Digital Wrap-Up
Reflecting on the Ups and Downs of 2023
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As the CEO of Harden Digital and Design, I've witnessed first-hand the rollercoaster ride that was 2023, and I'm eager to share with you the highs, lows, and standout moments that have shaped our company in the last year. Together with Kaylee, we're pulling back the curtain to give you an inside look at our strategic expansions, the acquisition of new clients, and even some of the not-so-great moments. Our conversation is a treasure trove of insights and musings that will leave you inspired and ready to tackle your own business challenges.
Join us as we recount the intricate web of website redesigns and launches that have defined the past year. We dissect the pivotal role of aesthetics and content in driving online success, and delve into the nuances of managing client expectations, especially within the social media realm. It's a raw and revealing discussion about the delicate balance of serving clients while honing our own internal strategies. Plus, we touch on how our connection to the Tipton County community has not only enriched our work but also allowed us to give back in meaningful ways, setting the stage for our future goals.
Step into the future with us as we reflect on the valuable lessons learned from community engagement and the significance of solidifying contracts in our day-to-day operations. Kaylee and I expose our personal ambitions, from expanding portfolios to exploring new ventures like product photography, and we candidly tackle the complex task of setting fair pricing strategies for our services. We're setting our sights high for the coming year, aiming to churn out compelling content weekly. So, stay tuned, because if you thought this past year was a whirlwind, you won't want to miss what's next on Harden Digital and Design's horizon.
Subscribe to the Social Media Six: https://www.socialmedia6.com/subscribe
Contact Harden Digital & Design for help with social media: https://hardendigital.com/social-media-services/
Enjoy the podcast? Send us a message!
As the CEO of Harden Digital and Design, I've witnessed first-hand the rollercoaster ride that was 2023, and I'm eager to share with you the highs, lows, and standout moments that have shaped our company in the last year. Together with Kaylee, we're pulling back the curtain to give you an inside look at our strategic expansions, the acquisition of new clients, and even some of the not-so-great moments. Our conversation is a treasure trove of insights and musings that will leave you inspired and ready to tackle your own business challenges.
Join us as we recount the intricate web of website redesigns and launches that have defined the past year. We dissect the pivotal role of aesthetics and content in driving online success, and delve into the nuances of managing client expectations, especially within the social media realm. It's a raw and revealing discussion about the delicate balance of serving clients while honing our own internal strategies. Plus, we touch on how our connection to the Tipton County community has not only enriched our work but also allowed us to give back in meaningful ways, setting the stage for our future goals.
Step into the future with us as we reflect on the valuable lessons learned from community engagement and the significance of solidifying contracts in our day-to-day operations. Kaylee and I expose our personal ambitions, from expanding portfolios to exploring new ventures like product photography, and we candidly tackle the complex task of setting fair pricing strategies for our services. We're setting our sights high for the coming year, aiming to churn out compelling content weekly. So, stay tuned, because if you thought this past year was a whirlwind, you won't want to miss what's next on Harden Digital and Design's horizon.
Subscribe to the Social Media Six: https://www.socialmedia6.com/subscribe
Contact Harden Digital & Design for help with social media: https://hardendigital.com/social-media-services/
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. Welcome to 2024.
Speaker 1:This is the first podcast of the new year, and I'm happy to have Kaylee, as you can see, joining us today. We're going to do a look back at our 2023 as a business and some of our favorite things, some stats from the year, what we enjoyed, and then maybe look ahead at some exciting things that we have planned for the new year as well. But before we get into that, I just want to apologize if I cough on the stream or the podcast at all today, getting over a sickness so I'm 90% over it, but I will try to hit the mute button quickly. No guarantees, though, but 2023 was a great year for us. This is our first full year at the office, had a lot of exciting projects, a lot of new business, a lot of old business that we carried over, obviously, but we're going to talk about some of those things what went well for us as a business, what didn't go well for our business as Kaylee makes some notes here last minute, I thought of another thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was a really exciting year for us and we have a lot of exciting things planned already for this year. So, kaylee, first off, thank you for joining me again. Welcome to the show. We had some technical difficulties with the streaming setup for the podcast today, so hopefully it's all worked out now. But before we jump into all of that, if you are not watching on YouTube, definitely check it out. Go to youtubecom, slash at hard and digital. You can see both of us on camera here and it's a little more enjoyable if you are into watching YouTube videos or listening to your podcast, watching your podcasts there. So, overall, kaylee, first off, how was 2023? First full year in the office, a lot of exciting things.
Speaker 2:I feel like I was way more productive than past years.
Speaker 1:That's good.
Speaker 2:I'm the whole reason that we have an office in the first place, because I didn't do well working from home. So that should be an obvious answer for me. But I do think I was much more motivated and I was here what? 95% of the time. So I think it was successful. It's our first full year. It's not supposed to be like we went viral and magically got millions of dollars. So I'd say growth wise we could have done better. But about as I expected for year one, I don't know.
Speaker 1:I will say I mean I haven't ran all the numbers to get officially. You know I was sick the past six or seven days so and I actually took time off. I didn't do anything work related. So I was planning on having those numbers but felt good to just relax and not worry about work. It's a good time to do it around the New Year's and the holidays anyways.
Speaker 1:But just from, I haven't ran quarter four numbers to completion yet, but every quarter up to quarter four we saw positive growth, quarter over quarter, which means we had to have outgrown last year in terms of profit.
Speaker 1:So I would say it was successful. I think there's definitely things that both of us know we could have done better or could have capitalized on more or wish we could have done more of, but I think overall successful year In terms of projects. I mean there's definitely some downfalls. We can talk about those later, but let's just go ahead and talk just stats wise, what you've done, specifically Kaylee, because we talk a lot about the social media and some about the websites, but I think our bread and butter is social media. But we've had one of the difficulties I think this past year was growing the graphic design side of the business and not saying that we didn't have graphic design projects, because, as you'll see soon, we had projects. It's just a different service offering in terms of the social media stuff is monthly recurring revenue, where the graphic design stuff this past year was a lot of smaller one off projects. So our goal was to grow the monthly recurring graphic design stuff, but it's just that's a hard market to get into.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't know many businesses that have a need for that that aren't already filling it with someone on their staff. So there has. There's probably some out there, but finding them that are big enough to need design services regularly but don't have a department for that. That's a very small window, so yeah if I can just do more one time projects I did like 17 of them a month that would be great. Yeah, overwhelming, but be good for me.
Speaker 1:So, speaking of graphic design and projects and everything, let's go ahead and go over your stats for the year, because you've done a much better job than me at compiling stats. Break everything down and I'll jump in on things. That kind of overlap with what I've done and what I've mentally prepared.
Speaker 2:So well, I did have 19 new clients this year, so a lot of those were just a one time they needed a brochure for something. But 19 new ones in a year is really good and if they keep coming back, fantastic.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think before we go any further and start to interrupt again. But the thing with the smaller projects and the one off clients is a lot of times they do come to us for one off things, but then six months down the road or a year down the road, they have something else come up. So it's not every month, but it tends to be the same people do come back for others.
Speaker 1:Other smaller projects down the road, which you do a good job. Everybody says so and I don't think we've had one issue with anything design related.
Speaker 2:So out of those 19, probably 17 or more of them were referred to us by someone else or were people that I knew personally and they were like hey, I know you do this, so we're not out there getting the random people searching us on the internet Like maybe would be better. But yeah, the word of mouth and the success we've had with people referring us has been great.
Speaker 1:Yeah, all right. So moving on to more project, specific stuff Project specific.
Speaker 2:I like my stats and I like my numbers. So I did 17 logos this year. Some of them were just small things, like I do a lot of logos for studies or clinical trials or something that it might get used on one piece of paper and that's the history of it, but it's a logo, so I counted them. My favorite one I believe it was this year was for the pickleball tournament.
Speaker 1:Which one? The apple one.
Speaker 2:Nope, not the apple one that was last year, I think the alternatives.
Speaker 1:Yes, oh yeah, I just like making out domestic violence. Yes, yeah.
Speaker 2:I like those like badge type of fun logos and hopefully they keep using it every year for the tournament. So I think that one was cool.
Speaker 1:Actually I played in that tournament and helped. I didn't help run it but I did play and everybody really liked the logo. So that's two logos for pickleball that we've done in the past 14, 15 months that people have loved.
Speaker 2:So maybe that's going to be our new thing.
Speaker 1:Designing logos for pickleball tournament logos.
Speaker 2:So 17 logos for me in a year is a lot, I think yeah, I did 208 book pages.
Speaker 1:And what are those books like?
Speaker 2:I'm counting. One was more of a portfolio type situation, but it was over 100 pages, so I'm calling it a book. Yeah, and that was something I had never done. That was more of an academic type project and there were a lot of regulations and that was me and him trying to figure out exactly what we could even do and linking PDFs to other PDFs, and it was a big learning curve for that one, but it turned out really cool and hopefully it went well for him. Yeah, the other book was an actual like hardcover book. It was the last one in a three part series that I had done for the past three years, so it was nice to finish that project.
Speaker 1:It's like a historical book.
Speaker 2:Yes For the Harold Bulletin. It's written by the Madison County historian he did. This is the fifth book of his I've done. This was a three part series, so I guess for the last five years I've been doing those. That's he keeps writing them and they keep buying, I'm so.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:They're usually a hundred ish pages. I think this one was 96.
Speaker 1:Jeez.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're fast. If you're someone who doesn't live in Madison County, it's still fascinating. This one was all about like disasters and major catastrophes.
Speaker 1:It's just bad, but yeah, it's interesting reads.
Speaker 2:Some of the times I read what I'm designing, if it's something I care about. Some of the times I don't, but that's okay, yeah.
Speaker 1:So I'm looking at your list and jumping ahead, because the books are kind of in relation to the magazines and magazine pages are on your last, but go ahead and talk about a number of magazine pages, and then I want to bring something up here.
Speaker 2:I did 640 magazine pages and out of that was probably I don't know 13 magazines split up into those amount of pages. I didn't actually figure out that number I should have, but yeah.
Speaker 1:So the interesting thing that I wanted to bring up here is we are very involved with the magazine. I don't know, I don't know about magazine world, but like just the involved a lot in Madison County Visitors Bureau and the I don't know what they're technically called.
Speaker 2:The Herald.
Speaker 1:Bulletin, the Herald Bulletin, all these publications in Madison County were we do a we Kaylee does a lot of work for them with the books, the magazines, all that kind of comes from Madison County, which is sweet. They were well like heavily involved there. But we're not involved in a lot of other stuff outside of the magazines and publications and things. So in terms of overall business for the like, looking back, like in goals for this year, being more involved in Madison County I live in Madison County, we're obviously our offices in Tipton, so it's a little different but getting involved more in Madison County I think would be something that hopefully we can expand on beyond just the design side of things.
Speaker 2:That would be nice.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean there's a lot of businesses there too that probably need a service More than Tipton County, honestly, yeah.
Speaker 1:And another cool note about the magazines is we did bring on more reoccurring magazines, which is awesome.
Speaker 2:That was my thing, I was the most proud of this year.
Speaker 1:Okay, we'll wait for that, then We'll come, we'll circle back to that. He's jumping ahead because he didn't read my notes.
Speaker 2:Okay, let's see. We did book pages, magazine pages. I did nine infographics, probably all nine of them with information I don't even understand. I get a lot of requests for graphics from data or from 12 pages of text that they want to try and mash that into one graphic and they end up looking great. Most time I have zero idea what any of it means. So I think those are cool to do, it's just. Sometimes it makes me feel kind of stupid.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but I mean it shows that they like it, like you're able to decipher it enough or it helps them in a way, you obviously have to break it down and figure it out on your own.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Shout out to Joel for helping me decipher some things. He made me a spreadsheet this year and we had to do all this rearranging of numbers so I could even understand what was going on.
Speaker 1:But that's the power of infographics, right? You take all this confusing data when you're trying to relay it and inform other people.
Speaker 2:Inform the regular readers, like me yeah. The non-super involved out in that specific study or industry, whatever it may be, which, I guess you're right. That is the whole point of it is trying to make it easier to digest that huge amount of information.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so if you have tons of information that you're struggling to really convey in a nice way to your audience, infographics are the way to go, and Kaylee can definitely help. Yes, and.
Speaker 2:I counted my Super Bowl infographic. That was just for fun.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's, all right.
Speaker 2:I also did 117 social media graphics.
Speaker 1:Nice, Mostly for us right.
Speaker 2:Mostly for Gooseberry.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:A lot of them were for us. Some of them were for Regan Streef. Yeah, a lot of them were for my sorority.
Speaker 1:So I include the 35-ish plus that you made for Best of Tipton. Oh yeah, I counted all of them.
Speaker 2:We only used like six, but you know I made them so it counts. I did the work. I also put on there that I personally helped with or completed three websites. That has never been my thing. That's kind of been your undertaking in the past because I think I was a little scared of it. But now that I've done them and I've done them on different platforms I feel like I'm a lot more comfortable than a couple of years ago. I would have been like no, thank you. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So the subject of websites, we did several others beyond just the three Kaylee helped on, I think we were six or seven total for the year, ranging from big overhauls. We did the Tipton Municipal Utilities, which was a huge project. They had tons of information. We had to condense it and get rid of all the unnecessary stuff and then put it on a new designed website.
Speaker 1:So that was a big overhaul process. We're in the final stages of wrapping up another big website for a local company, which is a fun one. But yeah, we did a couple of small websites. We've done a couple of bigger projects. The Boys and Girls Club was last year right Darn, Can't count that one but my sorority website. Your sorority project was big, I did the local one.
Speaker 2:That was just my idea because we needed one, and then I don't know exactly even how it got brought up, but our national board wanted to redo their website, so I did my sorority's national website.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's pretty sweet.
Speaker 2:That was a big undertaking as well, because it probably had never been updated ever and it's also a lot of people who have opinions and it had to pass all the different board members and all the different checks.
Speaker 1:Yeah, which side note. But when you are working on not creating your website, but when you're either redoing your website or in the process of building your website from scratch, it's best to really designate like one or two people within your company who's kind of in control of look and feel and content on the website. Not saying that, like you can't get input from other people, but from our end, we shouldn't have to be communicating with five or six different people within your company, because that gets confusing.
Speaker 1:It's very confusing. Everybody has different wants and feels and likes in terms of what they like on a website, but at the end of the day, it should be one or two people's decisions and that's ultimately what it comes down to, because if we're dealing with the boss or the CEO or the owner or whatever, but then somebody lower down the company chain is providing input as well, then you have conflicting stuff and it's like a whole political mess within building a website.
Speaker 2:I think a lot of times when you're making major changes, some people get a little gun shy and they're like, yes, we want to make changes. And then, as soon as you start making changes, they're like, oh my gosh, I don't know that's a lot. Yes, but if you want it to be the best it can be, we cut full pages full just huge information out of our sorority sites.
Speaker 1:So the utilities, but it was just stuff nobody was ever looking at.
Speaker 2:I remember when he was in for a meeting it was just like nope, that page can go, that page. Yeah, he was actually really good about that.
Speaker 1:He just ex stuff yeah.
Speaker 2:Didn't care.
Speaker 1:He's like. You know, people come to our website for five things and hear those five things by law or code or whatever. We have to have a couple other things just for information purposes, but other than that, let's get rid of everything else, which is awesome.
Speaker 2:He reminds me of that meme that just came out last week, or right before the new year. That was like in 2024. The name is going to be nope yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's all my stats.
Speaker 1:Cool. Well, that's, you know a lot.
Speaker 2:We talked about. That's just me yeah.
Speaker 1:We talked about, you know, not having a lot of reoccurring graphic design stuff, but there was a lot of graphic design work done this year, which is awesome.
Speaker 2:I should have kept track of like hours I spent, but that would be.
Speaker 1:That's I mean you invoice by the hour a lot.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So I'm sure it'd be not terribly hard to track down. But yes, that's why is across the board we social media clients. We gained two new big clients this year. We ended. A couple clients parted ways with a couple of clients too, so there was some up and down throughout the year. Just one of the new clients we signed on was a temporary contract while they brought on somebody else in house, which is fine. One of them ended up just not working out. For no hard feelings on either side, just sometimes people have different opinions and want more control than they realize when bringing us on.
Speaker 1:And then it's like we start creating stuff and they kind of want more control, or want things done a different way. So that's. It is what it is Like. That's why we do the three month period of it's a trial. Does the process work for both of us? Is communication work? Does the stuff that we're creating fit into what you're thinking, not thinking Like? That's why we do the three months and then if it doesn't work after that, or even after four or five months, then so be it.
Speaker 2:And a lot of times I feel like they don't even know how much goes into it, necessarily beforehand, and then when we come on and they're like, wow, oh my gosh.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 1:This is a lot, and maybe we're either not ready for that or yeah, I mean like there was one newer one that we brought on that we're parting ways with that. They didn't have any social presence, they had a LinkedIn, but then we had that first consultation. Like holy crap, there's actually a lot of stuff we could actually be posting. Like there is like until you sit down and think about it and kind of build out a plan or strategy or look at it, you might not realize every company, no matter what industry you're in, there's a lot of content you could be putting out there. But sometimes is it. Do we wanna be putting that out there? Do we wanna just focus on one thing or the other?
Speaker 2:Even for us, like we had a whole meeting about how we could better because we'd focused so much on all of our clients social media that a lot of times we didn't sit down last year and plan a year in advance what we wanted to do, like we are this year, because it seems like we know what we're doing, we should be able to do it. But then, once again, we got busy and, like anybody else, it got pushed and comes down to a time thing, Right?
Speaker 1:so?
Speaker 2:now we've planned and I have to do a podcast every month.
Speaker 1:At least one every month, potentially two.
Speaker 2:And a blog, so yay for everyone who wants to read those.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we're. I mean that's an overall business thing. That we're doing is more strategic content creation on our end, which hopefully we'll see growth More to come on that later Please listen to my podcast.
Speaker 2:Yeah, more to come on that later, later this month actually.
Speaker 1:So, moving on with Kaylee's stuff, what was your favorite project of 2023? My favorite project I feel like you're gonna steal mine, but what is yours Go?
Speaker 2:Mine was Everything Spare Rings.
Speaker 1:Yep same. Oh, I didn't even think about spare rings when we were talking about websites, but yeah go ahead and talk about spare rings.
Speaker 2:Well, I just liked it because we never get to do anything from the beginning thought process stage to the end. We got to do every aspect of it with them because they had the idea, they had the product and they came to us and were like we need help because there's so much to do to launch a product and we had never done at least I hadn't. So just seeing it go from beginning to end and getting to brainstorm with them, and that was really cool I got to learn a lot about a lot of different aspects of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean they really did come to us with here's a prototype. We don't even have a name for it yet. We have some ideas on names, but we don't have a name, we don't have a logo, we don't have anything. We need you to help us with all of that. So we brainstormed a name and they went and checked to make sure it was all good and available and everything.
Speaker 1:We started with a logo and then we built out the logo, we built out the website, we designed their packaging for their boxes. It's a silicone ring, so we, kaylee, designed the cover for the box that they shipped them out in. Like it was a whole like.
Speaker 2:Things we've never really done.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like we've done bits and pieces of all of this in terms of logos, websites, designing packaging, stuff like that, but we never conceptualized it and put it all together in one yeah and part of the reason it was my favorite is because you just said a meeting with these people that you knew because you worked with Reagan, and they came in and we had no idea what this product was. We had like zero information. Besides, they were gonna launch a product and they showed up and what do you know, has to do with tractor pulling and the coincidence of that and then me being like, oh my gosh, I'm actually going to understand what they're talking about was really. It was just fun that it was. In a world that I am somewhat familiar with, you were like what do these words mean?
Speaker 1:And I got to teach you some things which was exciting. For the spare rings. So go to spareringscom. I don't, we'll give them a plug. They're cool but it's a silicone ring with a specific design on it a double cut design Tire tread yeah. Which is a type of tire tread on a lot of like the big fancy bad ass tractors Pulling.
Speaker 2:Tractors Pulling tractors.
Speaker 1:When they came in and were talking about all this stuff. They were talking about this ring, and I don't remember what type of ring. Well, you were talking about like Qualo rings and stuff like that, and then pulling tractors and all this, and I was sitting there like I've never heard of Qualo rings and all these other rings like other brands that were like kind of what they're.
Speaker 1:Qualo also makes like silicone rings and different rings, and I heard pulling tractors so I was thinking, okay, there's some silicone ring that goes on a tractor that they're creating and selling Like a ring.
Speaker 2:That's part of the setup of a tractor, like a belt or something.
Speaker 1:I was just sitting there clueless for probably like the first 30, 45 minutes of the meeting, cause they had a little, they had a ring with them.
Speaker 2:You're like, what does this like? Stretch and go on. So it was.
Speaker 1:I was very confused, but it turned out, you know, just a wedding band.
Speaker 2:I was just proud, like I knew what they were talking about and of all the products in the entire universe that they could have been creating and come to us for. That was just. Maybe that's why it's not fair. There's just something that I actually was interested in and people I know were interested in it, so yeah, it was just a really fun project. And we got to go see their friends pulling tractors, I mean we did, obviously, a logo website.
Speaker 1:We set up their e-commerce site or their website too. So they're selling on spareringscom. They're 1995 a ring If you want a silicone ring. They are actually really cool. But we did the logo website. We went out and took some product photos of them at a tractor. We helped them set up all their social media. We did some posting for them, for the initial launch period and now they're running their social, which is awesome Reagan's.
Speaker 2:I know their tractor puns and jokes are hilarious. I'm here for it.
Speaker 1:Reagan's in the communications and PR and social media field, so she knows what she's doing and they're doing awesome there, and so it's. It was just a really fun overall project from start to finish, with everything we got to do for them, so hopefully they continue to, you know, get sales and the business continues to grow for them. So yeah, took my favorite project. I'm sorry, that's all right, we would have discussed this ahead of time.
Speaker 2:I mean, I couldn't have picked it, I didn't want to know before, so that was favorite for last year.
Speaker 1:Do you have a favorite that you're looking forward to this year?
Speaker 2:Well, technically we started it last year, but we will be finishing it this year and publishing it. The discover, explore, love, tip tin oh yeah, I've kind of forgotten about that.
Speaker 2:It's like a visitor's guide, slash magazine, slash information packet, I guess. But we met with Keegan when he was still at the chamber and then we met with Lindsey, who's in charge of the Main Street Association, and this was just me like hey, we don't have anything like this in Tipton. It would be nice if there was something for people when they come here that's like, hey, this is what Tipton has to offer. So I came to them with an idea and was like, hey, do you guys want to help with this? Mostly because they know people.
Speaker 2:But we've done everything from what there is to do with kids, what's going on with the schools, what's going on with the businesses, the restaurants, what's going on downtown with the new, whatever green space projects they're doing I don't know what it's called the anniversary of the Diana. So everything is just what's so great about Tipton, and I think that's pretty cool to learn more about the community that we're in. And that kind of led to us doing our best of Tipton project for the first time is just trying to be part of the community here and get to know everybody. And yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm excited to finish it and get it out there for people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, which you mentioned, the best of Tipton, which is kind of one of my favorite projects for this year, last year, because there hasn't been anything like this. You know, this is another thing that we kind of came up with on our own. It's not necessarily a new concept in general, but in terms of for Tipton County it is. You know, the Chamber does their awards but it's more voted on by the people of the Chamber and it's only Chamber members. But the best of Tipton for us was more than just businesses, it was the people in Tipton. You know, hair stylist I always say hair stylist and then draw a blink on everybody else.
Speaker 2:We had best plumber, I think best electrician, like best teacher.
Speaker 1:It was really just people in the community that you know aren't gonna get recognized for stuff they do at work, necessarily, or their business. That's more of a business related type thing. But you wanted the people of Tipton to be recognized too.
Speaker 2:And I feel like at the beginning we're like this could be a huge bust. Yeah this is not anything people have ever heard of. Like what if we do all this work and nothing? And then we posted it and immediately.
Speaker 1:I mean, yeah, the nominations were like oh my gosh, let's go hog wild. Yeah, which I don't think we've talked about it on the podcast, have we?
Speaker 2:No, because we haven't announced any information yet.
Speaker 1:But we didn't even talk about the best of Tipton at all. Like nomination, like we open nominations first of December and we got six or almost 700.
Speaker 2:I know it was over six, 70 at one point.
Speaker 1:So almost 700 nominations, and we thought that was people nominating like one. That's 700 individuals who could have nominated 40. Yeah, there's 35 categories for people to nominate and vote on, and over or almost 700 people submitted nominations, which was great. We thought that was fantastic.
Speaker 2:That's a lot For a two week time period for Tipton.
Speaker 1:yeah, that was awesome. So then we took the top five from each category based on the nominations that people submitted, and those were our finalists. That now people could vote on once per day, which I'll say it now if you're listening we didn't really have a way to control the once per day thing, but we just told people that we set a maximum of votes they could enter for the two week time period, but hey, oh well, if you want to vote 14 times in one day, good for you.
Speaker 1:You just can't vote anymore, but yeah, so we voted. People voted on the top five. You know we thought almost 700 nominations was awesome, but we were blown away.
Speaker 2:We got 5000 votes.
Speaker 1:Did you have you looked, since it closed yesterday?
Speaker 2:It was like 40, almost 5000.
Speaker 1:Yeah almost 5000 people at 5000 individual submissions, and again there's 35, 35, 36 different categories.
Speaker 2:It didn't actually close because it's gone up since yesterday.
Speaker 1:It was supposed to close, so we had 5000 and two submissions Yep as of December 31st, when it officially closed. I said it's automatically closed, but I guess it hasn't closed. But yeah, just getting 5000 submissions is crazy.
Speaker 2:And the amount of people, even just on my personal page, that I had seen share it and say like, hey, I got nominated, please vote for me.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I thought that was cool because there hasn't ever been anything like this, and a lot of people were like kind of shocked that they even got nominated. Yeah like, obviously you're good at whatever it is that you do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's like this is kind of transitioning to goals for this year. That I want to talk about is, you know, this is definitely something that we've struggled a little to do since we've opened up our office and tipped in is being more involved in the community. I think we're limited to a certain point because of, like, our services, our price point and just the general business landscape. There's not endless opportunities to be involved in the community or to work with all these businesses because a lot of them are smaller and don't have as much just capital sitting around to hire us, which totally fine, understandable. So one of the goals for me is to have the business more involved in the local community, whether it's tipped in or Anderson for 2024. And since we've launched Best of Tipped in, we've gotten obviously way more website traffic because we hosted the nominate, the voting, on our website, so that was one big thing. We drove everybody to our website so that they saw who we are if they weren't aware of us and saw everything that we do, which is awesome.
Speaker 2:But we're also just the recognition. We're also going to personally visit all the winners.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so just the recognition from people sharing on Facebook has gained us a lot of Facebook followers, which is awesome because those are people specifically in tipped in that we will be, hopefully, you know, engaging with talking, with seeing out in the community, doing whatever. But then, yeah, kaylee said we're going each of the winners, we're going to give them their decal or their you know prize.
Speaker 1:It's a decal that they put on their window or wherever they want to put it, and so we're gonna automatically. You know there's some of them will be repeats, but you know meeting there's several people that are winners that I haven't met before personally that most of the individual people I don't even know, and I've lived here for eight plus years yeah.
Speaker 1:So I think this whole initiative it wasn't necessarily a hey, let's do this selfishly so that we can get our name out there more. It's just kind of that's something that's an after effect of it, because we're the ones doing it, but I think it is something that's really gonna boost our I don't know how to say this are aware not like brand awareness in tipped in County specifically, which is a huge benefit to us and I'm really hoping that next year around November people will be like hey, gonna do that again.
Speaker 1:Yeah which we are. It's not just a 2023 thing. We're going to do the. The whole nomination, the whole voting process is again every single year, so if you didn't win this year, you could win next year, and you know, might have different categories.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there, we got some feedback on the categories and things like that.
Speaker 1:We just made it up. Yeah, I based it off of.
Speaker 2:I think Kocma, which is a huge city, so they had a lot more options on some of them yeah, but that's, I think, one of my big goals.
Speaker 1:That's not necessarily measurable by numbers or growth or income revenue, all that stuff is just to be more involved and get our name out there. I know it's not a measurable goal, so it's not technically a great goal, but and just increase the brand awareness in our local communities that we're working with. So that's tipton's a huge help. But then just you know, hopefully the chamber. There's an lag with Keegan moving on from the chamber to be the the mayor, but I almost said governor, but hopefully there's a bunch of chamber events that we can go to and make that a priority. There is one really big thing in the works that I can't necessarily announce yet, but it'll be a huge help as well. More to come on that, hopefully within the next couple weeks. So that'll be. Yeah, it's just not, it's verbally finalized, it's just not contractually finalized. So I don't want to say something and hey as a side note yeah that's what I wrote down earlier.
Speaker 2:What lessons learned this year?
Speaker 1:contracts are important yes, so that was my main goal to talk about. Do you want to talk about? Your golden will go to my goals I just have. These are like specific project things, goals I or things I want to learn that's probably more measurable goals than me just saying be more involved in the community so my main goal was more publications, just because that's what I enjoy the most, which also was the thing I was most proud of is getting.
Speaker 2:I got two new magazines. One of them was supposed to be a one-time thing and apparently I did a good job, because now they want me to do four more next year. So yeah, which is all within the same company that I already do magazines for, but at different office hubs, yeah, and ocean, and so in Traverse City, yeah and those are pretty large areas with a lot of people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and just the fact that I do. I've worked with the same editor in Anderson for so long and he gave my name to people within the company and they've now contacted me. I think that's really cool. Like to me, that's exciting that I've built a relationship and that he would recommend me, because a lot of these places, like even in Anderson, they have a whole design center full of people who could do this job but they have.
Speaker 2:You do it but they came to me because magazines are what I do well. So, anyways, that was what I was proud of, but I also just want to do more yeah. I like the magazines or the booklets or the brochures or anything like that. I am gonna branch out and try to get more websites this year, now that I feel a little bit more comfortable, yep, and my time will likely be diverted to other things moving forward.
Speaker 1:So Kaylee's gonna fill in and do a lot of the website work that I have done over the past few years and I'll still help when needed, obviously.
Speaker 2:But I think it just takes me longer because I'm a little bit OCD about the design of the website not only like the content being correct yeah, when the lines don't line up or anything like I have to fix that where you may be not necessarily worried about those things yeah, but I also have been obsessing on TikTok about product photography, as I'm not a people photographer. I am terrible at it.
Speaker 2:That's just a fact yep there's no need for me to get better at it when there are so many people who do that well. But as far as I know, anywhere around here, there's nowhere that does product photography, and since we got into all this with bearings, I just think it's fascinating and it's something, even if I do it as a hobby.
Speaker 1:That's one thing I want to learn, so yeah, I mean it can definitely Benefit the business too. I think we've had people reach out about product photography.
Speaker 2:It's not something we advertise, that we do, and well, it doesn't have to be like Major products like even if you sell something on Amazon, like Something stupid or something small on Amazon, you have to have it there's a good idea, correctly, yeah so even if that's, all I do is Photograph things on white background for Amazon, yeah that's still something we could offer. I just have been into the videos where they Go all out with different layers of glass and having water come this way and Saying go this way. It's so cool to watch, though, and, yeah, just even the lighting setups. I've watched videos for hours just about Angling light.
Speaker 1:Lighting equipment for this project.
Speaker 2:We don't really have a space to do that either, but we can make one. If I get good at it.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I just like taking pictures of things, so this seems like the most useful way to make that.
Speaker 1:Makes sense goals? Yeah, sweet, so will. You kind of mentioned this already. Is the lessons learned one of the big ones, if you can? It was your lesson learn. Why is both bars? But yeah, contracts are important for small businesses, for any business.
Speaker 1:Even if it's people, you know yeah specifically for small businesses, where one bad thing could Ruin your business essentially and we ran into that situation early this year seems like forever ago at this point, but Early in 2023. We had an issue with it the contract or a lack of contract issue and somebody wanted to refund and because it was a verbal we don't think was verbal agreements on this is the work that will be done, which is Weird because I've had contracts in place before.
Speaker 1:We've done contracts for a lot of other stuff Prior to this project. I don't want to go into too many details, but we've had that. It's just. Kaylee had done some work from him leading up for this and and everything up until that point was fine yeah and we were doing more for him and I guess the timeline that was never really agreed upon.
Speaker 2:There was just a lot of miscommunication and Somehow got all jumbled around. Yeah, but if we would have had a contract. We could have just said, well, this is what it is, yeah, and, of course, like we're a small business.
Speaker 2:Refunding him was the correct thing to do in this situation, because we don't want to get into a big argument about it. When he wasn't satisfied, yeah, we want him to be satisfied with the end product either way. He wasn't necessarily. I don't think the product was the issue, I think it was just a timeline. But yeah, it was.
Speaker 1:It was just a big lesson.
Speaker 1:I honestly it was just a big shock and jumped on a meeting one time and it was like I, I don't like this, I want to refund, like out of the blue and but like from a small business standpoint, we had already deposited and paid the, like you know they do, the 50% deposit for the project Next pay period. I'm paying that out to whoever was working on the project. You know we set back X amount, whatever, but like that money had already came and gone from our bank account and you know it's not the end of the world, like it didn't break us but it was not great.
Speaker 2:For something we weren't expecting. Yeah, so that's our big business lesson of the year, I would say yeah also Taxes coming out quarterly, which is the smart thing to do.
Speaker 1:That's required.
Speaker 2:Our stuff is business, taxes, business taxes coming out quarterly, it's a big chunk of money. Yeah, I had never done that. I always just filed. Once when I was freelancing with my personal taxes, and that was a big shocker to me.
Speaker 1:Like, how much comes out all the time. To clarify Kaylee's taxes are not coming out. Kaylee's are coming out. She's a w2d employee. Yes hers are coming out every paycheck but the business has to do payroll taxes, which is separate from your individual taxes and separate from 1099 Contract or individual taxes. Completely different landscape.
Speaker 1:Yes, kind of Saying it confusingly, but from the business standpoint, yes, we had to do payroll taxes. That we paid, I think, states every month, or then federal's quarterly or vice versa. I don't do it anymore because I didn't understand it. So our payroll company does it, but Once a quarter we get, you know, taxed for a Lot and it's like every quarter is different.
Speaker 2:So it's just another thing you can't really plan for you can plan for.
Speaker 1:It is just something that kind of you know. It's different than when I was just running the business or different when you were just a freelancer doing 1099 contract stuff. So a lot of things come up as a small business owner that You've never ran into before and you kind of just have to adapt and a lot of it involves money and a lot of it sucks. But hey, I Wouldn't trade it still. So To do goals we already talked about those.
Speaker 2:I I talked about goals. Yeah you have specific goals.
Speaker 1:Pretty much just talked about generalized for the business that my general goal is, yes, being more involved in the community. I think personal goals related to the business is stepping back from some of the day-to-day stuff and Maybe passing off some stuff which we've already talked about the website stuff. I'm passing off not all of it, maybe all of it I don't know depends on the workload of the new project we have coming up. But being able to step back and not Feel like I have to do everything Is a big one and I know for long-term growth that's good. Hmm, personal goals I guess one thing that we're going to be focusing on there We've kind of already set up and done, referring back to the content planning for the year is building out more strategies and processes to help the business function like not a small business that has no plan going forward.
Speaker 2:Right, you know, bigger businesses.
Speaker 1:They have weekly meetings or they have monthly meetings. They do all the have these processes in place to help run the business. We've kind of just been, yeah, like winging it, like we're two freelancers who just happened to have an office together, yeah, and so We've already we tried to do weekly meetings last.
Speaker 1:It's been on my calendar for a year now, but we did in the middle of the week on a Wednesday at noon, and never we did it like twice and then it never stuck. So getting back in that having more of a structure for the meetings, what we're going to do each week, what worked last week, what didn't work last week, goals for this week, what's the content going out this week, all that. Mondays we're going to do eight by Hannah and Kaylee. Both don't want to do eight, so but still some of us are not morning people 1230 on Monday.
Speaker 1:Make it a priority first of the week to really talk about what's going on in the business and plan ahead and discuss on a more regular basis what's working, what's not working, on top of a monthly content meeting where we're planning here's week one of February, here's week two of February, here's week three, and then we get into more those Monday morning meetings for that week.
Speaker 1:So developing more processes to help streamline things to make the business run smoother, make our processes for content creation and working with our clients smoother and better as well. So those are kind of my personal goals for the business this year.
Speaker 2:I should have added to mine to get better at selling myself or selling our services. I guess that I get uncomfortable when it's people that I know I don't want to bother them Like I don't. I'm not good at just being like.
Speaker 2:I already asked you once and if you never text me back, then that's the end of it. I'm not good at being consistent about I don't want. I don't want to be pushy, I don't want to be annoying, I don't want to. I don't know. I guess if they say no, I'm like, okay, yeah.
Speaker 2:So to get better at being a salesperson, being a salesperson, because that is not my forte, which retail Sales I am so great at. I can sell you anything you want, but selling the fact that people should pay us to do something, I think it's different, because I want to cost more than buying $30 flowers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but yeah it's. It is hard and especially when you're dealing with people you know, because you have that personal relationship, you don't want you don't want it to feel like you're abusing that relationship to get money from them.
Speaker 2:And I feel like that a lot, or like I know what we charge for things and whether or not I think that's going to be doable.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's tough. I think that's what I guess. One thing, too, is setting our price points and sticking to them.
Speaker 2:Yeah we did. We did get better this year. I feel like, yeah, because I used to be like oh, this person is my friend, they can have it for cheaper and I'm doing twice as much work. Because they are my friend, they're going to tell me if they don't like it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so yeah, I mean, I've always given deals and negotiated, and negotiating is important to agree, but when you set the bar at below what you should be making and then negotiate down from there on top of that, yeah, really take a hit. So we've, at least on the social media side of things and well I know Kaylee's done it on her hourly projects to, but sticking to the price points that we know we should be making and you know, if somebody can't afford it, no feelings hurt. I understand I don't want to pay X amount for some things, for our business to, and that's just how it goes.
Speaker 2:but it's hard to compete sometimes with people who can do a? Logo for $5 on the internet.
Speaker 1:Yeah, which or you know, somebody could hire somebody on Fiverr to do their social media posts. Create 10 posts for the month for $30 and it's like that's not sustainable at all. You're going to pay for what you get because once you hire that person you're going to realize it's all generic graphics that they've used for other companies that they just slap your logo on instead and does it convert? No, so yeah, you're wasting 30 bucks and Not your business at all.
Speaker 2:It's like when we're getting new clients over meeting with potential clients and their very first question is well, how much is going to cost me?
Speaker 1:To real flag.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean people, business owners. Some of them understand that they need to invest in their business if they want to really see growth. And you have to invest time and money and You're going to reach your goals, right? So, like, as a business owner, what's your goal to? Whether it's to run a successful business where I don't have to spend 80 hours a week at the business but I know I'm making money and I can Travel or spend more time with my family. If you're not willing to invest time and money into it to get to that point, you're never going to be there, right?
Speaker 2:so you're never going to grow.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So they're like what are your business goals and how can we help you reach those goals? You know whether it's you want to be more involved, you want to be more seen in the community? Okay, great, let's Build out your social media plan. I don't know how to do it. Okay, awesome, we can help you create the content so that it frees you up to go Be more involved in the community or do these other events or run your business like. That's the biggest thing for us is we free up your time so that you don't have to stress and worry about stuff and, honestly, so that it probably looks better than what you or somebody on your team who's not trained to do it Can do it.
Speaker 2:So it's definitely a good one, like overall, just knowing what our time is worth yeah. I have. I don't know if it's just in the, if it's the same in your world as it is in the design world, but I just even recently I have a friend that's a photographer, that we're having the same discussion about pricing and the amount of hours she spends not even just at the event that day, but editing and planning ahead and meeting with them and going to the venue and Just completely undercharging.
Speaker 2:she's like but I want people to hire me like I've been. I've been there and I guess now we're kind of in the stage of like we have to make that much because we don't have time to do it and not make that much, I don't know. So being better about it for next year.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's the thing is you have to get to that point eventually, or else you're never going to grow and succeed.
Speaker 2:so which was the whole point of us getting out of freelancing and yeah. Yeah, become a legitimate business.
Speaker 1:Yep, so anything that we missed, to kind of wrap things up here, and I covered everything on your list, which I guess I didn't really need to write a list because I can see your list from here, but that's okay. But, yeah, overall, 2023 was a really Big, important year for the business. I think it helped us learn a lot and helped us give a give us a path for moving forward, to continue to grow. So, yeah, I was pleased with it. There's ups and downs. I think there's always going to be ups and downs and a lot of stress, a lot of time, but we came out on top and already 2024 is looking to be incredible, so, hopefully, yeah, any last words before we wrap up?
Speaker 2:Not that I can think of.
Speaker 1:Cool.
Speaker 2:Did you get any stats from Hannah to talk about?
Speaker 1:Hannah posted one million posts on social media.
Speaker 2:Sounds like fake news.
Speaker 1:No, I did not get anything from her. We're doing a podcast later in the month about favorite projects and stuff and we can go over social media stats specifically. So this was more just overall business and through in some of your design stuff, but don't want to drag on forever. So Thank you everybody. I guess a big thank you to everybody who's one listening to the podcast. A part of our business. A lot of exciting things last year and upcoming this year. So Please continue to spread the word, share the stuff that we do. We're posting on social media a lot showing off the work that we do. Thank you to everybody who does share it. The word of mouth has been one of if not our biggest sales drivers.
Speaker 1:So please continue to do that if you want to support us and you can also support us support the podcast specifically by going to Bitly bit dot LI slash digital wrap up with the D digital, the W and wrap and the you and up all capitalized. It'll be in the show notes as well, if you're listening or watching on YouTube. But yeah, a lot of exciting things Coming up, a lot of new content every single week. We're going to be content machines this year. That's the goal. So Thank you, everybody for a great 2023 and You'll be back next week for the next episode and digital wrap up in 2024, and we have some exciting things to talk about next week. So Take care, everybody, and we will see you on the next episode of digital wrap up.