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Our Year-end Wins, Flops, & What All Designers Should Audit
87 Plays11 months ago
Listen in as Cass & Amanda discuss our biggest business and life wins and flops of 2024, embarrassing face-palm moments we had, and what you can audit in your own design business to grow a design business that brings you joy and fulfillment.
Resources Mentioned:
Our website: FoxtrotBranding.com
Have a design or business question you want answered on a future episode? Leave a comment on this episode or send us a DM on Instagram.
Timestamps:
(0:00) Intro
(3:27) Our wins this year
(8:02) Our fails this year
(13:11) Our biggest face-palm moments from this year
(19:00) Why you should audit your business at the end of the year
(24:47) Audit questions to ask (and putting ourselves on the hot seat)
(36:23) A free planning workbook we recommend
(37:56) Listener question
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Vibe
00:00:00
Speaker
But I also feel like our audience of people listening, like they're gonna match our vibe. Like we are like grandma's drinking tea. Like that is the vibe. Like we have like your grandma's lukewarm best friend. Like it's really interesting. um You might learn something, but it's probably not gonna be like the piping hot tea talking about like everybody's least favorite influencer online.
Meet the Founders and Episode Focus
00:00:23
Speaker
Hey everyone, welcome to Spill the Tea. We are Cass and Amanda, the co-founders of Foxtrot Branding. We're really excited for another episode today. And in these episodes, we share about navigating our lives as designers and business owners and the challenges and rewards that come up along the way. So in today's episode, we are going to be spilling on our biggest wins this year, our biggest fails, and then talking about why and how you really need to be doing an audit for your business at the end of every year so you can set better goals in
Pre-podcast Rituals and Energy Levels
00:00:50
Speaker
the new year.
00:00:50
Speaker
Yeah, I'm excited. We're going to share, like, the real wins, the real, like, fails or, you know, things we wish we had done differently. So it's going to be good. I've taken my five ants. I've drank all my coffee. So maybe that's what I need before this call. I was like, I'm so tired, like, so low energy. We're like on opposite ends of the energy spectrum today. Yeah. Yeah. I need something. Usually we need my La Croix. La Croix. La Croix.
00:01:18
Speaker
I feel like usually we meet in the middle as far as like energy goes and we're like not super high energy people. We're like usually pretty chill, but I feel like we're more like on opposite ends than we usually are today. yeah Before we dive in, if you have enjoyed this podcast or if you listen to this episode and you like it, don't forget to leave us a rating and review on either Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or if you're watching on YouTube, you can give this video a like because that really does help us out and help us reach more designers with our
Reflecting on the Year
00:01:43
Speaker
podcast.
00:01:43
Speaker
Great. Okay, so let's jump in um this year. Let's talk about like a little recap. How has this year been for us, Cass? It's been, I guess, kind of a mixed bag. it It's felt long um in the way that we were like talking about some things that happened in spring, and that feels like two years ago, even though it was just this past spring. What what do you think? Yeah, it definitely feels like it's been a long year. um I think a lot of things have gone really well. And then some things, which we'll talk about later, have just been like maybe not as fruitful as we had hoped, um which is like a little disappointing. But that's also just kind of how it is in business sometimes. like
00:02:20
Speaker
Not everything
Mental Challenges in Business
00:02:21
Speaker
goes the way you would hope it would go sometimes. But I will say I feel like client wise, we've not really had any like super difficult client situations um or no like difficult clients. Like there's always like little things that you have to problem solve sometimes, which is fine. um But overall, I feel like the clients we've had have been great and like really fun projects this year.
00:02:42
Speaker
Yeah, I feel like our client experience and our process for that has only gotten better every year, and that's really paid off. And overall, like we've hit you know financially most of the goals that we've wanted to. We'll talk about that. But for me, the biggest challenges are always just, I think, mentally, like feeling mentally good about how we're doing. um And we'll talk about why it's important to get into that data so that you can have like a proper, like accurate view of what's actually happening, because it's easy to get down on yourself or Maybe even think you're doing like your emotions override, like what's actually
Celebrating Collaborations and Rebranding
00:03:15
Speaker
happening. Yeah. Yeah. I think that is honestly the number one challenge for most entrepreneurs. Yeah. Owning a business is like very emotional. We've talked about this in past episodes, but it's turbulent. Yeah, it is. Yeah. And let's talk a little bit about like our wins, like what has gone really, really well for us.
00:03:32
Speaker
Yeah, and when we talk about wins, we're always going to bring up things that are not your standard money wins or data wins because we really appreciate the things that just bring us joy and make us feel fulfilled, whether that's something in our business or something that our business allows us to do. We we have kind of a little list here of things, but one for me would definitely be that we've gotten to collaborate with some designers and um some of our friends as a part of our rebrand. That's also one of our wins, but I've really enjoyed getting to work
The Importance of Breaks
00:04:05
Speaker
with other designers. And I think you can sense that and I can see it in our business, the result of that, because what we're putting out is as far as like content goes and just for our rebrand, it's been really cool to be able to see other people's like hands on it.
00:04:18
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. I think like the rebrand was definitely one of my proudest like thing proudest moments, I guess, for the year. and like It was just really nice to finally have our branding, and to have the time to like refresh our branding. so I think like you know business just kind of it just it keeps going. like It never stops, so it just felt like there wasn't time to like do the rebrand.
00:04:40
Speaker
But it really needed to be done, and so it felt really good to have that finish and feel like the brand finally caught up to like the level of work that we're delivering for our own clients. It felt a lot more updated and just a lot more personal to us, so I was really excited to finally have that done. We put so much work and so much time into that.
00:04:59
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's so relatable for most designers to feel like I'm putting out really good work for my clients, but it can feel stressful when you feel like your own branding, your website design doesn't reflect that level. And that is something that can kind of just sit, I guess, like on the back burner and feel like a bummer because you want you know your own platforms to represent your skill and just where you're at currently. like I think some of our branding did feel outdated to what we're
Launching the Podcast
00:05:25
Speaker
doing now. So it it was a lot of work and a lot of energy that isn't necessarily, we did this thing and we're getting this immediate payoff for it, but being able to just feel proud of what we're putting out, that is an immediate payoff that I'm so glad we put the energy in for. Yeah, for sure. I think it's worth it in the long run.
00:05:42
Speaker
I think another win for me would definitely just be that we've been able to consistently this year take the same amount of time off as far as our scheduled breaks go in the winter and the summer, which we talk about ad nauseam, because we love taking breaks. yeah We love a vacation. We love a vacation. we I also snuck in probably a few more vacations than you, Amanda, this year, which has kind of flipped, I feel like. Maybe, I don't know. From past years. I took a fall week-long little break.
00:06:11
Speaker
and Yeah, like a beach trip. and a Beach trip, something else I can't remember. But it's just so nice to be able to have that flexibility of like, hey, my husband's family you know wants to go on a beach trip this week. We don't have the ah client projects scheduled for that week. like Could we make it happen? And you know yeah as a business owner, you do have to like keep an eye on things. I'm going to bring my computer. I'm going to check in. But it was really nice to be able to take those.
00:06:35
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. I think it's like you're always going to have like a little bit of responsibility, you know, to maintain things. But we usually do do a really good job during like that summer and winter break to like totally unplug. But there's like a lot of prep work that goes into that. So I'm so glad that we've like figured that out, though, because there's so many designers that we know who like haven't taken a vacation or anytime often forever. And I think that they just like forget, like that they can do that or they fear that like they'll lose money and stuff.
00:07:04
Speaker
So we've done like a whole episode on all of that but I think that's definitely worth listening to if you guys are in the same place where you've like not taken a vacation I think that's like one of my favorite things about what we do in our business our biggest win is like being able to take long extended time off from work. yeah yeah So worth it. I think another big win that like we have to mention is launching this podcast.
Managing Client Requests
00:07:26
Speaker
That was a huge win for us. We honestly don't have really specific goals for it. um We mainly just wanted to turn our email newsletter into a podcast so that we could
00:07:39
Speaker
more like authentically you know share about the business topics we want to and just have a more personal connection that's kind of the goal for it and we've we've learned how to podcast put it out on the platforms figured that out so i'm really glad that we've done that and i i feel excited that we've been able to do it every month and excited to continue it next year yeah it's been a fun new edition for sure Okay, so now diving into some of our biggest bombs, what have we like not done super well or what's been tough this year? um Do you want to share one? Yeah, um I think one thing that's taken up a lot of our energy, not necessarily ah in a completely bad way, but is just ongoing client requests and continuing to work with our clients and figure out like our system for that because we changed it a little bit.
00:08:28
Speaker
him by creating a byte client request form because we're trying to basically get our project management so that we can bring someone on and keep things super organized and make that transition easy. So that's just been I guess like a transition of figuring that out, figuring out how we want to adapt our pricing a little bit for it, when we're going to do it, the timelines. That's taken up a lot of our energy and you're always going to have learning experiences when you try something new in like a new format. So there's been Some things were like, m maybe that that type of service can't be worked into this like package or this thing, this format we wanted to do it in. For context, by client requests, we just mean like ongoing like one-off work. so like Sometimes clients will come to us like just needing, I don't know, like a brochure or like sometimes they've asked for packaging, stuff like that. and so We're trying to figure out, like like we have different hour packages, just figuring out how all that works and like how to deal with the timelines with that on top of our other project timelines has been like,
00:09:26
Speaker
A little bit tricky to figure out, but it has brought in a lot of extra income for us. So like that is kind of a win. like It's definitely cushioned our our revenue quite a bit.
Social Media Frustrations
00:09:35
Speaker
And we've actually surprisingly had a lot of our clients like need extra work this year, which has been great. yeah But we just need to like figure out those kinks a little bit more. But I think by next year, we'll have it down better.
00:09:45
Speaker
Yeah, I think so too. And we don't offer a lot of technical retainers just due to the type of businesses we work with and like what they need. And what we want to do. And what we want to do. It doesn't always fit into a retainer model, which can make it a little bit more complicated to do all these like one-time requests. So we're figuring it out, but I think we're definitely getting there and in terms of smoothing it out and making it more of like a repeatable
Adapting to Market Shifts
00:10:11
Speaker
system. For sure, yeah. and Let's see, one that I can think of too that's been tough has been like just battling with like Instagram and TikTok and I still don't feel personally like I have a good system for TikTok creation. like I keep saying for like the last year, like I'm gonna get back into it. and I'm gonna have a good system. I still have not figured that out for myself. I don't know what I need to do to get myself to make more content more consistently. I always just feel like I don't have a good idea or I don't have enough time to actually do it.
00:10:39
Speaker
I don't like a good process for batching. So that's kind of like what I'm personally struggling with. But with Instagram, it's just like, I don't know, I'm sure you guys all feel the same. It just feels like everything sucks. Like all the social media platforms suck. It's really hard to grow. It's really slow on Instagram. It feels like we'll put stuff out and like hardly anyone will see it. yeah it's just It's just hard when you try to put so much work into like creating good content, but I don't even know what's good and what's not because the numbers don't look that much different from one post to another. so it's like I really can't tell. I'm finding that balance too. We're not good at Instagram. I don't know. It can feel depressing. I think a lot of people relate to just feeling depressed about Instagram specifically. and As far as the numbers go, it's like, well, I know that
00:11:25
Speaker
Likes and that kind of data are not always Indicative of how your content is doing like for example We've posted a few client-focused posts this week and they're not doing great like they're doing mid But we got a client inquiry from Instagram this week that I think was a result of one of those posts so it's hard to find that balance though of feeling of knowing is that exactly what's a Success, you know, it's like what's working what's not? Yeah I think in in light of some of that data, like when we do our full-on planning meeting for next year, we're going to be thinking about, like do we need to be putting less energy into this? like Seeing what is actually paying off the most, because I don't think we're going to ever leave Instagram fully. I know some designers who have and have just shifted to email marketing and like SEO, but it's not paying off in the way that it was two years ago. That's for sure. We know that.
00:12:17
Speaker
Yeah. I think another thing that's been kind of ah a struggle for us, not like a full-on bomb or anything, but it's just adapting and figuring out our products in terms of our templates and courses. We've been making some updates to them this year, but it's been just interesting to see overall how the environment is shifting and how people view like courses and templates and you know what people are wanting out of that and then also just making sure that formats we're doing launches in and and releasing the templates and make sense for both what we want to do and what our audience is looking for so we've just kind of been like adapting that and I think we the same kind of for what we were saying with social media we have some plans for how we want to
00:13:04
Speaker
kind of change that and maybe change how we're launching stuff and putting it out there as far as templates and courses and products go.
Podcast Naming Regrets
00:13:11
Speaker
Okay, so we thought it would be fun to share a quick little face palm moment. Was there a moment this year, Cass, where you're like, oh my gosh, like why did we do that? I can't believe that happened. like What was your face palm moment this year? Yeah, ah I think the one that comes to my mind is um naming our podcast, Spill the Tea. We've talked about that because me and Amanda are pretty like ah naturally wholesome people, are like pretty drama. We don't want to be gossiping online. And with the reason we named it Spill the Tea is because we've had our pod or our newsletter, our email newsletter that we've called Spill the Tea for the last couple of years. And I think when we started that like Spill the Tea was, you know, kind of the
00:13:52
Speaker
really hot, like culturally relevant name for stuff. And I think it's faded out a little bit. And now I think the connotation is with like drama channels, you know, or like gossip channels. But we just kept the name for the podcast. But then after we started, I was like, I think, you know, thinking about the searchability of it and stuff. I'm like, also, does this make sense for like our personalities and type of podcast? Yeah. Well, I think one of our design friends was the one who brought it up to you she because she was helping us like design some stuff and She was like, you guys need to spill some hotter tea. like yeah like Your tea is not that hot. I'm like. Your tea is looking warm. We are a little timid about like, we don't wanna, I don't know, there's a lot of podcasts out there who will share names of other businesses, share lots of details, and like that's just not the type of podcast we wanna have. We like spilling the tea, like the behind the scenes details of like our business and what we've learned to help you guys. I think like we could definitely do more episodes about like
00:14:49
Speaker
our hot takes may be on like industry relevant things, um but that's just not always like our first like favorite thing to discuss either. It's just kind of funny. like Why did we name this, fill the tea then? like I don't know. Maybe there will be a rebrand for the podcast. If we keep doing the podcast, we'll see. If we really can't like get any more juicy or dramatic, if we just can't pull it out of ourselves. We're just not dramatic and sassy enough. like We just don't have enough tea.
Financial Oversights
00:15:18
Speaker
We're trying though. I think as we continue, hopefully we'll like, you know, feel a little bit more comfortable on camera and like, you know, be able to be a little bit more juicy. But I also feel like our audience, the people listening, like they're going to match our vibe. Like we are like grandma's drinking tea. Like that is the vibe. Like we have like your grandma's lukewarm best story. Like it's really interesting.
00:15:41
Speaker
um You might learn something but it's probably not gonna be like the piping hot tea talking about like everybody's like Least favorite influencer online or whatever like right gonna be that um What was my face? yeah your event um Oh I think recently we were just looking at like our finances and realized like they were like subscriptions we were paying for that we didn't realize we were paying for and we're like We were like, we have a bookkeeper who like looks over all of our stuff, but we trust her so much. This is not good advice. Don't listen to us. Like we trust her so much that we like don't always like double check all of our like expenses on our bank statement and stuff. Um, but she doesn't know like what we're spending and what we're not like meaning to spend on. So we were like, okay, we probably should start doing like a check of our, our like actual statements more often.
00:16:32
Speaker
Right. Just to make sure that we don't have subscriptions on there that we don't want to pay for. This is not a Rocket Money advertisement, by the way. We're not going to be like, by the way, this podcast is sponsored by Rocket Money. Maybe one day. I do have Rocket Money. Is Rocket Money bad? I don't know. I have Rocket Money. I have it too.
00:16:50
Speaker
I haven't been using it. I don't use it. I don't know how effective it is if you don't ever open the app. I'd rather not categorize my expenses that are happening from the months of November and December. Yeah. but The gift giving expenses, um they just aren't what they are. Yeah. ands up We don't need to look at it. as far So yeah, we've had some failures, you know, maybe goals we didn't meet in the way we thought we would. We've had some and face palm moments throughout the year, but we're not beating ourselves up over it or seeing it as like a reflection of our self worth or you know, anything like that. It's just it's part of business and they're expected failures are expected and
00:17:34
Speaker
But also overall, like I think it is important to look at like the successes we've had because like I think we've definitely had more successes and failures for sure this year. And I think we should definitely
Year-end Business Audit
00:17:46
Speaker
be proud of that. I think that's one thing that like we kind of are always the best at is like looking at our successes and like actually enjoying that success and like celebrating that we tend to like focus on the negative sometimes because we're always like we got to push through or we have to like adapt to this thing this problem or whatever so that's like something we are always trying to work on it's like how can we actually like celebrate and enjoy the good things because we actually have done pretty well even if we didn't hit every single goal in the way we hoped we've we've done really well overall we've supported our lifestyles, we've taken vacations, like we've had great clients that we really love, great students in our courses. So all good things. ah Yeah, I think it's that capitalistic mindset of like that gets ingrained in didn't hit that number. You're a failure. grow and You know, like you've always got to grow, grow, grow, whereas like, yeah, I mean, that's never really been our goal. Like, yes,
00:18:37
Speaker
we do want to increase certain you know revenue parts of our business or in other areas but like just maintaining is an excellent thing for a lot of businesses and a lot of people like either you know you do not always have to be.
00:18:53
Speaker
growing up in a straight line for your goals and revenue. Yeah, consistent income is a good goal in itself. Absolutely. Okay, so let's move into talking about why you should audit your business at the end of the year or it just kind of like take a step back and ask yourself some big overarching questions. Yes, ask yourself some specific questions about your data too, but I think it's important because you need to like take that time, first of all, to sit down and reflect. And it's like one of those things that's like ah going to therapy or journaling, I feel like, because it's like, I don't need to do it, you know, but once you sit down and actually start to reflect, it's like, oh, damn, why am I not reflecting more? This is actually really beneficial.
00:19:41
Speaker
Yeah, you like discover things about yourself or about your business and it's really helpful, especially with business related stuff like you can actually look at like hard numbers and like use that to inform your decisions. So It's very important. Yeah, you guys are probably like, yeah, duh, that's a good thing. But i just i I sometimes forget to sit down and take the time to do it. So I think it's important. And especially for me, because we've like we've touched on it a little bit, I sometimes get too down on myself about things or think data that I think is actually is one way and it's not as good as we thought it would be. But it's actually we were actually fine. um and yeah i think Sometimes you'll be like if if a month felt kind of hard or if it felt kind of slow, you would assume that the business wasn't doing well. Then we would like pull up our finance doc and it's like, oh, we already hit our goal for the month. Like we're fine. But if it felt slow for some reason, like, you know, you might assume that we were not doing well.
00:20:34
Speaker
Yeah, I think overall it's like super important to audit your business because auditing your business and like looking at hard numbers like actually gives you clarity and that's going to help you know what's working what's not because you really don't want to be wasting your time. I think
Freelancing as a Business
00:20:48
Speaker
a lot of us will kind of just like fly by the seat of our pants when we're like running a business but If you're at least a year in, then you have like a year's worth of data and you definitely don't want to ignore that so you can continue growing your business and and being more effective and efficient as the years go by.
00:21:04
Speaker
That's one thing I was going to ask you like because it definitely I think makes sense if you're like a year in or more and you're more established and you can kind of more traditionally look at all these metrics and ask these questions. But what do you think about for people who are maybe just freelancing as more of a side gig kind of casually or have only been in business like officially for a year or less? like do you What would you recommend as far as auditing goes? Like the the know the same process? or I mean, I think if you don't have any hard numbers to really look at, I mean, even if you if you work for with a few clients, you have some numbers to look at, right. But if you don't have anything, you can still really go by just like qualitative data, like you can kind of also just like ask yourself emotionally how certain things are going. Like if you have a service that feels like a pain in the butt to do every single time, maybe you should adapt and change that service and see if there's something else you could do. So I think like,
00:21:57
Speaker
Like I said, it's just like therapy, it's just like journaling. Sit and take time to pause and really just think on how your business feels, how things have been going for the last couple months or year or whatever. And if you have the numbers, great, look at them. If you don't, you can still go by what feels good. Because I think so many people tend to forget that if you're owning your own business, you're not working for someone else, you have so much power and control over what your day-to-day looks like. So if you're not happy with something, you have the power to change that.
00:22:26
Speaker
you can adapt your services, you can change change your pricing. um So I think like the end of the year is a good time to like kind of do ah a little look at that and do a refresh for the new year. I think there's also an important mindset shift that some designers Need to have if you are freelancing on the side or you know, maybe you don't consider your design work like a full-time business Or you don't call it a business. You just say I you know, I'm a freelancer I think it's important to still consider and take on the mindset of like you you are running a business You know if you're doing services for people if you're paying taxes
00:23:02
Speaker
that is you know a business and you're a business owner, you could call yourself a freelancer too. But I still think you should be taking the time to like reflect on these things and not just be like, oh, well, I'm just you know doing some freelance services. I'll see how it goes next year. Like you said, Amanda, like you do have control over how you want to run things. And maybe it's important to reevaluate why you started freelancing. Maybe if you've been just wanting to supplement X amount of income for your family with these services. Maybe that's changed. Maybe you want to step into a new goal for yourself or doing it in a different way. Don't, I guess, don't discount yourself just because you aren't running a full time business like we are, like other designers might be.
00:23:45
Speaker
Yeah and i think like at the very least you should at least be like analyzing your pricing and like adjusting that for inflation like at the very least that should be like the the smallest change you're making i would at least start there like i'm very against like like don't be giving away free work free money all the time like i get it we tell you to do that for like your first like client or two just to get some portfolio work but past that even if it is just freelance stuff I think you should still treat it like with treat it with respect and treat yourself with respect and like pay yourself well and of course like how much you charge will change over time but I think it's important to like
00:24:23
Speaker
Be intentional with what you're doing and make your time worth worth it you know and like charge well for what you're doing because you provide a lot more value than you probably think you are.
Sharing the Audit Process
00:24:32
Speaker
No matter what level of business you're running, make sure that you're running your business and it's you're not letting it dictate your life or control you. Make sure you're staying in charge of it. I think doing an audit at the end of the year is really important for making that happen. Amanda, do you want to talk about some of the audit questions we'd like to ask ourselves and what that process looks like for us at the end of the year?
00:24:54
Speaker
Okay, so we'll touch on a few questions here, but we do have a free workbook with even more. So if you want to dive into, you know, analyzing, auditing your year and planning for the next, it's called the map out your year workbook. And the link will be in the show notes for this. So um one of the questions that we like to start with is just asking about how you feel like what did you really love doing this year? And then also you can ask yourself, what did you hate doing? So again, like, don't let your business run Run you like if you hate doing something like can you hire that out? Could you change that? You know, like could you charge more for it? We definitely do that. There's things we hate doing. Yeah, we're going to charge more for that because we want it to be worth the effort. You can ask yourself, where do you need help in your business? So again, if there's anything you can outsource,
00:25:41
Speaker
That's a great question to think on, because there's also a lot of things that you can outsource for cheaper than you might realize. um and I'm not suggesting like not paying other people well, but I just think some people might not know that like you can hire out like a junior designer for a lot cheaper than like your own rate might be right now, or that could help you book multiple projects. You can still pay them well, but you're bringing in more revenue for the business, stuff like that. Like a a virtual assistant? Virtual assistant, yeah. That's something we're kind of thinking on.
00:26:09
Speaker
for the new year too. Another question would be, what do you want to do differently in your life and or business in the next year? So is there anything like do you want extra vacation days? Do you want to take Friday's half off? Like, what is something you've always wanted to do? And like, can do you think you can make that possible in the new year? and And maybe you don't have to go straight into planning, right? Then answering that question, but just like, what do you really want? Like, what would make you super happy to have next year in your life or your business?
00:26:37
Speaker
And then you can kind of reverse engineer and think like, how can I get there? What are the steps I need to take to to make that happen? Yeah, I think you really big picture because I think the the way we like structure these questions in the map out your year workbook is we do have the questions about specific data, which is incredibly important and how you should be basing a lot of your decisions. But we think it's really important to start.
00:27:01
Speaker
from the big picture questions of, you know, what did you love? What did you hate? How do you feel? Because that is going to set the tone for your next year too, to sit and just do some reflection about these questions. So definitely recommend getting the workbook so that you can see all of them. um But Amanda, do you want to do like a hot seat where we just go back and forth and ask each other some of these questions? Yeah, sure. We haven't done our year-end planning meeting Yeah, we're going to get there, but maybe this can like prompt us for some of the things the we know we want to talk about. okay um Amanda, what did you love doing this year? Crap, I haven't thought of the answer yet. What did I love doing this year? and Honestly, your answers to these questions, just so you guys know when you're filling out this workbook, it could be something in business, but it also could just be something in your life. you know I think whatever comes to your mind, like
00:27:57
Speaker
Yeah, because i the first thing I thought of was not business-related. I was like, what did I love doing? I was like, ooh, I loved like the trips I took, like especially that summer trip. like That was just like a lifelong dream. I went i went to like Switzerland, Italy, and France, and that trip gave me so much more. It made me feel so much more refreshed and gave me so much inspiration, which I then used for our brand, our rebrand. So it kind of affected the business in a little bit of a way. but That was like my favorite thing. It was just like being able to take like a long trip to somewhere amazing and that fulfilled me and made me happier and made me feel more creatively inspired so that I'm but like better able to do my job. What did you love doing this year?
00:28:38
Speaker
um i think i The main thing that comes to my mind is just getting to work with clients who I really enjoy working with and who honestly feel like friends. We get to work with a decent amount of clients who are actually pretty close to our own age or even younger.
00:28:53
Speaker
True, a lot of them are younger. It's like rude. You're running these incredible businesses and you're like five years early. They're so successful. It's crazy. That's crazy. But yeah, I really loved getting to collaborate, honestly. And a lot of those younger clients that we get to work with or the ones that are our age often also tend to be artists and creatives themselves. So we get to collaborate on projects where they actually do some of the artwork that gets integrated into the branding that we do or into the website design and i just get a lot of fulfillment out of getting to collaborate in that way and we just have a lot of mutual respect for each other and we appreciate each other's creativity we're like how could we you know work together to create an end product that is you know so much better than what we could have each done on our own so i've really enjoyed that plus they always have really cute products.
00:29:44
Speaker
And that's why I'm so glad we like shifted into doing like pretty much only e-commerce now um because I love like getting to see all these unique brands and like all their products that they create. like And I did a lot of my Christmas shopping from most of them too, which is really fun. like it's It's fun to be able to shop from like websites that we built and stuff. It just feels very fulfilling.
00:30:06
Speaker
It really does. If you want to check some of them out, some of our favorites have been Good Luck Test, goodlucktest.com. um Apartment 5 with two I's. That wasn't from this year, but we love getting to work with her. The Outlaw Oracle has been a really cool one. um She does country music inspired tarot products, so she has like an oracle deck and a honky tonk tarot coloring book, which is so cool. Candles and stuff. I love it.
00:30:32
Speaker
The other one I was just going to list is Inkwell Threads. Great if you're like a bookish person, you love love books, love all the classics. She's got so many fun like designs for all those. Yeah, she else she her t-shirt designs are so good. They're so good. Really original, really well done stuff you'd want to wear. I did a big shopping haul from her for my friends and family. and she I really considered for myself purchasing some of her band books products.
00:31:00
Speaker
because she has a really cool like band books world tour sweatshirt that has like a list of all the band books but it looks like a rock i should kind of like sweatshirt it's so cool and I actually just saw today that there's like some new book bandings about to take place in Tennessee.
00:31:18
Speaker
So backwards. I almost wish I had bought that even though I don't need another sweatshirt and I didn't need to spend the money. I just want to like- We need the list. I mean, I want to give the finger to the government in some way. I'm like, oh. Yeah. Well, because she donates part of the your purchase to like programs that help fight that too. so Yeah, she has a couple products that go specifically to certain charities, so just so many cool clients. Okay, so what did you maybe hate this year? Was there anything you loved doing this year? I think I'm finding more and more that I don't enjoy live launches as much as I used to. It's like for the courses and stuff. yeah for like our products we don't we don't do any live launches for like services but for the product side of our business it just isn't it for me anymore it really takes a toll on me mentally it really stresses me out it puts me in like just just a really stressed out state so that's one of my least favorite um parts of the year and that's why I think part of what we're gonna like
00:32:21
Speaker
adapt so that we don't have to have like certain times of the year where it's just like stress mode. um Another hot seat question for you, Amanda, where do you need help in the business? Where do we need help in the business? I think we've both talked about this a lot where we both feel like we really need a VA. We have someone we think we're going to hire soon and like we just need help because there's so many tasks that go into like onboarding and like managing inquiries and stuff. and that really is eating into both our days a lot so that would become the first thing outside of that we really want to hire a junior designer and maybe for branding maybe for web maybe for both we're not sure yet that's kind of maybe like a down the line twenty twenty five kind of thing but i don't know just having more team members like contractors to help manage the workload and manage like daily tasks would be awesome okay what ah cast do you want to do differently in your life for business next year
00:33:18
Speaker
Oh, that's a good question. Maybe this is kind of small, but I think I would like to get back to always taking half day Fridays if we could, which we did a lot at the beginning of this year, but then there were just sometimes because we were doing a lot of extra work of rebranding, redoing our website, just a lot of stuff where we didn't get to take off half day Fridays all the time. So that's one small thing I can think of that I would like to make sure.
00:33:46
Speaker
we do consistently next year. Yeah. Yeah, that really helps with our sanity for sure. Yeah. Anything come to your mind that you want to do differently in your life or business? I feel like I would kind of like to try like time blocking or something. It's something I've like looked into just like ADHD struggles. I really struggle with time management or like knowing how long things will take um or also just having like almost feel like I need like a time crunch to get things get things done sometimes.
00:34:12
Speaker
So I've kind of thought like maybe time blocking would help which we already kind of do to an extent of like we block out certain times that are like just for these types of calls or those types of calls or these types of meetings. um And like I have certain tasks that are like assigned to certain days but I kind of curious about like time blocking even further like maybe that would help me because I feel like sometimes I'll like put too much on my plate in a day and then feel like ah annoyed or disappointed if I don't get it all done.
00:34:41
Speaker
or like I won't put enough on there or like not enough like pressure to make myself actually do things. Or I'll be like, Oh, I don't feel like doing that. So I'll do it on another day. But then that's when stuff stacks up on like a stressful day that I didn't know it was going to be so busy. So I feel like I need a better like system there. You have that really cute timer. I do have the timer, which i I have right here. But I kind of forget to use it sometimes. Can you turn it off so you can like see the cute color in it? Yeah. Let me make sure the sound is off. Because the sound, honestly, is very loud, which is annoying to me that it's so freaking loud. Oh, that's aggressive. But it's cute because you can see, you can like set the time and it just slowly takes back. But yeah, I don't like how loud the little alarm is. So it kind of makes me not use it. I can turn it off, but then I feel like I don't look and notice when it's off. But I mean, this would be helpful if I had like, I still feel like I need to assign like blocks of time for tasks maybe. Yeah, that makes me think something I want to do differently next year is probably actually time block batching
00:35:43
Speaker
video creation and content creation. I think that's something we have to do probably next year. I know, but I still haven't figured out how to do it. I don't know. Because then we have to have a time to plan the content before we even make it. So that's something I still have not figured out for myself. I don't have a good system. I need systems for stuff like that. Otherwise, I'm just not going to do it. Yeah. I think that's something we'll... I mean, sometimes I think we've experienced just having goals that we set. We're like, yeah, we're going to try and do it this way.
00:36:11
Speaker
It just doesn't happen at all over the year. So that's why it's important to sit down and reevaluate again and be like, well, that didn't happen that way. ah Let's try a different way because if we keep trying to do that, it's not going to work. So we need a new system or a new plan. So those were some of the audit questions we just went through that are included in the map out your year workbook. The workbook not only has like those broad questions about auditing your business, but it also has a bunch of questions about like your data for your projects and your clients. It's very designer focused. It's made for designers.
00:36:40
Speaker
um And it just has a lot of incredible prompts that are going to help you evaluate your year and then also plan for successful new years and set those specific goals for yourself based off of the data, based off of how you've been feeling. We've done that a map out your year workshop as a paid workshop before, but we're offering you this workbook for free, just as a free download. um And it really is like a lot of the questions we ask ou ourselves.
00:37:05
Speaker
at our year-end planning meeting. So if you want to grab that workbook, you can get it at foxtrotbranding.com slash map dash out dash your dash year, or you can just use the link in ah the show notes if you will want to grab it. But I think it's a great free download just to have, even if you're not sure if you're going to do it, like may as well go ahead and download it just so you
Managing Client Pinterest Boards
00:37:23
Speaker
have it.
00:37:23
Speaker
So we're gonna go ahead and tell you next episode we're going to be doing kind of a part two to this so this episode is all about analyzing your past year what went well what didn't look at your data. Next episode will be early in January so you can actually use this when you're doing your new year planning um and actually follow along and like set your goals and stuff for the year so.
00:37:46
Speaker
It'll be using that same workbook. So whether you download it now or then it's going to be really helpful if you want to listen to that or if you want to use that workbook while listening to the podcast. So to wrap things up for this episode, we're going to end with doing a listener question. And this is a question that comes from one of our Slack groups because we have Slack communities for all of our courses. And somebody had asked in our Squarespace course Slack group, when do you ask your clients for their Pinterest board? um They said this is something they want to be able to review in the strategy meeting together, but they found that having their client create a Pinterest board can be one of those sticking points that like holds up the timeline if the client doesn't
00:38:25
Speaker
Complete it. So Amanda, when do we ask our clients for a Pinterest board? Yeah. So whenever we onboard them into our project management system, which we use Basecamp, we have like templates for everything. So it's kind of already done for us, but they do have a task. So instead of just like kind of telling them, Hey, send us a Pinterest board. We set it as a task with a to-do date. We have like links to everything and we give them specific instructions that we want this Pinterest board.
00:38:50
Speaker
before their strategy meeting with us so we want it to be completely done like the week or two before then that gives them plenty of time and we'll give them some pointers like hey if you you know you can look through our Pinterest if you're looking for inspiration please include me like 20 pins of like brand or web designs or photography things that inspire you or you think connects.
00:39:11
Speaker
to your branding vision. So stuff like that. But yeah, we definitely asked for that well in advance of our actual strategy meeting at the start of the project so that it's already done. And we've not had any sticking point issues, you know, with that, like pretty much all clients have been able to like get that done. And I think that's kind of the benefit of having a project management system as well is that you can set those due dates, it's set up to send them an auto email reminder. I think also because we make it clear the purpose of the board, I think if you're running into a sticking point, it maybe is because your clients are feeling like, Oh,
00:39:43
Speaker
I have to come up with a board of exactly what I want from my branding or my web design. No, that's not the purpose of a Pinterest board for us. Really. It's just going to be a starting point, a jumping off point for a visual reference for the project. So let them know like, Hey, just pin some, a few things that inspire you. This is a jumping off point. We'll go through it at our strategy meeting. Yeah. Cause the way that we do things too, like we're never going to use that client's Pinterest board and then just plug all of that into the mood board and call it a day. We're using that Pinterest board, just like, as Cass said, like a jumping off point.
00:40:13
Speaker
things to look at to compare like, do you like this style font or this one? Which color palette do you lean more towards? And then we will consider that when we're creating the brand direction, but we sometimes don't include what they put in there. It kind of just depends. So you're still the expert, you're still the brand strategist, you're still the brand designer, but you can use like their Pinterest board for like a starting point.
00:40:35
Speaker
Okay, we will wrap up this episode there. Thank you guys so much for joining us and for listening. We hope to see you guys in our next episode where we talk about planning and setting goals for the new year. The link to the map out your year workbook is going to be in the description, so don't forget to grab that free download. And if you have a listener question that you want us to answer, um you can leave a comment on this episode or um Send us a DM on Instagram. We're at Foxtrot Branding. And you can find all of our templates and courses for designers at FoxtrotBranding.com. And we'll see you in our next episode. See you next year. Bye guys.