Latest / Imperfect Marketing / Episode 134: Breaking Free: Transitioning from Business Prisoner to Flourishing Entrepreneur with Annelise Worn

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Episode 134: Breaking Free: Transitioning from Business Prisoner to Flourishing Entrepreneur with Annelise Worn · Imperfect Marketing

• 0:28
  Speaker 1: Hello and welcome back to another episode of Imperfect Marketing.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: I'm your host, kendra Corman, and today my guest is Annalise Warren.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: Annalise empowers digital business owners to create true freedom in their lives by building systems into their businesses and, as we all know, systems are really important to scale.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: Now, one of the interesting things that I think is very interesting about Annalise is when she started her agency, she had no idea how to run a business and created a virtual prison for herself.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: Annalise, welcome, tell me more about this.
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: Thanks for having me, kendra.
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was not good.
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: I think so many of us start this way right At least a lot of the women that I speak to.
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: We start a business because, for me, I wanted to be home with my children more, and or maybe we have a skill or something that we want to bring to the world, and so we start our business based on that and then we realize that's such actually a small piece and we need to learn all of these other things like marketing and finance and leadership and all of the things.
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: And I, at the start, just said yes to everything because I wanted to build my business.
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: So I did.
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: I said yes If I was like yes and figure it out later.
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: That was my motto and I didn't charge enough to be able to hire really good people to be able to take that on.
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: I had support, but they were junior and they couldn't.
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: Something went wrong or really I just set it up in a way that was not serving me.
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: And yeah, that's where I landed, like drowning in client work, literally, and I couldn't stop to actually change things, or at least that's what I felt.
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: And yeah, I felt like I was in this prison and it was like this never ending, oh my gosh, like reigning client work.
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: I've said I'm going to do this thing.
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: I have integrity.
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: I'm going to do this thing, even if it means a minute Kill myself.
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: And then, one day, enough was enough and I actually stood back.
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: That's fantastic.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: I think most of us starting businesses at least I'll speak for myself definitely started we undercharged, we said yes to everything, we were all things to all people right and tried to really figure out where our niche was, without any plans for actually starting to narrow into that niche until we reach a point where we're about to break.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: I think that's pretty standard across the entire entrepreneurial culture, at least the female entrepreneurial culture for sure.
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: So, because that was one of the issues that I had was that I had all this client work and I didn't charge enough to be able to hire somebody to do some of the tasks that I was doing, because a lot of them were for small businesses and nonprofits and I wanted to make sure that they were happy and then I was over serving them, which made them devalue what I was giving them.
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: It was crazy.
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: It's a horrible cycle and we do it because we care and we want to do a good job, to be yeah.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: So I had a couple clients where I go above and beyond for them and then they're like where's your time going?
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: And I'm like I just worked my holiday for you.
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: What yeah, I just stayed up till two o'clock in the morning and got up at 6 am to be on a call with you.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's where I was, yeah exactly so much for that flexibility you were trying to build in to spend more time with your kids, totally.
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: That was the thing that really pinched hard.
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: I was like, oh, I failed.
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: Actually, I started for more freedom and I now have the worst boss in the world, and it's myself.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: Yes, my husband said they have a mean boss too.
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: So let's talk about the scaffolding that you built and what it was that helped you.
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: So I had been teaching, funnily enough and ironically enough, a seven system framework to my clients and it has the five typical business systems in there that you would expect having a marketing system, a sales system, service delivery, a people kind of system, and finance and legal.
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: I just put him on bucket because that is not my.
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: It's the stuff that, as creatives, we often don't love to do, but we need to do it, those five systems.
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: But well-being and impact are the two other systems that I started actually prioritizing.
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: I said that I had them and I was, but I just was working way too many hours At the time.
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: I had four young children.
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: I think one was really young, like newborn-ish.
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: My husband was building our house, so not there a lot.
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: It was just one of those seasons that you're like oh okay, I've created it, look what I've done.
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: This is all self-imposed, but those well-being system having well-being as a focus in my business and impact was the thing that helped to really define what it is that I needed and didn't need in my business, what I mean for impact.
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: For me it's about building a, having a socially conscious vision for the business.
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: For us, we give a percentage of profit.
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: We also work for a couple of.
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: We do pro bono work for a couple of charities.
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: So that's what it looks like in our business, but it doesn't matter what it looks like for you as long as For me.
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: I think we need some sort of bigger purpose there, and tying that to our business activity for me then helped me to realise that there was a reason I was building the business, not because I wanted a Lamborghini or the next Gucci handbag or whatever.
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: If that's what you want, amazing, go you.
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: Good thing.
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: But for me, that was like why am I, what am I trying to build this for?
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: So I needed that in them.
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: And then, being actually building that in, first, I'm like, okay, so what is going to fill my cup so that I can give the best to my clients and actually do a really great job and be the mother I want to be and be the wife I want to be and the friend all of those hats that we wear?
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: And so I built that in.
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: I was like, okay, these are the non-negotiables.
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: This is when I want to exercise, this is when I'm taking date night, this is when I'm having white creative space and then saw what was left rather than trying to squeeze those things in last.
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: And that meant that I had to say goodbye to clients that were just draining my energy, the ones that we over deliver for that don't appreciate us.
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: I had to say goodbye, which was really hard for me as a total people pleaser.
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: And then I upsold other clients, and so I expanded what we were doing, or I changed our fees slightly, or I decreased what we were doing but keep the rate the same.
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: I just worked around with the figures with the clients I loved to work with but really just scaled back, got rid of team that I didn't need because I'd said goodbye to clients.
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: So it was just really smart about what's actually profitable, like where is the fat here?
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: Where's the stuff that energizes me?
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: What can I do that I love doing?
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: That is going to make me the money that I need to be only working in these spaces that I've said that I want to work For me.
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: Now that's only two to three days a week.
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: I'm homeschooling my children.
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: The other half, like that's where I needed to get to and that was how I did it.
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: So at the start, say goodbye to clients and just restructuring pricing and upselling where I could.
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: I love that.
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: Saying goodbye to clients is a very hard thing.
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: I've had to do it for several clients.
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: One I told her I was like you don't need me anymore.
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: You need a digital VA.
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: You're paying too much money or and I'm not adding enough value, which was draining me because I was doing some data entry when I wanted to be doing more strategy, because strategy is what fuels me, right, similar to what you're talking about.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: And then there's other clients where I've just called and I've said I just don't think I'm the right fit for you anymore.
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: And that's a hard call to make because, for whatever reason, especially if you believe in the business because, similar to you, I pick businesses and people that I think are making a difference and an impact.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: Some of them are nonprofits, some of them are for profit, but all of them are about making a difference and, overall, I think, being good people, which is very important to me.
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: So how did you have those conversations?
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: I know that's something that a lot of people struggle with.
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and for someone's really scary like one was like 30% of our income, it was our biggest client, but it was draining, like I would wake up and have messages and it would like I'd have this anxiety like this whole, like crippling fear.
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: But what is it now?
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: What's broken?
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: Because we were managing their entire business like operations, administration, all of that marketing adds, all of the things, and it was just too much.
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: It was a lot.
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: It was the same as you.
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: I had put myself as an assistant when I'm actually a CEO, and my team couldn't support them and so I had to support them at that level and that was just not working for either of us, because that's actually not my skill set is to be that detail, or more vision, more strategy.
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: So we put a plan in place and said, okay, as of the end of the year, which was, I think, three months, this is what we're going to decline.
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: I'll be available for training as much as possible.
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: From there on, we can do these tasks, which then actually still didn't.
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: That was too tired, so then I ended up cutting that off.
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: So over a period of about six months, we slowly offloaded pieces of the business.
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, financially it was scary, going okay, like just trusting that the right things are going to happen here, and yeah, and they did, but it was just a slow process.
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: So, again, to uphold the integrity, to finish doing what I said I was going to do and not let someone down.
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: But I guess there's no right answer of how you do that right.
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: Every business is going to be different, every situation is going to be different, but just for me, trying to make it fair for both parties was important.
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I usually try to give as much transition as possible.
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: One person, I think I gave three or four months notice, another person I gave 30 days notice.
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: It's whatever is appropriate for them and their needs and their situation, because I think off-boarding clients is just as, if not more, important than how you onboard bums.
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and some clients, I'm still available for training and they'll hire me for an hour to come in and make sure that their team's on track and things like that, and that's great because, yeah, it wasn't anything that someone had done specifically wrong, it was just the structure was fundamentally broken.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I get that and I think, but I think that's a testament to what you did and the fact that they could clearly understand what you were doing too, because you were probably clear in what that was and you helped them.
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: You didn't leave them stranded anywhere, anything like that, and I think that's also key.
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: Okay, so you talked about the five basic processes and then adding in your two for the seven.
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: How do you help business owners create processes around those?
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: So what I like to do and I think sometimes we can forget as we get into the day to day it's really simple.
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: When you say it out loud, you'd be like, oh yeah, of course.
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: But to actually reverse engineer, like I did, with the well-being, the life that you actually want to live because we start our business, because we want more freedom, right, more life.
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: That's generally like in some, however, you slice a dice.
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: That's why we want, that's why we want a business.
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: So what does that actually look like?
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: What is it?
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: Is that for me, that's working two, three days a week, homeschooling my kids, living where I want to live, being able to travel, like those things.
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: That's the life that I want to live for right now.
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: And so what do you need financially for that to happen?
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: What do you need?
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: What kind of work do you want to be doing, actually nutting out that offer and the people that you need to make that happen?
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: Because I don't really know any business owner that wants to do every single thing in their business At the start.
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: We just have to, of.
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: Often, if you don't have cash coming in, you have to.
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: That's fine.
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: We do what we have to do, but I don't know anyone who loves all five of those systems and wants to do it forever.
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: So, even if it's just you and one support person, actually crafting that organizational plan early, based off how and when you want to work, and once you have that, okay, then I need X number of clients to support that.
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: And so then putting a plan in place.
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: I'm going if I need X number of clients, if I need two clients a month, then I need to be speaking to six clients a month.
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: How?
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: What does my marketing look like?
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: So that I get on the phone six times a month?
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: What is?
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: And just start to keep reverse engineering going.
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: If that, then what.
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: If that, then what.
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: And that will get as simple as you can.
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: I think so many of us are really guilty of being on social media and seeing people doing all of the things that have big teams and comparing ourselves and going, oh, now I need to do that.
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: Oh, and now this week, I need to be on threads.
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: I know this is coming out later, but look at it, threads has just come out.
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: And oh, I know I need to be doing this and I need to be.
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: And actually, the simpler that you make it, the better you're going to be, the better results you're going to get.
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: If you just have one way of getting in front of new people, one way of nurturing those people and one way of selling or one kind of core product that you're selling initially, start there and nail those three things and test with those three things.
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: Everything, as long as that supports that main goal of how many clients I want every week, month, whatever that, everything else will come off the back of that.
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: But start at the end and then go right to the start and nail the marketing piece and then you'll be able to figure out what systems you need.
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: I love that.
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: I really do.
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: I like the fact that you're talking about focusing, because focusing is really important because we can't do all things.
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: And then I love the note that you said about comparing yourself to all these people with these large teams.
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: So I think there's a quote that says do not compare your beginning to someone else's middle.
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think that's so true, because we do.
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: And I was scrolling through TikTok and somehow I got into this digital marketing like TikTok world where these people are making.
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: I made $10,000 before noon this morning selling digital products and I'm like huh, and it's okay.
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: They're like now I can take the rest of the day off and I'm buying a new house and it's like you look at it and it's one.
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: I have no idea if that's true or not, but you look at the situation and you're like what's going on?
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: And you started comparing yourself and you're being like I didn't make $10,000 before lunch today, but it can be stressful.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: The comparison is very stressful.
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: How do you deal with that when you see things and you don't necessarily have the full context?
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think too, we need to ask ourselves do we actually want that If we compare ourselves?
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: Like for me, I had to learn really early on.
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: So when I started my agency, I was in this Facebook ads mastermind where I learned how to do Facebook ads, and I had, I think, three young children at the time and two or three and I was in this thing with primarily men.
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: Young men like maybe 20 year old men were the bulk of this cohort, which is great, but they had 20 hours a day to work on their agencies and so they were hustling and getting all these calls and growing way quicker than I was.
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: And then I started scrambling and I was working late and I was taking calls from all over the world and I was at Bion calls with the UK and then the US and you can hear by my accent, I'm in Australia.
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: So that is, that does not work if you want to sleep.
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: And then I was like, hang on, I'm studying this business because I want to work three days a week, so why the heck am I working seven days a week right now to try and grow this thing, just because those people are trying to grow something entirely different?
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: I don't actually want that empire.
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: At that time I think I wanted a couple of hundred thousand dollar like business.
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: So I was like whoa, whoa, whoa, like deep breath, what are we actually doing here?
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: What mountain do I want to climb?
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: And just making sure it's your mountain and your mountain for now.
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: Are you running after a dream that was 10 years ago and actually now your situation's changed and you don't really want that anymore.
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: Like this week actually, I realized I've been working towards this goal of running 10 kilometers.
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: I'm like hang on, I don't care anymore.
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: I used to do that, I used to be a runner, but right now I don't.
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: I'm not having fun, I don't like oh good, great, scratch, that.
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: We just have to reassess.
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: Are we going after what we want or what someone else in the space wants, or what society tells us that we want, or to like, please, our parents or our spouse or our whatever?
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: And going, hang on, what do we actually crave and what are our desires?
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: And allowing ourselves to want those desires and then putting blinkers on everyone else Once you decide and going no, this is my plan, like I like to create a 12 week plan because it's long enough to get some traction.
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: It's short enough that you can sustain it, you can have the energy and then going.
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: This is the plan for those three months.
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: So if that's a great idea, great, table it for the next potential quarter.
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: But this is my plan now and decide and put the blinkers on and then go.
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm looking, but I'm not actually comparing myself.
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: I'm not looking because I have my plan and I know what I'm out working right now and we'll just put that on the shelf.
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: But probably one of my favorites, because I think that's one of the things that business owners do wrong is that shiny object syndrome.
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: We're like, oh okay, I'm not on Instagram and now they've got threads, so I should probably be on Instagram.
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: And now they're going to go and it's like you've identified that your entire target audience is on LinkedIn, exactly.
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: Just stay there, keep going.
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: You can start to experiment and do things as you go, but you can't abandon one tactic for another because you heard something on social media or in a networking event or whatever it happens to be.
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: I'm a big fan.
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: I have my full focus planner here right next to me and I mean, yeah, it's a 12 week planner.
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: I look at everything in 12 week increments because that's long enough to focus and I love the idea of putting on the blinders because I definitely don't do that enough and I do get China Object Syndrome quite often, but that's something that we need to look at.
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: I started this year with a plan I've added some things in and then I started getting off track and was all excited and creating all of these different town loadables and freebies and I was like, oh yeah, because I love to create them.
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: I could create them all day, every day, because it's like one of my passions.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: But then you got to sell something to pay for Seriously, eventually.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: So it just exactly so.
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: It just it's just a really good way of looking at it.
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: So put those blinders on for 12 weeks at a time, stick with your goals and your plan and make it happen, because you know what you need.
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: And if you like to experiment and you know you have so many objects in your own do like I do build in 10% room in your schedule and your time and your budget, or time or budget either one to do some experimentation and that's really all you need and it can fulfill that testing part of what you want to test out.
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: I love that.
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: Get the variety in yeah, because I know I need it, and so if I can limit it to 10%, then I'm good yeah.
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: I just recently put a timer on my Instagram because I was finding myself in a hole, because I love marketing right, I love looking at what people are doing and like looking at funnels and I was like, oh, hang on, I could just totally get stuck here.
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: I actually need to be pushed out of the app once I've done my thing.
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: But I think to recognizing that there's cycles in business and kind of treating it like the seasons, like there's going to be times when you're sprinting towards a goal, there's going to be times when you're resting, there's going to be times when you are researching and you're creating, and then there's going to be times when you're just having that introspective time but not thinking that you're going to.
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: You can research all the time or you can be in that zone.
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: You have to like.
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: Everything in life, in nature, is cycles, and we can have the same in our business if we're going to have the best results.
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: So choosing when am I looking at what other people doing?
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: When am I not?
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: When am I just looking inward and creating?
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: When am I running to the finish line because I'm selling?
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: When am I resting and not doing anything and actually having all of those pieces in at the times that you choose keeps you so much more creative and innovative and energized and excited about what we're doing, because otherwise we can really get bored.
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: It does for sure.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: So I think that's a really great way to think about things.
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: This has been a fantastic conversation.
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: I'm like time has been flying by and I'm like, oh wait, there's more we can talk about.
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: Because it's just, it's a really great way to think of things and I know that as entrepreneurs and solo openers and small business owners, we get overwhelmed and it's 99.9% our faults.
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: Take some time and think about it for sure.
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: I think that's definitely the lesson to take a look and add in system and process processes around, around well-being and impact, because thinking about those as part of you and your business is really important.
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: Before I let you go, annalise, I do want to ask you the question I ask everybody who's a guest on this show.
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: As we know, it's called imperfect marketing, because marketing is anything but perfect.
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: What has been your biggest marketing lesson learned?
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: My biggest lesson was, is continues to be, that it doesn't actually matter what I like.
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: It doesn't matter what I like, it doesn't matter what the client likes.
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: What matters is what your audience likes and needs to hear.
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: And I think imperfect is the perfect way to talk about it, because even if we think it's perfect, if we put it out there and it doesn't get results, it doesn't it's not perfect.
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: And so I think as soon as you have something that is good enough to take it to market and test it and hear what the market actually has to say and then iterate from there.
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: That strategy has saved me so many hours because I don't need to worry about it and polish it fully.
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: I can go okay, they want more of this.
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: Great.
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: Now we pull it back in.
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: Now we make the tweaks All right, let's put it out again and we let the market tell us, because ultimately, it's their opinion that matters, not ours 100%.
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: Knowing your target audience is so, so important, and I think almost I would say 80 to 90% of my podcast episodes go back somehow to target audience.
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: But that is the core.
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: I think that is the foundation for everything that you do, because if you don't have them in mind, you're not going anywhere, and I think that's really important to remember and keep in mind.
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and often it's the one that surprises me, like still, six years into doing this, I'll be like, okay, so I'm like I want that one, that one.
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: I think it's the best registrations.
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: Okay then, thank you.
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, oh yes, I'm always surprised it's oh, this edited really nice pretty image that my graphic artist did is not performing, as well as his handheld video that I held in front of my monitor.
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: Totally, totally, and I'm shaking the snapshot with the blurry photo of Nick me at the beach also.
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: Exactly right.
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: So I think it's important again to keep your target audience in mind.
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: Always I feel like I'm a broken record because I say that almost every episode, but hopefully when I understand your audience, so that you can give them stuff that's going to resonate and that they're going to enjoy.
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: And thank you again, annalise, for coming, for being a guest on Imperfect Marketing.
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: I do appreciate it.
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: For those of you listening, I hope that you learned something today.
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: I know I did.
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: I got a fresh perspective and definitely a refresh on some things I should be working on, so I do appreciate your time.
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: If you learned anything, please do me a favor and rate and subscribe wherever you're listening or watching.
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: It would really help me out.
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: In the meantime, have a great rest of your day and we'll see you on another episode of Imperfect Marketing.