Re-brand burnout, boundaries & creating my own customer journey

Welcome to this episode of the LionHearted Marketing Podcast!

What’s this episode about?

It's time for a behind the scenes episode! Since I re-branded & relaunched my business back in June, there have been a lot of changes behind the scenes and I know that sometimes, hearing what other people are testing, experiencing and struggling with is just as useful as a new 'strategy' - so I wanted to share it with you!

In this episode we cover:

• The 'post-launch' burnout which was a big lightbulb moment (or painful learning curve depending on your viewpoint!)

• What stripping back to the bare minimum taught me and how I'm making changes to stop doing the things I was able to drop

• The 5 things I've changed in the last 3 months including:

  • outsourcing Instagram & working on my messaging with Rachel Pearson

  • testing new lead magnets using Ads & using my £15/day Facebook Ad funnel

  • looking at my boundaries with clients

  • evolving my email sequences to stop the reliance on Instagram

  • batching the podcast to stop my resenting the time it takes

• 2 things I'm focusing on having in place before Xmas to truly move towards more time & energy freedom

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Read the transcript:

NOTE: This podcast was transcribed by an AI tool. Please forgive any typos or errors. LHM 011: Solo - BTS current marketing === [00:00:00] hello, and welcome to Lion Hearted Marketing. This is a podcast for bold businesses who are ready to go from a slightly scattergun marketing approach to connecting everything they're doing to create joyful, repeatable customer journeys, that build connection and consistently convert new clients. That's called a funnel. If you fancy. If you have that nagging feeling, you should have more of a grasp on your marketing, more of a plan, more of a system to support your pretty successful business. You're in the right place. This isn't about trying lows and new strategies. It's about taking what you've got and making the most of it. I'm Sophie your host. Self-confessed tea superfan marketing strategist and funnels or joyful journeys, as I like to call them, demystifier. Join me every Tuesday for my Lion hearted approach to marketing. To help you navigate those big moves, stay focused on your goals and ultimately take your business to the next level. Let's jump in to today's episode. Hello. And welcome to this week's episode [00:01:00] of Lionheart in marketing. Now it is the first week back for school in the UK, for many of us. And I, for one, I'm very excited to get back to. A little bit of structure, a little bit of normality, and I have to say, I bloody love September. September energy is my vibe. I've always loved that feeling. Are an energy in September of like coming back to school after summer holidays. And that natural then break at Christmas as well. I often find that a lot of the work i've put in the rest of the year tends to come to fruition and this time of in this period and i just absolutely love the energy now my behind the scenes episodes are always the most popular that I do. So I thought what I might do is start doing them every every like eight to 12 weeks, and just really give you an insight into how the business is growing and evolving, because I know. That it's always really interesting, but I love it anyway, to hear about what other people are doing in their business. I [00:02:00] also invest a lot in coaching and training and I would love to share. What I'm learning, how I'm learning it and how I'm putting into practice as well, because I also think that's just really interesting as well. happened? So the last behind the scenes episode I did was when I launched to the lighthearted marketing podcast back in June. So it's been three months. And gosh, what three months it's been so at the beginning of the year, I was really just focusing on helping service businesses, grow their email lists, using Facebook ads. And we really, really successfully, I had lots of one-to-one clients. I had a group program and the results were really great. What I've evolved to over time is to continue helping clients grow their email list, but also integrate email marketing into that. And then turn these subscribers into clients. And as time's gone on at, you know, I'm looking much more at customer journeys funnels. If you want to call them that. And how we can still be, be the face of our business, you know, the brand, the values. Us [00:03:00] like that personalization and that contact with clients and potential clients. But also allow ourselves to create that time and energy freedom that comes when you have systems and processes working in the background for you. And you can just do the stuff that really adds value and is really critical to running your business and getting the clients the results that they want. Now, the reason that they has kind of evolved in this way is partly because it's what my clients have asked for. It's partly is because the results I've been getting when I've been doing with clients, but also it's a reflection of how I've evolved my business as well. So last year, and for the first chunk of this year, I was just running Facebook ads to grow my email list. And I always get incredible feedback on my emails, which is really lovely, but I was still finding that most of my clients actually came from Instagram. Everyone always says like, you know, the money's in the list and then you'll get higher conversions from your email list. But honestly, I've put so much time and energy into connecting with people on Instagram. And I just, we're still [00:04:00] finding that most people were connecting with me on Instagram. Which I didn't have a problem with. However, what I did feel was that I was a bit beholden to Instagram. If you like, and probably was spending. Proportionally too much of my time on it in a week. Considering it's just one marketing channel in my business. So that's something that I was thinking quite a lot about. Now, if we use go back to may and June, I had a big increase in clients, which is really lovely. But I also spent a lot of time at events. And I've talked about this before. I went to Atomico and I had some in-person mastermind days. I also had a couple of other like single day events. All of them. Really really worthwhile doing, but I think it's because of the bank holidays and the Easter holidays in April and may. I think my actual days working almost halved over two months. From where they were, and what I didn't do is actually account for that in terms of the amount of clients I took on or the amount of work I was doing. So I [00:05:00] still took on clients and did the work, but I was just working a lot in the evenings and weekends. Also because I, we launched my podcast and my business and rebranded, but not only was that you know, very front facing in terms of I had to redo my website and everything. That was also just, I can't tell you what admin there was in the background for that. Moving over a website, domain names, my email domain, my calendar. All of my backend systems that then connect to my calendar. My marketing's is like my emails. Then had to move over. Because they were coming from a new email address. There was just so much in the background. I can't tell you. And I did most of it myself because I just totally underestimated how much that was going to be today. So that was just a huge amount of work. And I got to the point where we launched the business and the podcast and it went so well. And I had such a high that like week or two as I was like getting all out there and it had [00:06:00] such an amazing response and it was so lovely. And in my mind so going into early July, that was like my springboard for, you know, this new kind of content is up leveled, slightly bolder content. You know, going out with this new offering, these new services I've been working on and it was just, I was like ready to sort of relaunch and then grow into this new business that I'd been like working on since February. And then what actually happened was I had an insanely busy may and June. As I've just said. I then did the relaunch. At the end of the, the relaunch week, I actually had my sister's head and do which I was organizing. Co-organizing I then the next week I silo parented for a week cause my husband was away. Which always is quite a big shift because we're quite equal in terms of the time and parenting we do with the kids. And then we went [00:07:00] into the end of the summertime. Now Eliza is only in year one. So this is only my second end of summer term. I think I need to write a big old post-it note in my diary for next time, a term to tell myself, to give myself. The space and the grace to not do too much because, oh my goodness. I had forgotten or didn't realize just how challenging that would be. Not only is there the extra events and that sort of thing, but my daughter, she struggles with change and yeah, there was changes to the timetable. You know, she was used to, there were changes to. Everything that was going on at school, the thought of kind of moving to a new classroom and a new teacher, she kind of really struggled with. And we had, we had a lot going on in the background. With that as well. And essentially what it meant was instead of this wonderful launch into a new business, new new clients and new services. And it's up-leveled content. What it meant was I had to just drop anything that wasn't essential. So I just doubled down on my client [00:08:00] work and my essential marketing, which for me, looks like the podcast and email. And I basically dropped social media and for a few weeks. Pretty much the only content I put out was about the podcast. And then some stories. Instagram stories, which I find relatively easy to do, but even that I kind of dropped off that quite a lot. So, what I did was I created quite a lot of space for myself just to allow myself to do the sort of mission critical work. If you like. We went into the summer holidays and actually it was a big relief. A lot of the pressures have dropped off. My husband was at home, even though I dropped down to three days a week, childcare. Actually, it felt much more manageable. Because I'd created this space for myself. By not doing a lot of the stuff, a lot of the admin staff, a lot of the social media staff. I didn't need to be doing. And I had quite a big realization that I needed to be doing for myself, what I do for my clients. And that [00:09:00] is creating a lot more automation. Outsourcing and not picking back up this stuff that I dropped. But making sure it was done in a different way. So I sort of started. Working out what that might look like, so in terms of like, what could I afford to outsource? Versus what could, should I be automating? So that it just works in the background. So I invested in some support upleveling my DUP Solido to make sure that works as smoothly as possible. Onboarding new clients, invoicing scheduling appointments. So that was a one-off investment. And now that runs really, really well. The next thing I did was get super clear on my boundaries with my clients. I am, I'm an over giver. I absolutely adore working with my clients and making sure that they get the results that they. Want, and I want for them. However, what it does sometimes mean is that I make myself available all the time for all things. And actually I had to really think about, okay, how do I want [00:10:00] to be spending my time? Is it that I want to spend. More time on zoom calls. Is it that I find Voxer in between the zoom calls more productive and really thinking about what what's going to be best for the clients and for me, and then working out what those boundaries are and putting them in place. For me, it looks like a really structured strategy call at the beginning of every month for most of my clients. And then I actually started using Trello boards, which I haven't used in a really long time, but I use Voxer to contact my clients in between calls and. We were going, going backwards and forwards and whilst the voice needs are amazing. I love a voice note. You can't review them really quickly. And if there were lots of actions after our strategy call, sort of putting them in Voxer or emailing them over, it just felt like it was a little bit disjointed. So I'm now using Trello boards, all of my clients, which is working really well. We have an actions list. We have a list of all like key links and documents. We have an overview of the strategy. And I can put in documents like the monthly [00:11:00] results and that sort of thing. So that was implemented, which is working really well. And then we using Voxer still, but actually I'm finding I'm using. Folks we're a lot less because we've now got this structure of the strategy calls and Trello. And between those two things actually, Voxer is then more for like ad hoc. You know, check-ins or, you know, little kind of all, could you have a look at this? So that's something that I've really has been really helpful as well. The third thing. But I decided to do was really have a look at my social media. So Instagram has always been really challenging for me. I absolutely love it, but I know that I could have a bit of a tendency to. Spend far too much time on it. I have lots of ideas for content. And then it kind of often it can feel like it's consuming my mind, like all the time. I'm like, oh, that would be a good idea for content. Oh, I should put that. Or that would be a good story. And it, I find that even when I'm not working, I can't switch off from it. So I decided, yeah, at the beginning of the [00:12:00] summer holidays that, that needed, that really needed to stop. Like I needed, needed to be able to find that space when I'm not working to actually not work. So I started working with the social media manager, which has been amazing and is incredibly exciting. And I mean, August is a terrible time to start with a social media manager, by the way, because the engagement and everything drops off massive lease. It's quite hard to work out what is working and what doesn't. And it's just natural that it's all kind of dropping off. But what we have been able to do is work on our process of working together. You know, how, how I give her. You know, content ideas, how I reviewed the captions, because I still really want to be really involved. Also I've been doing a messaging course over the summer with Rachel Pearson. Ah, who is incredible by the way, I have absolutely loved working with heart. Over the six weeks is a group course. And it's been all about messaging. And because I had so many thoughts about how I wanted to evolve my messaging. Once I rebranded. But [00:13:00] what I was finding was I couldn't, I was struggling to, to bring them to reality. Like I know high level, I want to do, I know who the client is. I want to talk to, but what does that look like day to day in my Instagram and my emails, you know, I was finding those, like my website was. Was more how I wanted it, but I wasn't able to translate that into my, you know, my day to day messaging. And, you know, Rachel has massively helped with that. So between working with Laura and my new social media manager, and then Rachel on the messaging. Social media suddenly is feeling. So much more farm and rewarding and less stressful because I'm not having to get involved in the day to day. I can't tell you the joy of like coming to work on a Monday morning and logging on to see that I've already posted on Instagram and there's, you know, engagement and people sort of getting stuff from the content. It's just, oh, It's utterly wonderful. So that has been, has freed up so much of my time and energy which has been amazing. The four thing [00:14:00] I've done is to look at how I record the podcast. Now I have to admit I'm utterly terrible. I have really, really good intentions with like batching my content and. You know, to having a podcast day, once a month, I get all the podcasts I've done. The reality. Is it just doesn't hasn't happened over over the summer holidays? I think partly because I've only been working three days a week anyway, so to take a day out. To do the podcast just felt too much. When I'm only working three days, however, I am committed to making this a reality. I'm recording this two weeks before it goes out. I will also record my other sailor episode for September today as well. So that's going to be a big change. I do have a podcast VA as well. So once I've recorded and edited the podcast. She then puts it into the right systems and does the website and creates the graphic and all that sort of stuff for me as well. So I'm getting some support with that as well. Because the podcast is an incredibly important marketing tool for me. I would say. [00:15:00] Eight or nine out of 10 people, they get on a call with say, they've listened to the podcast in some way. Whether they say they've binged the episodes or they listen to a episode that, you know, may push them, you know, to get in touch with me. It's such an incredible tool for connecting with people over a longer period of time. And helping them hear my voice and get to know me and what I'm like. I absolutely love it. However, when I do it weekly, it is a beast, like to record it, to then edit it and write the show knows it's. It's a good sort of half day a week when you're only working three days a week. That is pretty tough going actually. And I don't ever want it to become a burden to the point where I wasn't doing it or the energy and the episodes is a bit lacking because I'm like, oh my God, I don't want to do it today. So that's really important for me to make sure that the podcast. Planning and structure is set up so that I feel like it's done and then it gets released into the wild, and then I can come back to it the next month. [00:16:00] So that's really exciting. And then the fifth thing that I have been working on to really create this sort of time and. Why did they create, or keep this time and energy freedom that I've sort of allowed myself to do? When I had to drop everything is really working on my own customer journey now cause I rebranded everything I needed to redo all of my email automations. Now, originally I was just going to rebrand them. And then I decided obviously that I needed to rewrite the whole thing. And that really links into my ads as well. So I stopped running ads when I rebranded, because I needed to do a new lead magnet. And then what I realized was actually I needed to do the whole thing. So I have been working on over the summer. Testing out some new lead magnets. So I've actually done three different lead magnets. I've tested them and I now have one I'm going to be moving forward with, I haven't actually, I don't think I've actually put it on organic social media. I've been testing them, using ads. It's called [00:17:00] automated to elevate. . It's actually my three-step blueprint to creating a personalized customer journey that gives you time and energy freedom whilst maintaining your financial success. So I will put the link to that in the show notes. If you want a copy of that. You can click that and sign up for it. It's had such a good response on Facebook ads. I've been really, really excited about how well it's done. So that was a big thing for me, is finding a lead magnet that attracted the clients I'm looking to attract. But also got people, clicking on the emails, opening it, downloading it and taking action. So I've been testing that out on my ads. So those are lead ads I'm using to get people, to download the lead magnet. And then I'm also using engagement ads. To put podcast episodes and some of my social media posts. In front of the people that are downloading the lead magnets. So once they've downloaded the lead magnet, they, then it will see things like my episodes of my [00:18:00] podcast. They'll see social media content. And so that they can kind of bring them further into my world immediately because they want to make sure that if they've downloaded the lead magnet, Then they probably want to listen to the podcast episode that's relevant. Like the next step from that. Well. I'm looking at the results of those and testing different podcast episodes and different pieces of content. And it's been a bit of a slow process because I wanted to test different types of content, but we've had to make. You know, wait, we've created that content and got it out there. So I'm now creating content and podcast episodes as well. Thinking about, okay, this piece of content or this kind of podcast episode. Would be really good for, to put back in front of people who've just downloaded this lead magnet. So then need to put that in my plan to make sure I actually create that post or make that podcast episode. So that's been part of the overall plan as well. And this structure of their lead ads and then the engagement ads. And eventually I will do some sort of low-cost offer. So something that is useful, that's probably probably under 20 [00:19:00] pounds. That helps people put this into practice. And that will also go on social media as well and offered to people who , have downloaded the lead magnet or engaged with my content in some way. So that's my 15 pounds a day. Facebook ads funnel. I'll actually do a separate episode on that because I think that's really important to kind of go into the different elements of that. But I will be running that myself. So maybe in my next behind the scenes update, I can, I will have a low-cost offer and I can let you know how those kind of three types of ads are working together and what they're kind of bringing me. I've got clients who are running this funnel already, and it's so powerful to see those sales coming in every day. Like the idea is a sale a day. From those low-cost ads and it offsets the cost of their ads, essentially. It's not to, you know, make loads of money and, you know, have it as a massive income stream. It's more about converting subscribers into clients as quickly as possible. [00:20:00] And then offsetting some of your ads costs so that when you, you know, you can scale those ads. You're not just spending 15 pounds. Maybe you can instance spend 30 pounds or 45 pounds. But if you're still offsetting the cost of them, it just means you're reaching more people without having to just invest in the ads upfront. So it kind of takes away some of the risk associated with the ad spend. So that's my next step is to implement that last section. Of the funnel, but you know, it takes time to bring all of this stuff together. Like I need to actually create what it is I'm going to sell and do a sales page and then test it organically as well. So there's still quite a lot around that as well. But, you know, just taking it a step at a time. And I want to kind of share that, that, you know, it's not a case of, like, you can just whip up this funnel in an afternoon. There is a lot of stuff that most people will already have that you could then pull into this. Customer journey that you can kind of [00:21:00] create, but a lot of it also. Takes time and energy as well. Yeah, so I think where, oh, at the AAN thing I had on my list dimension was my email. I've been working a lot on my email automations as well. So I'm testing out different emails, testing out different flows. You know, how many emails do I want to be sending to people? To try and get them to download the lead magnet. How many emails is good in a welcome sequence? You know? What subject lines, are going to working within the welcome sequence. What emails are getting opened? What emails are not getting opened? Where am I losing people? what's of real interest to people. What are people really clicking through on? So just, yeah, really taking notice of the data and trying to make little tweaks again. It's. The more people you have going through the funnel, the more data you have. So the more you run ads and the more you can spend on ads, the more you'll get that data quickly. So it's more a case of just for me, keeping an eye on those emails at the moment I've currently got a sequence. [00:22:00] Of three emails you go through. Once you get the lead magnet. If you don't download it, as soon as you click download, then you drop out of that sequence and move into the welcome sequence. And the welcome sequence I think has. For emails at the moment. I can't remember off the top of my head. Three, either three or four emails, which I will be adding to over time. I also want to introduce a sequence that walks you through. More like what I offer it and how I offer. So at the moment, I don't really have a sales focused. Email sequence that actually talks to people about the services they offer. It's much more about like me an introduction to me. And how I work and my kind of ethos, rather than the specific services I offer. So that's the next step. For me is the more of the sales focused email automation. And then the low-cost offer. Ads. The only other thing I will mention is that early in July, I started emailing. [00:23:00] Daily on the days that I work. I, which is Monday to Thursday. So I started doing an email Monday to Thursday. Now it's partly cause I joined Rob and Kennedy's email marketing heroes community. And they advocate daily. They actually aggregate seven days a week, but I felt like that was too much of a commitment for me personally. And my audience considering that I'd been emailing once a week, maybe twice a week. I went to four emails a week and I will, I will do a more in depth episode on that because Most people will be horrified hearing that I imagine like, oh my God, a doing every day and be receiving emails that much, it's just too much. I didn't find that my open rates dropped that much. Initially, I did have a high level of unsubscribes, however, that's really settled now. And I don't have a high level of unsubscribes. I just have the normal amount and. I get a really consistent open rate of around. Anywhere from like 42 to 46%, which is really high. And like mostly you'd be happy if you got over [00:24:00] 30% is sort of a industry benchmark. I get good click through rates. People engage my emails. I get really good response from emails. So I'm actually going to continue doing that. It might be more, I might do three a week. I'm going to see what my, again, this sort of time and energy freedom. There's always one email about the podcast, which is I'm on a Tuesday. And so there's then either two or three additional emails. Right. Actually, I find them quite easy. They're quite short emails. I they're kind of story-based, which I really like. I find quite easy to write. They're almost like social media, longer. Social media captions. So I don't find them that hard to write. But I do have to write them. I do tend to write them on the day which isn't me being unorganized. That's actually what they advocate because it's more than. You know what you're thinking about at that point, and it can keep it really relevant for your audience. So I'm going to continue with it for now. And just see how I get on. If I find that it feels too much of a, you know, if I want to take a day off from, I felt like, oh God, I've got to write my email still. Then I [00:25:00] will reduce it down, but I think for now I feel, I feel okay actually about that. I feel great about the results that it's kind of getting me and people Are responding to the emails, clicking through replying, getting in touch with me. So that feels really nice as well. But again, that's kind of, I would say that's under review going forward. So yeah, so those are the five things I've been working on and and probably number six and seven as well. I sort of lost count 12. We had to be honest. But I hope that's useful and interesting. And if you've got any questions, all about anything please do just pop me a DM. On Instagram. Although I do have a social media manager now, I still do my own DMS and I do still reply to comments on all posts myself. I do most of my stories myself as well, so yeah, I'm still there on Instagram. It's more a case of actually getting consistent grid content out there. I needed help with that was always my blocker. So yes, all the rest of the stuff is still [00:26:00] me. If you want to come and have a chat with me in the Let me know how you've got with this episode. If you found it useful, if you've got any questions, I always, always love to hear from you. And I will be back with one of these episodes probably. Just before Christmas. Which will be a nice Roundup of kind of how autumn and Q4 has gone and the things I'm going to be focusing on in. Early 2024. Can you believe it? I hope you have a lovely day and I will see you next week. Thank you so much for joining me this week. Before you go, make sure you subscribe to the podcast so you can receive new episodes every Tuesday when they're released. And if you enjoyed this episode, I'd love for you to rate or leave a review wherever you are listening to it. It only takes a few seconds, but it really does make a massive difference to new people finding me. Thank you again for joining me, Sophie, in this episode of Lionheart Marketing. See you next time.