned how to not, like, where's the balance? Like, how do you create like a lead magnet freebie for a person that gives them enough information to trust you and commit without giving them so much information? I've never figured that out.
I can't. I don't know how to do it.
[00:47:13] Speaker B: I don't. I think that's a function of like, budget and I think that's a function of stage.
So there's a program and I suck at. I'm the worst at sales. I was so lucky to have Jake back in the day because Jake is like, good at sales, good at marketing, good at this stuff. I always sucked at it. So for me, what I'm like, the reason I'm asking some of these questions is cause I'm reflecting back on some of my weaknesses. Sales I suck at. There's a program that Andrew Warner from Mixergy is doing called Bootstrap Giants. And it's like B2B sales and they do mutual intros. It's basically like a sales process.
They set you up with, you know, the scripts and the templates and you know, tracking and all that, that stuff.
And in the same way, like with marketing and like, you're smart enough to do marketing, I'm smart enough to figure out sales, but there's something in me that blocks me from it. And so I look at, they've got like a $5,000 program and I'm like, oh, I mean, like, how, how much am I going to procrastinate on this thing? Like, is that going to get me across the divide?
You know what I mean? Like, yeah, they have like an entry level product which is probably about 80% of their process.
And I'm kind of chipping through it and understanding it and it's making me slightly uncomfortable because you've got to go out to your network and then target someone and say, hey, can you make an introduction to this person? And then do a pitch? Which is difficult. Like, it doesn't come naturally for me.
Um, so the, the way that I think about it is like, they offer 80% of what the process is.
There's a. There's kind of like a.
The people that fill in that gap where they'll actually do the work because they want the outcome enough versus paying someone to help them implement it. And Whip them to do it. That's kind of that middle spot. So if you're giving people like 90, 95, 99% of the process, then it's, you know, there's some, like, secret sauce that you can like, kind of pull back on a little bit. But in regards to that program, I think it's actually just the accountability because it's like, you know, Andrew and Jesse and these guys are, you know, well respected and they get on calls with you and you kind of don't want to let them down, and that's what pushes it forward. So.
Yeah.
[00:49:35] Speaker A: Totally. Yeah. And, you know, people would ask me a lot, like, how did you get clients? How did you grow a podcast? Ally? And I was like, you can't.
You can't look at what I'm doing now. Because also, like, I had invested so many years in relationship building and marketing before this that I was just kind of like resting on the network. I had, like, if we had openings, I would just send out an email and say, like, hey, this spring we're going to have a couple of openings. Is anyone want to take one? And I'd usually get a couple of calls and I'd usually book both of those calls. And so, like, I was enabled to be lazy.
No way. Like, but.
But I think it's a problem. And like, one thing I'm thinking about now with what I want to do next is like one, one of the issues with my model, I would say the issue with my model, with my business is that you can't put. Or I couldn't. The way we worked with people, like a clean ad targeting group together, because it was the sorts of things that I was looking for were like, you had to have a really great story, you know, like kind of this, like, case study before and after. To ring to podcasts, you had to have good relationships already there were like these intangibles and you can't like, put that into Facebook. Facebook's a little different now, I think. But then it was more like this interest targeting, real deep dive. You know, it wasn't like this easy thing to create this marketing bucket for. And I think now, like, I want to do another business. And I think about that a lot. Like, I want to create something where I can have these forms of like, lead gen that aren't just based on meeting a person. Be like, are the vibes there? Or do they have charisma or do they have a good story? You know, because I would turn people away on sales calls. And it was really, I Think the reason I was good at sales is because it was a real consultation. I was really trying to figure out, could we have success for you on that call?
And it wasn't just, come on and I'll sign you up. And I'd have people yell at me, send me nasty emails after that, like, tell me how much they wanted to work with me, even though I said we couldn't do it for one reason or another.
And. And it's like, man, it would have been a lot easier for myself if I didn't have this, like, criteria.
Another constraint. I made my life harder than it needed to be.
[00:52:13] Speaker B: But could you target. Was there any patterning around, like, the category of people that you were working with, or was it all just so broad that there's not. Like, there's not like, there wasn't a classification that you bucket people into? Target.
[00:52:28] Speaker A: You're forgetting my first constraint, which is I didn't want a lot of calls, so I could have targeted people. Like, we did a lot of work in, like, wellness.
We had some, like, big health and wellness influencers that we worked with, so I could have targeted people in that space.
But I think also I probably would have increased my volume of sales calls, which would have been untenable for me. Um, yeah, that. That was a really big one for me, like, not having a lot of meetings on the calendar.
Oh, man. I'm telling you, all my. This is. This is rough, Alex. I don't like this.
Move on.
[00:53:13] Speaker B: Well, what did you expect? This is usually how it goes on. We chat.
[00:53:17] Speaker A: I was like, you need to, like, not tell everything.
But here I am.
[00:53:22] Speaker B: I kind of lean on that a little bit. And I have. I'll tell you what, I have recorded a couple of these podcasts after the fact, and this happened with Jake, actually, when I spoke to Jake a couple of weeks ago, and he's like, hey, can you just take that bit out? Because we were just vibing, we're chatting, and then I'm realizing, oh, shit. Like, I've kind of, like, said a bit too much there, so I might, like, pull that back. So if there's anything after the fact that you need to get chopped out. But.
But I think, like, you know, I. I take license with that. Cause we do have trust, and there is, you know, I kind of know where to look a little bit. Like, there's a bit of a. You know, I've got a bit of a radar for it. Okay, so tracking back to the progress. So you.
Where do we. Where do we jump off okay, so.
[00:54:07] Speaker A: I'm, I've slowed down.
I've on. I've onboarded team members. I spent a lot of time. I actually hired somebody to help me with like this training program. I spent a ton of money, stopped working with her halfway through, did my own thing.
[00:54:22] Speaker B: Training in what regard? What were you training?
[00:54:25] Speaker A: So the people who are coming on, if they were coming from either PR or for podcast booking, they had to learn our process, which was easy.
And our systems, we had a pretty in depth system, but I had a lot of training videos for that. But really what they had to learn was like, what are the hosts looking for? Like, what makes a good pitch? Like, what's that magic?
And so some folks came in and were able to kind of glean that and pick that up right away. And other folks need more help. And then I had other folks. Like, I had one guy, I think he'd be comfortable with me using his name. Sam, who worked with me, we worked a lot. So I did weekly one to ones with every team member. We did a 30 minute one to one every week. And because I didn't want to be on the call, we just did it on the phone.
Like, I don't wanna be on Zoom. So we meet on the phone for 30 minutes. And Sam needed help just with like, client management. Because one of my values for the company was like, we're not yes men.
So one of the things that I tried to teach the team is like, you need to understand that the client is an expert in their business and the thing they're sharing in the podcast and we are an expert on how to do that.
So, like, we'd have clients come to us, for example, and they said, I heard John Lee Duma say that you need to follow up with a podcast host seven times and drive to the know. I think, John, it might have been somebody else.
[00:55:56] Speaker B: If it's terrible advice, that's bad advice, flat out.
[00:56:00] Speaker A: This is being. Maybe it's not John. It might not have been him. So.
[00:56:04] Speaker B: Yeah, but it wasn't jld.
[00:56:06] Speaker A: But yeah, it was being taught in this, like, really prominent book yourself on a podcast course that a podcast host was giving. And his thing was like, drive to the no. And we'd have clients come and say, like, how many times do you follow up with a host if they said no? And like, will you go back to them? Will you go back to them?
And we would do two follow ups max. And we had a process for doing that.
And because things get lost, like, I had a lot of hosts be like, oh, my gosh, I'm so sorry. I meant to book you. Thank you so much for this. Right.
And I would. We'd have to educate the clients. Like, look, if you want to go to that podcast host and ask them seven times until they say no to you, sure. But we have other clients. Like, we can't just burn a relationship with somebody by nagging them and never be able to book another client with them. Like, the reason you hire us is for our relationships, and we need to caretake our relationships with these hosts, and they need to know that we're never going to spam them for anything.
And so, like, with Sam, you know, I had to work with him on how to do that pushback with clients because he came from an agency where it was like, very. Clients are always right. And so a lot of the training I had to do with people was more that kind of thing. Like, what are those, you know, three, four things that were really unique to us versus somewhere else you might have worked for, and how does that show up? And so I spent a lot of time with folks, helping them learn that, so that when they were working with clients, they were like extensions, not of me, but of the values I had for the company, what I wanted the company to embody.
[00:57:44] Speaker B: This is an interesting one, because it's sometimes hard to communicate what that means practically.
So if you say, like, we're not yes men, like, I can interpret that in one way, you can mean it in another way.
How I execute that is kind of wonky. And then it comes back to your. Like, it comes back to your attention, and you're like, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is not what we're doing.
I see a lot of this. I've seen a lot of this. Because it's sometimes too hard to get that granular with examples of what these things are. But, I mean, as you scale, those are the things that kind of make or break you, I think, at some level.
[00:58:21] Speaker A: And I don't think there's a way you can do it without one to ones. Like, I would.
I did not want to do one to ones. I was like, we're a small team. We don't need it. And my husband, he's a big fan of this podcast called Manager Tools, and he had started doing one to ones in his company. No one in his company does them.
And before he left, he was, like, top rated in the region for employee satisfaction.
And he's actually working there again, and it's happening again. It's like, unbelievable. And he would push me and push me like, you need to do this, you need to do this. I'm like, I don't. We're.
No, he was totally right. I hate it. I hate it. There's be. Because like the one one is where you get that like unfiltered moment where stuff comes up, like where if you're meeting with somebody and you know they know I do the kind of one to one where it's like it's their agenda, right? So we have 30 minutes. You start anything. You could talk about your trip, you can talk about a client problem. You could talk. You can get on the phone and be like, I don't want to do this today.
That almost never happens.
And it's where you build the trust, where they feel like they can start opening up to you about those sort of like shades of gray things and you can do some more coaching on the fly. And I just don't think, I don't know how else you can catch that kind of stuff if you're not in regular communication with people.
[00:59:51] Speaker B: I have a hypothesis yet to be tested, kind of navigating this with a client at the moment, which is that their values are clear.
Their level of kind of craft and care that they take with certain things is evident through how they behave. But there's a translation problem to getting that out to the team.
And so the hypothesis is you get really, really granular and it's going to feel a bit weird to provide examples.
The user manual is a pretty simple tool to do that at a high level. I do think there's a secondary level if you're really scaling and if you need to, I don't know, you've got multiple people working in marketing, people working in engineering, people working in other things where they.
If you're small, founder led and you want to be consistent and coherent on voice, then you either accept that it's going to be different to what you want and you eat that, or you provide the specific direction with examples and talk people through it. But I don't think you're allowed to be in the middle because you're going to be so dissatisfied because it's going to be like, oh, they don't understand what I want. But at the same time you're kind of not giving them guidance to show them what you do want. So then it's kind of back on you and that like ultimately like you're responsible for everything anyway when you're the founder. So that's kind of how it goes.
[01:01:18] Speaker A: So this is the work that I'm doing with people now. And there's, like, a theory that, like, one person can manage, like, 10 to 12 direct reports, and that's where things start breaking. And so I kind of took that, and I say, like, okay, so for your first 10 to 12 people, you should be doing this directly with them. But then what you'll see is, like, through this process, you're going to get to know people.
And, like, a real strong example for this in my company is, like, I had somebody working with me. Her name was Kelly. She has a PR background. And I never in my life have met a person who can write an email to another human being that feels so warm and genuine, like, to a stranger. Like, the pitches that she would write to people were just like magic in a bottle in terms of that feeling of, like, you care about me.
You've researched me. Like, podcasters are always saying they want it, and Kelly could just do it. And so, like, through this process, because that making people feel cared for was one of our values. And you wanted the podcasters to feel like you're not just doing a spray and pray and sending the same pitch to a million people. And so it's really important to make that connection, but do it quickly in under 300 words. That is so hard to do. And Kelly could do it. So once she was trained up and I learned that if I had somebody else who needed help, I'd be like, you know what? You need to go have a session with Kelly. And so it's not you. You get yourself out of that bottleneck, but those first people.
You're training them, and then you're learning.
Like, I had another person who was on my team, Val, and she had managed clients before, and. And, oh, God, I think I might have cried after the call happened because we're on a call, and she was telling me about a client who was having, you know, a pushback with his program and some issues.
And I was like, oh, do you need me to get on a call with him? Because I always managed issues. And she's like, no, I've got this. And I was like, what do you mean? And she's like, we're in communication. I'm just, like, letting you know so you know what's happening, and I'll let you know after we talk.
And, like, she report back to me. And she's like, I handled it. Here's what the outcome is. It was perfect. It was better than what I would have done because I was emotionally wrapped up in the company, and so then if somebody else came on board and they were dealing with a client problem, I'd be like, go talk to Val. Because I knew she knew what to do, and I knew she did it the way that I would have wanted it done. And so it's like, when you think about scaling these things, it's like, well, eventually it's not you anymore, but you've got to impart, like, your first hires. Those are the people who are spreading that culture of, like, here's how we do things for you. And so you need they become your ambassadors to the rest of the team as it grows.
[01:04:10] Speaker B: Yeah, I agree with that. I had this learning, actually, at GoDaddy. There's a member of the team, his name's Matt, and I look at him working on his computer and he'll laugh if and when he hears this. But, like, he'd often be just goofing off, like, in the office. Like, he'd just goof off. And I'd be like, what are you up to, man? And he'd be like, on Facebook or something, right?
And it would make my blood boil because I was like, oh, you've gotta work in this way. And if you're not grinding it out, all this stuff. I had all of these things that were just in my head.
But his way of working was that he'd, like, take a breather to chill, goof off, and then somehow, some way, he would deliver the outcome every time. And I would test him on this, and I would make it even more difficult target. And I'm like, how is this guy doing it? And I just could not.
To this day, I really don't know how he got these things done, but he had a way of, like, his work method didn't align with how I saw the world, and it frustrated me. But he still got the results, so I couldn't be mad about it.
And that was a lesson for me because there is some sort of acceptance in that way. Like, you're not going to understand their process.
It's gonna maybe even upset you a little bit when you look at it. But if they get the result and the result is satisfactory and the work is getting done, like, you sometimes just need to get the hell out of the way. Like, yeah, yeah.
Okay. We veered off training. We were talking about a training program, but I'm veering us back on because I want to go through the rest of Podcast Ally and, well, we're getting.
[01:05:43] Speaker A: Close to the end here, so that's good.
Where do you want me to go? I mean, from here, we were just kind of smooth sailing, and then I decided to close it, huh?
Like, yeah. So the thing that happened there is how long I'm trying to think about, like, when this.
When this was. I think it was the next year.
So, you know, outliving my dream life, traveling around, going to national parks, hiking, and everything was sort of catching up, like, the fact that I've been doing the marketing, so things were starting to slow down.
And it was also, I feel like the getting the year right is so important because the timeline is important. It was, I think, the summer of 2022, and I just remember being in the trailer with Lucas and being like, I really think the economy is taking a turn. I think we're entering a recession.
It was like, when inflation was going kind of crazy, and I was like, it just feels really bad. Things are slowing down.
We were getting a lot of competition at that time because we were early to market of folks who were doing a lot of, like, race to the bottom with pricing.
And so our growth was sort of slowing down. It was still steady. It was. It was fine. But I was just like, I think we're in for it, and I just don't want to do it again and again. I meant, like, through the COVID times, I was like, I just don't want to go through it.
And the dirty secret of all of this is that I've always hated working in pr.
I hate it.
Your face.
I partially wanted to build an agency because I had come out of school with a creative writing degree. I went straight into agency life because I was like, this is a way where I can write for a living and be creative.
You know how that goes left and was like, I want to start a business and work with people. Because even in my agency life, I knew that I really like leading other people, and I think that's really rare.
I had this thing where, like, when other people that I've mentored accomplish things, I feel it more deeply than the things that I accomplish. Like, I just love that feeling.
And so I was like. And I like working on systems a lot. And so I'm like, this is what I want to do, and I'm going to do it in the PR space because this is the only thing I know how to do. It's the only thing I'm qualified to do.
And so when I'm. I'm sitting there and I'm thinking, like, I think the economy is going to take a turn, and it's really freaking me out.
And I Just don't have enough of a love for like the industry I'm in. I know, like pr, it just, it takes a hit, you know, budgets go. And I just didn't want to do it. And God, Alex, I really hate to say it, but I was right. Like that was because you know this. But like, I don't think a lot of people understand what happened service businesses, when interest rates went up and when companies had no access to capital.
Like we have been in a recession in the service market for brutally for three years now. People are struggling. And I just, I've always had like a good eye for economics and like the market. And I just saw it and was like, I can't do it. I just can't do it.
[01:09:45] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:09:46] Speaker A: And I, I went into mourning.
I, we, I stopped taking on new clients. I quietly shut down the company. I actually wrote this whole blog post, I don't know if you found it, about how I managed this with the team. I mean this was like, it took from that moment to when we finally shut down. It was more than six months. It took, it was a lot of like communicating with the team what was going on. Like it was a whole thing we had shut down. People didn't even know we were shut down. That was like the next, it was the next year actually. So it was like the next summer from when I started thinking about this.
No one knew. It was crazy. I finally announced it and that's actually when I sold the company was like after it had been shut down for like six months I think is when I started getting in those conversations. I just took a break.
[01:10:39] Speaker B: Huh. Were you still servicing clients or what does shutdown mean? Shut down means what?
[01:10:44] Speaker A: I had a couple of contracts that I had somebody on the team finish them out. So I had a couple people subcontract. We came to a revenue share agreement where and the clients knew what was happening. So yeah, we, because we did have these year long contracts, but I had sort of started.
So when this first happened, I wasn't positive I wanted to shut down, but I was feeling like a recession is coming. We've got to figure something out.
And I started working with a team at that time. I said, you guys, I really think the economy is going to take a hit. Here's what that means for industry. We need to come up with a lower priced product. We need something that isn't such a big commitment if we want to weather this.
And so the team actually worked with me to come up with a project scope that took like the first Six weeks of our process of when we onboarded and delivered a package to clients, which is like, they loved that process. They'd be like, you were telling me things about. You're giving me language for things I never had. I feel so seen in my business. Like, I never knew how to put my story together before working with you. Like, people loved it. So what we would do is we would do almost like a VIP day format, but it was a little more extended where they do the onboarding, we deliver the plan, deliver a pitch list, and then they'd get voxer support from a team member, but they would go out and implement and it was a lower priced product, wildly successful, super profitable. And a team member developed it with me. She trained the team, they were doing those. So we were already sort of shifting to a lot more stuff, smaller projects at that by the time when I finally made the decision.
So, yeah, so I was letting them know what to expect. I was kind of giving them updates on here's what's happening. Like, we are getting fewer inquiries for our main, you know, 12 month project, but this smaller one, I was calling it the podcast.
Something intensive. The intensives were going really well and just trying to be like, how do you be transparent with people that there could be a change? People that I had an amazing team, Alex. Oh my God, they were amazing enough so that they could make their choices if they wanted to stay or leave. So, like I had one person, she left and she heads up like development for nature conservancies, like South American operations. So she moved on to an amazing job.
But most folks decided to stay with me.
And I finally told them a month beforehand that we were going to be completely shutting down, not taking new projects. And I made commitments to all of them, like, whatever you want, I'm going to help you figure it out. If it's a new job, if it's. You want to keep doing this.
So one of my guys, he did end up servicing a few clients that were contracted with us for quite some time actually.
He was working with them and I was kind of mentoring him a little bit while he started up his own agency with his girlfriend who's now his wife. So they're doing great, traveling the world, actually running their own agency and like a couple people made career changes and yeah, it's so sad. It makes. It hurts to think about it.
[01:14:16] Speaker B: Well, thank you for sharing. I know that it's, you know, the. There's a lot of heart and soul that goes into this and those are not easy decisions to Make. So I appreciate you, you know.
[01:14:27] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:14:27] Speaker B: Giving me, giving me some, some insight into it.
[01:14:32] Speaker A: But you should be yelling at me because I should have sold at our peak. And not.
[01:14:38] Speaker B: If there's anything I've learned from the last, I don't know, five years, is that it's never as linear as you want it to be. Like, it is never as linear as you want it to be. And what is true for you is going to look so much different to someone else's pathway.
So there's like an ideal outcome that you think you should get some way, but often it's never that linear and packaged up and organized and it just doesn't work out like that sometimes. So, I mean, again, commend you for just looking after your team, having their best interest at heart, communicating clearly. There's so many stories of people, especially high profile startups, that they raise a bunch of money, they just shut down, they just don't care.
They kind of torpedo their network, they torpedo their employees, they just walk away and they're just like, oh, it's just business. And that's the norm. That's a lot more common than the way that you approached it, you know?
[01:15:37] Speaker A: Yeah, I just, you know, there's a saying that, like, you have risk, more risk than your team. As a founder, I don't understand how that, first of all, I have an llc. Like, if anything, if the business goes bankrupt, I'm not going bankrupt. And I know what the forecasts are for the business. They're the ones that could walk in one that is such. I don't understand that mentality at all. You're protected through your business structure.
Like, it's not true because you have more insight into what's coming. And I just, that whole time, like, when I think about integrity, it was like I didn't want to panic people and I didn't have all the answers. So just figuring out how to navigate that was so hard. But I'm glad, like, I'm still in contact. Like, we're on WhatsApp. In fact, I just like referred one of them to another job this morning.
You know, we're all like friends on Instagram with our, you know, life posts and.
Yeah, and it's good. But like, also through this process, the reason I was finally able to make the decision and why I feel good about it is because, like, there was one day where we're still in the trailer. So since then, my husband and I have bought a house, we've settled down in Sacramento. He's gone back to his bank job. It's. They like welcomed him back after I guess for him was five years.
And he loves it. Like he's doing great. It was super good for him.
But we were in our trailer and I was working on one of our systems. I was doing an automation in airtable. They had just rolled out these like interfaces. I'm like spending all this time on it, way too much time. And I thought to myself, I just wish this were my job.
And I was like, wait a minute. And I just came to realize that in building this company in this way, I had developed something skill sets that I didn't have. So like I was building an agency around a pr, you know, because I knew how to do it, I was good at it and I had, I started having this thought of like, what if I took all of this energy and built something that I like doing? Like, what would that be like versus something that I just.
Yeah, yeah.
[01:17:55] Speaker B: I love that.
I mean, what a. What an insight. Hey, like, I chuckle when you said you hate PR because like I hated WordPress. Like, WordPress is the worst.
Like it hasn't got any better in 10 years. Like, it sucks to use. It's so frustrating.
I mean, but there's some kind of decision that you make internally where you're like, it sucks, but there's some kind of endpoint that I'm getting to or you know, the. What do they say? It's like the juice is worth the squeeze or means to an end or whatever throwaway thing you want to say about that. Which is fine unless you're in it and you're like, I don't like this at all. This like stresses me out. I don't love it. So I can relate. Like, I'm with you. I'm with you.
So airtable Automation leads you to what? Where do you end up after that? Actually, hang on. You sold. We kind of buried the lead on this one, which you can't do when I'm talking to someone who's xpr.
We're now xpr, by the way, the sale. So take me through a sale and then let's talk about what you're doing now.
As much detail as you're comfortable sharing and everything like that.
[01:19:07] Speaker A: Yeah. So I was working with a business coach at the time where I met her at a conference and she wanted to coach me on marketing the business. And I said, you don't understand, I want to exit this business. I'm going to shut. Like, I need to figure out what's next for me that's I'm hiring you to coach me. I'm figuring out what I'm going to do next, you know, and, oh, God, so many conversations. She really wanted me to keep working on my business.
And then we start working through the exit and she, through her coaching, I've actually never told this part of the story. She, through her coaching, is working with someone else who runs a company in a related industry who's looking to do some acquisitions. And she's like, she actually might be interested in buying your.
Like, I have like turnkey systems. You know, over the years, we had this database. We had logged every single client that we pitched to every single podcast. Like, we had this huge database in relationships that somebody could just pick up and use the system. She's like that. That might have value to her for what she's doing. I'll connect you.
We got pretty far in those talks. She actually, we'd kind of come to an agreement, you know, a verbal agreement. Then she had some life things happen and she just reached out to me and was like, this just isn't the time. I'm really sorry.
And I'm like, huh?
Somebody wants to pay me money for this thing that isn't happening anymore.
And I started toying with, like, I could either try to sell the agency, right, all the systems and the name and the brand and everything and our data, or I could do like licensing of the database and everything. And I really quickly was like, I don't want to do a licensing because then I'm still in the same kind of. I don't know, I just, I just didn't want to do it. I mean, I was like, I don't want to stay in this industry. I want to do something else. This is just delaying the inevitable. Like, it might have a bigger payout, except I don't want to do it, so it won't.
So I was like, well, let me put it out there and see if anybody else is interested. So I think I made.
[01:21:17] Speaker B: Was this a LinkedIn post or something? Yes.
Okay.
[01:21:22] Speaker A: I made a LinkedIn post about how I had.
Was looking at offers for the business. And I put it out to my email and I had some people reach out.
So I ended up having.
I think it was 1, 2.
I should have added this up. It's so I.
1, 2, 3, I think six meetings and three. I thought it was four, but I can only think of right now three, like real offers total for the. For everything.
And so I couldn't believe it. Like, I could like people.
I just Didn't.
I was shocked.
So I kind of had my line in the sand where it was shut down. But I knew I wanted some cash up front because there were some people who wanted to do like, like a profit share kind of payout over a series of years as the deal with no cash. And I was like, absolutely not.
[01:22:33] Speaker B: And so yeah, we call those shenanigans in deal and where they're like, I'll give you a great, I'll give you a great payment, but it's going to be over like 36 installments starting on the leap year. Every, you know, every Blue moon kind of thing, you're like, oh yeah, no.
[01:22:51] Speaker A: Yeah, it was interesting. Like one of the people who reached out to me was like a Com, you know, a competitor. Oh yeah, that's the six. I just thought of the sixth person, a couple competitors.
One, one person that we got really far was a former client, which was really interesting and she was doing a bunch of agency acquisitions and that was a, a hard one to walk away from. But I just didn't like the term of the deal, but. Oh God, she's really smart woman.
Um, but yeah, I ended up through my LinkedIn post. It was somebody who was in my network and he had been considering do I do an acquisition or do I do white labeling with another company?
And he preferred the acquisition. He knew my company and our reputation already, but I had never met him, you know, like before.
But we just ended up having a bunch of talks and everything worked out and acquisition went through.
[01:23:54] Speaker B: I'm just thinking of a headline like how to sell your business on LinkedIn.
[01:23:58] Speaker A: Like with a, with a post.
[01:24:04] Speaker B: You could sell a course on that for sure.
Okay, so exited. And that was like a handover systems, processes, data, all the, all that backend stuff.
[01:24:17] Speaker A: Yeah, it was like handover, client list, email list. We kind of have a, we both have access to the email list, client list, email list, all the data, all the systems.
I actually have like a license to, to use some of the administrative systems. So like if I'm coaching other people and hiring, I can like reference the hiring documents I put together, which is really cool.
And like a little bit of, you know, advising upfront.
Strategic advising.
[01:24:55] Speaker B: Yeah, everything that you've shared because of the non linearity of it, you've done this thing where you've got kind of had ups and downs, but all the way along those things that you're taking away from it to me, which is just like, it's, it's like really enthralling stuff. It's really, you know, I'm learning a lot.
[01:25:12] Speaker A: Thank you. I'm like, I hope I was glad. I feel like I've been blathering on a bit, but I am like, I can't help it. I'm really analytical about things and sometimes I always have, like, not over learn a lesson. Like, I had something with a team member when she left and it went really badly and it was like, you don't need to take away. Like I was working with somebody at the time. It's kind of like a business therapist. And it's like, you don't need to take away too much from every experience. Like, sometimes that can be to your own detriment to always want to learn from things or like you learn the wrong, like too much because you're looking for that lesson. I. I find that really hard. I don't know if you.
[01:25:55] Speaker B: No, it's a. It's a trait. It's like, it's ownership. Right. So I think some folks will be like, something went wrong and I don't really want to look at my role in that. And therefore I just hope it doesn't happen again. And then there's like the other, like, there's a lot of pendulum stuff here.
Other extreme. I can relate. I did the same. Like, I've done the same. I've done the same thing over and over again where I'm like, I'm responsible for all of it. It's all my fault. I should have seen. I should have known better. I should have did better. I'm never going to make that same mistake again. Now I'm just going to go and flagellate myself because I was the worst and I should have known better.
And that's also not constructive. It's like somewhere in the middle. Somewhere in the middle.
All right. Okay. What are you doing today? Opswhisperer. Great name. Love it.
Thank you. Talk to me more about it.
[01:26:54] Speaker A: Yeah. So I'm. I'm still very much in the early stages of putting this next iteration together, but I'm trying to pull together the sort of things that I had to learn in running this company on.
How is it that you're able to work yourself out of the day to day? So one thing we didn't talk about is that I don't know my husband.
I paused because we always argue about how much I work. He would say, I worked all the time. I would say, I work 20 hours a week. Because when you're a business owner, you're thinking about your business 24 hours a day. Right.
But that doesn't mean I'm working on a hike in the middle of the.
[01:27:35] Speaker B: Day with a notepad. Just like one minute, one minute. Got money?
[01:27:41] Speaker A: Oh my God. Yeah. So it's like we have a disagreement of opinion about how many hours I worked, but I truly was able to run an agency built off of a methodology I developed and live this off grid life. And it was amazing. And I've really come to realize that like a lot of the advice out there, specifically for people in this stage where you're building a business, it's around something that you have developed that you're doing a little differently than other people. You're small, you're not funded with seed money, you're bootstrapping.
Like, a lot of the systems out there don't work for that. You know, the, like the traction, the eos, the startup, lean startup, like, they're just, they're not quite right.
And so I'm really working right now with mostly agency owners or people working as services on that thing we were talking about earlier. Like, how do you get all of those intangible things out of your head and imprint them into your team so that they can run the company for you?
How do you create. Like, I'm really big into systems and automations, but I think that systems and automations exist to enable the people to do the best work, not the other way around. And so how do you create systems that make it easier for people to do the work that they need to do and that incentivize them in the right ways?
How do you feel form relationships so that you're not being surprised with problems all the time? Like all of this stuff? Because one of the really hard things for me was just like, what am I supposed to, how do I do that? Like, I would Google, like, what am I even supposed to be doing in a staff meeting? Like, I could not figure out the function of what a staff meeting was supposed to be in my company. And I would like read so many books and be like, no one will tell me. I don't understand St.
[01:29:43] Speaker B: Fair. Fair.
[01:29:45] Speaker A: Yeah. So that's what the Ops Whisperer is all about. It's like helping people in that stage where the business is growing. Right. I'm not, I'm not your girl to come help write a marketing page or, you know, design all that. But the business is growing and you need the team to like, step up for you in a bigger way than they are now.
[01:30:07] Speaker B: So how, how do you get clients for that? Is this still through network and folks that know you and referral or are you out there writing blog posts about concepts you already understand and just like boring yourself to sleep.
[01:30:24] Speaker A: So I am doing. I've gotten my first few clients definitely through the old emailing people. Do you know anybody looking for work like this?
Tried and true. I am also enrolled in a marketing program with somebody, she does Facebook. I've known her for a really long time and she does. I have a client actually who's done her like year long marketing mastermind and they will like review 100% of the copy and the things you put together and help you figure out what offers are going to work.
Because that is really important to me. Like I want to have something where I can like turn on a lead gen that isn't always networking.
So yeah, so that's something I'm trying to build from the very beginning right now. That's a lesson.
[01:31:10] Speaker B: I also have to commend you because throughout this conversation I think I've heard three or four different people or like programs or things that you've leaned on to like, you identify something that you need help with and you don't stall.
You find someone that you trust or you go to a program and you say, I can improve on that. Like that in and of itself I think is a bit of a skill to have a good sense of awareness about where you feel like you might need some help.
And it's often very hard to ask for help as well because it's kind of like, oh, I should know better.
[01:31:45] Speaker A: So Alex, starting again once you've done it is so much harder because you know, you're not like when I was 29, when I left my first job and went out on my own, I didn't know what I was getting myself into. And I just like one thing at a time. And I built it over many years. And you know, Lucas would always say to me like, you've learned so much and I would downplay it, but like, what do you even mean? And now I'm kind of seeing it because I'm like, you know what's ahead of you? And it's kind of exhausting. So that's actually why doing this program, because I'm like, I can't. I need the accountability. I, I will like just faff around, you know, reading books, playing civilization all day if left to my own devices.
[01:32:39] Speaker B: Well, this is what we were talking about before. Like that, that threshold between knowing how to do something and then having some commitment to get it done. And sometimes the Investment is. It's either time or money. When it's both, it becomes real. And it's kind of like, I have to see this through because if I don't have something at risk or at stake, then I'm just gonna. I know myself well enough to know that I'll play civilization or do whatever I need to do.
[01:33:06] Speaker A: Yeah. But if somebody I like tells me to do something, I will so deeply fear disappointing them that, you know, I gotta. I gotta show up.
[01:33:20] Speaker B: Fascinating.
Yeah. The accountability part is huge. Like, that's massive.
[01:33:27] Speaker A: Alex, if I had not done my homework and showed up to those calls with you and I wasn't like a teacher's pet doing the work, that would, like, crush my image of myself. I can't have that.
[01:33:42] Speaker B: I mean, again, polarity. I would have clients where they would do nothing and then we'd get onto the call and it'd be like, I'm still where I was last week. I'm like, cool. What action did you take? It's like, well, that it. And so those people were the ones that I would say, okay, we are going to have to press pause on having calls because ultimately, like, the way that I can help you is if you want to take action, if you choose not to take action, that's not something that I can do for you. And it's like, always a bit of a weird thing. Like, it's a bit of a weird zone and it takes a couple of weeks to get there. But I mean, yeah, so people that actually did the homework and did, like, did the review or did what they needed to do, they get the most value out of it for themselves. But also, like, for me, it makes me really excited to work with them because I'm like, yes, I'm going to be, like, hyped and we're going to have fun and we're going to go through a lot of content. It's going to be really good. So, yeah, I appreciate teacher's pet. Top class. Awesome. Unreal. Okay, so if people want to find out more about, like, where are you? Maybe no longer on X or Twitter, more LinkedIn, where would people find you? Or, like, if they want to learn more about you and what you're doing.
[01:34:55] Speaker A: Yeah. So I have a site I built called theopswhisperer.com and that actually has a link to the substack where I have an email list. I have a substack where I'm posting these. It's a mix of, like, these longer form essays and then excavating some of these lessons that I've learned like we're doing here.
And then I suppose I'm Bridget Lyons on LinkedIn. I do post there sometimes and my Instagram is really just like hiking content and home renovation content. So I'm terrible. I do not really use social media. Like probably the website to the substack is the best place to chat with me and there's people want to talk to me. There's always an opportunity to book a call. Love to do that. I'm now stable and I. One of my things is like I'm open to having calls now. So that's changing what I'm thinking. It's different.
[01:35:51] Speaker B: Okay. I'm going to see, I'm going to see who I can send you away to have a call because if you're available to call, I mean that could be a limited time only thing. So get in there while you.
[01:36:03] Speaker A: My mood might change in six months.
[01:36:05] Speaker B: Awesome. All right, well, thanks. I'm going to stop the recording. Appreciate you jumping on and thank you for being again, thank you for being so candid and honest about all of your lessons because I think this will be really, really useful for people to hear. So thank you.
[01:36:18] Speaker A: Thank you. Alex.
Couldn't have done that without your push.
