Digital Wrap-Up
Digital Wrap-Up takes listeners on the journey of a digital marketing agency from startup to success. Episodes follow Harden Digital and Design CEO Riley Harden each week as he continues to grow his business. The Digital Wrap-Up covers many different topics, including the work Riley does for his clients, different tips and tricks he uses to grow his business and a mix of fresh social media news/tips. This podcast is perfect for small business owners looking to follow along as another small business owner (Riley) goes through the ups and downs of growing a business. Social media managers looking to stay current on different best practices and new features will also find this podcast informative. Come join us for an exciting journey in the small business world!
Digital Wrap-Up
Making Smart Decisions as a Small Business Owner
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Strap in for a deep dive into the heart of strategic business planning. We don't just want to ride the wave of our best year yet; we're all about paddling towards sustainable growth. Kaylee and Riley break down their approach to setting goals, from trimming the fat off non-essential tasks to doubling down on content that truly drives our business forward.
We're not shy about the struggles, sharing how we're navigating the ebb and flow of project workloads and the search for consistent clients. Plus, hear our candid take on sales strategies—because let's be honest, cold calling is nobody's cup of tea. So, whether you're a budding entrepreneur or a seasoned business owner, there's a nugget of wisdom in here for you.
We're also talking about our unfiltered thoughts on the office move and its impact, from the joy of natural light to the unexpected perks of close-knit business neighbors. Tune in to catch the buzz around how our content strategies are evolving in this lively locale.
Support the show: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1525549/supporters/new
Welcome back to another episode of the Digital Wrap-Up. My name is Riley and I'm the host and I'm the CEO of Hardin Digital and Design. We're coming to you live from the new studio, and Kaylee is joining me. I say studio, but it's technically our office too.
Speaker 1:But we're going to be talking about the new office one, and then just some other stuff that's happening with the business, downsizing the office, how we've kind of shifted some strategies for our content creation lately, and just the general update about life at Hardin Digital and Design. So first of all, kaylee, thanks for joining me.
Speaker 2:Thanks, it's really awkward because you're behind me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like I'm not looking at you anymore, Great podcasting, but you could see my hand behind Kaylee's camera there. But yeah, this is the new office.
Speaker 2:Now it's echoey.
Speaker 1:We're doing so well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I talk loud, that's okay. So, for those of you listening to the podcast or watching on youtube, we actually are recording this live. We're streaming it live while we're recording the podcast, so we might stop and interject and, um, answer some questions from the comments throughout the podcast. But uh, just trying a new way to engage with the audience and we'll see where this goes. So if we just randomly stop and answer a question, it's not us getting sidetracked which we tend to do, that anyways but this is something we're going to give a try. So first thoughts on the new office.
Speaker 2:Is that a question?
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Oh, I love it. It is infinitely less depressing.
Speaker 1:Yes, I would agree. As you can see behind us, if you are watching on YouTube, which please go subscribe to our channel on YouTube. It's YouTube dot com slash at Hardin Digital YouTube. It's youtubecom slash at hardened digital, and you can see a little bit of the office and the limited camera views that we have here. So yeah, the old office was very dark and felt like a dungeon. The back part of our office did not have any windows in it.
Speaker 1:So we were really just working in the dark, not necessarily in the dark, but the lighting. There was no natural light back there. So, first of all, the window is a huge upgrade for us and we're also actually have a nice view of the courthouse right here on the square in Tipton, so that's pretty sweet. Yeah, I'd say that's my biggest plus so far is the window.
Speaker 2:I also like that. There are people. There are other people in these business suites or professional suites, I think it's called.
Speaker 1:Tipton Professional Suites suites. I think it's called Tipton Professional Suites, Tipton.
Speaker 2:Professional Suites. We have neighbors and people just popping in and out saying hi is exciting for me At least. If you're not here, there will be other human interaction for the whole day. I've already seen a lot of people. I know they did ribbon cutting the other day for Chelsea and Dan, a whole bunch of people up here. There were kids in here when she was doing a photo shoot the other day. It's been at least exciting for me. I don't know if you need all those people, but I like having people no, I, I think it.
Speaker 1:It's nice to have some human interaction throughout the day, because we got hardly any foot traffic at the other place. Our goal or our hope, you know, with having the office when we first opened the office was so that we could get some foot traffic, but just the location, nobody was really walking there. I think that's one of the biggest takeaways, for me too is the amount of traffic that goes. We're on the main, main intersection in downtown tipton now and it's not like our old office was out in the middle of nowhere it was one block over square, but we never saw anybody, like no car, like hardly any cars, no foot traffic.
Speaker 1:But this is completely different, so it's an adjustment it's very noisy, for sure the, the street noise is loud, but that's okay. So, besides the window, what else do window what?
Speaker 2:else do you like? What else do I like? I don't know. I just feel like it fits us better. I know that's like a silly thing to say, but it's very open. Everybody can just walk right in here. And now I have to face them. Before I was facing backwards, so anytime people came in they scared the crap out of me.
Speaker 1:Now I'm the first person they see. Uh, not technically, they see me before, because I'm well, yeah, I'm sitting closer to the door. Yeah, no, it is nice um the old office. People have to come in the common area, then walk down the hallway, then walk into the big entry area and then didn't see anybody. So it's like, is anybody even here? And then we would have to walk up from the back or they'd have to walk to the back, and it just wasn't a great setup for when we did have people come in.
Speaker 2:So this is much more friendly and happier environment for greeting guests, I think and people would just all of a sudden be standing behind me before and just be like hi, yeah, like I didn't hear them come in, I didn't hear anything keegan did that a couple of times.
Speaker 1:He thinks it's funny.
Speaker 2:He I'm sure did on purpose. He he probably snuck in, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, other updates about the office. It's newer, it's recently remodeled, so it's floors are brand new, paints brand new.
Speaker 2:I wish I could show you guys the trim and the doors. It, I love the doors. It's such a stupid thing to say, but they're they remind me of Veronica Mars and everybody keeps making fun of me for saying that, but it's like the frosted looking glass on the doors, and the doors are painted black, so it looks very like mysterious and like you can't see through it. So what's behind the door?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it is, it's's. It's an old bank, right? So imagine, like 1950s bankers and that, that textured glass, that it's frosty and you know, imagine old bankers sitting in here smoking and it gives off those vibes like they kept that kind of historical feel to it. But it's updated.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the ceilings are tall. Even though it's smaller, it feels more open.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so that's the next big piece about the new offices. We technically downsized. Our old office had a huge open entryway and big seating area. We thought it was a great idea when we moved in there, but we used it maybe two times in a year and a half. Most of our meetings were at the conference table, which was in a kind of separate, separated area, and we never really just sat out there in the big open area. So it was really wasted space. Um, you know, it was a good thought and I I think if we had more foot traffic like a quote-on-quote regular company, like as it was a good waiting area if people were waiting on appointments or things like that, but we just that wasn't our what we do so kind of underutilized space there.
Speaker 1:but we were able to move all of our furniture except for one desk that we don't use to the new office, so like it was a downsize, but it was kind of just getting rid of the wasted space Right.
Speaker 2:And we gained a desk. So really we have the same amount.
Speaker 1:Yeah, technically we have the same amount and you know, we didn't lose any of our seating area chairs. It was just a little tighter fit in there and that's perfectly fine. So anything else, I think, uh well, the one thing we haven't talked about, um, is we're saving a lot of money by moving here too. Right the, I think the appeal of having the window, getting rid of the extra space and all that is nice, but when it comes down to running a business, we're saving $300 a month. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So, it's like it was a no brainer. I couldn't think of any reason why we shouldn't do it. I could.
Speaker 1:Well, the stairs, the stairs, the stairs. Please, please, people, come and visit us, and then you will understand and look at the desk that we're sitting at and realize how big or how hard it was to get these desks up here. So that's the one downfall, but they're up here, we don't have to worry about it anymore.
Speaker 2:So yeah, we, we can just never leave. We're going to be in this office until the end of time.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:Because I'm not carrying all this stuff downstairs.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I mean all of that stuff combined it was just like this is the easiest decision. We don't pay for utilities, we don't have to split. I guess that's technically utility, but we were paying electric and gas at the other office. Now that's all combined with the rent. The base rent itself is cheaper. So when we add all of that up it comes out to on average about 300 bucks a month. That we're saving, which is a lot.
Speaker 2:And I just kind of like the setup of having all these other like-minded business owners up here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like Chelsea and Dan, we love being your neighbors too, but we consider ourselves creatives, right? Kaylee's a graphic designer, I do creative stuff on social media and websites and they're photographers, and I think there's an event coordinator up here too, and um, so it's just having like-minded people in the same areas is nice.
Speaker 2:I think it's motivating to me that, like all these people are trying to do the same thing. We are yeah to make it in tipton. Like tipton is still small, we talk about it all the time, but like people are trying to do things and it's nice to see other people that are like pushing and trying to make it happen, just the same as us. And not everybody needs a whole building, like we don't need a whole office building for the two of us, so this is perfect I thought we did at first yeah, like if we had 10 employees, that would be fantastic, we could have our own building.
Speaker 2:But yeah, right now that's not where we're at.
Speaker 1:So this is a good setup yeah, so kaylee and I sit a little closer now.
Speaker 2:We don't have individual little cuties.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:We're more newsroom style here, just wide open. I can't see what he's doing, but he can see every single thing I'm doing.
Speaker 1:Yep, it's not really a problem yeah. No, I think it works well and the only like potential downfall was when I'm on virtual meetings. But so far it's been fine. I mean you could hear me on my virtual meetings anyways, at the old office.
Speaker 2:We had a little half balls before. It wasn't like it was totally separate, it just felt a little bit more separated.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I guess the one big change that I mean for those watching is obviously the podcast studio. That's, I guess, the one area that we really lost out on. We used to have a dedicated podcast studio. It was tiny, but it was its own separate, closed off room, had a nice setup in there. That's the one, I guess, big thing we lost. It's not the end of the world, right. There's several people who just sit at their desk, like we are now, and do their podcast, and it presented some challenges. We had to test some different setups today before recording this, but we worked it all out and I think this will definitely be an okay setup moving forward.
Speaker 2:Um, I look less awkward at this setup. I don't know if that makes a difference to anyone else besides me, but however, I was sitting before. Maybe it's just because I'm in my rolly chair or I can lean on my desk, or whatever, but I always felt like I was so uncomfortable in the other ones because I didn't know what to do with my arms.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I always had a computer in front of me and things like that, where you were just kind of sitting there awkwardly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, which I'm great at this. Just I look and I can see myself. Maybe that's why I never had my computer, so I couldn't see myself. Or maybe I would have adjusted and not look so stupid before.
Speaker 1:I don't know yeah, so we we spent money on the podcast setup when we first moved into it, but um, overall, I don't think it's a huge loss necessarily.
Speaker 2:No, we're still using most of the stuff, just not the same.
Speaker 1:We don't have the dedicated room for it, yeah. But overall, we're here to talk about business and how to make smart business decisions. And aside from the fact that we like the space better and it's better for our mental health because we can actually get some natural light in here and not just sit in a dungeon all day, I think we realize that this is actually more than just hey, we like this fancier office. This is a really good business move because again, we're this newer fancier office. This is a really good business move because again, we're saving that $300 a month. We're kind of cutting down on wasted, underutilized space and yeah, I think this is a good time to do that, because we're kind of shifting to some different strategies and everything else that we're doing too. So it was kind of like hey, this lines up perfectly with the other stuff that we're doing, which we'll get into here in a couple of minutes.
Speaker 2:And we never seem to plan these things out, Like it just kind of falls in our lap and then we're like okay, I guess we're moving offices, Like yeah, you know we talk about making smart business decisions.
Speaker 1:the smart thing to do would be and and forecast this out, but we didn't know these offices were opening up, right? Um, you know dan, who's chelsea's husband, who's leaving comments here on facebook. Um, he's the one that told me about him and showed me hey, there's a couple of suites open and brought me up here. And within a week we were like, okay, let's do it. And now we're here less than a month later. Yeah, probably exactly a month, cause we had to give 30 days notice. But, yeah, it, just I forgot where I was going.
Speaker 1:It just happened to work out this way yeah, yeah, I mean, it would be great if we could be like okay, we need to find the new spot because we're not using our space effectively and we're being charged too much for what we're really using it for, like on and on. It would have been a great business decision if we had planned that out, but we didn't.
Speaker 2:But happy accidents. Yeah, that's kind of how we got the first office to begin with.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think the bigger part of that is just being adaptable as business owners and kind of seeing the opportunities in front of you and just running with it Right. You know, yeah, the first office we didn't really plan for at all. We had just joined forces and Kaylee joined the team, became part owner, and then, like a week later, this office opportunity came up in downtown Tipton and we're like, well, can we go for it? And looking back, like we had the money to pay the security deposit first month's rent. Was it the smartest move? No, but I think it worked out. Our goal was to establish a presence in Tipton and I don't think we could have done that without getting that office. No, I don't think so either, just paid the lawyer to create the S corporation, accountant, whatever.
Speaker 1:And like we just went through all this transition of starting a new bank and transferring money and doing all this stuff and like then, oh, hey two months rent upfront out of nowhere, like, yeah, we were kind of tight on money when we started out, but I don't know where we'd be at if we were still just both working from home.
Speaker 2:I would probably not be doing very well yeah.
Speaker 1:Once again.
Speaker 2:I need some human contact, yeah.
Speaker 1:And just in terms of the amount of business we've gotten to, I don't think we would have no, because people wouldn't have even known who we were yeah, there's, oh yeah, I mean people still probably don't know who we are yeah, but like, yeah, we have our presence set up on google and we have a google business profile, so people search, marketing agencies and tipped in we pop up, but like, are people actually doing that?
Speaker 1:not so much, um, but the personal interactions and the connections and relationships we've made since opening our office have been very beneficial um, and maybe we'll get some new neighbors up here who need help marketing themselves.
Speaker 2:That's a potential opportunity there that we didn't have before.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's why us being here is a unique situation, because every other tenant that moves in here is a potential client for us. Yeah, if we look at it that way which, like that's, I'm not going to be over pushing you Like first day they move in, hey.
Speaker 2:Hey, you need to hire us.
Speaker 1:You need a new website. Let us run your Facebook page Like we're not going to be. We're one, we're terrible salespeople in general, but two, we're also nice people. But two, we're also nice people, not going to just be over pushy and say you need to work with us or we're not going to be friends with you, but if, like, you're right next door, but we can't speak because you didn't hire us yeah, but if we realize, okay, this new company moved in and they don't have a website or they need help getting their social media started, like we're here as a resource for them and that's a very big benefit for us moving forward.
Speaker 1:So any other thoughts about the office, on things, strategic things I'm probably going to get in shape. That's not strategic.
Speaker 2:That's also a happy accident, because we have 8,000 stairs.
Speaker 1:Yeah, three to four trips a day up the stairs. It's good for you, it's going to kill me.
Speaker 2:Shout out to Jake Jude for carrying this furniture up the stairs.
Speaker 1:And Riley.
Speaker 2:And Riley yeah.
Speaker 1:And Joel, and Joel.
Speaker 2:That was my one. My probably only stipulation about moving here was that I could not carry these desks up the stairs.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was. It was rough, but we're here.
Speaker 2:You guys are in shape and we're struggling. I would definitely not be okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So, speaking of smart business decisions higher movers hire movers.
Speaker 2:Hire movers if you're over 30.
Speaker 1:Yes, if you have at least a couple hundred dollars minimum that you're willing to part ways with, it is worth it, especially when stairs are involved. I mean we should have known. I mean, and stairs involved, I mean we should have known. I mean I kind of knew.
Speaker 1:But when we moved these desks into the old office it was a pain and I was just moving it from a trailer inside two doors with no stairs and you know I debated. I know a local moving company that engages with our content on social media and it's like, oh, that'd be nice to give them a, you know, reach out to them, see what they can do. I don't know why I didn't. I just figured, oh, we'll be fine and, uh, I over promised, but it worked out so I mean we're here yeah nobody injured themselves majorly good business doesn't
Speaker 1:have to pay for the whole chiropractor bill?
Speaker 1:yes, hopefully no, we're past that now good, um, the one thing I mean this is getting nitpicky and doesn't really have to do with the overall performance or overall thoughts of the office, but we had just settled into the old office space literally two months before we moved. I hung stuff on the walls in my office and finally made it like an office and felt homey and I enjoyed sitting there all day, versus just looking at blank walls. And then two months later we move and we're kind of back in the same situation because these walls are not great for hanging stuff on, as we found out this weekend.
Speaker 1:So kind of lose out on that, yeah, I mean, we have our big paintings on the wall, which is nice, but, yeah, I lost my shelves and my clock.
Speaker 2:I'm sure you looked at that clock so often, considering you have it on your computer and your wrist.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, actually, I did kind of until daylight savings time changed and then it was wrong and I didn't take it off and move it. That's all right. Anyways, moving on, any last thoughts about the office.
Speaker 2:No, I think people should come see it though. Yeah, what's the address?
Speaker 1:of this place 102 North Main Street in downtown Tipton, right above the Market on Main.
Speaker 2:Come see us. We're here all the time. Come hang out.
Speaker 1:Well, not necessarily hang out, Just come say hi. Um, sweet 207. So second door on the left whenever you get up the stairs. But yeah, overall office is great, Great business decision, Great decision for our general wellbeing. And can't wait to make more connections with potential new tenants that move in whenever. I mean they're looking to fill this place up. So if you are a business owner or looking at an entrepreneur or whatever, trying to get a new, even if you don't need it every single day, it's a. There's a several different sized offices or suites left, so let us know and we can get you in contact there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, come be our neighbors.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it'd be fun. Anyways, moving on talking about smart business decisions, we've kind of been changing a lot of what we do content wise in the past couple of months. Um, we've really started to hone in on what's worth our time creating and what is not worth our time creating, and even evaluated the podcast in terms of is it beneficial for us to continue doing? And, um, we're still here podcasting, so I guess that answers that, um, for now at least, right? Um?
Speaker 2:yes, our whole solid 15 dedicated listeners. We appreciate you yeah.
Speaker 1:But we're trying to focus on things and activities and projects that actually make us money, right? Why are we writing a blog about something that nobody's actually reading? Right? Especially Kaylee or Hannah trying to write a blog when they're not natural writers, right, that's taking up a ton of their time and we got a couple of clicks through on Facebook one time and then that was it right. So what was the purpose of that? Nobody is searching for that blog on Google or anything where we're like getting tons of views from Google search or anything like that. So it was kind of a realization of we're doing a lot of things that aren't really benefiting the business at all, because we thought it would be helpful, because other people do different blogs and different things like that Didn't really work out. So trying to cut, I guess, trim the fat, as they say, in terms of what we're putting out there and what we're focusing on. So instead of, I guess I'm just going to talk about the blog first, instead of writing these random blogs about, like the one that pops into my mind is the nonprofits that we love blog, where we talked about family promise and good samaritan network, which we do love working with them, and they both have special place in our business and in in our personal lives.
Speaker 1:But what is that really benefit about?
Speaker 2:we did a podcast on it.
Speaker 1:Great, I think the podcast is a little more open to having those type of conversations. But for the blog purpose, what like? What did we benefit from that?
Speaker 2:and I can't tell you Right, and that's why we weren't consistent with it was because it wasn't actually gaining us anything, so then we could push it off.
Speaker 1:Yeah, focusing on new things, trying to come up with new things, instead of working on things that we already have been doing, and I know that's a downfall, but I think part of it that plays that played into that is the fact that some of the stuff we were doing that I was spending a lot of time on wasn't actually benefiting the business myself, whatever it may be. So then I would put that off because I knew why spend a couple hours writing a blog and doing all this posting it, publishing it, posting it on social media? Why spend time doing that if it's not going to do anything for us? And then I would start looking at other other projects or other things that, okay, maybe this will take off. And so I've done that a lot.
Speaker 1:You know, like our Shopify website and then our Etsy store, which is still technically up. We have like three sales on it, but I we've talked about this in the past, but you know I ran with that idea and went all in for about a month and then hasn't been beneficial, so I've kind of let that fall off. Well, the same thing was happening with the blog is, I'd write a blog, wouldn't really see any traffic to it, so then I would be discouraged to not want to write a blog again for a while and then go on from there. And honestly, the same thing happened with the podcast for a little bit too.
Speaker 1:Not just recently, but over the life of this podcast, which started in 2022, maybe the end of 2022 is. You know, I've gone stretches of, you know three or four weeks without recording and publishing a podcast, because sometimes it's like is it really beneficial for the amount of views and downloads that we're getting?
Speaker 2:Right, and I think that might be a better way to go about it, though, than just recording for the sake of recording. So it's like there's there's a positive and a negative to it of we need to be thinking of things that people actually care about and that it's going to benefit the business, but also we don't need to record it if we're just doing it to say okay, we did our weekly podcast.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that is true. I think that's kind of what we've come to the realization of is being more purposeful with our every piece of content that we put out. You know I talked to Kaylee about okay, what are our conversations going to be on the podcast? We can talk about the fun part of the new office and all of that, but that's not what the entire podcast should be about, because people aren't going to necessarily be searching for that or enjoy that right. We're here to talk about small businesses and marketing and things like that. So, trying to have a more clear focus on the topic of the podcast and relating it to stuff that people who know us would actually be wanting to listen to or it'd be a benefit to them wanting to listen to or it would be a benefit to them.
Speaker 2:And a lot of it, at least for this episode. Particularly like I think I would like to know sometimes when other people are, like I didn't know if that was a good decision for my business or not. Like I would like to know that people besides us sometimes are like wow that is expensive. What do you mean? If I was a listener starting a business, this episode would be good, no matter what we were talking about, because maybe people are starting their first office and they may have run into the same questions we did.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's true. It may not be something people are searching for, but for the people who do want to listen to it, I don't know I don't want to be on the podcast. I need to just shut up.
Speaker 1:And Kaylee just volunteered. No, but I think taking this new approach will help, hopefully be more beneficial and worth our time and, you know, if it is something, that we are more pointed and more focused on a specific topic whether it's the blog, or for the blog or for the podcast and put a more focused effort I just said focus twice but put a better effort into the content that we're putting out, that hopefully it's actually stuff that gets views and gets clicks and provides some positive reinforcement that this is worth it to keep doing Right, Because if not again, then what's what's the point of doing it?
Speaker 1:would we be better off spending this now 45 minutes that we've been live on facebook and youtube and everything? Would it be more beneficial for us to be working on?
Speaker 2:stuff for our clients maybe like right.
Speaker 1:So then that's what you kind of have to weigh and decide on. So it's all this stuff is like constantly just circling in my mind yeah, all this stuff, and but we also have had conversations that not everything you do can go viral every single time.
Speaker 2:so we get discouraged sometimes if we're we're putting in all this effort to post however many times a week on social media to do these things that we think are interesting and funny and informative, and then when it doesn't get any views or listens or likes, then we're discouraged. But not everything can do that. Some of it is just our loyal family and friends listening to our podcast.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it is what it is, just our loyal family and friends listening to our podcast.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so, circling back to the blog, though, we started making a more pointed effort to writing content that would be searchable right the whole SEO that people throw around. Searchable right, the whole SEO that people throw around. Well, I started really digging into that and writing content that people were searching, and it seemed to work out really well. Like we got thousands of page views on our website. We our Amazon affiliate links were blowing up, making 10 to $20 a day in commissions, which, like on the grand scheme of thing.
Speaker 1:No, that's not a ton, but for us, when we were making zero dollars off of our blog now, all of a sudden we're making 10 to 20 dollars because I'm putting more effort into the content that we write. Yeah, like making a couple hundred bucks a month from Amazon affiliates through our blog is amazing. My goal was to make enough from our blog to pay rent for the new office every month, and up until last week I thought that was attainable, and then Google has kind of hurt us.
Speaker 1:But I don't want to complain about that because we're new to the blog space, so it's not like we're. Our business is tanking because of everything happening with google because, like I said, we're only making 10 to 20 bucks a day, or some people are literally their entire business is ran off of a blog and they're losing traffic like crazy, but I don't know. Hopefully we can rebound the blog it's hard to say rebound because it's still so new, but recover and get back to where we were a couple weeks ago, making $10 to $20 a day off Amazon commissions and things like that.
Speaker 2:But it's also one of those things that if, for whatever reason, we do reevaluate it and this whole google mess is gonna be a problem, maybe the blog is not worth it. It's not worth it anymore, yep so that's where we're at with every single part of our business right now is like, if we actually look at it by the time spent, how much of what we do is worth it or not.
Speaker 2:Even the projects that we commit to. I got myself stressed out having 97 things to do, which is great, and I'm managing it, but I only have so many hours in the day. I mean, that's a whole tangent too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but we're literally at the stage of, like she said, evaluating everything, even to our core services that we provide. Right, like I mentioned earlier, we're terrible sales people, um, and we've known that from day one and I've tried, um, you know, sending cold emails and doing all this prospecting and all this, and it's good wielded yielded zero results, so that then I was sending X amount of prospecting emails a day and then nothing was happening, and so naturally I stopped doing that because I was discouraged.
Speaker 2:And it was a lot of time spent. It was a lot of time spent.
Speaker 1:So now we're shifting and I mean this is kind of, I guess, an exclusive drop or preview, but we're shifting or looking at okay, is the coaching model something that would be beneficial for us? In an easier quote, unquote sale right, where I just get on meetings and coach small businesses, entrepreneurs to either get their social media started or answer questions on weekly calls and things like that. So like we're literally looking at every piece of our business.
Speaker 2:And yeah, things that we've offered from the beginning, like maybe that's not the direction we need to continue, we've offered from the beginning, like maybe that's not the direction we need to continue.
Speaker 1:yeah, and even so, that was the social media side of things and graphic design. We've always kind of struggled to get those long-term clients and projects anyways, because it's a different beast in itself, right, the people that need the long-term stuff usually have somebody in-house. So I think the graphic design side of our business is one that probably really change a whole lot of processes for us. Like, we're not necessarily going to be doing a whole lot. We'll still have the one-off projects, which are great, but we're not going to necessarily change a whole lot to that Um, but we're not going to necessarily change a whole lot to that Um. In terms of websites, though, um, I'm extremely busy. I was the one doing most of the website builds and updates and projects and things like that, and I've come to the realization that I don't have that much time um doing all everything else Right that much time?
Speaker 1:yeah, doing all everything else right. So we've shifted and Kaylee is kind of taking the lead on website projects now, where I'm still involved in the early stages, the early meetings, talking about the technical information yeah, where everything's hosted domain names, purchasing all that stuff and making sure it's set up or transferring over to a new hosting platform, whatever it may be, but then kaylee's doing the bulk of the actual designing and updating and things like that for clients.
Speaker 2:Now, because I was falling behind, right, I you have a lot going on, yeah, which is great.
Speaker 1:You have all these new clients, which is fantastic, but if I'm letting websites fall behind, way behind, then that's not good for those clients, and so I have to be like okay, I need to shift and shift priorities and it's one of my downfalls and things that I don't do good at. I think I can manage everything when I can't, but starting to realize that, and so the websites. It's just one example of us again kind of optimizing what we're doing here at the business.
Speaker 2:So and I. I've always been able to do them. Yeah, that was just your thing, and now it's for me, my thing. Like I don't have anything against it. It's a lot of it that I didn't know you're still involved in, so I like doing them.
Speaker 1:I mean Kaylee helped with our website. She did her own website when she was still on her own. She's done several other websites on her own before we joined forces. And then she helped in the redesign of our website. Did we redesign? We didn't. What was my? We started from scratch I know I'm trying to think did I have have a website when?
Speaker 2:it was just hard and difficult.
Speaker 1:You had a website, yeah, but then we just completely gutted it.
Speaker 2:We just started over. Yeah, New template. Start from scratch.
Speaker 1:I can't even remember what my old website looked like. That's kind of depressing. I kind of want to know. Aw.
Speaker 2:So sad. Yeah, You're like I've completely forgotten that phase of my life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but like Kaylee has the expertise and ability to do all that stuff, it was just the way we structured how we were going to do our business or how we were going to provide the services. We set it up where I was going to do websites.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, and honestly, the website structure of how the timelines of them work is very similar to my design projects. They're usually like one-off big projects and then you move on. So it's the same setup. Like you have a lot of monthly recurring things. Websites kind of fits into my schedule better of. If I've got this free time to do a whole project and I can knock out a website real quick, then great.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know a lot of your stuff is the four to six weeks turnaround and time frame for your magazines that you design and and so like. That's again kind of looking at. Like I said, we struggled with the long-term graphic design clients. Right, we've picked up a few magazines through the network that kaylee designs for, but we haven't like signed on with a company to be their graphic designer on a contract basis like what we do with social media. We haven't been able to find that. So Kaylee has not necessarily like an abundance of free time, obviously, but there are gaps in her schedule where she has the ability to pick up these projects and that's a huge benefit for us if she can do that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I don't have. I don't always have an abundance of free time. I have like 80,000 things at once and then nothing for a little bit. If we could somehow make all those things not happen at the same time, that would make my life much easier. But yeah, that's a big website.
Speaker 1:They're hard to plan for right, because we're on our clients schedule in terms of they're reaching out when it's convenient for them. Your magazines are different. You kind of can plan those out for the most part, unless they bring random ones on you.
Speaker 2:But and the websites, I think, kind of come in waves, like we always seem to get a whole bunch all at the same time and then we won't have any for months. I don't it's out in the universe somewhere that somebody's like hey, everyone should redo their website right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it goes back to the being bad salespeople. If we were better salespeople and had a sales process that worked, we would probably see more consistency in that. Yeah, I'm not a salesperson, so and I mean I've tried everything and and I'm worse than you.
Speaker 1:We use HubSpot and track all these things and send automated emails and whatever. Like I've tried it all and at the end of the day, I'm either just not dedicated enough or I. I'm either just not dedicated enough or I know cold emails don't work very well, but I am not the type of person that I want to cold call people, so it's just like I don't even like calling people, I know yeah.
Speaker 2:Let alone strangers. To bother them, I would be like I'm so sorry, don't mean to take up your time.
Speaker 1:So yeah, cold calling is not my thing, which I know probably extremely limits our success in the sales world. But hey, we've survived, have we thrived At times, but at other times it's a struggle and we're trying to just make everything go better.
Speaker 2:And we're still in the beginning.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Technically.
Speaker 1:Technically.
Speaker 2:As a combined whole company.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's been less than two years. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Most people, at least that I've ever heard. It's like you got to give yourself five years before you make it big.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's an interesting dynamic because there's all the stats about most small businesses die within five years, but at the same time, the ones that are successful usually take two to five years as well.
Speaker 2:To get to the point where they're yeah, so it's no longer struggling the next three years are going to be either uh really good or really bad? But, I mean we'll keep you posted.
Speaker 1:No, we're obviously planning for for good, and that's, I think, why taking all this time to think about this stuff now and at this time, versus just kind of continuing to do like, yes, last year was the best year in the history of hardened digital, from when I started and when we combined forces.
Speaker 1:But not saying that like we can just stop there, right? If we just stopped at that where we were at last year, with the way prices increase and things like that, we probably won't be around in five years, right? So still trying to find new ways to innovate and improve and make things better. Hopefully that sets us up for the next three and a half years to be very successful.
Speaker 2:And the fact that we're even having meetings monthly to evaluate this stuff and quarterly meetings and actually sticking to that and saying these were our goals for this quarter. Did we actually succeed?
Speaker 1:And then, kind of light, a fire under our butts, to be like, okay, we didn't do that very well, tracking all this stuff, whereas, you know, 2022 and 2023 was kind of just all over the place not necessarily all over the place, but there wasn't. We didn't have weekly meetings, we didn't have quarterly meetings, we didn't have monthly, like we didn't really, we didn't really look back at anything yeah, and we planned a little but we didn't like strategically plan.
Speaker 1:So now we we look at we have a weekly meeting that talks about okay backtrack our process now is.
Speaker 1:I'll start from the big and go small. We have a quarterly, quarterly meeting that we lay out our goals for the quarter, our projections for the quarter in terms of what new projects are we trying to do or finish up, what's our revenue goal, what's our individual goals for the different services we provide. So we lay out the next three months of what we're looking at so that everything that we do should be reflecting back to that quarterly goal. And then we have a monthly meeting that we break down the content that we're going to produce for the entire upcoming month. So the last week of the month we have a meeting to plan the next month and we talk about each week at a time. Okay, this is, we have an overall monthly theme and then we each week has a different specific topic that fits into that theme and we write all this down a month at a time and then each Monday morning we have a meeting that breaks down.
Speaker 1:This is what we're talking about. This is what we're doing this week. Who's doing what? Who's recording the podcast, who's posting this on social media?
Speaker 2:so we broke, break it down quarterly, overall, look month by month and then week by week and we were never doing that in the past right and I think to me it never really crossed my mind because it was just us two and Hannah, yeah. So like I'm sure larger companies with more employees probably do that regularly, but it was just us and like we would talk about things as they came up but it was never consistent.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think it worked right. It obviously worked. Like I said, last year was biggest year yet, but in terms of really scaling and growing to be where we want to be as business owners, in terms of the lifestyle we want to live or what we want to do, we have to look at it from a bigger business standpoint than just we were both freelancing on our own and now we're together and, yay, we have a little bit of structure and we can say we're together, but there's no way to that.
Speaker 2:But we want to be able to retire one day like it's not just a little side hustle for fun anymore, like if we want to be serious we have to be consistent with all of those things.
Speaker 1:Yep. So that was my big implementation for this year and we've been through a full quarter of that kind of strategic cycle now and I think it worked in terms of we were more consistent than ever with the content that we put out. We were more consistent about strategically thinking about everything we're doing. We look back, like we never looked back at quarterly revenue goals and did we hit those goals before and we had we just finished our quarterly meeting last week or something. So it's like we're we're one quarter in and we're still going fine.
Speaker 1:Now it's just keeping up with that every single quarter and then every year, and yeah, so on from there.
Speaker 2:And not letting ourselves slack on what is. What's the word? I can't think of the word.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it's. It's just um again, trying to optimize the business and make it more efficient, with the goal of obviously we're a business, we want to make money, so yeah, as does everyone indeed so um all of that kind of wraps back into making smart business decisions right um, whether optimizing the content they were putting out or really focusing on strategic goals and what we're planning on doing, evaluating what services are working, what services aren't. What should we abandon? What should we maybe pick up and focus on?
Speaker 1:We're always consistently thinking about that now, and we have a couple of things in the works that we're trying to plan and figure out if it's worth doing, and while keeping what works now but also adding in the new things that will hopefully work in the future. So and circling back to the office. New office kind of plays into all of that Kind of a new lease on the business and kind of a fresh start in terms of, I mean, like we weren't in a bad place, like it wasn't necessarily like we were going under if we didn't move offices or anything like that, but just kind of a nice little refresh here for us.
Speaker 2:Not that we need to be doing this every two years or anything, no, maybe next time we can refresh just mentally.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I guess, like when we were looking at our yearly goals, one of them was to hire on a new full-time account manager. So if that happens, they better be okay with working remote because we don't have room for another person. Here we can make it work.
Speaker 2:They can share my desk. It's gigantic, we can make it work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for now this works much better. And, honestly, I think somebody, if we did get to that point to hire a new account manager who's doing a lot of social media content creation I just like the industry in general I feel like that person would be okay with working remote, especially if they're traveling around central Indiana to create content for clients. Anyways, traveling around central Indiana to create content for clients. Anyways, they're not going to be here a whole lot. So, yeah, all right. Well, any final thoughts about the office, about business life. You have a new dog.
Speaker 2:I do have a new dog, that's completely not what this podcast is about, but I do have a new dog. Yeah, he's ginormous. He cannot come to the office.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was just talking to Pence my dog about that.
Speaker 2:We could have the dogs at the old office because it was on the first floor and there's nobody else. I don't think my dogs do stairs.
Speaker 1:Our dogs would, but I just it's not the right setting for it anymore.
Speaker 2:so and they'd be noisy. Yeah, Floors are very click clacky.
Speaker 1:Yeah, very true. So any other thoughts before we wrap up? Any questions? Like I said, we're live on Facebook, youtube, linkedin, twitter. Any other questions from people tuning in before we wrap up, let us know yeah. I think we, like this, set up the podcast. It's been nice. Gotta go back and listen to it. Had a comment about it being a little echoey, so hopefully it wasn't too bad.
Speaker 1:Hopefully we didn't do this whole thing and then you can't hear us, but let us know if you have any other questions. We'll give it another 30 seconds here before we hop off.
Speaker 2:If you want to be on the podcast, yeah, if you are happy to take a week off and you want to be on the podcast, let us know.
Speaker 1:Be happy to have you, ideally, if you're like a business owner or relevant, not just you can't just come talk about your dogs? Yeah, only we can do that I wish we could, but we could do a dog podcast.
Speaker 1:I bet people would listen to it yeah, um, but while we're waiting for any last questions or comments, um, please go subscribe to the youtube. Uh, it's actually kind of going well right now with all of our youtube shorts that we're posting. So youtubecom slash at hardened digital or you know the pot, the blog was going great fora while and I thought that was kind of where we're gonna focus moving forward, but with everything with Google kind of shifting and again and seeing if we can ride the YouTube train here and get that going, and so far some of our shorts have been doing well.
Speaker 2:If you want Riley to do an entire podcast about how frustrated he is with Google, let us know.
Speaker 1:I mean, I might do it anyways.
Speaker 2:I guess it would be good, because people don't even know.
Speaker 1:Yeah there's a lot of history around what's happening with Google. Why are people's page views tanking? Why are search results not showing up? And it's just a mess. But I found out why. So now I'm mad about it, but seeing no other questions, I think we'll go ahead and wrap up. So thank you for tuning in. Please like and subscribe whatever device or app that you listen to, whether Apple, spotify, amazon Music or if you're watching on YouTube. Please subscribe and support the podcast. We really appreciate it, and if you have any questions, feel free to send me an email, riley at hardenedigitalcom, and we will get back to you. So I think that'll do it for this week's podcast. Thanks everybody for listening and we will see you next week. You.
