Feeling Like I'm Dying...
It's been emotional chaos the last 7 weeks...
Been a while. Apologies.
Let me recap where I left off with my last update and tell you about what’s been happening since then.
I was in Thailand visiting family.
Launched an ads management offer, taking a few clients on.
Also taking on a couple of consulting clients.
My focus was on building out the fulfilment systems for the ads management.
I didn’t have capacity for more clients until I had proper systems in place. I wanted to focus on serving the clients I had to dial in my processes.
What’s happened since then?
I felt like I was dying for the majority of the last 7 weeks.
We’ve had health issues in the family that have completely taken over my time, and added a huge stress load.
That cut my available work time down to probably 30% of what it would normally be. My emotional bandwidth to about 5% of what it would normally be.
I’ve also been feeling the effects of not having a good ops assistant. With no buffer between me and intricate techy stuff.
It’s not hard, but is extremely tedious.
Especially when you’re coming in to run ads for a business. Needing to integrate about 15 different softwares, per client.
I’ve felt completely behind and swamped in low grade busywork. It’s required, but very far from my zone of genius or the high-value work I’m really being paid for.
The emotional rollercoaster was intense.
“I’m letting my clients down”.
“Can I do this now?”.
“Am I in the wrong business?”
“Should I do something simpler until I have a more settled life?”
“How much would it cost me to just refund everyone?”
I’d swing one day to the next…
From knowing, of course this season shall pass and all will be well…
…To feeling like I’m dying, letting everyone down, and everything is going to blow up.
I’ve heard people talk about the emotional rollercoaster of being an entrepreneur. I’d never experienced it like this before.
It hits different when you have a family, health issues, people relying on you. While building out the foundations of a new business.
That’s why I’ve not been publishing.
For over a month I did zero marketing or sales. Only trying to keep my head above water staying on top of serving the clients I had.
What I’ve learnt in this process.
Being ‘in the thick of it’. Creating onboarding systems and basic process documentation is hell on earth for me.
On the flip side, consulting has been super fulfilling.
I’ve figured there’s 3 roles I enjoy in business.
Consulting. Solving problems and being creative. In a set up where someone else handles the leg work.
Creating content. Bringing my ideas to the world.
CEO role. Problem solving / leading from a high-level.
I already knew this about myself. This last season has embedded just how important it is for me to avoid straying from these roles.
Hiring issues.
In the ads management business I hired a friend. The project was to build out the documentation and processes. Unfortunately, he let me down and flaked out.
Hiring is a task I don’t enjoy.
One of the biggest mistakes we made in The IOFBC was terrible hiring.
We were always in such a rush to move forwards. Never pre-emptively building the infrastructure for a new hire to come into. Nor having a pipeline and process for attracting and assessing potential hires.
We were offloading things from our plate because we couldn’t handle it anymore. Giving it to whoever was around that would take it.
It didn’t work out well.
Of about 30 people we made 1 truly good hire. Who was a fit for the role, bought into the mission, and did a good job over an extended period of time.
These hard fought lessons have taught me to invest in the hiring process.
Allow as much time as it takes to find the right person.
And to do it when the need is on the horizon. Not when it was needed yesterday.
I’m currently faced with the choice between 2 flavours of suck.
Do I invest in hiring the right person to help with my process development. Which means a proper hiring process and all that entails.
Or suck it up and do it myself. Which is no fun.
To be honest nowadays Chat GPT can do half of it. I just need to get myself into the headspace of sitting down and starting.
I’m leaning towards doing it myself.
Investing the time into hiring for a temporary role doesn’t seem a good use of my time and energy.
The development of processes is a higher competence task.
While the help I’ll need running the business afterwards is lower level.
Thus, in lieu of an easy fit which I hoped my friend would be… I’ll have to do it myself.
My thinking as it stands now.
Since beginning this business I wasn’t sure which direction I was going to take it, or if it was a long term thing for me.
I had some criteria that I wanted from anything I work on.
Recurring revenue
Simply scaleable
Fun for me to work on
The last few weeks have been about as far from fun as possible. But there were extenuating circumstances.
I don’t think I would have had fun doing any business apart from consulting in the last few weeks.
Consulting is great because my responsibility ends at the end of our call.
My creative thinking, problem solving, experience, insight holds the value.
Meaning no matter what craziness is going on in my life, I can work only in my zone of genius, if I’m consulting.
The reason I’m not exclusively being a consultant is 3-fold.
I don’t want to make it my primary income. That risks losing the joy because I’d be ‘running a consulting business’ and all that entails. Rather than spending my time doing the role of consulting
I’d likely need to expand outside of my existing network to find clients in the short-term. Which means I’ll be doing stuff that isn’t my idea of fun for lead gen
I’m building value for other people. While I can be paid well, I’m not building anything of value for myself. Making it a time-for-money trap
So I love consulting, and will continue to do it, but not as a primary thing.
I want to structure my businesses going forwards being a consultant for my own business.
The ads management agency for example. I am going to be creating very defined SOP’s and hiring people to do the day to day work.
While I do creative strategy and oversight. Which is my zone of genius.
I’m pretty confident I can operate this business with just VA’s and myself doing creative lead. At least up $50k/m before needing higher level employees.
New Offer
I’m putting the final touches on a new front end offer.
A community offer for coaches and service providers.
Solving the “I don’t have enough qualified leads” problem once and for all.
Watch this space, I’ll be coming out with that in the next few days.
My plan is to run people into this as a recurring membership. With ongoing trainings, my lead gen systems, and a true community vibe of helping each other.
Make it a no-brainer for people to get so much value, they’ll stick around for ever.
This will be my lead gen pool for the DFY ad management, with 2 ‘upsell’ offers.
Build out your lead gen infrastructure for you, test and dial in your ads, etc. and then hand over to you. This is what I’ve been doing. As I dial in my process it will get quicker/shorter. Will charge a flat fee for this.
Ongoing ad management. This is a continuation after the build out, if people want me to continue running the systems for them. Will charge a monhtly management fee and % of attributable revenue for this.
I like this set up of offers.
It has a good mix of economics. Recurring revenue, high-ticket offers, and performance based upside potential.
A win across the economics board for me, and a deal that should be a good fit and win-win for anyone who wants to work with me.
Initial goal is to launch the community this week and fill the first 10 spaces.
I’m making it super affordable. This won’t be big money for me, but I want the first group of people in to build it around.
After building out the first month or so I will open the doors for more people.
My thinking on this is that I want to serve people far beyond the value I’m charging.
Making it affordable and delivering a high-level of service. Stacking the odds of people staying around for a long-time.
I know from experience that any new offer will have teething problems and things to figure out. So I’ll limit the first intake.
Smooth out any issues that arise, and then go full tilt with bringing people into the program.
With the community aspect, I feel it’s important to set a strong culture with the first members. It’s easier to do this having closer contact with a limited number of people.
That’s a wrap for today.
Thank you for catching up, I’ll get back to sharing more regularly. There’s a bunch of stuff I’ve been doing or thinking about that I haven’t covered today so lots to talk about.
Until next time,
Phil