#25 Client churn and how to factor it into your pipeline with Charlotte Sheridan

One day you're at capacity, the next day, 3 of your clients give notice on the same day and you're suddenly in panic mode about replacing them.  

In today's episode, Charlotte Sheridan, Founder, The Small Biz Expert,  shares why client churn is inevitable and why instead of burying our heads in the sand and being in denial that client relationships will come to an end, forecasting how long they may stay and keeping a constant pipeline to stay fully booked.

Freelancer feast and famine periods are common.  Break this cycle after listening to Charlotte share her experience and how she overcomes this within her own business.

To contact Charlotte:

Charlotte@thesmallbizexpert.co.uk
https://www.instagram.com/the_small_biz_expert/

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Transcript

Aggie Meroni: 0:00

Hello welcome to the freelance ads club podcast with me your host Aggie Meroni. Whether you're a seasoned freelance ads manager, or just thinking about taking the leap into self employment, this podcast is for you. Every week, I'll be releasing a bite sized episode, I'll be sharing mistakes I've made and lessons I've learned from my own freelance business. I'll be showcasing some of the amazingly talented freelancers in the freelance ads club. And I also will be speaking to some incredible guests who will generously be sharing that knowledge with us to help us keep updated with industry trends. And I really hope that after listening to this podcast, you'll come away full of confidence on how to win great clients, how to charge correctly, and most importantly, retain those dream clients so that you build a successful and sustainable business. Hello, and welcome to this week's episode of the freelance ads club Podcast. Today, I'm joined by Charlotte Sheridan, the founder of the Small Biz experts. Charlotte's and I have known each other for a while now. And she is what I call the Oracle of all things marketing and business ownership really. And something that's we have talked about before, not in this podcast is about client churn. And one thing that Charlotte's first kind of brought to my attention, I guess was that is just normal. It's just something that you need to factor into how businesses run kind of hard to predict when someone might churn and how to prepare for it, and what and how to have something lined up. So you're never in that feast and famine cycle that so many freelancers find themselves in, also talks about lots of other things that kind of went off on a tangent about our personal experiences, and some protections you can put in place to help you in your business. So let me know what you think, and listening to what Charlotte had to share with us. Hi, Charlotte, thank you so much for joining me today.

Unknown: 2:13

Thank you, Abby, lovely to be here.

Aggie Meroni: 2:15

So I know you've listened to the podcast before. So I'm sure it's not going to be any news to you that the first question I always ask everyone is who they are, and how they got to where they are today.

Unknown: 2:27

So I'm Charlotte Sheridan, founder of digital marketing agency, this small business expert, I actually started the agency completely and utterly by accident. I had finished up where I was working, and was waiting to start a new role. But it was in the public sector and their rapid thing process or takes a very long time. So I thought, one weekend, I'll knock up a website and do some freelance thing. And got to the day, I was supposed to start my new, very snappy job. And just I by that point, I had four clients. And I thought, You know what, I'm never going to take this risk again. So I just went with it. And six years later, you're still going. The Accidental business owner, basically.

Aggie Meroni: 3:13

Yeah, I can relate to that as well. I didn't intend to start a business either. But here we are. So today, we're going to be talking about something I don't think it's talked about that often. I've certainly never heard anyone else talk about it. And that is about churn within your business. So how many clients part ways with you whether that's because well, we're going to talk about the different reasons, they're not always bad things either. So that is also something we're going to talk about today, why you shouldn't be worried, or sad or concerned about the churn in your business. So do you want to just give a bit of an overview Charlotte about what you understand churn to be

Unknown: 3:52

when you're looking at your client churn rate, it can be so sorry, when we're talking about churn, generally speaking, that's how long your average client will stay with you how quickly they pass through. If they're on a retainer, we're generally talking about retaining project here as opposed to one off projects with a specific start and end date. Because we all kind of get super excited that new client that we're working with, especially sort of in your early days, you kind of think you're going to be with them forever and ever, and still be working with them in 10 years time. And as time goes on, you start to get more of a feel for how quickly you your client will go away take different paths or you know, in some cases actually upgrade their services. But if you can understand the level of churn in your business, it makes it far easier to plan for the future in terms of your income, but also to make sure that you've always always got a reasonable pipeline based on what What you expect your churn to be, and I think a lot of freelancers fall into this trap of going, I'm totally at capacity, I'm totally pasty. One week later, they get a bit of a shock with a client find that they're terminating their services, and then sort of scrambling around. So understanding churn can really help you build a more confident foundation in your business and ensure that you don't have these sorts terrifying gaps in your workflow.

Aggie Meroni: 5:27

Definitely. So I know the first time I came across this was actually talking to you. And you say, Oh, this is, you know, roughly how long people stay with me. And, you know, I always make sure that I have, you know, something coming up. So how do you how have you calculated that in your own business,

Unknown: 5:45

so thorough, so as a, because we do the whole suite of digital marketing, we kind of calculate by two things. And you know, some people are unpredictable and the world changes. But actually sided business can really matter. Smaller companies that tend to the slightly less time than longer ones. And it can also depend on the service that we're offering. So what you tend to find is, when you work with a company that is just starting out in life, by doing Facebook ads, you know, that they will usually get to a place where either they will decide the ad, actually or not, for them, that genuinely does happen, especially if you're almost doing a proof of concept. With those clients, we'll give them six months, Mack, sometimes it goes the other way. But that's what we based on kind of the best thing to do based on worst case scenario. Larger clients tend to be with us. One year class, we still have clients from when I first started out by accident six years ago, but often it's based on the server, or the other way around it as well, when you're freelance, as businesses grow, quite often, it goes the other way round, and everything's going so well that they actually don't need either in house resource or may trade up for a larger agency. So there's no kind of hard or fast rule. But you do start to kind of look at the size of business, and also the project that you're working on. Even on a retainer, organic clients tend to stay longer than ads client, we find that Google Ads clients stay longer than Facebook ads client. And it's going to be individual to your business and the type of businesses that you work with to. So it there's no hard or fast rule. But actually starting to get into your head that actually, we're going to part ways at one point, and that's okay, makes you feel far more confident stuff comes as less of a shock when you kind of go, I give, I give this client one year. And it's like go past that we're past that. But it just kind of helps you to not get at that stage where you're sitting there really comfortably at capacity, because we all know, a new client usually takes a lot more a lot more handholding than an existing one. So you've also got to build that into your profiling, because if your onboarding, as I did in January, pick clients in one month, that is a lot of work. And ideally, not taking my own advice I should have looked at when we'd expect to do that and how the term would look.

Aggie Meroni: 8:21

Yeah, that's definitely something that I've learned along the way, just how front loaded it can be. And even those first few months, you're kind of getting to know how each other work. And there's always some kind of teething problems. And that's normal. I think, just like establishing how you communicate and that kind of thing. One

Unknown: 8:38

thing that I built in quite, quite early, I mean, I spoke well early on maybe a few years ago is because of that front loading. And because of the churn now, everyone works slightly differently, we have literally zero minimum contract, it's a 30 day notice period from day one. So we don't even tie people in for three months. Because we never want to be in a situation where someone says, Actually, I've changed my mind, I don't want to do this anymore. And we're like, well, we want our money for the next three months. But you know, everyone works differently. But what we did build them because of that front loading work. We always charged step up faith, always for everything. Because even if technical setup isn't something that you do, or design isn't something that you do, there is always a real, timely, costly element of onboarding your client, even if it's organic social media, and it's a case of chasing them for one of their images and setting up drop boxes and stuff like that. You really don't want to be in a position where you're doing a lot of Front Loaded work, and actually, the relationship for whatever reason and more and sooner than you thought it was. So that's kind of another way to protect your income from these pipelines. And it's completely and utterly fair. If you've got fairly short contract terms, but a 30 day rolling or three monthly contract you Everything tying someone in for a year, you might not need both kind of early protection, but it does sort of help to safeguard your your income against any sort of unexpected gaps due to unexpected churn.

Aggie Meroni: 10:13

Yeah, that's actually a piece of advice I took from you, as well, I think it was about a year ago, 18 months ago. And it's been such a game changer for me, especially as I've started to work with different types of businesses that need different types of campaigns. Because some campaigns you can put together quite quickly, there's stuff available straightaway, and it doesn't take much time. So you know that the fee won't be that high for them for that particular accounts. Other accounts are much bigger, have much more complex needs, they're much more strategic, and you know, it's gonna take you at least two to three weeks to set them up. And then you charge a quarterly for that as well. So yeah, I moved away from including the setup fee. And my first month quite quickly, I think

Unknown: 10:57

the problem can be is sometimes you don't know which one is going to be problematic. For example, when we've all been there, you suddenly go into the ad account. And this account is restricted from advertising. So you've got maybe you could you wait, potentially of trying to get that sorted, or nobody knows who's out who owns the page and stuff like that. And so it's really easy, we all do it to underestimate that onboarding. process. And the amount of time and effort involved compared with the client you've been working with for two years, you know, their campaigns back to front, they're great at getting you the asset and stuff like that. And if you build, if you build in a setup fee, people don't bat an eyelid out. That's the other thing people get scared of there. But I can promise you good clients don't bat an eyelid because they absolutely understand that building the foundations and making the plan is what takes a lot of the work. And it can help you to be more reasonable in your costs in the longer term as well, because you're not trying to make up for all of that. All of that upfront work.

Aggie Meroni: 12:02

Yeah, I have to say I have had some conversations with E commerce clients who might be new to ads, so they don't have any benchmark or they've not spoken to anyone else. And it is a shock to them that they need to pay an extra setup fee. And depending on how they respond, which as you explain it. So as this is why we charge extra, that can actually be a red flag, and kind of one that can kind of tell you whether you want to work with that client or not. So I kind of see it now as an extra test. Before I take on a client, because you know what kind of resistance you're gonna get to certain things.

Unknown: 12:40

You wouldn't expect someone to come marching up and say, I'm going to build your house without making the plans first, right. And we all understand that we have to pay for those architects plan upfront before we start laying the bricks. And it's anyone who does want that house just thrown up probably isn't after the best quality house. I love and analogy.

Aggie Meroni: 13:06

That is the best one I've heard actually about this. You have not disappointed with your analogies. I'm sure there'll be more to come I

Unknown: 13:14

guarantee it.

Aggie Meroni: 13:15

So just touch on something you said before you notice that Google as clients stay longer than Facebook ads clients do wonder why that is? You know,

Unknown: 13:25

I think there can be several reasons, generally speaking, there's a perception that Facebook is cheaper. And so that can be more of a case of we have more clients who are faced with their first introduction into the world of advertising. So actually, whether you're coming in there as an ad manager to help them get get leads, they'll product, what you're really doing if they've never advertised before, and are generally a new business is actually proving the concept for them. And sometimes that concepts, especially with very, very small businesses might not be proved quickly with baseball cards. It can also be the case that it does tend to be the one that people bring in in house. The sooner we do, we had a week. And I'm sure I've spoken about this, if anyone's spoken to me before I had a day where I lost two clients in 48 hours, once a quarter of their Facebook had been house and the other closed its doors to the products that we were advertising to. And both of those kind of flip sides of pain point one was they had grown to the point where they wanted to take them the other one with Facebook ads had not saved a failing product. And that sometimes can be a big thing around Facebook ads, Google ads, generally not always. But often people that are trying Google ads are doing it because they already have they know what they want to rank for. They know what works for them. organically and now they just want to push out to a larger audience. Facebook often will be, for some businesses, their first introduction into proving the concept of whatever they're selling or promoting.

Aggie Meroni: 15:13

Yeah, I have to say that, as I've worked with more and more brands, I kind of have a strict rule now that I never work with complete startups, because it's so expensive for them to prove their concept with us.

Unknown: 15:28

So you think 100%, and I get it, I completely understand that that that can feel like a vicious cycle for some brands that we can't get eyeballs on our products unless we put money into advertising. But at the same time, we don't want to spend money on advertising, just to get eyeballs on our product, we want to get fouled. And unfortunately, it everything in business is time or money, because the opposite of that is building really, really strong organic foundation bit organic, social, organic, SEO, and people want to quick test, but quite often, there's then more expense that comes out of that testing, the product needs to be improved, or the website needs to be improved. And that can mean people having to go away and rethink the concept and come back. And that can put a pause on Yeah, because actually, you know, we've had that before, actually, we think we need to improve this website. So of course for a while, or where, you know, things are seasonal, we knew we do really well at Christmas. But actually you don't want to advertise in January and February, when nobody's buying our product, we want to go away and do some of this other work. So a lot of it is kind of scoping out. What you're feeling is what will be that client key moment and potentially key triggers to either you need to put in full make or break points into your plan. If that makes sense. We know that if Christmas isn't flying, we can probably expect that January will either be a toning down or even a pause or a spring and a complete stop. These trigger points can kind of, you know, it could be the end of their financial year when budgeting is happening. It completely depends on your client what they do, but they can kind of help you think about what their points are there the month up to which you might start really looking at promoting yourself and building your pipeline, even if you feel that you're overextended. Yeah, I mean,

Aggie Meroni: 17:27

some like a big challenge that's that came up in the freelance ads clog was how to continue promoting yourself when you are at capacity because the leads keep coming in, but you can't take it on. So it's like how you manage those leads coming in? Because you don't want to the rest of your clients to suffer? Because you can't, you know, you can't manage

Unknown: 17:46

it all. So I think like genuinely, I don't think there's any right or wrong answer. But I am a girl who like I'm just the girl that can't say no, right. So generally speaking, we'll take on a more work out every time and wherever that wasn't me, that means bringing in extra resource to help, which is obviously something that I know you've spoken about before, you know, potentially using either outsource resource or not even thinking about hiring depends where your business is that. So that's kind of my approach is, let's take it on, and we'll work it out. Because it it's never yet not worked, well probably give me a cue extra grey hair, but out for other people. I know, a guy who does web development, we have about a six month waiting list. Now for web development, that kind of works because of the type of projects that they are, you could even that manager thing, actually, I'm going to I'm going to make a body I'm going to team up with the body system or something like that, you know, I'm, you're an E commerce, your stuff goes, you know, you know Christmas is absolutely crazy. That's when you want extra resource. You know someone else who then either no accounting, their stuff goes mad in April, you might want to look at sort of partnering with someone like that for additional resource. And I think what scares people with that is the idea that they need someone who will literally be them and do their job. It might be that just taking some of the fiddly bits off of your hands is enough to free up your time. It's like building a waiting list can be an amazing one. But again, it kind of depends on if you've got someone who needs an ad campaign for an event that's done in three months time, the chances are they're not going to wait for you. But if you're doing sort of strategic work someone may well do. There's no right or wrong on it depends on your appetite for risk and also your how much your work life balance.

Aggie Meroni: 19:44

I think something that can help with that workload is having different services that you offer so you obviously have this you offer different types of marketing support. But for people that purely do ads, having a mix of consultancy in there, maybe offer group training Ain't maybe offer corporate training, all these things can massively help if one of your retainer clients suddenly decides that they're taking everything in house or, you know, maybe they go bankrupt, so you never know D why someone might part ways with you,

Unknown: 20:13

we've had it or we've had, we had a company go bankrupt, and we didn't get off, you know, we've got 10% of our invoice payment. And we've had we've been ghosted, before, all of these things can and will happen to you at some point in a business, it will, it's just kind of the way life goes. But I think also what you say, diversifying what you offer really helped, like, even the way you deliver it, but also ring fence some of your time, always be your own, you know, generally speaking that that time that you should ring fence for working in your own business rather than on somebody else's, but also can give you just that tiny bit of wiggle room. If things have gone quiet, and you're quite wind farm down. And you go and do a big masterclass training business owners, is there something else that you can kind of put out there, and it does help to protect your income? If you're not eggs in one basket? I mean, we were doing loads of travel stuff. In January, February of 2020. We lost I think, every single client we had, are they paused or should they we lost them. They paused 90% combat the travel one did not that I offered training throughout the whole of that first bit of lockdown, I did a lot of training. And actually 2020 was our biggest year ever, in terms of income and retained clients. And it was kind of like diversifying into that training was what got more clients for us. Because actually, although the people training didn't necessarily go with us, although some did they, you know, you do the training people go, Oh, gosh, they've been harder than I expected and actually just want someone to implement, but also has great reputation as well. Because while the person we were doing a power hour or training course with might not be quite at the stage where they wanted to use external help. Yeah, a lot of them know people that do so constant promotion of yourself. As a kid, lots of us feel about that it really, really is important because you don't know who's connected to who and how that might help with the pipeline. In the future.

Aggie Meroni: 22:37

I think one of the biggest things that I've learned since starting my business is sometimes like if you find yourself in a sticky situation, and there have been times something this month, I fall a bit short, I need to quickly make some money. So I'm like, What can I do, and you suddenly just get creative, you're like, right, if I run this, and I get this many people to come, then it might generate this for me, or, you know, maybe I just stopped promoting my consultancy a bit more because you know, if I can get another three or four this month, that's gonna help. Or maybe I can, you know, reach out to some people that I've worked with before and see if they can refer me to someone. So I've definitely learned lateral thinking, since I started if retainer work is dry.

Unknown: 23:21

I think there's, I don't like people that say, oh, you know, we've all got the same 24 hours in the day, you can go out and do everything and this stuff. But I have found that if you need to make a certain amount of money in your freelancing business, very often you will make it if you have a goal in your head of three grand a month, you'll hit you'll hit three, take that goal, turn into five, you'll hit five, take that full, turn it into 10, you will hit Can you say I need to make 10,000 pounds a month. And I know how this sounds to people that are just scraping you to trust me it will happen because if that's what you need to pay your mortgage, it will happen. And you just get more creative, you charge a more realistic rate for what you're doing. Because actually the people that are paying you they're getting both quite that kind of income too. And they will value you know, a decent client more value your time and your expertise.

Aggie Meroni: 24:22

Yeah, definitely. I think so charging and I'm still learning the ropes on this like you do get more confident with it. The longer you do it, don't you because you kind of figure out how long things take you how good you are at what you do. Because you don't as a freelancer, you can forget how skilled you are. You don't really interact with as many people and you kind of realise that as you go along. I guess.

Unknown: 24:45

It's really tough, especially when you start freelancing. I remember thinking well, I was on 50 grand a year. So if I charged 40 quid an hour and work all of the hours I just assumed Well that's about 50 That'll do me and I'm working from home and I'm not having His take the train anymore. And all of that didn't take into account any of the expenses and all of that kinda, and I think you've said a really similar thing on the podcast before I go. But actually, it's not about that. And I remember being in a house when I remember a lady back in, Oh, this must have been about 2014. She came in, she was a freelancer who ran off Twitter for and she charged 3000 pounds a month. I remember, well, I'd like to be on 3000 pounds a month. But with hindsight, she was bringing so much value for for that costs. So it's actually it's never about how much you think you should charge. And it's the value that you're bringing to that business. And sometimes even just saying, Look, you shouldn't be taking this route you shouldn't take you should take that route. You might have saved the client 10s of 1000s of wasted spend. So never undervalue what you're bringing to the table.

Aggie Meroni: 25:59

Yeah, I mean, that did actually happen to me recently, when I was said, I've just think I've had the worst consultation ever. I basically said, no, no, no to everything. They're not ready. This isn't right. And think even such you like I think, Oh, I just feel bad taking their money because we didn't even get started on the ads. And then one of our mutual friends said, Yeah, but just think how much money you've saved them. That is way more than they paid you for the hour. And then they came back. And they put me on a retainer consultancy.

Unknown: 26:31

Things that clear? Well, I don't know why we undervalue our skill, especially if if someone came around and said, No, you don't have to replace all of your windows like either because other solution or actually you know what those windows blast another five years, you'll be fine. It'd be so grateful to them, right and great job. But we kind of feel like we have to have a solution that makes advertising work for somebody. And when it's not the right solution, it's not the right solution. And just saying that is actually really, really good value.

Aggie Meroni: 27:05

And I think as well, like from speaking to other freelancers, we get this quite a lot. I know a lot of freelancers with lots of integrity, and they really do want the best for the people that they work with. And whenever they give honest feedback, and it can even be shock horror, I'm not the right fit for you. And I don't think it's gonna work out for me to support you, you need some other service. The brands are so grateful. They're like, I can't believe you've been honest with me. It's like the first honest conversation I've had with anyone in months. And I'm like, That is such a poor reflection on other people running their businesses, isn't

Unknown: 27:36

it? It's terrifying. But I guess taking the analogy of the builder, you know, you saved you want the window, it's exactly the same thing, isn't it? You're like, Oh, my God, it's I found an honest builder. And I'm sure 90% are on it and have integrity. But it's the, it's the 10% that don't, or, in some cases don't potentially have the experience to actually give the right advice, because we all want it to work out. We all come into work every day to do to make a change to our clients lives. But that's what we want to do, we want to make their business better. And I kind of did a bit of soul searching around this recently, some client that you work with, and we don't feel that it make us feel super happy. And it was because actually, we can't make enough of a difference to make her happy. And we stopped taking on those clients. Where we felt either budget was an issue or something and the product was an issue or something on the website was an issue. Unless we added assurances that those sort of things would be could be changed, either as part of our email or within the remit of the client. If we didn't feel we can make enough of an impact on that business. We won't work with them. And we'll try and push them in the best direction for them. The sad thing being they'll always be someone who will ignore all of those things and just go yeah, we'll take your money.

Aggie Meroni: 29:02

Yeah, we've all heard horror stories about when people are like paying 50 pounds in adspend and paying the agency like 500 pounds and things like that. It's ridiculous, isn't it? We've totally like sidetracked from churn like everything is related to churn as well, because there are some times when you realise that you're not the right fit for the brand anymore, as well. And then you like amicably part ways. So you have to sort of have the confidence in your pipeline, that you can kind of part ways with the business on good terms, and you're not fearful that you can't pay your mortgage that month,

Unknown: 29:41

I think, yeah. 100% that the biggest thing with China is accepting it. And that sounds like really sort of wishy washy, but actually, you see it all the time in sort of freelance groups and, you know, speaking to peers and stuff like that people like Oh god, I'm going to lose this part. I'm really upset about it. I feel like it's all my fault even and then I'll explain exactly why it's not their fault. And it's just something going on in the client business or life or whatever. But when you just become accepting that, that that's absolutely normal. We change our phones every two years, we change that, you know, we change our contracts every, you know, whatever, you know, I changed my pile of television package and stuff like that. And when you kind of understand that, there'll be people that will always do that, is it quite normal after working with someone for a year or two years normally that again, look at those trigger points, that someone will at least look around for what else might be on offer. And you've got become kind of expense acceptance is the key to accepting chair. But building your pipeline is the key to making sure that it doesn't negatively impact you financially.

Aggie Meroni: 30:57

Yeah, and I think with the pipeline thing, as well, it's one of those things that sometimes you'll have a pipeline that is just kind of maturing, and it's taking weeks, like I've got leads on my pipeline that have been on there since like September, and I'm still in talks with them. And they do want to work with me, but not yet. That's the kind of annoying pipeline. Yeah. And then you have other leads where they'll have a call, and within 24 hours, that Agreement, signed the payments down payments made for set up, and you're on your way. So you know, you have to kind of gauge where those where those leads might land. And when that's kind of like an added level of complexity, isn't it?

Unknown: 31:37

Yeah, there's a few sort of forecasting thing that you can start doing. Because you do, the more clients you have, the more the more you notice the pattern, obviously, quite often, the larger the business, the longer the process, because there's more stakeholders and shareholders involved in getting that sign off to work with you. The smaller the business, that you know, not always, but quite often, the faster and I'm I'm a girl who loves Excel spreadsheet, right? So I will sit and kind of group these sort of things. But also we've started to be very specific about the clients that we start to work with. So we we like when you Nish you can be far more prescriptive in your marketing and your messaging, you can actually be more exact in your forecasting for your own finances and your own pipeline, and you own it does go back to your own Marketo you know, things fall out of bed in January, then, you know, you start building those January, January clients in November.

Aggie Meroni: 32:40

Yeah, it's true. I think it takes you been in business for like a couple of years. I'm coming into my third year now. And I'm only just starting to see a pattern because I've only had like two Christmases on my own. The first one is only just getting into ADS fully. So I've only had like two where I was fully doing all the ads myself. And I've kind of started to see the past in my own business, January's always busy February and March quieter, which isn't a bad thing. I feel like I'm recovering from it all, to be honest. And

Unknown: 33:10

two years, it's been three years it's been I say about patterns, I can say everything that we ever had went out the window and 2020 21 Yeah, and then 22, when really differently, but you do, I think is like time, it's like having a shot, we work out what seasons work well for you whether customers buy more on a Tuesday, whether you have to have additional staff in there on a Wednesday, when you start treating your business like that, and actually take an objective view, you can find patterns, even if it you know, and your patterns will be different to my patterns. That will depend on sort of clients, all of that kind of stuff. But if you can take a while to go, these are the clients that I've had, you know, in the last however long you've been getting the camera going a few months, this is how long you know, we kind of work with them, generally speaking, it can really start to help you find those little peaks and troughs that are really important here and sort of allocate your resources, whether it's just through the resource or bringing in extra leads or

Aggie Meroni: 34:19

Yeah, I mean something that I do you know, at the end of every year was like all the goal setting staff and like it's all a bit crazy. Everyone's like plan your year and be super organised. And I just found out I could never do that because I like you know, if you're gonna be launching anything, plan it all out on your calendars. I was like I don't have anything that's established enough because you know, some people have like their signature offers and a signature programmes and they always do a challenge before it's like always known it's kind of like they know in those months they'll have income and all that kind of thing. I think that's really hard to do if you don't have like that kind of revenue stream in your business.

Unknown: 34:56

Yeah, I think as well like we all say when you know The big thing when you work in marketing, right, it's marketing strategy is a document in progress. It's a working document. And yet suddenly come January will go, Well, I'm gonna have to plan out my exact year, to the moment I will be posting this launch at midnight and one minute. But actually, it has to be a work in progress, especially where the world is pretty changeable at the moment, we have to be flexible might even be changing our messaging. You know, all those points that taking stuff in how do we are training your internal resource now instead, at managing stuff for you?

Aggie Meroni: 35:39

Yeah, isn't that the truth? Things are definitely changing. But that's the joy of being freelance or like a small agency, right? That you're so nimble, you can literally just like change to what people need really quickly.

Unknown: 35:51

This is why we run our own businesses, right? We did it for freedom to be able to do what we love. And if you find what you're doing, maybe there isn't a demand or you're not loving it too much anymore. You can change it. That is the beauty of it.

Aggie Meroni: 36:07

Absolutely. And that is like the one thing that I love and have said the only thing I put in my diary this year is my holidays. So I actually take time off.

Unknown: 36:17

When you really work out your turn, you can even work out I mean, this doesn't quite work around the kid. But you can even work out well. That is exactly the best time to take a holiday. Yeah, absolutely.

Aggie Meroni: 36:29

Well, I have to say today's session on churn has been fun. We talked about loads of things that weren't chain related, but kind of were at the same time. I'm hoping that after listening to this, or whoever's listening to this will be reassured that it's completely normal part of business, you know, it's not that you should hold on to clients for the whole their whole business life. Things change the world changes, situations change. If people want to find you after this, where should they go?

Unknown: 37:01

You can come and visit the website, www dot the Small Biz expert.co.uk. Or just give me a follow on LinkedIn, Charlotte Sheridan Morbi.

Aggie Meroni: 37:12

I'll add those links to the show notes as well. So you can go and stalk Charlotte on LinkedIn

Unknown: 37:18

skulk away.

Aggie Meroni: 37:21

Well, thanks so much for your time. Today, Charlotte's and I will speak to you soon. Thank you. If you enjoyed listening to this episode today, then please hit subscribe or follow depending on where you're listening. It really helps other people find us. Also if you're a freelance apps manager, and you're looking for a lovely community of other ads managers to support you as you grow your business, then check out the show notes and apply to join us. And if you're a brand or an agency that are looking for talent, support your new projects. There's also an application form for you in the show notes to tap into the talent in our community. So thanks again for listening in. And I will see you on the next episode.