My Year In Review (The Good, The Bad And The Ugly)

It's that time of year again where I want to stop and take stock and share with you the things that I did in my business. What went well this year, what didn't go so well, what my key learnings and what am I going to do differently in 2022? I know you can listen to lots of gurus online who claim to have all the solutions and paint this amazing picture of themselves, but I want to be really real and really honest with you guys. So I really do want to share the things that I screwed up this year, the things that I spent money on that I shouldn't have done as well as things that I did well and as I say, my plans for next year. So that's what this episode is all about. And let's get on with the show. Accelerate your agency's profitable growth with tools, tips and value added interviews with your host agency owner and coach, Rob DaCosta. So let's start with the positives. What are the things that went well for me in 2020? I already have one online group coaching program as well as my private coaching. So my group coaching program is called the Self Running Agency and it's like a mastermind group where they have access to online content. We get together once a month as a group and answer questions and network and then we have expert guest trainers come into the group and we have a discussion forum. So that typical sort of mastermind set up and it's been really good. We've got 30 plus members in there at the moment and we get new members every month which is fantastic. But I realized that that program wasn't serving the entire agency world that I wanted to target. There are a bunch of people who are smaller or freelancers who may not want to be part of a program like that, but they still want some support. So I took the business development aspect of the self running agency and I created a self a standalone program called the Agency Selling System and this is everything to do with business development. So positioning, niche marketing, sales, client retention and growth and everything to do with that. So we launched that program this year and it went really really well and it' still going well now. And then most recently we've launched another program called the Build Nurture Convert Blueprint and this is all about list building and email marketing because I am such a believer as you will know that building your email list is so important and is the best way to win clients over the medium to long term. So we recently launched the Build Nurture Convert program which creates a suite of three Online programs plus my private coaching. So that's gone really well. Another thing that went well finally this year is the fact that I managed to hire a really good virtual assistant. I've had a whole bunch of false starts with virtual assistants, either because they over promised and undelivered because they got really busy and they stopped providing the service levels, or they just disappeared. And I've tried working with VAs in the UK as well as VA in India and now I'm working with a VA team where they have a model of like a project manager who reports to me and then she manages an number of other people who might have specific expertise, for example in editing podcasts or editing videos or writing or creating social media. So it's a really good setup in that I only liaise with one person, she picks the other best people for the job and that has worked really well. And I think the thing I've learned there is you need to communicate really regularly. We have a call every Monday and you need to document your standard operating procedures or your working practices so that you can expedite the learning process for them, get them up to speed quickly and make sure they are doing the work in a consistent manner, no matter who's doing it. So I documented all of my standard operating procedures and I not only wrote them, but I also used loom L O O m as a way to video something so I could show as well as tell in my written documents. So that has worked really well for me this year. Finally, the next thing that I've started doing in 2021 is I started measuring more of my marketing activities and I tell my clients to do this all the time but you know, I don't always do it for myself. So I just have a simple Google sheet that I'm measuring every email I send or social post so I can see how well it's doing and I and therefore that helps me do more of what's working and stop doing the things that aren't working rather than just doing them because I always do them. You know, we are all time poor so we need to make sure we are as efficient with our time as we possibly can be. And the next thing that I did that was a big thing for me this year is from the beginning of September. I started working four days a week and this has been a goal for a number of years. And I've had a number of false starts with this where I sort of promised myself, it's lasted a couple of weeks. Then a client has said, oh Rob, can We talk on Friday and of course I say yes, and then immediately that fifth day has gone out the window. But the difference this time is that I knew what I was going to do with that fifth day. I And so if any of you know anything about me outside of work, I'm a camper van owner. And I decided to document all that I've learned with buying my camper van and owning it and traveling in it. And as a newbie, like, what did I learn? And so we created a YouTube channel that's been going really well and growing, steadily growing, our mailing list. And so ultimately I'll be able to monetize that. But that's the thing that I have been doing on my fifth day. And to be quite honest, I could do with more than just one day because it takes me five or six hours to edit a 10 to 15 minute video every Friday. So I get a video, at least one video out a week. But that's the difference because I know that's what I'm going to do on my Friday and I need to keep it free. It's meant I'm really saying no to people who want to book Friday with me. And I'm really consolidating the four days a week now. That means you also have to be super efficient and super organized because I'm basically trying to do five days work condensed down into four days. But it is possible. And if that's a plan that you, you want to follow, then it's absolutely possible. And I'm sure I will record more content on that in the future. So that's some of the highlights of what went really well for me. Let's spend some time talking about what didn't go so well. So first of all, when I launched the agency selling system, that's the business development online program, I used webinars to launch it, which I think are a great strategy and I still use them. But I also hired someone who was supposed to be running Facebook ads for me. And I've tried and failed in the past regarding Facebook and Google and YouTube ads. And I've hired people that haven't worked and, you know, haven't really listened. But this time I was recommended this person. And I looked into them and they looked pretty good. They had things they said made a lot of sense. They had some good recommendations on their website and things started off pretty well. And they were quite expensive, to be honest, but things started off pretty well. But then there were a few little red flags early on, like they missed a Few deadlines. They weren't really good at communicating and I'd have to chase them. And then we got close to the launch and the campaign just wasn't delivering new people into the webinar, which was the purpose of it. So when I sort of sat down and had a debrief with this person, they were like, well, Rob, you know, we've done this with so many clients. We've used the exact strategy with you and it hasn't worked. So I don't know why. Which is super frustrating to hear, right? As a customer, you don't really want to hear that. You want them to give you some solutions, not just kind of go, oh, well, it didn't work. And of course they weren't interested in refunding any money. So that was an expensive exercise in trying to shortcut a way of getting people to sign up for my webinar. That just didn't work. And I think on that note, you just have to remember that there are no magic solutions, no quick wins. There are all these shiny objects that are trying to distract us. But actually the tried and tested things work. So the next thing I want to talk about is my Frankenstein of a website. So my website has evolved over time and it's partly hosted on WordPress and partly hosted on Kartra and sort of cobbled together. And so the look and feel isn't always consistent. And then the sort of knife in my heart regarding the website was that I recently was talking to a prospect who was a referral and they said to me, oh yeah, X person referred me and they said, you know, Rob's really good, but don't look at his website because that's not very good representation of him. I was like, okay, so the client didn't tell me this, but the prospect did. So I then dug a little bit deeper and by the way, the prospects become a client. And then I went and asked a couple of other people who I knew would be honest, and they gave me sort of similar feedback that it's perhaps looking a bit tired and not consistent. And so that's something that I have got sort out, which I'll tell you a bit more about as we get into plans for 2022. And the last thing that didn't go so well for me is that I started a number of projects that I was absolutely convinced were the right thing to do at the time, but then they sort of 40% of the way through, I realized this was not going to work and it was a waste of my time and I think that reminds me and you of the importance of having a strategy and a plan before you jump into execution. Because, you know, I think a lot of the time we need to make mistakes to remind us of what we already know. And I know that's the case, but on these couple of projects, I just jumped straight in because I was very eager to get going. I didn't really think it through and then it sort of petered out and it didn't go anywhere. So that was a waste of time and a bit of money as well. So those are some of the things that didn't go so well for me in 2021. So let me just talk about the key learnings that I got from that experience. So, first of all, there are no shortcuts. Every genuine, robust business development strategy delivers in the medium to long term. And so looking for instant gratification, you're always going to be very disappointed, even though people will promise you that. And you need to invest the time so that you get the delayed gratification further down the road. And I've been reminded of that this year. I also think another key learning is to really, really vet any vendors that you work with, any suppliers that you work with. Don't just take their word for it or take the written testimonials on their website or the couple of videos they've got, but do your due diligence. Dig a bit deeper than that. Go and try and talk to some of their customers and try and talk to more than one if you. I know that doesn't guarantee anything, but it means that you need to slow down, speed up. My favorite expression, do your due diligence first to get the right person on board. So the third thing is related to the first point really, which is you need to keep focused, have your plan for the year. There are lots of shiny objects competing for our time and there are no quick fixes. So if you have a plan for the year and you focus on executing that plan and you've really thought that plan through, then that's what you need to focus on. And anything that comes along that provides opportunities elsewhere, think very carefully whether you want to pursue them or not. Okay? And the last key learning, which is a bit of a surprising one for me, is that you should really keep a record of all the software and the app subscriptions that you have. Because I decided I want to consolidate some stuff and I started trying to work out how much I'm spending on various annual subscriptions and it was really surprising. And I created my list. And then a couple of other big costs came up of reoccurring subscriptions that I'd completely missed off that list. So as you buy things, keep a list because sometimes you end up paying for two different services that are very similar and you'll be surprised at how much money you're spending every year. I certainly was. So let me share with you some of the things that I'm going to do differently for 2022. Not surprisingly, one of them is I'm going to launch a new website and I've commissioned a web developer who started on the project now, and I'll be moving the whole site back onto WordPress and creating a much more up to date look and making it functionally easier to navigate and also consolidating some of my pages because I have lots and lots of free ebooks and guides. So I'm on a project at the moment to review then and update them and decide whether some of them are still relevant or not. So I'm not giving too much content out to the world, not because I'm worried about giving too much away, because I know when you offer people too many choices and too many options, they don't know, they don't choose. So you need to be much more guided. So look out for the new website and hopefully people will look at it and go, yeah, that's really good. Rather than saying, don't look at Rob's website. So that's one of the strategies that I AM implementing in 2022. Another one is streamlining my marketing and keep measuring and monitoring and more streamlining. So I'm going to be focusing on three key areas in 2022 and cutting out a number of other things. So first of all, I'm going to obviously keep focus on building and nurturing my email list because I get 80% of my business from that and you should be doing that too. I'm going to be really focusing on my podcast. This is episode 98, I believe we're nearly at episode 100, which is a really exciting episode to look out for that. And I've been running the podcast now for two, two years, and it's now got enough momentum that I'm getting, you know, 10,000 downloads a week of the podcast. And it is a good reminder that you have to be in it for the long run. You know, slow and steady wins the race. We are episode 102 years in and it's taken that long to build that kind of audience up. So keep at it. Is the message for all of these different marketing activities. And then the third thing I'm going to be doing is doubling down on creating YouTube content and promoting that YouTube content. My YouTube channel for DA Costa coaching has been around for a long time. The content's pretty good, but I haven't tried to optimize anything. I haven't really promoted the YouTube channel, and hence I haven't got a ton of subscribers at the moment. But we're hoping to change that by making sure we're creating really focused content that's useful, getting our tagging and our searching right, and promoting the channel as well. So Those are my three focuses, the YouTube channel, my email lists, and my podcast. And I'm going to try and stop doing a lot of other things that I've been doing. The next thing I really want to do is to try and keep removing all the distractions and keep focused on the task at hand. I'm getting better at that, but that's definitely a journey that I need to go on. I need to practice all the things that I preach, turn off the distractions, keep your email off when you're doing things like this, you know, finish a task, because it's quicker to do that than it is to get distracted. Remember, there's no such thing as multitasking and so on. And to that end, one of the things that helps with that is batching. So that means like setting up the studio and recording four or five videos in one go, or recording four or five podcasts, or writing three or four emails in one go is much more efficient if you can spend the time planning that than it is to do one and go and do something else and then come back and do another one. So I'm going to try batch more in 2022. And then the last thing, which isn't so much do differently, but more of a focus is I want to make sure that I keep working my four day working weeks and I keep the Monday to Thursday time really efficient and get everything I need to get done in that time. So for me, as I say, my focus for next year will be on the mailing list growth, the podcast growth, and YouTube channel growth. I'll be focusing on just selling my three programs plus my private coaching. And I won't be launching any more programs because that's more than enough. And I obviously want to make sure I'm keeping adding content that is valuable to my audience in those programs and keep my members engaged so they complete them as well. And finally, I'm going to keep using webinars as a really good way of building credibility and authority with my audience and making sales as well. So those are the kind of things focuses for 2022. So that's my honest review of my year. I'd love to hear what worked well for you and what didn't work so well for you and what are you going to do differently next year. I love hearing from you guys so please do drop me an email and let me know. I hope this episode has inspired you. In fact, I hope all of the episodes throughout this year have been really useful in you growing a sustainable, profitable and enjoyable agency. As ever, if you've enjoyed this episode please consider leaving a review and because that helps the algorithm show it to more people which means I can help more people just like you. But other than that, have a great rest of your week and I will be back with you for the 99th episode of the Agency Accelerator podcast.