7: Reflecting on 2024: Wins, Challenges, and Trends for Creative Entrepreneurs

Hello and welcome to the Product Growth Lab podcast hosted by Andrew George and Melissa Biggall. This is the podcast for creative business owners who want to grow their businesses without overwhelm or massive investment. Each episode we explore actionable strategies, real-life stories, and insights from business owners and experts who know what it takes to succeed. Whether you're just starting out or looking to scale, we're here to help you grow your business on your own terms. Subscribe and join us each week as we dive into practical advice and inspiring stories to fuel your growth journey. This is the Product Growth Lab. Let's get started. So we need to start off with an announcement. This is our final episode of the podcast for 2024. But of course, we'll be back next year with lots of exciting stuff, and we'll talk about that later. But in this episode, we're going to reflect a little bit on everything that happened in 2024, both during the time of the podcast, which has only been going for a few episodes so far, what we've done since the start of the year in our own businesses and what we've seen in our clients' businesses and just in the small business world as a whole. 2024 has been another rollercoaster, both for us and for businesses as a whole. Things are always going on in the business world, and we have worked out the other side, and hopefully 2025 is a little bit smoother sailing. With what's going on in the world, I doubt it will be. So we'll still be here with all of the advice and tips we have to kind of navigate what's coming. But we want to I don't know, say thank you for being with us in these first few episodes of the podcast. We're like amazed at so much we've done so far, the amount of content we've been able to get up in just a couple of months of hosting the podcast.

It's been fun. It's been great. And biggest thing, I don't know, like tell me if you agree with this, Andrew, like we've talked about doing a podcast for years, I think. At least back in 2013, we talked about It's like, you need to tell you to do a podcast. And we've talked so much about doing the thing. And then this year we just sat down and used one of our trends from 2024 that we talked about in a few minutes and banged out. And now we record every week and like we're doing a pretty dang good job of just coming here and kind of like, where am I, where am I trying to go with it? Like stuff that you talk about doing in your business and then taking the step to actually doing the thing is so rewarding. And like, we're here to say thank you for— if you've been listening for the past few episodes, as I'm sure we're trying our best, we hope you're learning a little bit and that you're at least entertained if nothing else on these. But like, taking that step to actually— from talking about something to actually doing it— like, that's been a big thing, I think, in 2024 for both of us, uh, in our business and our personal life, from both ends. Of just talking about doing stuff, stopping just talking about it and actually taking the first steps into doing it. And even more so beyond doing it privately, taking it public. So I'd like— we didn't just record podcast episodes, we published them. Because I can't tell you how many YouTube episodes are recorded on my computer and never made it onto YouTube. Or yeah, you know, social media, it was email.

I think from the very beginning of us having this kind of joint venture thing Personally, I've had a podcast in my head and I would, like, we started off, we did Facebook Lives every week and I used to always say, we could repurpose these as podcasts. You know, these could be podcasts. Hey, I found this podcast recording tool that lets us stream to Facebook. I've kept trying to subtly leave hints from the very beginning. And finally, after all these years, it's here and I wish we'd done it sooner. We're really excited to see where that goes. It's an, like, our initial Facebook Lives were kind of like our podcast, but we're getting into it and learning on the go in a different format. This one we get to edit and make it look like we're really smooth and professional. I'm not sure that comes across.

That's true. Well, I don't know how professional we come across, but it's smoother than the Facebook Lives, that's for sure.

Yeah. And it's definitely easier because speaking of challenges that came up in 2024, it is now a total nightmare to stream into a Facebook group. I think we should kind of shift towards talking a little bit about Twitch. 2024 and kind of what's happened this year, because we keep trying to get there and we might as well just let it happen. There's been a ton of big shifts that have happened in 2024, and the most obvious one that has been bubbling under for a little bit before 2024, but definitely came to the forefront this year is AI. Whether you love it and have integrated it into every day of your life, or you're totally against it, it all has some sort of impact on your life and how you're running your business. And it's almost unavoidable because it's been integrated into every Everything. Even if you're like, you know what, I'm not gonna use it in my business, washing machines have AI. I'm not quite sure how much of an AI feature it is. I think there's a lot of, we're just gonna stick the word AI into stuff. But the kind of generative AI, ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude type stuff is kind of what we're talking about. And kind of being integrated into tools like Klaviyo and Shopify, all of them have this kind of AI tools built in.

And if you're a SaaS tool and you don't have AI, you're not surviving.

But I think it's something that is obviously just going to grow in 2025. And like, obviously there's benefits and drawbacks to that. It's not like it's a whole podcast episode or series in its own. So we'll just kind of touch on it a little bit. But I know personally it's something I have tried to embrace. I've looked a little bit about the ethics a little bit. And another thing we'll talk about in a minute is sustainability, and there is some kind of sustainability issues when it comes to AI, but I know that there's people working on that as well. Hopefully, some of those effects are negated a little bit as we go into 2025. But it has a ton of benefits to small businesses. That being able to get stuff up quickly, check things, sometimes It's like you can use it to write a product description, but sometimes I will sit with the ChatGPT app and have a conversation in the kind of voice mode. And being able to have that back and forth is really amazing. And sometimes you need to do that with a real person, but sometimes when you just need something quickly, or you need to say that thing that you're slightly embarrassed by and that you wouldn't actually tell a real person, you can let ChatGPT—

That's not gonna judge you. Unless you ask it to.

It can be a little bit judgmental at times, especially Claude is very judgmental of people, of most people.

I don't play with Claude.

No, I don't use Claude too much, right? It has some opinions on people.

It's sassy.

Yeah, but sometimes just having those aspects there. So there's a ton of different uses for it and it's something that is gonna just keep on growing and being used more and more. And I think we'll probably talk about this in probably multiple episodes of 2025. But that's one of the trends I wanted to touch on. Another big trend this year is the move towards privacy. And obviously this has a lot of benefits for people as kind of their own entities, but as business owners, sometimes it can be a little bit frustrating. Like, there's been more of a shift. Like, all of these things aren't just exclusive to 2024. It's all kind of moved over time. But GDPR is like the, when that was introduced, that was kind of the big kind of marker of this move to privacy. Apple has made a bunch of changes and keeps continuing to implement a lot of things. And Google and Yahoo did their big Yahoo-Go update that changed a lot of things for email marketers. And there, Google had announced this transition where cookies as we knew it were going to go away, but they then kind of went back on that a little bit. But it's still good to, if you know about those changes and some of the ways you can stop using third-party cookies, starting to make some of those changes now while you can is great. It's a good idea because it's something that's going to happen over time. And again, I think it's one of those things that's going to keep on happening in 2025, but I also think there is a ton of opportunity with that. Just speaking as an email expert, it encourages people to gather first-party data. If you can't gather data that's being passed over from other sources, places like Facebook and things, gathering first-party data is more important. And it's something that I think we should always have done. The example I always tend to use is if you're a pet shop, does this person have a cat or a dog? Having that piece of information, like, it feels really small, but it has a massive effect on your business. If you can send people emails that are specific to whether they own a cat or a dog, that's going to have a massive effect on your business and your bottom line. And because you own that data, you can use it in the way you want. So you can pass that data on to places like Facebook, and say you're running ads, you can have the dog ads and the cat ads, and your audiences are synced between your email platform and Facebook., and that gets passed around there. So if you can gather this data, then you can use it. So gathering more first-party data, that's kind of the, as basic as I can put it in a tiny podcast segment, but doing that is really going to serve you well in 2025.

Other things we see a lot of in 2025, especially in e-commerce, is personalization. People are, I think a lot of this comes down, like people want, they don't necessarily want mass-produced anymore. They want it curtailed to them. Specifically. We see it in— of course, Andrew's business is all personalization, and I'm seeing it. I think a lot of it comes down to, to like the proliferation and the ease that people can get things like laser devices like Glowforge and those things, to where it's becoming much easier. Engravers, all of those— access to these tools are getting a lot easier and simpler. The software to run things is getting a lot simpler. To where personalization is available on so many things. We didn't really have it before unless you were going very, very bespoke. Do you agree with that, Andrew?

Yeah, I think that trend has been smart, and I see it in like even big retailers. At Christmas, a ton of them will have these personalization stands. You can do like say names, like they sell like Christmas stockings and baubles and things. They'll have these stands like, okay, come and personalize it, and it becomes gift and seeing ads on the TV, like Christmas cards. Christmas cards is kind of— people send less of them. The cost of stamps has become ridiculous.

That's the reason I don't send Christmas cards, is the cost of stamps.

Yeah, but it's become slightly more special and people— I don't want to say go more towards these like personalized cards, like I'll put— you can put a photo on it, you can put people's names on it, and like there's a ton of things where it's a lot more effort, but people are putting in that effort because they're sending to a kind of smaller, closer to them kind of people. It's like, okay, they're that family friend you haven't seen for 10 years. They're not getting a card anymore, but like the core family, they are. And I'm willing to spend a little bit more on that because I'm not going to have to spend £1 million on stamps. Yeah.

Another big shift that we're seeing is, and this has been coming, this has been building and building and it's still going to continue to build, is a shift into sustainability. And a lot of this comes from, I think, like, there is a big thing with Gen Z, Gen Alpha starting to come up and all of that. But you're kind of voting with your dollar, you're voting with your money, and where people are much more conscious of where they're spending their money and having it align with their own values. So if you're a fast fashion person, you have no problem buying from Temu and SHEIN, and I pronounce all those names wrong, but that's okay. Versus if you're a slow fashion person, if you're like, I care where my food comes from, maybe you're doing farmers markets, maybe you're doing CSAs versus Walmart grocery. And I see that a lot in sustainability.

Yeah. And I think people are more aware of these things. There's a ton of information available, especially places like TikTok where you can have 1 million pieces of information in these tiny 10-second bites and suddenly You know everything there is to know about CMLA and why, and I think there's like a mix. It's like they're growing and they're massive and there's a bunch of people who are seeing Timo Ahrens and they're like, okay, I'm going to buy this. There's also the people who are like, okay, I can see why this is bad and why I wouldn't want to do this because obviously if you can get a product produced in China and sent from China to the US, UK, wherever you are, and like someone's made that, someone's delivered that, and it costs like $3. You know that there's something has to be weird somewhere. Someone's not getting paid properly for this. I think people are usually become more aware of that. They're shopping less, like money is harder to come by. Things are more expensive. And I think especially as you go through young age, like the millennials onwards, there's kind of a, a shift towards experiences. The, like, restaurants are really big. They're like small cafes. The 'I want to travel' is becoming really more and more—

concerts, the ticket prices for concerts. No one buys an album anymore unless it's vinyl, and you're into that. They don't buy CDs, but you don't even buy on, like— do people buy music on iTunes anymore? I actually don't know. Everything is so free.

Is gone at like 10 years.

But yeah, that shift to experiences. And like, one of the things I'm seeing so big in the gifting space this year, and it could just be because it's what I'm interested in, so that's all the ads I see, but I'm seeing puzzles, I'm seeing family game nights. Big bulk of what I bought for Christmas this year is things that are games. So it's experience and spending time things.

If you can add that twist to your products, you are I think definitely if you're focused a little bit more on, like the consumers are more focused on things like experiences and they're shopping up less, it's like you have the kind of time and energy to dedicate towards thinking about, okay, is this business ethical? Are they sustainable? Where are they sourcing their goods? It's, I can take a little bit more time to look into that.

So much competition out there. That sell similar products that people, if they have the time to feel they can educate themselves, they're going to make a more educated choice.

Yeah. And I think just in with like so much access to information, so much access to businesses, it's like almost kind of like, what's it called? Tinder. It's like people look at these businesses and the second it's like, there's like people and businesses and all this stuff. And it's like, okay, The second they're like, oh, this isn't sustainable, or they said something I don't like, it's like swipe, swipe, swipe. Like, I, 'cause I have so much choice. It's like you can totally just abandon someone. 'Cause I'm like, okay. I'm also—

so knowing these things right here.

Yeah.

Keep going. Keep going. Keep, keep the insult going. Let's get to the sun.

Yes. I said I like sticking puppies, so I'm gonna go somewhere else for my Jolie now.

Okay. The people, not the puppies, dude. Did stop on the cat yesterday though.

Yeah. If you're in like this slightly more simple version of the world where it's like there is one jewelry maker in town and that's the only shop where it's like, if I need jewelry, even if Melissa is, is the devil and the worst person in the world, it's like I'm stuck with her. But when suddenly there's 100,000 different Etsy stores selling jewelry, it's like, okay, the second Melissa— Pisses me off. Yeah. Like any random thing. She says she hates the color blue. It's like, okay, Melissa is gone. If you can see, if you can see, if you're watching the podcast on video for her, you can see that Melissa does not hate blue.

My headphones are closed.

She also, at the risk of getting us into talk, she also doesn't kick puppies. I don't know, but from what I know, I don't suspect that's a problem.

I'll kick balls for puppies so they can go chase them.

Yeah. I don't know if that's the best example, 'cause that's quite extreme, like a death threat.

That is very extreme.

If I don't get you on that, the podcast is over. Oh no, no, no. Yeah. But something to be aware of, as of this morning, ABG personalized on me are sustainability certified.

Really?

Which means we know how to be sustainable. It is, have I taken a bunch of the steps yet? No, 'cause there's, there's a lot to it. And sometimes it's like, use less AI because it's like, ooh, and then switch your bank to like an ethical one.

Less is a pejorative word there.

A lot of that, like packaging materials. And I know suppliers, like there's a type of packaging, it's like, okay, do I, I can take some more effort to recycle this. And moving from like more plastic packaging to paper packaging, like those things are really simple, but there is more to sustainability. Than just— it's like carbon emissions is the thing we all focus on. But there's the whole circular economy and, you know, this is a whole episode in its own. But creating stuff that can be repaired and recycled, and there's so many different pieces to say about it. And that's something, again, we should maybe focus on an episode. Maybe bring a guest in to speak about that because I am not the expert in this. Despite just hitting certified. And speaking of shifts, the other thing to speak about is a bunch of challenges that have happened this year. And a lot of these are things that have been happening over a couple of years. Supply chain issues really started to become a problem in 2020 when— obviously COVID happened. Yeah. COVID was happening.

Things were— the world shut down.

Yeah. There was that, the big ship in the Suez Canal thing that got stuck sideways. That caused— but like there was a whole bunch of stuff. And they, and as much as, not that COVID is completely gone, but as much as the kind of world has returned to a little bit more normality, the supply chain issues—

The shipping lines still are not good.

Yeah. Things are continuing to be an issue there, and people have to adapt, and there's a bunch of ways to do that. But it's that initial, okay, things have changed, what do I do about it? It's the finding new suppliers. Can you find suppliers who are making things a little bit more locally. And again, that's another huge challenge because it's like, okay, maybe this supplier is located a mile away, but they're importing all their stuff from China, so it makes absolutely no difference.

Already have in stock what you need, that is the big question.

Yeah, and sometimes having backups. I know my supplier, yeah, there is another supplier who in 2020 I opened an account with as a backup. So other prices and let's never use that backup unless we really have to, but it's there if I need it. And all sorts of random stuff, like shipping supplies. I'm like, okay, I use just the blue plastic bags. They were hard to get for a while. I went on Amazon, all I can get is these giant bags I have to like fold over 10 times and tape and stuff.

And now that doesn't feel sustainable anymore.

No. And it's, and maybe I should have bought paper bags. But it seems like really something like I was looking over it and it's like, why are these so hard to get? I don't mean, obviously it's hard to get the, like these, they're probably made outside the UK and have to be shipped in, so that's harder. And people are online shopping more, so they're probably being bought more and there's just a bunch of stuff happening. I spoke about, there's actually, I asked ChatGPT for the stats and I guess it was like, there's more. Small business license things in last year, and it's increased. It, like, it continues to increase. So about, like, there's more demand for this stuff.

People are going in, which means that our supplies that we rely on are being sucked up by more people.

Competition. Like, there was a bunch of time in 2020 about, okay, everyone's quitting their jobs, this like big reset thing, and the Great Resignation. Is that the word? Yeah. 31.7 small businesses in the US.

What, what? 31.7 what?

31.7 million small businesses.

Really?

Okay. Which is 99.9% of all US businesses, which was an increase of 4.4 million new business applications. In 2021, it went up another million to 5.4 million applications. 2022 went down a little bit to 5.08. And then 5.5 million in 2023, the biggest in all time.

I told you. So, doesn't mean they're all succeeding, but this is people who are making the intention and they're opening licenses, they're going into business.

If you're in the B2B world, they're like, it's probably good for you because there's more people hoping using your services, but it also increases competition. So it's another thing you have to be aware of. That's another charge. And another really big thing is rising ad costs. And this has been happening on Facebook for a long time. Well, they always raise— raise— they always, they always raise each year, but it seems to be happening like exponentially faster lately.

It was— so I ran ads last year in 2023 for the holiday season. I was able to keep my ad costs, um, under a dollar a click. And the rest of it wasn't, I wasn't as educated in ads and stuff at that point, but my under a dollar a click, I was pretty happy with 70 cent clicks and whatnot. And that was through the holiday season. This year I had to turn my ads off. I think I did right after Thanksgiving, the following first week of December, because while my click-through rates were amazing and my conversion rates on my page were amazing. I was spending about $2.50 per click, and that is just ridiculous. And the competition pool, all the big people came in, of course, for Black Friday and all of that. And my, my dollars, well, my click-through rate was amazing. My cost per click was horrible, and I wasn't being shown to enough people to manage it. Whereas you could spend $5, $10 and at least get shown to several hundred people. I was looking at $5 or $10 and being shown to 40 people, and that was just not— there's no way sustainable. Doesn't matter how I have an over 6% click-through rate on 40 people, that's not enough clicks hitting the page to make it work. You can't.

Yeah. And people across all industries are seeing this. I know someone I follow who has this, what they used to call their $1,000 ad test, where I can't remember how many days they did it, but like, I think it was like a week or something. It's like $20,000 in a week and you'll know by the end of that week if the thing that you're creating has validation or not. That's another $3,000 ad test to be able to do that. And it's like, that's a significant investment.

They probably have a 70% chance of saying no.

Yeah. And it's, there's, I think a few years ago, the whole, kind of funnel world, there was the, like, you put something out and you run ads and you make a profit. Now it's like, okay, you can have a whole funnel that is supposed to make a loss. 'Cause it's like, okay, I have the ads, it's going into this, people are buying and I'm building a list for a low cost and then I have to make it back afterwards, which—

I need to harass those people who just got on my list.

Yeah, if you know your decent lifetime value and this whole is, but it's, that's much more of a challenge. You need to know that you can get this money on the backend and it is much more—

There are a lot of people who look at with their ad costs knowing that they're gonna be spending a lot to acquire the customer, but also knowing it's gonna, they're gonna make back on that customer, they'll actually be profitable, but it's gonna take 90 days to get there. And having the budget in place to be able to continue to run it, knowing that you're not making money for that person for 90 days. What you're spending today, you're not going to recoup for 3 months. That's intense right there.

Yeah. And it forces a bit out because you need to be able to be willing to take that risk. Like you could kind of come in, set up this one thing and it's like you could break even or make a small profit and it's like, that's a little business that can kind of run and then you start developing things around. Now it's like, okay, you need to have the upfront thing. That if you're lucky, breaks even. And if you're, and even if it's still need to be a bit lucky, it's like you're paying a smallish cost for a person to acquire this person. And then you need to, okay, I have lifetime value and I also have customer life cycle of when I purchase something. Because like some businesses, like, okay, I make it back in 90 days. Some businesses it's like, okay, I need to work for a little bit longer to this. And that becomes really terrifying because if these things start to stop working, you start to look at your stats and okay, this isn't working. You're kind of 90 days behind and you're going to have like the people from the last 90 days are making a loss for it and it starts to have this kind of effect. It's much more challenging. And I think one thing we're definitely going to focus on to get after is, honestly, there's Joey Tranad's name's education on that, but where my expertise lies is organic traffic. And I think people are going to be focusing a lot on that. I know we are in what we're doing, because we're focusing a lot on that. Things like social, things like SEO, and collaboration, and all those kind of things are going to be really important in 2025, and are ways to help with that. And it doesn't mean you have to stop running ads altogether.

Often the benefits to your ads are invisible. And that is such a difficult thing to work through. But oftentimes you might not see the return when you look in your ad stats right there, but they became aware of you then, and it might be 6 months down the road that they actually make a purchase. And that's going to be showing on your Shopify or someone else's stats and not related to your Facebook when they only found you because they saw your Facebook ad. It's a very, very micro example right there that I hope made sense. But let's move on from ads because, oh, I could talk ads for a long time.

So they're a thing and it's something that, like, if you get big enough, you should be running ads anyway, but it can run alongside and supplement some of that traffic in a more cost-effective way and kind of come out of that organic traffic. And email, which I love and isn't as risky in the money sense as ads. And I expect to do that, and we'll talk about that more next year. The next thing I'm going to talk about is a little bit about the lessons we learned this year. I think one of the things is, and I think I've always preached to other people about doing it, but I'm starting to realize, okay, you only need to say to do this, but you also actually need to do it, is simplifying things. Trying to be everywhere, doing everything, doesn't, it doesn't benefit anyone, and it makes your results worse. If you're going to have a really good presence on one platform, so like you say, okay, I'm going to focus on Shopify, I'm going to promote that on Instagram, and I'm going to spend every waking hour looking at SEO and improving my listings and photography and all that stuff. And I'm going to go on Instagram and go, okay, I'm going to create reels every day. I'm going to test different hooks. I'm going to test the lengths, like the length of the format. I'm going to test different styles of content where it's like day in the life, FAQ, how I make this product, the here's like footage of someone using the product, like, and I'm going to sit and I'm going to do this. I'm going to comment on other people's stuff. I'm going to do stories. And you do that. That is going to work better than the, okay, I'm going to be on Etsy and Amazon and Shopify and I'm going to just like half-assedly list our products and all, copy and paste some descriptions. And then I'm going to go on Instagram and I'm going to just use AI to create some like half-assed posts that don't do much. And then I'm going to also put those on LinkedIn and Facebook and TikTok and X. And Bluesky and Threads, and I'll put them into an email and then I'll—

don't forget Pinterest—

put them on YouTube, I'll put them on Pinterest, and you're never gonna get to the end of that list. I think, I don't think it took me a year to do one post, but it's gonna be so, like, such a mess and you're not gonna have any mastery of any of these platforms. And it's like, okay, I'm speaking to everyone on every platform, but badly. Like, that, it's going to be such a mess. And I'm not, I think I have an account for every one of those platforms, but I don't consistently post to them all. I am doing more on all of them than I should. And I think where this year, well, for 2025, it's something I need to focus on. And I have been spending some time making plans for how things are going to work in 2025. And it is much more simplified, like e-com-wise, Shopify is my focus as always. And I'm going to be on Instagram mainly. And the kind of coaching services side, it's like, okay, I'm going to talk to like the small business owners who are going to do the like DIY kind of stuff and sell on Instagram. And I'm going to kind of establish more authority as like a service provider on LinkedIn. And I know that's two platforms, but I speak into Zoom and it's def— it's simplified from the trying to be also on like YouTube and Facebook and a hundred other places. We'll see if I stick to it, but that is the plan and it's much more simple and sustainable.

My big lesson from 2024 is really going strong on single customer. So like how Andrew said simplify, I am a lot of simplify on customer. And really going deep onto what like one single person type wants versus trying to have 8 different customers or talking to 8 different people and all that stuff. I tend to do this every couple of years in my business. This is a really good thing. I do, Andrew's all online. I do a lot of in-person events. I like to talk to people. I like to see people's reactions to my products to know, like if someone walks up to me and goes, is everybody gearing towards one product? That's a product I should go all in on then. But that should be my front-facing product everywhere if that's the same one that everyone goes to versus testing everything. But what I did this year is I did about 25 or 30 different festivals, events, craft shows, all the Highland Games, all that. I did a lot of events this year. I was averaging about 3 or 4 months, something like that. Like some months I, it was crazy. Whereas the previous year I think I did 5 or 7. Shows. So I like tripled or quadrupled how many events I was at exposure-wise that way. And through doing that, I found a lot of duds, but I also found a couple of winners into parallel audiences too. And once I can look at and be like, okay, is that a customer that I want to build a relationship with, build a connection with, that type of customer right there. I learned that I rock it at homesteading conferences. The county fair, you know, worked. Oh, those are the big ones. Oh, I did a Halloween night market that just like, I slaughtered at that event. It was great. And then we had a whole bunch of shit craft shows and it's like, not again. I will not be doing those over the next year. I will run them every couple of years and do like a massive expansion, like blow up. It's like, I'm gonna be everywhere for this year for this type of thing. So for me it was in-person events. And then I can look at that and assess, okay, like I tried a bunch of different new things 'cause you don't know if you don't try. What worked, what didn't work? Okay, we're gonna keep the ones that worked and get rid of everything that didn't work for this year. So this year we'll probably do about 15 events, I guess. So that was a big one. And just doing those expansions, that was really great. And just the really going deep on singular customer is so been reinforced time and time and time again this year. I'm looking forward to that for 2025.

And another big lesson that I think is everyone's lesson every year is the shiny ball thing. How many times do we talk about these shiny ball smackdown things and we talk about people that now have shiny balls, but throughout the year, there are things that come up and suddenly it's like, okay, we're gonna give this all our attention. That's a shiny ball.

And stuff we were doing that was working.

And it's such a bad idea and it just takes us off course. And sometimes the things themselves aren't that bad and it's something that you should do eventually on a, and like it's in your Santa boards and it's scheduled on that date where you have time. But no, we completely abandon our plans and go off and do something else. I learned that. And I think, and another lesson is this, it's kind of like using intuition in business. There are things where I know that I should do things, there are things I've written down and I'll ignore them because it's like, oh, I don't know, or I'm not ready for this, or like there's a boss or something. Like there's all these little things and it's like eventually I do do them. And it's like, okay, I should have done this sooner. And I know—

why in the hell did I not do that? That was so simple. I've been struggling and thinking about it for 3 months and I did it in 20 minutes.

Damn it. Yeah. It's like the podcast. I spoke about it for years and I, I went to a conference in Edinburgh, February in this year, and Teresa Healy went. Did a presentation, uh, one of the things she speaks about in it, uh, it's, I'm gonna try to think exactly what it is. If you went to my summit, you've seen it, cuz I got her to do that one there. But it, one of the examples she uses is someone starting a podcast and it's like they were gonna do it, but then something happened and they delayed and it like took years and I don't think they ever did it. And I was like, oh, this is me. And I, and I told her that. And she gave me deadlines and all these goals and stuff, and we agreed stuff. I made a trip, I did all this stuff, all the backend work. And that was like, yeah, that was like the middle of this year. And then I, I was in a phone with her and I like left it to just mainly so I didn't have to show up and say I hadn't actually launched the podcast. Like, stop. I completely ghosted her to be like, okay, I don't have to tell her I didn't do that. Eventually it took till October and bringing in Wallace as a co-host to finally start the podcast. And you know what? We did that first episode and it was so fricking easy to do. We just sat down, we recorded it, I wrote and did the script, I did all this stuff to what, like, made it and repurposed it, it got uploaded, and it was so damn easy. And could I have done this in 2018? 2020 or whatever it was when I first started that JR podcast. Yeah, maybe there wouldn't have been as many AI features, it would've taken a little bit longer. But for the most part, yes, I could absolutely have done this this whole time and have this like number one podcast for 3, 4 years.

No. By now it would be. 3, 4 years in, 200 episodes in.

But like, yeah. And I think definitely like the, like the speaking and importance and like who am I to a podcast and like so much stuff for that. And, and I just deleted it. Deleted it? Deleted it.

I'm loving the vocabulary today.

Yeah, it's the, this is like my final actual proper workday of the year and I'm dead.

Definitely no chance.

I got 2 more. Well, I, I kind of like Friday is supposed to be, but tomorrow I want to go out and start all my Christmas shopping and then Friday is like, I have, I'm like doing a virtual quiz and like all this stuff. It's a half-ass pretend workday, but today was like the final actual Doom-like day. And I definitely noticed that. I'm looking forward to it, Rick. Anyway, but like, I should have done this much sooner. There's sometimes you just need to take the leap. And there's a whole bunch of things that have been projects and things I wanted to do for years. And I'm like, okay, I need to like go back, look at these plans, figure it out and be like, okay, let's do these in 2025. And that is scary.

And I'm not sure how that's gonna go, but the first big question of that, and like, I'm sure we'll cover this next year, is like, do those things still align with your goals and what you're setting up 2025 to be, like, going into it purposefully? Or is it just, this is a list I've had of things I've wanted to do, and I don't know if they all fit together, but I'm gonna do them anyway?

And, and sometimes that's difficult to know because sometimes it's like when I set goals, they do serve me, and then they don't, and then they do again. And sometimes it's I'll find a way to say these don't serve me because I don't want to do them. And sometimes you need an impartial—

Oh, that's a good one.

Yeah. Sometimes you need to go to someone and be like, okay, what do you think?

Because we're too nice to each other anymore.

Yeah. I'm using ChatGPT a lot and it will, based on things I've told you and things I've done, like tell it, and it's like, it has such a higher opinion of me than I do. It's like, because for years, like I'll tell it stuff and like, I want to do this, I want to do that. And it's like, Andrew, you never give up. You can't even do this. For years and you keep coming back and tell, and I was like, okay. And knowing that about myself, I was like, okay, that, you start saying, okay, yeah, that is right. And it's like, you've, it, talking about challenges, like, Andrew, you have faced bigger challenges than this before. It's like, you can do that. And it's like, okay. And I don't know, sometimes, like, if someone told me that, something like, yeah, okay, but let's just say that to be nice. Well, it's not a human. It has no emotion and it has no skin in the game apart from you. Cancelling your plan or something to lie to you. Sometimes I'll say, okay, roast me, and it does that too. But for the most part, it will tell it. It's like, okay, I do that. And sometimes having a really good kind of coach or friend to do that, and we'll do that. And there's other tools you can use out there that will help you do that as well. And I think us as people who work with clients, knowing that Being nice doesn't always serve the people.

Does it?

Does it not? Yeah. I can't remember if it was like last week or maybe it was yesterday, but we spoke a little bit about, it was yesterday, speaking about like Instagram. It's like, okay, we post like, I think we kind of just talking about everyone. It's like we all post shitty life, but I'm like, try and blame Instagram and stuff for this kind of content number farming. But it is obviously not Instagram. It's our crappy content. At the time.

They're doing the bare minimum. You do bare minimum on a social platform, you get bare minimum results or worse.

And I started this new kind of series which I, I'm going to be consistent with in 2025, but I'm like doing a kind of soft start in 2024. And it's like the behind the scenes and what I'm working on and how I'm using, um, AI and stuff and other tools in my business. And I sat and I wrote this like really like authentic, sharing everything kind of post. I even used ChatGPT and said, okay, tell me, like, score me on like authenticity and like how this fits in with my tone of voice and stuff. And it like gave me suggestions. And I like put all this effort into a post. Then I used Midjourney to create realistic images for it. And that post got like a bunch of comments, a bunch of likes, performed better than anything I've posted in months. When you actually put this effort in, it works. And I think that can be really— it's speaking about things that Twitter left. I think that's a really important lesson to learn and be like, okay, honestly, doing that kind of post takes a little bit more effort, and I want to be consistent and become a little bit more of a writer. And do these every day. But if you can't do that every day, maybe you are okay with saying to yourself, I don't post every day, I post every second day, or something like that. And like, I take weekends off. And having a little less content, but it's all really great content that serves your audience, is probably going to be more worth it in the long run, even the short run. I think getting off the whole kind of myth of the you have to post every single day and all this different stuff and 'You should do one Reel and like 3 pieces of static content and a story of your art.' Like, no, you're wasting your own time and everyone else's with that. So that has been our review of 2024. We will be back soon with another episode all about what we think is coming in 2025, or what we know is coming with us in 2025. But we want to thank you for sticking with us through these first initial episodes. We've had a really great time kind of getting started and getting this out there. We would love to hear what you like about the podcast this year and what you'd like to see from us in 2025. So be sure to leave us a review, share this with a friend, and go over to theproductgrowthlab.com/flash for our flash sale in a snap, guys. I'll let you run a flash sale this weekend. Uh, in an email list and give you a really easy way to keep in touch with us, and there'll be a link in the show notes to a Facebook group where you can also tell us some stuff there. We hope you take some time over the next couple of weeks to have a rest from your business, spend some time with your family, have a great Christmas and New Year. And we hope you had a really great 2024 and that you have an even more amazing 2025. Thanks for tuning in to the Product Growth Lab podcast. We hope you found today's episode insightful and inspiring. If you enjoyed the show, leave a review. It helps us reach more creative entrepreneurs just like you. Stay connected and keep experimenting. Follow us on your favorite podcast platform and don't forget to join our community for more resources, tips, and support. Until next time, keep growing and creating. This is the Product Growth Lab, signing off.