I have made so many bad decisions in my business. I have done some things and I am just like, “Why in the world did I do that?” And so today I really want to talk to you about a really big, major mistake I just made in my business.
I like to be honest, I like to be transparent. And because I have been talking to you guys about the fact that we are in the process of scaling my business, and basically what that means is that taking my business from where it is today to like way more revenues, serving way more people and employing way more people.
And so any time you’re trying to go from wherever you are to where you want to go, there are all the things. On previous episodes of my podcast, I talked about the people you need to hire, and one of the people you need to hire, of course, is an assistant. Now, I did not make a mistake with my assistant.
I had been really talking to you all about hiring people and slowing down the hiring process and how we wasted a lot of money just trying to fix problems. I mean, just crazy.
And so today I wanted to kind of update you guys on some other things that have been happening in the business and just a really big mistake that I made.
As a content creator, I create content, put it out there on social media, and engage people on social media.
I’m also a coach, a consultant, so I have clients. I do live streams. I serve my audience inside of my Facebook group. I serve people through webinars and things of that nature. I teach people’s podcasts. I teach teams. I speak at live events, I speak at virtual events. I do all the things plus I run my business and I’ve been managing my team and learning how to manage my team and be a better boss and just all this stuff that I have to learn as it pertains to business.
And so a couple of months ago, I hired a virtual assistant. She’s now my executive assistant. And she does a great job. She’s learning and she’s learning to learn with me as I go. And then I decided to bring on an online business manager who could be the me in the company. So instead of everything just coming directly to me, my business manager could help me with launches and things of that nature and just really help more with the team.
So I did not make a mistake in hiring OBM or hiring my assistant. I made the mistake of my behavior as a result of having them. Okay, so here is a mistake that I made and then I’m going to explain to you why I made that mistake. So the mistake that I made was once I hired everybody and I spent time with them and all that type of stuff, walking through things, I found myself falling back.
I found myself just going, “okay, they got it” They can write the emails, they can read the emails, they can check up on everything they can. We bring on somebody who’s brand new to the company. They can manage them, give them what they need and all those types of things. And one of the reasons why I felt that way was because I knew that these two people were very qualified and they had the ability to do that.
But also one of the reasons was because I honestly was tired. You know, I have been honestly working since I was 16 years old and today I am 41 years old. So you’re talking about 20, 25 years of working. Right. And I’m tired. I found myself in this moment in time where it was like, “Okay, I’ve got these two qualified people I can fall back on”
They’re writing great emails, they’re doing this, they’re doing that. They can manage this, they can do this, they can do it, they can do all these things. I was still working, don’t get me wrong, but I could see how I was not being more intentional with like, hey, they wrote emails, but let me really look at this email.
The term is something I would say, “Is there something current? Is this something that serves my audience right?” So for example, we launched our YouTube channel. And I started with this strategy of being able to get more people to watch our videos each week.
And one of the strategies was to send an email talking about the YouTube video on Mondays and then send them to the YouTube channel, which is great. But after about a month or so of this happening, I started having this thought of like, “Wait a minute, when are we actually serving my audience on email?” Meaning, I know people opt into my email, they get their downloadable PDF training and all the things that we give them on our email list.
But also my audience is very used to me sending emails, teaching and serving and not asking for anything, not telling them to go anywhere.
And I tell them to buy anything on a regular basis. Now I do sell things too, but they’re used to me serving and teaching. And for weeks I wasn’t doing that because our weekly video was driving them to YouTube and then our second weekly video was driving them to the podcast.
And finally, one day I said, Are we serving people with these emails? And they were like, No. And I was just like, Okay, whose fault is that? It’s mine. Because they did what I told them to do, you know? And I wasn’t really looking at what we were doing and determining if that’s what we should be doing. And so I was like, I don’t even know how many people we lost in the process.
Like my email. I have no idea the folks we lost, but I know we lost a lot of people in that process. But I had this moment where I said, “Okay, I need to get back to serving people” And that Monday weekly email. And I could still encourage them to go and watch the video on YouTube, but I have to serve them.
So then when we were opening the doors to our course, monetizing the talk, I felt the same thing happened. And it’s basically where instead of me being very like taking a lot of time and energy, educating my audience on how to take a change, I was really enhanced and all the different new abilities you can do with TikTok and ads and the business and all that type of stuff.
I was like, I was doing more other things, but there’s so many things that go along with the business, right? There’s accounting, there is payroll, there is HR. There is finding a newbie with a higher training, then being a content creator. There’s all these things, you know what I mean?
And I just really found myself just not being fully present in the things that were the most important, which is our Monday emails and then the communication that when we were offering people an opportunity to join my course.
Now we still have amazing students that enroll inside of our course, right? They see the value, whether I was on it or not in my email, they still saw the value, but I had this moment in time where I said, I am not keeping the main thing.
The main thing, right? So what does that mean? So when I was in network marketing, one of the phrases that we had was keep the main thing. The main thing means that there’s always going to be all these things, but you have to make sure that you keep the main thing, the main thing and the main thing changes depending on what’s happening in the business. So the main thing as it pertains to email was, Hey, you’ve got to serve these people and get an opportunity to enroll in months at the top.
And the main thing was not the other things like training and HR and accounting and all those other things. They just were not, they weren’t the main thing. And I just didn’t keep it. I didn’t keep it there, you know, and in the process of that, we had brought somebody on board to work with us as a virtual assistant through copywriting, and she was only with us for a couple of days. And she left.
And, you know, I said to myself, Oh, no, this one’s my fault, period. You know this person came on board. I should not have brought this person on while we were getting ready for our three day challenge. I should not have done that. I should have waited until I had the time and the space to spend with this person.
But I didn’t do that because I knew we needed some additional hands and all that. So huge, huge mistake because as you know, I lost a good talent, someone who could have been really, really good with the business. And I just didn’t have the space and the time to really be intentional about now is not the time.
I should’ve told myself that you can bring her on in two weeks or a month, but you just can’t do it right now. I did not do that. And so then here we are with this episode here, because, you know, the good thing is that there’s always amazing people that are looking for work, right? There’s always an opportunity to give a person the opportunity to want to work with you if they want to.
So we always open the doors, people that they can work with. That’s no problem. But my point in saying that is that because I made a huge mistake of one not keeping the main thing. And then not actually being fully present with what I was asking my team to do and how they were doing.
It wasn’t what we normally do. I found myself just like being disconnected from my audience on email and I was honestly a little bit disconnected from my audience online as well because that was so inundated with everything else. And this is why I understand when men say, Listen, I cannot do this with you right now.
I’ve got to do this or whatever. Or I’ll hear men who say, I am not dating right now, right? That this is my main focus. I’ve got to focus on this thing right now. I understand it because when something is true, what they’re feeling, when something is that big and that important, you know, you pour all everything into it like you just pour everything you got into that thing that doesn’t leave a lot of space for the other stuff, right?
And then the relational standpoint, like if you are so focused on your business, like so lasered in, then that means you really don’t have the time and attention that’s needed to cultivate a brand new relationship because when you start daily use are spending hours hanging out with them, hours on the phone, our texts and our thinking about them and all that type of stuff, it’s the same thing.
So when I think about it, you know, if you’re going to launch a product or service or you’re going to hire people, you can’t do them at the same time. And that was a big mistake that I made that like, now, that we’re not offering the course at this point in time, I can about even more time and attention to the people that we are bringing on board and we have brought on board to the company and cultivate them and help them become the best members of our team possible, you know what I mean?
And then I can be the best boss possible, you know, and then when it’s time to bring on newer people, now I have the space to look at what I’m really looking for. I really have the time to like those people and not just bring somebody on initially.
Like, for example, we’ve been working on bringing on a person to manage our Pinterest account. And initially in the midst of all that, I brought on the team, it was very low cost, only $7 an hour, and they taught me a lot of stuff really quickly.
But one of the things I did not vet with them was where was their onboarding questionnaire? They didn’t ask me a bunch of questions about me, my business, my, my audience or any of that. They just started working on my Pinterest account.
Now, the good thing about it was they did get to optimize the profile, But I was like, well, what are you guys going to find out what our goals are? How are you going to lead people to our automated things that they can opt into? And then how are you going to help us lead to sales? And they just didn’t have all these answers.
And so I had them for like two or three days and I was like, “Okay, this is not working out because I didn’t just need traffic to my Pinterest” I needed a strategy of what are we doing?
Because if we’re going to provide content to these people, we need to know what we’re doing. And so I just kind of said to myself, pause, post the job, and then you can start interviewing people as time permits, but don’t commit to anybody until you really are able to spend a substantial amount of time with a few candidates.
Tell them what your expectations are. Tell them what your goals are for your business, and ask for their detailed plan of how they’re going to help you accomplish it. And it just took me a while to, like, pull back and go, “Hey, do this first, right?”
So that is today’s article. That’s a big mistake that I made in my business, but I’m so grateful that I didn’t ruin my business and that I didn’t wreck my business.
I just had to make some changes.
If you’re business owner or you have a full time job and you’re starting a business, I want you to think about some of the things that I share today, because like one of the beautiful things you can do is you can avoid certain traps, you can avoid certain hurdles, you can avoid things that happen to me by listening and watching and working with people like me who’ve already made the mistake. Right?
So it’s kind of like a woman who has never gone through a divorce and said, what are some red flags? She can ask a question. I can give her a list of red flags.
But if I’ve never had a child before and if I want to know, what is it like to go through the birthing process and then the after birth? What is that like? I need to talk to women that have birth kids and then they can really give me some they can prepare me for.
It’s just kind of like I wish somebody prepared me for when I go viral, but anyway, I didn’t know.
So, now, I prepare my students on how to prepare before you go viral or when you go viral.
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