As a business owner, I’ve made mistakes.
Mistakes that cost me millions.
MILLIONS.
I broke my own rules and my own advice, and honestly, it was a tough pill to swallow.
The past few months have been a life-changing journey for me. I’ve been reflecting, rebuilding, revamping, and getting back down into the trenches of my business. Today, I’m ready to share the two big mistakes I made (and the incredible lessons learned) with you. Listen in!
DM me on Instagram, @emilyhirsh, if this episode has resonated with you!
Key Points
01:00 You Can’t Share an Open Wound
01:50 I Have Made Some Mistakes
03:05 It Was Time to Sit Down, Listen, and Learn
03:58 I’ve Been Rebuilding My Company As If I’m Starting From the Beginning
05:08 I Thought I Was the Exception and I Broke My Own Rules
05:44 I Lost Focus and Tried to Do Too Many Things
07:00 I Am Addicted to Chaos. If There Isn’t Chaos, I Create It
07:58 I Get Value From Feeling Needed, and Completing the Impossible
10:17 I Had Too Many Offers, Even Though the Offers Were GOOD
10:50 Going Back to the Beginning
11:40 When You Do Too Much, You End Up Doing Something 80%
12:10 I Put More Effort into Delivery Than I Do Marketing, but Our Delivery Was Not Where It Needed to Be
12:48 As a Leader, You Have to Take Responsibility and Determine How and Why
13:50 How I Would Do This Is Not How It Was Happening
14:45 Quality Gaps and Apologies
16:00 It’s Not the Tactical ‘How It’s Done,’ It’s Setting the Values and the Expectations
16:40 My Company Wasn’t Ready for Me to Become Disconnected, but I Was.
17:13 I Moved On to the Next Thing Too Early
18:42 Rebuilding My Agency Offer to be the Best Agency
19:38 I Let Other People Change My Business
20:41 What If I Had Not Gone Down This Path? What If I Had Just Focused on One Offer?
21:34 Why Am I Not Listening to My Own Advice?
22:20 No One Could Have Convinced Me Not to Launch That Offer. I Needed to Go on This Journey.
23:45 Simplify Everything. Do More With Less.
24:34 I Delegated Hiring, and My Business Wasn’t Ready
25:32 Hiring the Wrong Person Costs Your Business a Ton
26:00 Processes and Strategies Were Changed That Didn’t Reflect My Values, and I Didn’t Realize the Effects Right Away
28:02 We’ve Had to Push Through a Lot of Changes
29:29 Building My Leadership Team
30:28 Ending of Market Like a Pro
31:00 To Get the Best Results With Your Marketing, You Need to Outsource
31:25 I Knew I Could Serve Business Owners Better by Doing It For Them
31:45 Just Watch. This Is My Turning Point to $10,000,000.
31:56 Learn From Me. Learn These Hard Lessons.
32:36 Don’t Make Decisions Your Business Isn’t Ready For
33:38 Don’t Let Your Ego Get in the Way
34:26 My Ethics and Values Don’t Waver
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READ THE EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Emily Hirsh:
Literally, nobody could have convinced me to not launch that offer. I wouldn’t have listened. So it doesn’t matter what anyone said. It doesn’t matter what anyone told me, predicted, gave me advice, whatever, I was going to do it. And I needed to go on this journey to learn that it wasn’t the right fit.
You are listening to The Not for Lazy Marketers podcast, episode number 431.
Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. I have been waiting to record this podcast, to be honest with you guys. I there’s some things that I want to share on the podcast that I just know it’s not the right time. And I think there’s a balance when you share content that you can’t share an open wound in the middle of it, very productively, right? And so when you’re going through something extremely hard, you can share, and I’m very like vulnerable and transparent on my social media, you know, about things that are hard or things that I’m going through. So it’s not constantly just to highlight real, but I don’t feel like I can accurately show up and share really good content in the middle of hard. And I’ve been in another season of hard. It seems to be like a thing in the summer that happens to me because it was like this last year too.
So I don’t know why that is a thing. And I’m not just talking about like business profit and revenue hard last year. That’s what it was this year. It’s a little bit different and I’m going to share some parts about it, but I have made some mistakes. I have been getting my ass kicked to put it lightly with incredible lessons and growth and challenges and just evolving in transitions. Honestly, I’ve had a little bit of a hard time creating content the last three months. And I’d go through phases, like where, you know, a couple weeks I was feeling better and then something would happen. And, you know, I’m like, I just don’t even want to, I just need to almost be more like inwardly, self-reflecting. And you know, if you create content, you get it. It’s really hard. At least for me, you know, I show up, I’m the same person on my podcast as I am in person, as I am on meetings, as I am speaking, as I am on a webinar.
And so I can’t not be myself. And when I’m feeling off, it’s really hard to create content. And so I felt that the last couple of months, because I’ve just been just going through a lot of growth and lessons and just almost like, you know what I felt like, I felt like it’s time to sit down and listen, Emily. That’s what I felt like, like, you need it for once. You, you, can’t not for once, but like you, you, you can’t talk here and you can’t jump the gun with the solutions. Like I normally do. You need to take a step back and you need to listen. And that’s how I felt. And so I’m ready to talk about it now because I finally, you know, I’m not through it. Well, are you ever through anything like it’s just to the next level, but I’ve learned the lessons I’ve sat down and listened.
I’ve reflected, I’ve gotten help. I’ve gotten feedback. I’ve listened to my team, to clients, to past clients, to friends, to mentors. And I’ve really processed to the point where I can now listen, and I can now reflect and, you know, move on to kind of the phase two. So I have ultimately been rebuilding my company for the last probably 90 days, maybe four months, three months, I’d say three months has been a season of where I have felt like I’m completely rebuilding my company. I’m rebuilding it as if I am starting it from the beginning. And there’s a few reasons why I had to do that. And I’ve had really hard lessons I’ve had to learn. There’s two big things that I’ve had to learn that I want to share with you guys. And, you know, sometimes when I do these, I’m always like, am I just going to ramble?
And nobody’s going to care about what I’m going to say, or is it going to actually be valuable? And every single time you guys send me messages about how it’s valuable. But I do go into these going like, oh my gosh, you know, I, I don’t know. And I don’t like do a lot of pre like scripting or planning for my podcast. It’s me. It’s, it’s very much me. And like I said, I’m the same person in person and my podcast, everywhere. So anyways, there’s a couple reasons why I was knocked on my butt and had to rebuild my company in the last quarter. Basically one of the biggest things and one of the biggest lessons, I think it took until the last three weeks for me to really learn this, is I broke my own rule. I broke my own advice that I say on here all the time on the podcast.
And I didn’t even realize I was doing this because I realized that I didn’t consciously do this, but I thought to myself, and I said to myself, I was the exception to this rule. And I convinced myself that I could be this exception and I could still do it. And what that rule I broke was I lost focus. I tried to do too many things and you guys have to know something about me. I have a level of grit and tenacity that you won’t find in a lot of people. And so, I think that growing up, and kind of how I’m programmed, is when people would say something like, oh, that’s not possible. Or , you can’t do that. Or, that’s going to be too much. You’re going to be stressed or that’s not a good idea. I would, I learned to ignore it.
I basically programmed myself to be like, well, they just don’t understand, you know, they just don’t get me. Right? And so when I have had mentors or coaches or people tell me like, oh, that’s not a good idea. Or like, you know, give me advice I learned in the last few months that I shut down. Like, I’m like, yeah, okay, I’m listening, whatever. But I convince myself, I can still do it. I’m the exception I can do more than most people I can, you know, handle more. I can take on more and I’ll still be fine. I tried to do too much in my business, meaning I had too many offers. I had too many things I was trying to do. I was spread out too thin. The other, like really hard lesson I’ve had to learn, and this started when I did MDMA and I shared this and I honestly, I will tell you, a lot of this started from there.
I’ve gone through massive transformation since then that I think that kicked it off. But I realized I’m addicted to chaos. If there is not a crisis or something happening that is chaos in my life, I go create it. And I think I started to create that in the form of let’s create this new offer or let’s launch this new funnel, or let’s do this over here, or let me start this new business. Which I still do have my other business, so that is not over. But I started to create this chaos and all of a sudden, I had all this chaos around me and this stress and I was like, so overloaded. I realized, and you know, maybe you guys will resonate with this…maybe you guys will think I’m crazy. But what I realized was I get value out of being needed and having so much on my plate that I feel is almost impossible to get through, and then I yet still get through and I get some sort of like satisfaction out of waking up and being like, it’s basically impossible to have to do what you have to do today. And then at the end of the day going, I did it! I freaking did it! I had this many calls and I was able to do this or whatever it is, was able to record 60 videos in a day, or I was able to do this. I like to do the impossible and it’s a game to me. And I get, you know, value. I feel valued when I have a lot to do… when I have so much on my plate that all I can think about is just the chaos. Right? And that’s a trauma response.
And I realized, here’s the thing though, when you’re a leader and when you’re growing a company, what happens is you act that way. And then you create all of the people below you who now act that way and who are constantly in chaos or creating crisis or in a crisis. And you might be enjoying it, because that’s your trauma response. And, you know, you can deal with that, but they’re not, right? And it’s not good for the business. And so that is something I’ve had to sit with a lot. And the only person who could actually realize I was doing this was me, because I’ve been told this for years. Like I’ve had coaches, I’ve had mentors, I’ve had friends tell me, Emily, you know, you got to, it’s not even just like, relax. Like you’ve got to go into a more being mode than doing. And I never got it until like, just one day it clicked for me.
And I was like, oh my gosh, like I spend all this time creating chaos. And if there’s not chaos or a crisis, I go make one, like, it’s crazy. And I’m not fully like, okay, I never will do that again. I’m still going to do that. It’s going to be a constant thing I have to try to stay conscious of and work on. So anyways, in my business I realized, oh my gosh, I broke my rule. I have like four offers and I have all these different funnels and I’m constantly trying to do all these things. And because we have all these offers, we’re trying to sell all these offers. And so why don’t we just scale back and go back to one offer. One solid offer. And I don’t know if I’ll stay with just one single, but essentially what I am doing is going back to when I started my business and I am just an agency and I am doing done for you marketing services, because that is what we do best. Doing done for you strategy, done for you ads, done for you funnel work, done for you creative ideas, done for you copywriting…all the things I have insanely good process and good delivery and assets around that.
And so we decided about two weeks ago to shut down our done with you offer, Market Like a Pro. And here’s the thing that killed me to get to this decision. It’s a good offer. Like the Market Like a Pro content, the structure of Market Like a Pro, the auditing of all your marketing, all of that support. It’s a good offer and it helps people, but we were trying to do too much. And what was happening is on both ends. It’s like when you try to do too much, you end up doing those things 80% instead of just doing one thing and focusing on one thing a hundred percent. So while both areas of the business are really good offers, there started to be delivery gaps. And I do not do that. Like my expectations for delivery with my company are so insanely high and I put more effort in delivery than I do my marketing and that didn’t change.
But what happened was, as I grew my company, I wasn’t the one delivering anymore. So I thought it was going one way. And then basically over the last three months, I found out it wasn’t, not all cases, but some cases. And I was horrified. And like, this is not me. This is not my brand. This is not my values being represented. Like we’re better than this. And the hardest part about it is at the end of the day, when you build a company and you build a team and people go out and make mistakes or, or do something that you would never do, but it’s in your name, you have to take responsibility and you have to look in the mirror and go, what did I do to cause this, what did I, what did I allow? What did I set in the values?
Where did I not show up as a leader? What decisions did I make to get here? And so I had to really think about that and, it’s easier to go like, oh, well that team member, you know, like that person is so dumb or whatever. And it’s a lot harder to, to figure out how you can take responsibility, which is your job as a leader. So over the last 90 days, I’ve realized…and part of this came from when we launched our Elite Agency offer, which is our done for you, mid-tier offer, which is $2,500 a month, and is basically all the done for you without the funnel work, which is our higher level offer. Those will now be the only two offers that I have and they’re basically two different levels of the same offer. When I launched that, we didn’t have the team that I wanted to be able to do it.
So I was like, I’m just going to do it. Like, I’m going to get back in the weeds. I want to get back in strategy. I want to do this. And that is what kind of kicked off this experience where I realized like, whoa, how I would do this is not how it’s happening. Like way too much has changed. And then I started to realize, okay, now we have both of these offers. There’s this happening over here that I didn’t know about, there’s this happening, we’re doing it this way when I thought we were doing it this way. And ultimately like our delivery was not where I wanted it to be. And it was not what I was proud of. It was not me. And, and again, this wasn’t every experience, but there were things that I, you know, I’ve reached out to probably 20 people or more and I’ve said, I am so sorry.
I didn’t know this was happening, but it’s nobody’s fault, but mine and this is not, not okay. And this is how we’re going to fix it. And so that’s the other thing is like in business, you’re going to make mistakes. You’re going to have, you know, potentially a quality gap, right? In your product or your service and how you handle it is, is extremely important. And so that’s, you know, it’s really like when you care about your delivery, like I do, it’s one of the worst things to have that happen and to go to bed at night, knowing that somebody had a bad experience with your company or, or it wasn’t how you wanted it to be or how you even thought it was happening. And at the end of the day, how it’s also your responsibility. And so, you know, I’ve really like gone deep and I’ve probably spent, especially in the last 30, 40 days since, before we launched Cashapalooza, which was our last new offer that we launched which went really well.
I delivered that, so it went really well and I spread myself too thin, but I was able to do it all and deliver that. And while delivering Elite, I onboarded, we’ve signed, we’ve brought on 17 Elite clients. I’ve done every single strategy call. I’ve done every presentation. I’ve retrained the account manager and the ads manager, how I want it, how I want it on the ads trackers. And I don’t say that in the terms of like, well, my way is the best. It’s not about the tactical, how it’s done, it’s the values and the outcomes and accomplishing those and setting the standard and the expectations. And that’s what was missing is I was two levels basically removed from our delivery and my company wasn’t ready for that. That’s the bottom line. I didn’t have the leadership and the values and the expectations in place and set, you know, from the top to allow me to be that disconnected.
But yet I did become that disconnected because everybody in this industry also sells you on this idea that you need to let your business run without you, and it’s not, you know, valuable or worth anything, or you’re not doing a good job unless that’s happening. And the reality is you have to earn that. And I didn’t earn it. I moved on to the next thing too early, and I had to go back and I had to rebuild and I’m still rebuilding, but I feel really good about Elite. And I’ve, like I said, onboarded every client and I’m heavily, heavily involved in the delivery right now. And I’m happy to be because at least I know it’s meeting all my expectations. And the next step is to remove me again from the delivery, but in a way that now has KPIs, better tracking, better accountability, better reporting, better check-ins all of those things.
And, and what’s going to allow me to do that, right, is only having this one offer, the agency done for you. I was actually literally about to launch Cashapalooza again, which again, it went really well. And that’s the thing with these offers is like, they’re not going badly. They’re going 80%. Right. I want them to be better. And I convinced myself the delusion of I was the exception and I could do all this. And I don’t know if you guys resonate with that or not. Cause I’ve been told I’m crazy. Most of my life in the, in the amount that I do get done in a day or a week. But I convinced myself, you know, no problem I could do all that. And the reality is no I can’t. And no, my team can’t to the level that I expect.
Right. So I was about to launch it again. And I said, nope, we’re actually not. I have all the content recorded. I could launch it again. I could put process in place to have, you know, coaches step in and help me deliver it. And I said, no, I want to put all my energy, all my resources into making the done for you agency 10 out of 10, the best offer out there, the best agency out there, the best value for what you’re paying and rebuild it. How I did when I started my business, which is, it’s so ironic. You guys, it is so ironic because when I started my business, I had 60 clients, not when I started, but I built it up to that. I had 60 clients all paying about $2,000 a month and I had 95% retention. I was involved in all the client accounts, but I didn’t hate it.
You know, it, it was just like the next step to building was to remove me. And I had all those clients and it was just rapidly growing. And the delivery was amazing. You know, it was fast paced. I mean, there was definitely issues. There’s always issues right in way in opportunities to grow. But what happened is I let other people change my business. I let other people tell me I need to raise my prices and need to double my prices. And, and we still have our higher level offer. But honestly we offer more than we ever have before at the price that we’re charging. But I let other people tell me, I need to do that. Tell me, I need to launch the done with you program. Tell me I need to do this. And you know, one of the things that’s happened to me over the last three months is I’ve really been like, what’s the truth.
Like I have conflicting, you know, advice coming at me and I’ve had to realize like only I know the answer, it’s my business. I know it deeper and better than anybody else ever could. And I need to listen to myself and stop letting other people make those decisions, which I think is a big issue for us. So one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned, and this is a mistake that has cost me millions of dollars, millions, because I would not be at the level I’m at right now. If I would’ve just focused on that. And what’s so ironic what I was saying, you guys is, what if I just didn’t go down this path of launching these different things and going these different directions. And I still just had that offer and I’d been making that the best ever all this time, where would I be right now?
And I think at one moment, it hit me in this strategy call that I was doing. It’s really been helpful being back in strategy calls because I was doing this strategy call with someone and she was telling me like, she has all these offers and she has all these ideas and she’s so excited about it. And I said to her, I was like, what if you just didn’t ha you didn’t do any of those offers and we put all of your resources and my team’s resources and your ad dollars into this one offer that you’ve already proven converts to. Like, it was crazy. It was like 3% to a $2,000 offer. It was really good. I was like, what if we just put all the resources into that? It might be boring, but I think it’s going to make you a lot of money. And then afterwards, I was thinking, you know, reflecting on the call and working on my presentation for her. And I was like, holy crap. Why don’t I do that? Why am I not listening to my own advice? And how many times have I come onto this podcast and told you guys one offer, one funnel, you know, until you, until you’re even at a million dollars. But even beyond that. And I think, you know, I’m around still 3 million. Like I have been fluctuating around this number. Oh my God. Like, I’m going to say it, since I launched my Done With You program.
Ugh. Since I launched my Done With You program, my business revenue has gone up down, up, down, the same. I think there’s a correlation to that. So learn from my mistake that I’m grateful for, because I wouldn’t…literally, nobody could have convinced me to not launch that offer. I wouldn’t have listened. So it doesn’t matter what anyone said. It doesn’t matter what anyone told me, predicted, gave me advice, whatever, I was going to do it. And I needed to go on this journey to learn that it wasn’t the right fit. And, you know, we’ve had probably like 500 people go through Market Like a Pro…and before that it was Ignite, it’s an amazing offer. I don’t even know what I’m going to do with the content. It’s really good content that who knows. Maybe I’ll give it away or something, but it’s a really good offer.
And, and sometimes you have to realize the really good ideas don’t need to be executed, always because taking the visionary ideas and the things that, you know, that energy that you have to create new and to create that chaos and that excitement, if you just put it into what’s already working and you make that even better, that’s how you grow a company. And I started realizing like, oh my gosh, I’m not listening to my own advice. And again, I needed to go on this journey and I’ve been on this journey. And I have been just, you know, knocked down over the last three months with so many things. Like, not even just related to this, I shared it on the podcast a while back. I mean, it it’s been like a lawsuit, you know, a team member issues, taking clients, just lots of stuff that happened that it’s like, you know, the goal became just don’t quit.
Like you’ll only lose if you quit. And I got through that. I did. And, and that’s been, you know, the last month. And then I think I had to get through that to have the clarity that I have now to really simplify things. And my motto for the business is simple. It’s simplify everything, do more with less. Simplify. 10 out of 10 delivery focus. So that was my one mistake. I tried to do too much with that mistake here. Here’s another that I learned, and this is going to resonate with you guys who are growing a team because this, I have learned this… oh man, the hard way. I delegated hiring. And so I was basically letting managers on my team make hiring decisions. And, you know, basically, we have a process where you do a first interview, you take a test and then you do a final interview.
And I thought, you know, my business was ready and I’m too cool. Not really. I mean, maybe my ego thought that, but to be on these final interviews, my leadership team can do it. They can make the decisions. And we made a lot of not great hiring decisions because I, you know, not because, I wasn’t on the final interview, but because I had people who, not to their fault, didn’t have the resources and the training to be able to make those decisions. And I really think as the CEO of your company, you don’t want to be removed from hiring for a very long time. I mean, the bringing on a wrong person, it costs you, I just saw a stat. It costs you like one and a half times to their annual salary, one and a half to two times. And so why not, you know, get on that final interview, I’m talking to myself, get on that final interview and support in making that decision.
And so I made a couple of bad hiring decisions. And one in particular, I hired, you know, made a mistake in hiring and hired someone who without, you know, I don’t know if it, it was their intention or not, but without me realizing, changed every process that we had like changed the way we are doing daily reporting, changed the way we’re doing weekly reporting, changed the way that we send these monthly reports, changed the way we structure this. And I didn’t know it was happening, which that’s my fault. I didn’t have the KPIs and the reporting and the dashboards in place that I needed to, to be able to keep track of this. And because I was so busy and I was overloading myself with new things, I was just assuming that those things were fine until I got back into the weeds.
And I was like, what? We stopped doing it this way? Why and why aren’t we doing it this way? And it was one person in particular who you know, just took over. And I think, think that they actually did it with good intentions, but the problem was their values were not in alignment with mine and not in alignment with mine around marketing and around how to run a business and how to support clients and strategies. And so it, it really messed up a lot of things. And I did a podcast a while back about how there’s a delayed response in business. And that is very true. So basically like right now, I finally feel able to share this podcast because we’ve not fully fixed everything. Nothing will ever be fully fixed, but we’ve really gotten to the other side of this time period because everything kind of lasts for a quarter, like as what I’ve found a season.
And so now it’s been about 90 days since discovering this, since rebuilding everything, since dealing with this since having to, you know, have hard conversations, since having to apologize, take ownership. And so now I feel like we’re kind of bearing the fruits of the work we’ve been doing the past 90 days, like working our butt off me and my director, shout you out, who I know is going to listen to this podcast. Like she has got the grit that I have, and we’ve just pushed through, right. A lot of changes. But the previous 90 days we were paying for like the previous 90 days when that person took over and changed a lot of things and had, you know, client strategies and, and, and those things that just were not in alignment. And again, I just didn’t know that it was happening and that’s not an excuse to be like, why didn’t know it was happening.
It’s my fault that I didn’t know it was happening. But that is something that can happen when you, when you hire a team. And so my lesson in it is I’m now on every final interview. Not from the perspective that I want to do it from a controlling perspective and run them, but that I’m empowering and teaching my leadership team how to run them. And so we’ll do a final interview and, and it clicked for me like a couple weeks back, I did a final interview and instead of me sharing my thoughts, I asked my team like, what do you guys think? You know, tell me what you think, what are their strengths? What are weaknesses? And they would hired that person. And I was like, here are my thoughts. And I was definitely not going to hire them for reasons specifically around values, things like when you interview, you have to pick up on the things that are not being said in the interview.
And that takes practice, takes a lot of practice to get there. And so I think it’s an amazing learning opportunity for me to work and build my leadership team. And so I’m involved in all the hiring. I also have created much more QA process reporting a lot of like outcome based communication and making sure the team is clear on, you know, not like here are all the steps that you need to do to do this, but here’s the outcome we’re trying to achieve. And here’s the why. And are you on the same page with achieving that outcome? So, yeah, I’ve spent the last 90 days rebuilding process rebuilding our delivery, being personally involved in our delivery. Like I said, I’ve, I’ve done the strategy. I’ve done 17 strategy calls and presentations in the last, like 45 days. We’ve launched every one of those clients on time.
They’re getting amazing results. They’re seeing amazing progress. Like the feedback that we’ve gotten from Elite is like how it was when I first started my business where, you know, I didn’t even need to market because the referrals were so heavy. So all that to say, that’s what I’m doing. And I had to make the extremely difficult decision to shut down our Market Like a Pro offer. Not because it was a bad offer, not because people weren’t getting results in it, not because it wasn’t making a huge difference. I mean, we let those people know last week and there’s a lot of people who are so upset. They’re like, this is the best, you know, Facebook group support or this is the best support program for marketing there is out there. I don’t know what I’m going to do. And I also, I kind of felt like, you know, to serve businesses the best, I truly do believe to get the results you want with your marketing, you need to outsource it and you know, especially components of it.
It’s really hard as a CEO to run your ads, to make your strategy, to build your funnels, to write your copy, even with all the support in the world and all the audits in the world, it’s hard. And so I just knew I could serve business owners better by doing it for them in Elite. You know, when they get to that point, which I made it super affordable for what you get. It’s pretty incredible. All that you do get, you get audits on all of your funnel and, and the done for you. And that I had to let go the done with you. And like I said, I, I really think you guys just watch you watch, this is my turning point to 10 million because I had to go through this journey and learn this hard lesson.
So, learn from me, do not lose focus. Do not think you’re an exception to what everybody says you need to be doing, and why business people who tell you stay focused and you know, don’t try and do too much. Don’t create that chaos in crisis. Like a lot of us entrepreneurs do sit with that, learn how to be, learn how to, to be in that mindset and to not just derive your value from doing and being in the middle of stress and chaos that you enjoy. Because if we didn’t, how would we be entrepreneurs? How could we handle the pressure we have to handle? It’s like, what got us here will kill us getting to the next level, right? That’s saying so true. And then when you build your business, don’t make decisions that your business is not ready for. And for me that was, that was, I didn’t have the leadership team level.
I still don’t. I’m still building it. I’m still working on. It’s why I’m very heavily involved in the delivery still. And not from a standpoint of doing from a standpoint of setting expectations of seeing work, of seeing an outcome of seeing what we’re doing and giving feedback on it and saying, here’s how I would do it because of this, because this is the outcome we’re trying to achieve. This is the result we’re trying to achieve. And so don’t, don’t make decisions where you become so disconnected because it’s so, you know, cool or being promoted as like the thing to do is like don’t work in your business and let it run without you. I can promise you everybody. Who’s doing that, who hasn’t been in business for 10 years and has like a leadership team making hundreds of thousands of dollars in directors like corporate, not like corporate, but at that level they have big delivery gaps trying to do that because I promise you.
And so don’t do that too soon. Don’t let your ego get in the way of what you, you know, should be doing in your business and how you have to buckle down and, and do you know the boring work or the hard work sometimes. And maybe you won’t make those mistakes that I did, but I’m grateful for them. I am. And I’ve had to, like I said, I’ve had to have a lot of difficult conversations and get on calls or get in a conversation where I was embarrassed. And I was like, this is not, I am so sorry. This is not what I thought was happening. This is never what I would want to have happen. And I’m going to make it right. And here’s what I’m going to have to do. I’ve provided months of free service. I’ve had to give a couple of refunds that hurt, you know, they were at large amount, but when I know that we messed up, I make it right.
Because one thing that is never wavering is my ethics and my values and my ability to admit when I have messed up and to own it. And I, you know, think it’s really unfortunate in this industry that, that actually lacks a lot of times. But I will never waiver from that. Even if it means, you know, crying myself to sleep a few nights of, of being like, just so frustrated or wanting to quit, you know? And so if you’ve gone through anything like this similar, I just want you guys to know you’re not alone. I hope this episode was helpful for you. And I’m back you guys. I am back. I, I feel, I feel like a, a different person. It’s kind of like weird because I’m back doing a lot of what I did five years ago. When I started my business and kind of like up until, let’s see, we launched market lake at pro it’s probably been two and a half years since we launched ignite.
And, you know, I’ve bounced around in this place and there’s, you know, things in the industry and economy that are obviously contributing to that, but it feels like I’m back in that place, but a different person, like a completely different, more mature just more, not like wise, because I still have a lot to learn, but just more prepared and ready for that next level. So I’m grateful for it all. It’s, it’s been a, it’s been a rough three months and I’m, I’m ready to have the season of growth and a different experience. But I know that there will be another season of hard just like there was for me last year. Well, that was different reasons, but it was hard and I I’m excited. And you know, sometimes when you’re in those seasons, I’ll say it again, like sometimes the goal in that time becomes just don’t quit.
Like the only way to that you lose no matter what is happening is if you quit, unless that really is the best thing for you to do, you know, sometimes maybe that is. But I think that having that grid is what has saved me many times and kind of pushing through, but then also realizing like how do I not get here again and, and create that chaos again? So if you enjoyed this, I would love if you send me a message on Instagram, you guys don’t know how much those messages mean. And I haven’t asked for this in a while, but if you do love this podcast, I’d love for you to go leave me at review on iTunes or wherever you tune into the podcast. I haven’t asked for that in a while. And those really help, you know, podcast feeds and the algorithms and all the things. All right, guys, I’ll talk to you on Thursday.
Thanks for listening to The Not for Lazy Marketers podcast. If you love this episode and want deeper support with your marketing head over to helpmystrategy.com to see how Hirsh marketing can help take your marketing to the next level. No matter where you’re at today, we help our clients scale faster than ever, find hidden leaks in their funnel, experiment with new creative marketing strategies, and help their business explode and be more profitable than they ever dreamed possible. Head over to helpmystrategy.com and see if you qualify for a free strategy audit with team Hirsh.