Riding the Rollercoaster: A Year in Podcasting, Business, and Tech

Hey everyone, Jordan Yates here! Join me as I look back on a wild year full of ups and downs. We've got it all: my podcast journey, the growth of my marketing firm, and the rollercoaster that's been my personal life. Think of this as more than just another business story - it's filled with laughs, some facepalm moments, and a bunch of unexpected lessons.

I'll take you through everything, from the early podcast days to the growth of Jordan Yates Marketing. It's been a crazy balancing act, but I've managed to keep the unique charm that makes my brand what it is. I'm going to be super open about how my services have evolved, the tricky stuff around pricing, and my battles with that sneaky imposter syndrome.

Wrapping up this episode, I'm laughing at how much I can talk - I could probably out-talk the Energizer Bunny! But here's the thing: your support and curiosity are what keep this project alive, and I can't thank you enough for that. Big thanks to all of you for being part of this journey with me. Stay tuned, stay curious, and remember, the mistakes you hear about in the next episode might just be the key to your own success.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:15

Hey everybody, welcome back to season two, episode one of Failing. For you, it is me, your host, jordan Yates. Now, oh my gosh, guys, where do I even begin? I have not done a solo episode in almost half a year and I haven't even done an episode at all since August of 2023. We're now in January of 2024. There's a lot of reasons for this and I will kind of get into it, but I want today to be sort of a catch up, a recap of 2023. As you guys know, we started this podcast about a year ago and I have learned so much and, being on brand, I've failed a lot too Between podcasting, my business, my day to day life, and although there's been many successes, there's been a lot of funny failures as well. So it's just me today, one-on-one with you guys, because I miss talking to you, I miss catching up with you, and I just I want to say hey, I want to let you guys know what's been going on. If you follow me on LinkedIn or we're connected there, I do keep you all updated a lot, but I know I'm sort of a sporadic person and so it's kind of hard to keep things straight. So today is the day we will catch up on 2023. We will talk about what's to come in 2024 and I hope I can at least entertain you on the way and tell a couple funny stories. So where should I begin? Okay, I think it's only fitting that we start talking about the podcast. So this is going to be a little jumble jumping around because there's so many factors that go into everything. But, as you guys remember, when I first started this podcast, my first episode was literally how to start a podcast, because I wanted to truly document on the way as I'm learning to podcast, teaching you all what I'm learning, what worked, what didn't work, so on and so forth. Then I got into more stuff that was more sales and marketing related, given that I have the marketing engineer background, and then I started bringing guests on. Now, I don't know if I originally planned to have guests. I think I did, but I was a little nervous about that. I had my first few guests and I was like, okay, this is so much fun. I love having guests on and I think that episodes were more interesting and probably more fruitful. But to me, when I have to start scheduling things with other people and there's that daunting task of coordinating schedules, getting on the same page and then making sure I actually have room in my schedule. It lines up with theirs, and then that day I actually feel like podcasting. It became a little overwhelming. So I did feel like I had a lot of success in getting guests on, but then I started producing a lot less content because I felt so overwhelmed by the concept of guest. So, as you guys know, I do everything myself for this podcast. I record it, I'm the host, I produce it, I publish it. And I think at first I was going strong, put a lot of content out there, felt really good about it, and then, like I said, I started to get overwhelmed by the concept of adding more guests, which the guests were never the problem. My guests were 10 out of 10 awesome. If there is an episode with a guest on it, you should listen to it because they're all super cool, amazing people. But, that being said, I got caught up in the admin and I just kind of I don't want to say I got lazy, because this is where part two comes in. Well, not really part two, factor two, I guess. So last year I think I kind of referenced it in some of my episodes, but around, like, I guess, early January, my side business, jordan Yates Marketing, started to get traction. Now, as you guys know, I have a day job which is a marketing engineer for a capacitor manufacturer. That's like my nine to five. My five to nine is I run a digital marketing content creation business for technical companies. So my value propositions that I try to make more dry, technical content fun and relatable, but at the same time, with my marketing and technical background, I like to help companies implement that content through like email marketing, linkedin campaigns and all of that. And then I kind of throw in my quote unquote LinkedIn influencer whatever. I have like 17,000 followers, but I throw that in as well. And when I started my business at the beginning of the year, I didn't really know what it was going to be, and so I wasn't prepared for how much it was going to take off and I got really caught up in chasing the revenue like generating work that was going on in my life, and so I put the podcast. I kept where it wasn't, because to me I was like, ah, I'm not ready to monetize yet and so I put the podcast on the back burner, which kind of sucked, because I love talking to you guys and I love keeping you in on the loop of what's going on. But my business just really it got it and you know I'm so thankful, but it got so busy and I didn't have a clear understanding of what my offering was, so I would just kind of like make it up as they went. For instance, my first customer was Robotis. They had these super cute little robots in servos and they were like, hey, can you do like a LinkedIn influencer campaign where you just post pictures? And I was like, okay, easy enough, like that's an easy deal. So what I did was just staged a photo shoot, did the photos, did a campaign, got them back the results. That was pretty clean, cut dry, easy. Didn't even have video as an aspect there. And then I had my next customer who was Verde Subsea. Shout out Verde. They are a real laying company for offshore wind farms and for them they were like you know, we like your podcast and we like sort of the conversational interview style approach that you have around technical content. And I was like, okay, what can I offer them? Because they were like I don't know what I want and I was. I didn't have a standard offering, I did not know. I knew what I seen in the market and what seemed successful. So I was like, okay, I think like you guys could attract more people through like interview style video talking about your offerings. Now I went to their office, did the video and then I helped them implement an email newsletter. But the thing that I learned there was after that project it's like they didn't have a team in place to keep up with the email marketing. So we did like three email blasts and that was that. And so I kind of learned, like you know, content and brand awareness takes time. It could take months to build up before you see a sale out of this. So I think with them, if I would have gone back, I probably would have, you know, looked more forward and was like, hey, if we want this to be successful, then we should probably do like a three month contract or six month, or let me train someone on your team to where, when I'm like done with this contract, you guys have the ongoing content generation and Execution and you're sending it out, you're still posting. But at that time I was just kind of I don't say like naive still, but I was still learning and I didn't know to offer that because it still seemed overwhelming. So I kind of got through that project. They seemed happy, they paid for it and you know they've hit me up a few times for advice and since then it's just been kind of like Okay, got my footing there. Then came my GE customer, which shout out GE. A. We're still working together to this day and I think that that was a very good learning experience. The people there are super duper nice. They trust me a lot with their content because I used to actually have a job where I was a salesperson for Basically one of their competitors. I sold the same products they did and so I was very familiar and the strategy of like, I Guess, promoting their products was something I'd already done before and I felt very familiar with their stuff. I felt very good and it really fit into my niche so well because I had so much experience already doing that and I had a proven track record of success. So what I originally did was we created content and then we were like okay, how do we maximize this content? So I took over their LinkedIn channel and we would create like product demos, product overviews with their team and then we would post it on YouTube, and then we would like implement the YouTube and to like an email newsletter campaign, and they had a great Existing list of email contacts and so then we would send those out to them, and so they had a bit more of an infrastructure there, but they didn't have any dedicated marketing people. So the first couple months we were like finding our footing, finding our groove, and then after that they were like can we just do a six months contract and just stay with us the rest of year? Keep doing what you're doing? And I love this because they trusted me, I trusted them and it had a good working relationship. So I always like had the ability to be like hey guys, like can we try this out? And they're like, yeah, why not? And so I felt like I got to do a lot of trial and error with them and we got to find, you know, some things that worked well, some things that didn't, and then in the end I feel like it's been successful, like we've grown their follower base, we get a lot of sales out at their email campaigns, we get a lot more brand recognition. It's teaching the sales guys good skills. So I Think so far it's going good. So now we have a contract to through 2024 and I'm super duper excited To create more content with them because, like I said, they've just been so great to work with. But where I had to kind of figure out, like you know, in the failing aspect of this is okay, like, what do I offer? You know, I remember sitting down with them being like here's what I could do, is this what you want? Like I think this will work. And it was really scary, like sitting down with the owner and thinking, oh god, like I don't want to look dumb, I don't want to price myself too high, I don't want to price myself too low, like where do I come in on this? How do I negotiate? And it turns out, you know, like if you just have a conversation with them of, like you know, what is this worth to you and how do you want to go about this? Do you like this, do you like this? And luckily, with them being such good people, I was able to kind of openly talk through them what I thought would work and it's like listen, I haven't run the email marketing campaigns extensively, I did it for my last customer, but it's not something that I've done a lot, a lot of. But I have good experience and good knowledge of email marketing and so on, and so For it's where it was like hey, like how can I make this work best for you? And it had to be a very personalized conversation. I felt like I couldn't go in there with a sales sheet being like here's your options, pick from there. Now, where this was good was we created a very personalized plan for them. Where this is something I learned from was I Still felt like you know back in, like it was March when we started, like I still didn't know what Jordan Yates marketing was. I didn't know what I wanted to offer to people and I was like, okay, is this my new standard offering? But this is a lot of work. Like the GEA takes up a lot of my my business hour times towards, like how, how do I offer this more customers? Do I want to scale? Like I don't know. So I think where I Am still learning and trying to figure out is I feel like my value proposition is that it's me doing it. I'm a technical person who has marketing experience, but I don't know how to scale in a way of Offloading certain responsibilities to other people, like, say I get an intern or get an employee, like we're making enough money to where I could hire someone, but I don't know how to give up control of of leak any of the tasks, because I've told GEA, like I'm going to do it, it's going to be perfect Like I want it. I'm not perfect, you know it's going to be good, but these are my standards. And so I think something I'm trying to figure out in 2024 is how can I grow my business, not just by getting more customers, because that's easy to do. I got so many more customers throughout the year, it's how can I do it without being stuck with all the admin work? Like how can I find a way to balance bringing in the customers and giving them the best? And so I think it's important to have a value that Jordan Yates brings, but also determining which tasks don't require Jordan doing them. And so I have all these plans on my whiteboard. I'm trying to figure it out. I don't know because, as I get more projects here and there, like I've worked with TQA Cloud, which is a quality management sorry, a software based quality management system. He's so cool, he's so awesome, he was so great to work with. He reminds me a lot of GEA. We created this awesome product together. We set it out and we're like hey, here's the product being the video. We set the video out to the world, did their customer testimonials. Their customers love them, obsessed with them, and then we're like OK, we do the email marketing, we do the LinkedIn campaign. Now what? So it would last for like a month or two and then he'll hit me back up for more videos and we'll just kind of go from there. Now, luckily, kyle is very tech savvy, he's very marketing savvy, he has his own podcast, he runs his LinkedIn. He didn't need as much of the implementation side. He kind of had that covered. So I there was offering more video creation, and so that's where it's like OK, do I just offer videos? Do I sell videos? Do I offer the full marketing suite? And I think it really still just depends and I'm still trying to figure out. Do I want to standardize my business? Like, what do we want to offer? Like, do I want to have a website that says you can get XYZ? But the thing is, is the way I've gotten most of my customers is like, like I said, I've never done sales. People just come up to me and they're like I saw you did this, can you do something similar for me? And then we figure out what that looks like for them. So from a customer standpoint like my customers I feel like are lucky that I do provide all of these very customized solutions and I feel like that's how I win this business but then I'm like, on my side of things, how do I do this and make it a little bit easier on my end, like how do I standardize work a little bit more? Because in order to grow a company, you need standard deliverables, you need standardized work procedures. And so I guess I'm still figuring out and thinking out loud with you guys do I want to have a company with standard offerings or do I want to continue these customized solutions so I can continue to figure out what the standard offerings will be one day? I also did some like video interviews for event promotions with contractors service gosh, I can't think of the name off top of my head and then Reuters events did something, and then who was it? The sprint robotics? They had a conference, and so it was just like there's all these different, the little one off videos I did and then, oh my God, I had so much fun with demo videos this year so I did a demo video with the the crusade Millennium Slim logic controller because they had it like integrated into a putting green and they're like, hey, this would be fun. We know you like golf, we know you like automation, like you're kind of the perfect person for this and you create videos. So that was fun. But, like I said, that was like a one off and to me I love a good one off video. It's fun, it's profitable and it's kind of good vibes all around for everybody. But it's a lot of work starting up with a new customer, figuring out they like what they don't like, their style, what they're looking for as a GEA. Like I know their style right now. When I make a video for them it'll be just as good as one of my one offs, but it's not as league exhausting because we already are in a rhythm. So I think I do want to stay open to the one-off demo videos, things like that, because that's kind of how you get in with a new customer is, like you kind of dip your toe in the water, see if it's a good match. But yeah, I don't know. So if you guys have any suggestions, then I would love to hear it because I'm always open to learning. I am reading a book right now. It's called the Growth Paradox. It's by Jackie Fisher and she's actually coming on soon, and I'm kind of interested because the book talks about, basically she had a small company that she grew from like $3 million to $50 million and they originally only had like five employees and now it's huge, and so I'm hoping to kind of learn a little bit from her book on scaling. But they also started with employees and I have none, although I do hire some things out to, like Fiverr, which you could just pay some random person to edit a video, but I feel like I always end up going back and fixing it. So yeah, I'm in the learning phase here and I hope by the end of this year and when I do a season three, episode one video, I can report to you guys like hey, I figured it out, I scaled. But right now I'll just say I'm really grateful for all my customers who have trusted me and who have worked with me and giving me these opportunities to learn and to create content for them and help them market their products. But anyways, I think I started this tangent off because I was going to say, with failing for you, I stopped doing it because I was so, so busy with all these paid projects. Like, especially this summer, like I had one point where I had like four overlapping customers at once and if somebody is paying me to do something, like I am focusing on that, like I do not want them to pay me for something and then feel like they are on the back burner. So I need to find a balance between prioritizing things I love, like doing this podcast, and my revenue generating things. So I think I just need to kind of, you know, find my balance there, because I do want to keep up with you all. I do want to keep this human element to it and I love just getting on the mic and chatting. You know it's, it's fun and I feel like you know, the reason I started this podcast was because I want to normalize failure as a part of the learning process. I want it to be known that failure is cool, it's fine, like it's literally just data, and sometimes we take failure so personally that we just we we take it in more like oh my God, this is a personality trait. Like I suck, I'm a failure, I'm this, I'm not. But let's still focus on you know, let's not make failure such a you know, like noun of like I am a failure, and let's make it more of a verb we're failing, it's cool, it's fine Like everybody fails, it's just like it's fine to normalize it, because then we can actually talk about OK, we failed, but now what? And that's what I want to get into. I want to get into the now what, like, recognize the failure, it happened and now we get to grow from it. And I feel like if we have the opportunity to fail, we're lucky, because then we're just going to, we're just going to figure out how to do better next time. And I feel like my guest did a really good job in season one of coming on and being really transparent about their failures, because they're like listen, if I didn't fail, I would not be where I am today. If I was afraid to put myself out there, I wouldn't be at this level of success now. And I'm not saying success is the end, all to be all, but we have motivation for doing things and ideally we want them to work out. But here we just talk about when it doesn't work out. How do we, how do we reposition ourselves? How do we reframe it Like, what do we do? If we take failure as data, then we're able to create a more methodical approach in the next time we go for it. Or maybe we realize something isn't for us. And, if I'm being fully honest, I felt like many times that I just kind of failed at this podcast and I was embarrassed that I didn't make any episodes after August and I thought maybe I should just quit and not do it anymore and I should just kind of like sweep it under the rug and think, oh, everyone will forget about it, which probably because they didn't have like a lot of listeners. And I was like, okay, like I failed at keeping up with it. I failed at the frequency I wanted to put episodes out at, I failed at promoting it. I failed it so much. But I think that in failing I learned what I have to do to prioritize, to keep up with this. So I started off by posting at the beginning of the year who wants to be a guest? Because now I feel like I publicly put myself out there. I have like 20 people who said, yes, I want to be a guest. Now I have to schedule them. Now I have this external pressure and unfortunately, I thrive under external pressure. So I tend to put myself in situations where I have this like external accountability to get something done. And, although I sort of had that by starting the podcast, I didn't just have this list of guests waiting on me, now I do, and that's actually something I have to do today, because I did say that I would get everyone scheduled by the end of this week and it is Friday. So yes, after this podcast episode that I am recording, I will be scheduling the guest. So let me let me take a look at my guest list of who we're going to have coming on and maybe I can shout them out and once I get them scheduled, you know you guys will have that to look forward to. So right now, my guest list that I'm looking at is going to be Megan Zimba, and she is super cool. She is the mavens of manufacturing lady, extraordinaire, awesome, super cool. Women empowerment, automation, empowerment. I'm obsessed with her. I've been on her podcast and genuinely, like I wish I could think of nicer words. I just can't, because there's like I don't know how to describe Megan. I love her. Then there's Jessica Chavez or Chavez, and she is somebody I've recently come to be familiar with in the automation community. I'm pretty excited because I've chatted with her over messages and I've seen a lot of her posts and I think she's really cool. Kathy Rine and Lauren Van DeMark want to come on together, so I'm really excited about them. I believe Kathy is the conveyor cougar. Let me just double check my notes and make sure I don't want to say that wrong. Let's see Pulling up LinkedIn now. See, these are one of the things that you should like do ahead of time before just announcing things. Okay, so Kathy Rine is the president. Go off queen at Flexline Automation. Yes, she's called. She calls herself the conveyor cougar. That is pretty cool. And then we have Vanessa Loyola and guys, if I say your name wrong right now, I'm really, really sorry because I have not talked to you yet over the phone to be like hey, before we start the episode, how do I say your name? Because that's something that I always do. So, vanessa, let's see what her title is. Vanessa, she is a robotics programming specialist. She is big on women and robotics supports. Cougar, finuc, kawasaki, abb, yaskawa, universal Robot she's big on all of them. She works with the Veloid Automation. Wow, she's based out of Ireland. I didn't realize that at first, so I'm really excited to have Vanessa on. She's cool, her posts are awesome and she always has like pink incorporated as a color scheme and I'm pretty obsessed with that. Then we have Daniel Crowe Full. Oh gosh, daniel, I'm so sorry, crowe, it's K-R-O-E-P-F-L. Daniel, I'm sorry, I need to remember how to say your name, but he is with telecontrols. So telecontrols was one of my customers this year that I did the unboxing for, and I love to work in telecontrols. They're super nice guys. They are really cool. They do a lot of fun marketing with like their stickers and things that they put in, so really excited about that. So, daniel, we're also, at the beginning of your episode, going to say hey, daniel, how do I see your last name? To introduce you. That's a conversation that will be had. Then there is Hank Prua. Hank is cool because he is always interacting with all my posts and all my friends posts on LinkedIn. He is an electrical and automation manager at New Voyeur Systems and I think the coolest thing about Hank is that he does this thing called hashtag Junior Boarded Directors, and his daughters are the Junior Boarded Directors. They're always learning, like new automation stuff, new technical things, and he posts about that a lot like hey look, today they're learning to use their 3D printer and OMG, so cool. I wish that Hank was around when I was a kid and I could enjoy the Junior Boarded Directors, because I would have been in, although I'm not Hank's kid, so I don't know if I would have been allowed to. Okay, next guest. So, girl, if I also mess up your name, don't be mad at me please. It is Chioma Aso. She is a awesome lady who I recently met as well in a group of ladies about automation. She is based out of Florida. Her bio says she's a passionate leader and author driving innovation and intersection of software and hardware tech, hardware spearheading automation solutions. So why I really like her is because whenever I post something like, she actually seems to read the post and have thoughtful engagements and comments going back and she reached out to me saying she's had some interesting failures and stories that she wants to talk about. So I'm really enthusiastic about her. Jacob Sanchez you guys know Jacob. He was one of my first few guests that I had on season one. If you haven't listened to his episode yet, go back and listen, I'm obsessed with Jacob. He is my automation bestie. Even though we've never met in person, he is just one of those people that, like you, see one of his posts and you can't help but smile. He is the definition of bringing fun to automation and, honestly, like my, value proposition for my company is trying to make you know automation and technical concepts more fun and relatable. Jacob's the epitome of that. He does an amazing job and he has such a cool background so I can't wait to get on and have him back again. Then let's see. We have Breanne C Martin. So Breanne and I connected probably over a year ago. She is out of Frisco taxes. I used to be up there. Her sort of trademark is she's the people engineer. She's a speaker, organizational console and facilitator. She is cool because she is very much so likes to bridge the gap between sort of the soft skills and like the hard skills of engineering. So I like her vibe, I think she's cool, I think she seems nice, I think she seems really smart. She is very like leadership material, very people oriented, but also has the technical background. So I mean, gosh, if you look at her recent public engagements of keynote speakers so many cool things, so I'm excited to have her on. Then we have Tony Bustos. Oh my gosh, I feel like guys. Once again, I feel like I have to apologize every time I say someone's name. So Tony is an executive sales leadership, private equity partner, revenue growth, business transformation and then M&A. I'm pretty excited to talk to him because my boyfriend and I have been really getting into like finance and learning about like investing and things like that lately, so I love business related things. Beyond the technical stuff. I've always been very intimidated by like business concepts, money, things like that. I've always been more of the like I know how to earn money but I don't know what to do once I have it. That's always scared me. So Tony, he's with Eplan, which is the let's see. Eplan, I believe, is a software company, do software development. He's the president and managing director of North America. There. I think he's going to be super cool and insightful and we've chatted a little bit. He's really nice. I like him. Then we have Caitlyn D Des Roachers. Let's see Caitlyn Des Roachers. She reached out to me. She is based out of Wisconsin. She is a future 15 award recipient. Tenacious automation and controls engineer, audacious entrepreneur, go off queen champion for minorities and STEM. She seems like a cool girl. She works for Procter Gamble, which is pretty dope. I'm pretty excited to get to know her better through her episode. I don't know too much about her. We just recently started interacting. Who else? I skipped one? Oh, david Turner. So David and I have done a little bit of work together. I helped him with his merch store. That was one of my biggest fails this year, though. I did promise something and then I couldn't deliver exactly how I promised it and I was super duper sad and embarrassed, but other than that, all my other customers have been happy. But David is super cool. We've been working together since, and David started his own company at Process and Automation Specialist I think it's been a little over a year ago, and so he's had a lot of really cool ups and downs there, but he's an impressive guy so I'm excited to have him on. And then Daniel Stanfield. So let's see what Daniel's background is. Daniel is SMT process engineer at Aurora Boardworks, so he seems like a very nice guy and he loves everything about the SMT process, and he gets to work with things like laser markers, paste applications, pick and place, reflow ovens, et cetera, et cetera. So for my technical friends, I think Daniel is going to be a really fun guest. He also seems like a cool guy. Oh my gosh, wow, we have so many people lined up. This just makes my heart so happy, and I'm sure there's other people, but this was just the initial flow of people who wanted to be on there, so this is my written list right now. Then we have Ryan Wicklum, who is a hashtag girl dad and hashtag terrible golfer. We're already going to be friends, so he helps companies drive efficiency and ergonomics through wearable technology and corresponding software solutions with ProGlove. So I'm pretty excited to see what that is all about. He says his story is deep and ever changing, but it's a ride I've enjoyed through every moment. So, honestly, it sounds like he has got some good stories to tell, and what we love here is a good story. So, guys, that is a pretty cool lineup of guests, and now that I will be publishing this episode and you're listening to it, I am hashtag obligated. So not only do I want to do it, because obviously I want to, guys, the issue has never been me wanting to talk to you and get on this podcast. The issue has been I needed a fire lit under my butt. So here we go, let the fire myself, and now we got all of these people waiting to tell their stories and I'm so excited. So, oh my gosh, I forgot to mention someone. She wasn't on my list because she is recently added. Her name, which I mentioned earlier, is Jackie Fisher, the CEO of I think it's three men moving company. Let's see, let's just double check. She's the one whose book I've been reading, or should I say listening to via audiobook. Yes, she is the CEO and author of the growth paradox and her company is three men movers, so her story is going to be just chef's kiss. I cannot wait because her book oh my gosh, I've never heard somebody's personality come through so well in a book. I just cannot wait to meet her, and I get to do that next week, so maybe I will have her be our first official guest. So look forward to that. And yeah, I've been rambling for over 30 minutes now and my goal is to keep episodes around 30 minutes, so I'm going to let you guys go. I feel like there was a lot I didn't catch up on, but yeah, I will get to it when I get to it, but in the meantime, look forward to these guests and thank you for listening to this episode and if you made it this far, you are real and I appreciate you and I just appreciate you guys in general for putting up with me and learning with me as we go. So, as always, I'm your host, jordan Yates, and in the meantime, I will be failing for you. See you next time.