Pineapples, Paychecks, and a Second Chance - Faceted Media

Company: Faceted Media

Guests: Kimberly Hogate

Year Started: 2000

Employees: 25-50

What if losing everything was exactly what you needed to build something better? In this episode, Kimberly Hogate, founder of Faceted Media, shares the raw truth about starting over after being fired from the law firm she helped built from the ground up and how that moment became the catalyst for a 10+ year agency journey.

She opens up about the realities of burnout, boundary-setting, and building a business with emotional resilience. If you’ve ever felt stretched thin or undervalued, this conversation is for you.

Inside This Episode:

• Why being fired from her own business became the best thing for her career
• How a pineapple became the most unexpected branding story
• Simple ways to set boundaries
• Why emotional clarity is just as important as strategy
• How she created “Business Therapy” to meet a real client need

Chapters

• 0:00 Faceted Media
• 0:41 Introduction
• 4:55 From Paralegal to Law Firm Owner
• 11:25 A Pineapple Promotion
• 13:54 Setting Boundaries
• 17:06 Balancing Dogooding and Business
• 23:56 Selling Business Therapy
• 28:10 Born or Made
• 30:47 The Downside of DIY

Transcript

0:02

Welcome to An Agency Story podcast where we share real stories of marketing agency owners from around the world. From the excitement of starting up the first big sale, passion, doubt, fear, freedom, and the emotional rollercoaster of growth, hear it all on An Agency Story podcast. An Agency Story podcast is hosted by Russel Dubree, successful agency owner with an eight figure exit turned business coach. Enjoy the next agency story.

Russel: 0:41

What if the best thing that ever happened to your career was getting fired from your own company? Welcome to an agency story podcast. I'm your host Russel. In today's episode, we hear from Kimberly Holgate, founder of Faceted Media, whose entrepreneurial path includes everything from paralegal work, starting a law practice to building a business that survived over a decade in the ever-shifting world of marketing. We dive into the emotional side of entrepreneurship such as burnout, boundaries, and the bravery it takes to start over. Kimberly's story is a reminder that resilience often begins at rock bottom, and that clarity comes from hard earned experience. Plus you'll hear something as quirky as a pineapple can turn into a brand defining metaphor and Kimberly introduces her concept of business therapy a one of a kind mix of empathy, problem solving, and hands-on marketing support. Enjoy the story. Welcome to the show today, everyone. I have Kimberly Hogate with Faceted Media with us here today. Thank you so much for joining us on the show today, Kimberly.

Kimberly: 1:39

Thank you so much, Russel. It's a pleasure to be here.

Russel: 1:41

I'm excited to have you. If you don't mind, start us off, what does Faceted Media do and who do you do it for?

Kimberly: 1:46

The name came to me very late at night. It clicked, Faceted Media, multifaceted without the multi, but the idea is that we literally do a little of everything. The idea came from wanting to start my own business as well, and knowing each of the pieces needed to get there, knowing that not one part is gonna lead you with kind of little pieces of the whole. My sweet spot, the people that I love to work with are people who are just starting out on their business journey, so I like to give them everything that they need to succeed. I will tell you that we've been around for over 10 years and a lot of our clients are honestly working on their second, third, even fourth businesses for some of them. So it's a tried and true process and yeah, we just give'em a little of everything that they want.

Russel: 2:29

New businesses certainly need the Swiss Army knife. That's, uh, good that you've, you're meeting the needs of your ideal client. I definitely wanna hear more about how you go about that. But before we get there, let's go back in the time machine, and I'm curious where young Kimberly thought her life was going and how closely did we end up there?

Kimberly: 2:49

Not too far from what I thought. It's just that, to be honest, and you might know about this, Russel, our jobs weren't really, um, in existence. When we were in school, when you're given that sheet of paper, it's like, check the box of, you know, what you wanna go to school for, what do you wanna be when you grow up? It just really wasn't a thing, you know? Obviously print was, um, more prominent, but also I think corporate marketing was just more of the standard. It wasn't as possible, I think, for individuals to start their own businesses back then. But as far as how it all came together, uh, my dad was a journalist. I always wanted to be in journalism. Writing, creating, putting together a story completely makes sense. When I was a kid, I had a Little Tykes tape recorder, and I would go around to my neighbors and recorded my first podcast, you know, before that's a thing. I also started a newspaper in my fourth grade class. It had a gossip column, so it was banned after the first episode drop, you know, issue drop. I got in trouble for that one. Same thing with editing our home videos. Growing up, I, I kind of got the highlight reel set up before that was a thought, you know? But I ended up going to school for journalism. I got my degree in broadcast journalism and then I decided,'cause still marketing, this job really wasn't even a thing then. When I graduated in 2006 from college, we were still just getting smartphones and consuming information so I really thought, I went to school for no reason. I thought journalism was going to be dead. And so My next best choice was actually law school. I went to law school to try to, um, I wanted to help people. I wanted to hear their stories and writing was a big part of it. But I will tell you that I ended up going a totally different direction and moving to Colorado and I didn't pursue the law degree. I was lost for a long time, to be honest. But eventually I just realized that some of those skills from way back when, when I was a kid, really were relevant now. I just pieced it all together. I built my first website based on what I learned online and everything else I just taught myself and put it into practice until I was able to start my own agency.

Russel: 4:46

You said building your own website. Were you building your own website with the anticipation of doing marketing services or were you doing that for some other different business?

Kimberly: 4:55

Yes, when I left law school, I started law school when I was 21, um,'cause I graduated college a year early. I was this go-getter, you know? But by the time 2008 came around, we had a recession, we had a crash, and I really felt that as a college, new college graduate, it was a really tough time to get a job. I ended up still following the legal path and I became a paralegal. While I was working for my boss, an attorney and financial manager, he wanted to start doing these lunch and learns and get people in to update their documents. Just basically build more business. My thought was, hey, if I can get some people in can I negotiate a commission off of any new business that I create? That involved making the website, hosting these lunch and learns, some cold calling, some warm calling, all of that stuff. That's where I got my confidence. I was like, you know, if I can do this for him I can do this for anyone.

Russel: 5:47

Pretty savvy approach. We're taking a paralegal job and working it into essentially a, a, a, really a performance marketing role. That's amazing. It definitely seems like you're on the path and should be an entrepreneur. So yeah, You talked about what was actually starting the agency, how did you get to there?

Kimberly: 6:04

Actually, going back to the financial attorney that I was working with, he, he turned down a raise after a few years and, um, I something clicked in my head where I was like, you know what? I'm done asking someone else what I should get paid. It's been said before, it's a meme I think, but entrepreneurs are willing to work 80 hours a week instead of someone telling them when and where to work 40. So I was definitely in that mindset where I just wanted to be my own boss. I didn't care what it took. I was just tired of that experience of like, here's everything I've done. I've done so much. I've made you tons of extra money. I've done a excellent job but just having someone decide that, what my future was Anyway, so I actually partnered up with another attorney in the office. Going back to the law school stuff, this makes me think that no path was a failure because had I gotten the law degree, I might still be in Chicago, I might be dissatisfied with my work, et cetera. I did stay in the legal field but this weird way. Long story short, myself and the attorney left that office and started our own law firm. It was a boutique law firm in a really fancy part of town for wealthy families to do trusts and estate planning. We started together. We left there. We had to have a little bit of gap in between because of contracts and things like that. I was working on my own, building up the business until she was ready to join me. Once we started the law firm, we were there for about three years, and then we sold the law firm, and it's actually still in existence today. But the new partner didn't have me in the plan, so I got fired from the business I started.

Russel: 7:33

That had to be tough, I imagine.

Kimberly: 7:35

I started off as a, I was a co-founder and the director of client services, and so I think it was a financial decision to just start over somewhere on a lower pay for someone fresh, you know, and new owner, et cetera. But was I expecting that? No, I started this thing, you know. Lots of tears. I really thought that the law firm was gonna be my entrepreneur experience. I thought that was the end of the road. I was like, oh, you know, I didn't finish in law school. I did all this stuff in my paralegal journey. I've started a law firm, it's well known, and everything was going great, and then got fired. So I had to go back to the basics and I had to just to make, make ends meet. I had to nanny, I was a photographer, I did blogging and different things. So It took like about six months or so to really get going. But then, like I said, that was over 10 years ago and getting fired was the best, one of the best things that ever happened.

Russel: 8:30

You know, it, it's funny. I mean obviously that was a very tough situation for you, but I, I do sometimes encourage this when folks I work with that, hey, sometimes firing someone, if, again, not saying anything about your circumstances, but if they're not being successful in your mind as an owner, that firing someone could set them on a path that could be very beneficial for their life. But sounds like it turned out that way in your case, but sorry you had to go through that to get to where you are. You've paid your tuition to the school of hard knocks, it sounds like.

Kimberly: 8:57

MRR what's saved my business. My pitfalls were month to month at the beginning or project based things. Now I'm able to interweave a lot of different services and products and stuff. I have a variety of offerings, but when I very first started, my consistency, my income consistency was really tough. It was only until I started doing six months to start retainers, um, and monthly, monthly billing monthly that I started to really get a leg up. It was just very up and down. I would say that was one of the trickiest things in the beginning. Client boundaries. That one was always hard for me. When I first, first started, I was in a sort of a service mindset as well, because I was a paralegal, I was a secretary, and that's the job. What can I do for you? And always up myself. Having that sort of like secretary service mindset was a bit of a disadvantage to me because people took advantage of me. Not knowing. I think of it like say like back in like junior high or high school, each teacher would assign you homework and by the end of the day you have like hours and hours and hours of homework. I think a lot of the clients would compound on things that they had already assigned me and I wasn't brave enough to say, okay, if we wanna add this in, we have to take this off, or this is gonna be a lower priority. Is this the priority? Because I think especially 10 years ago, people thought that it was easier to do a lot of the stuff that we do make a graphic or something like that. Now, thanks to Canva and thanks to a lot of DIY entrepreneurs. I think everyone knows it's hard. I think everyone knows now it's hard, but I think back then they thought it was easy. I don't know if that makes sense, but that's how I felt.

Russel: 10:32

No, it, it makes total sense and I think one of the hard parts of, uh, of marketing space because one time, sometimes it's a lot visual too, but because people are users of the product that they maybe have a little bit higher thoughts of themselves that they're also experts in it, but, uh, not really understanding the science, the effort, the skill and experience that goes behind what we do. I think that's a really great insight too, that the these DIY tools have proven that, how hard it is, at least to do a good job, and do I wanna be doing this myself as well? Maybe to that end I think some people were afraid that these kind of things were gonna put us out of business or lessen business. But maybe to your point, maybe it's expanded it.

Kimberly: 11:10

I agree. Someone still needs to operate the robot, you know, and there needs to be quality control. If you've been using AI for a little while, you know how many mistakes they make.

Russel: 11:18

Yeah, I always say, for smart, as smart as AI is, it's also extremely dumb.

Kimberly: 11:23

Yes, very true.

Russel: 11:25

Like maybe a lot of tools. Somewhere in there, and I, I don't even know the exact context, but I know fruit and an important part of your shaping your business journey. What's the story there?

Kimberly: 11:36

Yes. Oh my goodness. Back to the financial attorney who was a pivotal person, who actually is a client still to this day. He kept in good contact and, uh, he would never know how frustrated it was at that situation because relationships are really important to me. We actually kept our relationship for 10 years after that, believe it or not. Besides the fact, well, when I told you about the raise, I asked for the raise and he basically said no. What I did get that day was a pineapple from the farmer's market. That's what they brought me in.

Russel: 12:04

That was like a gift?

Kimberly: 12:05

They thought about my proposal over the weekend. On Monday they said no, and they had a pineapple and that was my gift.

Russel: 12:11

That might be a little tone deaf.

Kimberly: 12:12

Oh very. I don't know if my boss had ever been in my position before. I think to be an entrepreneur, you have to be a little scrappy. We've been in situations where we had to make something outta nothing and not that many people have been in that situation I think he just didn't fully understand, um, what it was like to try to get by. It was really, really hard. Like really hard. But yeah, the pineapple. After that, uh, when we went to start the law firm, I think I told you in our call, but everything was pineapple. Pineapple rug. Someone brought a pineapple to our grand opening. And to this day, I have used that as a story builder. I told you before, when I did my talks to the Denver Public Schools, I was the pineapple lady. I would tell all the kids the story and just encourage them to let them know that there's actually another path then the ones that are set out in front of you and that's the one that you can make yourself.

Russel: 13:01

I want to come back to that because I, I think that's a really great part of your story there. I'm just curious, have you maintained this pineapple branding element in your business, or did that go away?

Kimberly: 13:10

It's totally a story that I use over and over again. It's definitely relatable and actually the, the kids, uh, that I would go speak to, the teachers would always have them write a thank you note afterwards and they would mail them to me and I would get a big package of the thank you notes and on my website, um, it's called the Pineapple Story, at the very end is a picture that a kid drew of a pineapple and said like, thank you so much. It was really inspiring.

Russel: 13:33

Oh, that's cool. Again, sour gifts has been very instrumental, pivotal and probably inspirational to many people, uh, beyond even what you were able to turn that into. That's a wonderful story. I wanna go back to what you were speaking to, and I think a lot of folks run into this even today. Just as much as they were in the past of setting boundaries. How did you eventually overcome that? Or did you?

Kimberly: 13:54

Well. I don't know. I mean, I'm a human, right? So a few times when people would, I would bend over backwards and then I'd get a, like a personal, I would give people my personal phone. Clients, sometimes everything's going fine whatever happens in, in their brain or whatever, like they start thinking they can like, text me on like Saturday morning and like Sunday evening and like, stuff like that. Honestly, when I first was dealing with this, I, I would get mad. I would try to contain it as much as possible to the client, um, but I don't think I was very good at explaining the boundaries. What I had to do is actually start back at the beginning and do a pre-sign document. That has been a huge thing for me. I just did a post about it. It a document that's alongside your official contract that is basically a code of conduct. It says basic stuff for me. It says, please don't have a meeting while you're driving in the car. People used to do that it's like one, like I gotta show you some stuff on the computer And two, I'm worried about your safety. Maybe I should switch those. Stuff like that. Or, like one time I was building a website and without like checking with me, the client had held a huge seminar to look at the website, but it was not ready. I have like, text me only for good things. The rest please use email. Please don't text on weekends stuff like that. I think that the pre-sign document, and I call, I call it like the golden rules of working with Faceted Media. It's not when they sign, but in the contract it set, they have to initial that they've read it. That also saves me liability wise. Sort of a cover your butt, you know, kind of thing, because they initialed that they read it, these are the rules. When I propose it, I usually say, uh, you know, here's the contract. Easy agreement. Go ahead and e-sign. Here's the pre-sign document. It's all about mutual respect. I try to frame it as like, I'll respect to you, you respect me. When they read it, it's like, duh, because it's like when you read someone's behavior things, it's, you know, most people are reasonable. They'll be like, oh, that makes sense. But if they don't have something like that ahead of time and they're just angry one day, you know, it basically helps them remember like, what we talked about before. If you're mad about something, maybe there was a typo for gosh sakes, you know, and it's Friday or Saturday maybe wait till Monday. I think it just helps people, um, set their own standards when they have to look at something like that. That's helped a lot.

Russel: 16:05

I think that's great insight of Just the notion we have to train clients to how to work with us. We can't just leave it up to serendipity of their own natural ways. If, and, and frame it in the way of for their benefit. Like You said, safety. This isn't just things that I want them because the way I want them, but here's why this is helpful for you as having a rule in place, or something along those lines. And also sets the tone that this is a partnership, not a transactional, you know, to your point, not an order taker situation. For us to do our best work, we've, we've gotta be in a healthy, good place. Don't beat us up unless we deserve it or those sort of things. And Like you said too, I imagine, right, it gives you something to refer back to when they are, they're humans, they're gonna make mistakes. Now you have the thing to point back to remember this thing we agreed upon. Thank you for, for sharing that insight. Talk to me more about, I mean, I, I always love, I mean this is again, why I love small businesses and I think just folks like yourself, right? Just when you found a mechanism to give back and contribute to others, I, I have to imagine there's more than just speaking at a school that you've found some ways to do that within your business.

Kimberly: 17:06

Absolutely. And to be honest, that was one of the reasons that I got fired from the law firm is that I was really passionate about networking in the community. And so I did a lot of community drives and like one of'em was a big diaper drive and I collected like tons and tons and tons of diapers and went and donated'em. They thought that was dumb. Like, But I'm leading all these in community leaders and people were passionate about kids and our law firm is for families. How could this not be more perfect? Stuff like that actually they, they didn't like, but yeah, we did a, um, a handbag stuffing, um, for folks. Houseless folks. We did, um, bag stuffing. We did diaper drives. We also had a big flood in 2013 out here in Colorado. It damaged a lot of the waterways and different things like that. We did a river cleanup. I also did Girls on the Run, that's like a coaching program for girls to do a 5K. We did that too. We did Grace's Race. We've done a lot of races and stuff like that. But yeah, my main thing was working through Operation Hope and I went and spoke to the schools in Denver for about three years. A lot of that, and actually got canceled, uh, because of Covid. But it was actually a good time to cancel for me. It was tiring. I don't know how teachers do it, especially the ones that teach the same subject all day long.'Cause I was so passionate about it. I would volunteer for every period. I would be doing my pineapple lady spiel for seven hours, six, seven hours over and over. I saw the teacher had to do her thing over and over. She has to do it five days a week, so,'cause they were high school kids. But yeah, it was really cool. From that I ended up starting the internship program because I had the same problem, uh, like I was telling you with the recession, I didn't have experience. In order to get experience, you need the job, to get the job you need experience. I think the kids are misled in high school that like, it's just gonna be an easy, like you, you graduate to the next year and then it's just the next year. But when you are 18 and you go to the, it can be very shocking. Even 18 to 25 I think is a really hard time in people's most people's lives, especially ones that I've had to do everything themselves, which is me. It was really valuable experience, but um, yeah, it was just, I don't know. You never know where people's lives are gonna take them, but I hope it was inspiring.

Russel: 19:12

I'm sure it was. I I can't imagine anyone out there that you know have anything less than good things to say about someone that took the time to invest in them and just the mentality and the thought process is amazing and important. I don't know, I kind of heard maybe a little bit there of, of some burnout or kind of we might call overgiving, um, in that sense, you know, have you in reflection, have you found a happy medium there? Or at least sometimes where that can feel like, I know I don't, I'm sure there's some terminology for it, but this idea that if you're, don't really get fulfilled from it or, or if we can at least marry it in some, some higher purpose and value, then that we're gonna feel better about that. I don't know what the question's netting out to, but just when you reflect on that, those ideas, what comes to mind?

Kimberly: 19:55

I think, you know, in a way you're hearing in my voice like a bit of a feeling of failure, but I feel because, no, but it, I think it is true that when you are a speaker or a motivational speaker or anything like that, um, you don't really know who picked up something from it or where they go or whatever. But yeah, I did get to the end of the road realizing that I was giving more than I was, um, like I also needed to receive, to run my business. My goal was that I was gonna be teaching the interns, but they would also be taking some time off my hands, but ended up ballooning the time that I was spending. I feel good about that nowadays. It's a lot more nos, um, in a healthy way. For example, like next week, I have completely blocked off and it's a me week, a light me week. I've had a few things come in where I thought to myself, should I just take that? Should I just add'em on there? But I know it's gonna ruin my whole day if I have a meeting next week so I'm not gonna do it. I'm going to use the time for my creative writing. Writing a book like I told you before. Different things that are more of a long-term goal. If I don't stop and I'm always serving others, and I literally never stop, my purpose of serving others is also gonna stop at some point. Because like you said, you'll be burnt out and sort of resentful that you never have time for you. But the only person who's in charge of that is me. Again, I have to check myself on that servant mindset from being a secretary. Oh yeah, I can do it. Oh, I can do that. It's tempting sometimes to like break my own rules, but I'm not, I'm, I'm not gonna do it. I hate to say that I've like fully been like fully abused by clients and fully abused my life in the process to this point where I realized like it's only me who's gonna be able to have the, you know, schedule these breaks and things like that. So yeah, I don't take meetings on Mondays or Fridays anymore. Then once a quarter or so, I will book a whole week off without any meetings, because for me, even if I have the full day, but I have one thing at three o'clock, I'm gonna stress all day about it. I'm not gonna get it done. So I need multiple days. You need to have that recuperation. Out here in Colorado, I get to, so next week I've got like hiking plans and a lot of nature stuff like just for me. Some writing and you know, I'll still be working, but I'm not gonna be serving anyone except for me. Just for a week.

Russel: 22:00

There's a reason why on an airplane, they instruct you to put your own mask on first before you help others. I think even stepping away from, for a minute, from running an agency just to think back and realize how important, and I did not prioritize mental, my own mental health wellbeing enough, uh, just thought I could tough it out, rough it out, however you wanna look at that. I don't think I was my best self doing what's a hard thing? Maybe like a lot of things, like, it sounds like you're saying we gotta hit some rock bottom to, to really change our ways and to be motivated, uh, to otherwise. I'm glad, it sounds like you've got to a good place there. Oh, I, and I remembered while we were talking, there's a great book that even talks about the concept. I'm pretty sure it's this right book of Give and Take by Adam Grant that he talks about a lot of the people that give endlessly and needlessly or, or just infinitely, that they do always become burnt out. He's not advocating against giving, but the ones that are a little more apt to give strategically to kind of just, that ultimately comes full circle back to themselves again. Which it sounds like we're, you've got to, that's, that's the givers that thrive. I thought that was a really interesting take that seems like it applied in your own case.

Kimberly: 23:03

These days my giving is more of a, like donations if I can. As far as time, that's a big gift, like that's a really big gift.

Russel: 23:11

Oh, huge.

Kimberly: 23:12

But, you know, periodically we'll do events and stuff and we'll offer, we have like a sliding scale for some folks and we offer, free business audit for some folks. I still have a portion of my business that I have for sliding scale people or people that really want something that can't give me what I need. I'm able to modify it to meet them where they're at. They're still a giving aspect, but it's not all this time with sort of nothing back.

Russel: 23:37

It's boundaries. You've created boundaries for it, which is, what we, we have to have to set boundaries. Glad you got there. Another aspect I thought was interesting and just, uh, you know, I think you called it business therapy. I dunno if I'm getting that quite right, but, but you've got a, a, a coaching practice and element to your business, and I found very intriguing. How did you arrive at it? What does that look like in your business?

Kimberly: 23:56

Oh gosh, if you're like me and I am pretty sure you probably are, I'm sure you have like 2, 3, 4 businesses or business ideas in your pocket. Business therapy is something that I've thought about for a long time. Going back to all the, the beat downs from the clients, to be honest. I wanted someone to be able to cry and talk to, and actually there was a few coaches that were helpful in that way. I never did coaching before until a few years ago, and, sometimes I would just bla and bla and bla just to get a response that said, Kimberly, you're doing the right things. You're right where you need to be. That, to me, was worth paying like the$500 for the hour or whatever that I did at that moment.'Cause it actually did change my trajectory. I actually wanted to offer that back. It's similarly priced. It's like right now I have it on sale for 375 for 75 minutes. Then they get a follow up and everything, it's like you said, uh, before that, we're paying for not just the time for time service of things, the time for time trade. We're paying for these 10 years of, sleepless nights at times. Reading books and books and books and books and books. Taking classes, classes, classes, classes. Business therapy is like if you wanted to talk to someone to make sure you're doing the right things, solve problems that are stressing you out. For example, the pre-sign agreement, making sure someone's on the same level. I have all these ideas that can help people right away to fix either like emotional pain in their business or increase financials. It's a mix of that because my specialty is lead generation, traffic generation. Search engine optimization, just making things work. Business therapy is just one off sessions, again, to counteract the anti trend against, uh, mul, uh, monthly recurring revenue as well, so that people can have an option to just do a one-time thing if they want a DIY. As much as you DIY, you still end up with a list of like, I don't know how to do this. That's where we can do that and crush it. If I had someone that I could call back in the day to figure out how to add tracking tags or, you know, just basic stuff or interpret my analytics, that I could talk to, that was a human, I would've, I would still go for that. I don't know anyone, um, in my world that does something like that. That's why I call it business therapy. It's like a place to cry, get support, um, but also fix some tech stuff and just get actionable steps.

Russel: 26:09

I love it. I think that's intentionally, or even accidentally, so many agencies have had to move some direction in this consultative space with helping their clients, right? We've learned that just bringing people to the door does not solve businesses challenges, so we've gotta kinda dig deep in there and, and uncover really what's going on. And then we all need a little therapy. Maybe we need more than we always get. You're really meeting a need there of, of your clients and, and like you said, hands on. Awesome and, and obvious, and then to your point of giving, but also comes back and it's another revenue model for you. I love how you structured that. Very fascinating conversation. I'm sure we did not get to everything, but, uh, so goes any podcast episode, so what are you thinking for the future of the business? What are you trying to create here?

Kimberly: 26:55

Oh man, I've got so many ideas. But basically it's expanding business therapy. The book that I'm writing I'm really excited about. It's all for anxious entrepreneurs or the secondary title is Confessions of a Small Business Owner. Just all the things that we go through that we feel not feeling worthy enough having clients stress us out different things. It's just anxiety ridden sometimes. I'm excited about the book coming out. That's probably like, hmm, probably still four, six weeks away. I've put a lot of love into that. That's coming out. And then growing up the business therapy helping more people start businesses. I think people got, I don't know, people were really excited about starting businesses after Covid, but then I think people like got scared, maybe. I think that the influencer culture online contributed to that fear because I think people thought that they had to be like a TV show. So now that that is kind of falling out a little bit, I think that people are actually coming back to small business ownership and I think a lot of people are leaving their, the corporate world again. I'm just trying to be there to support people. It's interesting how the phases go and yeah, just try to modify based on what's going on, you know? I just wanna continue to keep my sailboat afloat and ride the waves.

Russel: 28:10

It's funny, I think what you're speaking to, the idea of entrepreneurship is not for everyone, and whether it goes in these waves of people trying it, uh, it's some people just can't handle the lack of security, which is a, an amazing segue into my next question for you is, are entrepreneurs born or are they made?

Kimberly: 28:27

I think they're born, I think it's a born thing. I think that if you ran the lemonade stands, which I was the boss, I paid the money out to my people at the end of the lemonade stand day. I didn't even talk about that, but that was the thing. You kind of have to be like a natural born leader. I think that you have to be not afraid and, um, I don't know. I think you're born, I hate to say that. But I think that if you are a business owner, I think you know that there's no escaping this, this future. Even if you tried. I went through a slow time, honestly recently. I even thought about applying for jobs again. I just realized that that, that'll never be part of my life. I just, I can't. I don't fit into that block. I'll have better luck creating a new business to make money than I would probably finding a job and being in that position. My leadership level is too high. I just gotta row my own boat, you know?

Russel: 29:18

Whether everyone is born or not, I do believe everything you've shared that you are, were born, to be an entrepreneur. That would only be fitting that you would have that be your answer. But all for very good reasons. If people wanna know more about Faceted Media, where can they go?

Kimberly: 29:32

Facetedmedia.com, so it's F-A-C-E-T-E-D media.com. On Instagram it's faceted.media. That's another cool place. And then, um, Business Therapy on Instagram or getbusinesstherapy.com.

Russel: 29:45

Get your business therapy folks. Everyone needs more therapy in their lives. You have a very succinct, direct URL for that. That's awesome. Thank you so much, Kimberly, for taking the time to share your story and the good points and the bad points, and really just sharing the journey of what it's like to be an entrepreneur. Just thank you so much for bringing that to the table today.

Kimberly: 30:06

Thank you so much. I appreciate you.

30:11

We hope you've enjoyed this episode of An Agency Story podcast where we share real stories of marketing agency owners from around the world. Are you interested in being a guest on the show? Send an email to podcast@performancefaction.com. An Agency Story is brought to you by Performance Faction. Performance Faction offers services to help agency owners grow their business to 5 million dollars and more in revenue. To learn more, visit performancefaction.com.

Kimberly: 30:47

When I'm helping people with SEO, I find a lot of times when they've DIYed, that they're coming up for results that are completely off of what they sell. Just this week I did an audit for someone and they were showing up for pans, like cooking pans because they, but they're a chiropractor. They are trying to write their blog about their community, who's into sustainability, who might enjoy cooking with these pans. Little did they know, just posting that blog, those words had totally dominated all of their searches. They were coming up for pans.

Russel: 31:18

Points back to why businesses need professional help, because, uh, uh, uh, you know, I've certainly heard interesting stories, but that might be more interesting in the weird, random things that a business might rank for.

Kimberly: 31:30

I know. It was validating too because she had actually had another SEO person audit her right before me, and so she was using me to double check the first one to make sure she got her money's worth and the pans, they had found the pans as well, it was validating for her. She learned a lot.

Russel: 31:49

I think if you're having to pay a company to double check another company, you're, you've hired the wrong company.

Kimberly: 31:54

I know, well I gave that for free. That was one of my gives that I was, that I was giving.

Russel: 31:59

Karma points or otherwise, I hope it came back to you.