Welcome to The Live Free Podcast. I'm your host, Micala Quinn, and I am a mom on a mission to help you launch, grow, and scale a profitable freelance business from home. Join me each week for tangible business advice along with inspiring interviews all designed to help you mom strong, work smart, and live free.

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All right, mama, it's time. Grab your coffee, water, or wine because we are starting.

Hey there, happy new year. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm your host, Micala Quinn, and I am so excited to share with you this two part series hosted by my dear friend, Natalie  Gingrich over at the podcast. The ops authority, she gathered up some of the top leaders in the freelance and service based industry to reflect on 2024 and look ahead to 2025.

So in case you missed that series live, um, I wanted Natalie shared their recording with me so that I could share it with you guys on the podcast.  So it is a two part series. Today you'll be listening to part one where we chatted about the good, the bad, the ugly of 2024. What we noticed, trends we saw, what worked well for freelancers and service providers, and what didn't go so well.

So tune in today to chat about the year we just had.  Um, you'll get a lot of nuggets of what was working in 2024 that we're carrying in to 2025, what, um, what people struggled with so that you can hopefully not have to face those same struggles or challenges, or if you do have some tools in your tool belt to  face them.

So without further ado, let's dive in to part one of the state of the union for freelancers and service providers

Welcome friends. You have arrived to the podcast version of our State of the Union for Service Providers. I'm going to be your host and facilitator, Natalie Gingrich from the Ops Authority. And today you are going to hear from the best of the best. These are all women who are highly experienced and worked with.

with service providers in a variety of different ways. We have different specialties and different interests, and of course we have different skills. But the one thing that we all have in common is our love and passion for helping other people around us to grow, to use their skills. skills to be the best, most profitable service provider around.

We are all peers and we lean on one another. I know I certainly do. If nothing else, we are inspired by the other people on this panel and we're excited to come together today. To share what we have learned over this past year in 2024 and what we have to look forward to as we move forward into 2025.

Today we're going to do what we do best. We're going to lead our audience, our friends and our students. Each of these women were selected to join me today because we all take great pride in showing up for you. They are the leaders that I respect in this space.  One of the things that I'm very, very passionate about, a high value for me, is the fact that I believe all of these women are transparent.

Like I said, it's a value for me, and I like to hang around people who have similar values, and that's what you're going to see today. None of this is prescripted. All of this comes from the heart and we're so excited to share all of this today. Today is all about service providers. It is about you. We are here for you to get some perspectives and to help you navigate, maybe process what you experienced or felt in this past year, and then also to help you look forward to grow and to continue develop in your career in this upcoming year or current year of 2020.

25. I cannot believe we're already at 2025. Before we kick off, I want to just level set what service providers are. And if you've stumbled upon this and you're like, Hmm, state of the union, which I think you probably know what a state of the union is, or you've heard about it before. And you're wondering what is a service provider?

Well, In my definition, service providers are people who have a skill that they leverage as a service and they monetize it. They are business owners via a skill or a set of skills that they are an expert in. So that can be operations, it can be marketing, it can be a specialty within those. Maybe it's human resources, maybe it's building funnels.

Regardless, you've got a skill and you're making money through that skill by building a business at the same time. I'm going to be rolling out the red carpet because I do feel like I am surrounded by stars today and we're collectively going to be sharing the State of the Union for Service Providers and really cool, fun fact, the State of the Union address actually started in the U.

S. in  1790. It generally includes reports on budget, economy, news, agenda, progress, achievements, and proposals as we look forward. And as I was like, man, what can we call this? That definition and what we are doing today, the state of the union just synced up so perfectly. That summarizes our goal today. I hope you enjoy, gain some perspectives and some excitement as we move forward.

But before we dive into all of this great information and perspective that you're going to gain today, I'd like to take a second to introduce myself and the rest of the panel. To begin, I'm Natalie Gingrich. I'm the founder of the Ops Authority, and we are an education company that partners with operators to take their skills to the next level.

We do that through our certification that equips women to become certified directors of operations. Abby, if you'll go ahead and introduce yourself. Hi everyone, I am Abby Ashley. I am the founder of The Virtual Savvy. I started a virtual assistant business in 2015  and it totally transformed my life and now I'm a little obsessed with telling people about virtual assistants.

I have a community of over 130, 000 VAs over on Facebook and I just love encouraging you guys to pursue your freedom life. So that's why I'm here and I'm so excited. So excited to be surrounded by all these incredible women. Uh, we're gonna have a lot of fun today. Emily. Hey, thank you for having me. I fell into freelancing back in 2009 from a full time job and never looked back.

It gave me the freedom and the flexibility I needed to be a military spouse, have babies and bring my clients with me. And so I really leaned heavy into marketing services because my background was PR and journalism, and I am still a practitioner. I still do the client work. I still build the marketing funnels, but I also just like Abby started telling my friends about it, especially the overeducated  underemployed military spouse, mom, friends in my life about this life changing work.

And so I trained virtual assistants to give them marketing skills. And then that's inside my unicorn digital marketing assistant school. And then we have a membership where we share jobs and we advance into marketing strategies because once. You learn it like it just never stops. It's so much fun and there's so much more to learn in this online space.

So thanks for having me, Natalie. Should I call on the next person?  Okay, Sarah, go ahead. Hey guys, I'm Sarah No Ked and much like all of these wonderful people here. Um, I just fell into it back in 2009 and realized how amazing it was and how it gave me this flexible, um, Work from home lifestyle living in the Middle East.

So I don't live in North America and I have been scaling my business as an online business manager. So I'm an agency owner. I'm also an O. B. M. And I'm the founder of O. B. M. School and I help service providers and O. B. M. S. Confidently step into strategic roles, streamline operations and build Thriving, sustainable businesses.

Um, so after years of running my own agency that we still run and mentoring and certifying hundreds of OBMs, I definitely know what it takes to build a business that aligns with your goals and values. And thank you, Natalie, for having me here. I'm really excited to share some insights on what's working, what's ahead and how we can all keep growing in this ever evolving industry.

Jordan. Hi, hey, uh, I'm Jordan Gill and I am the founder of Systems Saved Me.  They do. Uh, and the reason for that is because I struggle with three chronic illnesses, hypothyroidism, celiac disease, and chronic fatigue, so that affects me on a daily basis, and  I want to still create big impact even if I have very limited capacity, and so systems obviously are the way To that for me and for many others.

And so I did definitely do the retainer work and then moved into VIP days and now just love to build my little heart out and some tech tools, which are really fun. So you know, your business is ever evolving. But I have such a true heart for service providers and people who want to take their skills like Natalie said, and just be able to make the impact within people's businesses and lives.

Uh, it's truly amazing work that we do. So I'm so grateful for Natalie, for having me on here. And I'm excited to hear what everyone else's perspectives are too. So I'll be taking notes.  Mikaela?  Hey everyone. I am Mikaela  Quinn. Um, and I run the Live Free Academy. Where I help women, mostly moms, kind of get started in the freelance capacity so that they can earn a full time income, um, working part time hours, and be there for their family. 

I got started, gosh, back in, I think I landed my first freelance client while I was still teaching, Pregnant with Baby No. 2, um, back in 2016, and I thought I, Landed the jackpot, like won the lottery. Someone was paying me 20 an hour to check their emails. And it was incredible. And I realized kind of in that journey, there were so many other moms, especially in my local community that needed a better way to work and be there for their family and, um, decided to start sharing with them what I did and.

Seven years later, here I am and so excited to be with here with all these women and so grateful for Natalie. I knew her back when I got started. Um, and just excited to be here and share with everyone.  Hey there. I'm Tasha Booth. Um, I started off about in 2016, 2017 as a tech VA and soon realized that while I love being a tech VA, I did not love all the other things that my clients asked me to do, like copywriting and Facebook ads and all the things.

So I ended up building the launch guild, which is a launch. management agency. Um, I built that over the last six or so years into a seven figure business. And then five years ago, I decided to start coaching online agency owners. So now I have three programs specifically for online agency owners, and I love helping them go from what I like to call a me to a you.

To a wee in terms of scaling and growing their business without it all being about how much they can do and they can produce in a day. So excited to be here. Once again, Natalie, I think I've only missed one of the years that you've done this. So, uh, I am excited to be back and thank you for having me.

Okay, I think it's my turn. Hi, I'm Veronica Romney. Um, you can just call me V. I've been a marketer. I've proudly identified as a marketer for over 17 years, which is wild. And I've seen marketing from like all the angles because I started off in corporate, then I left corporate to do my own thing that turned into a full blown agency.

Then I sold the agency. Then I went all in on speaking. So I'm a speaker. I'm a podcast host. I'm a newly minted book author. Oh, you guys, I'm freaking out. I'm super excited. It's coming out in January called Identity Marketing. Um, but I'm also known, I think, for helping marketers transform into rainmakers. 

And I've been doing that for several years, which is a level of mastery, right? Beyond just the marketing fundamentals. And I think it's an upgrade in how you identify and your empowerment, your Sasha Fierce, right? Um, I also get to privately work behind the scenes of some very big brands, very, very visible personality driven brands or faceless brands.

And so I know what they're saying about you when you're not in the room. I know exactly what they're saying about you as a service provider when you're not in the room. And I'm ready to share what they're saying, if that helps you, especially walking into 2025. So let's do this. Awesome. Well, our conversation today is going to be broken into two different parts.

So the first part is going to be centered around what we learned this past year, and maybe even a couple of years as we led into the year of 2025. And then the second half is going to be focused on 2025 and all of the exciting things that all of us are thinking and have pulled together to help you to have a better improved 25 than 2024.

And it wouldn't matter. Actually, it wouldn't matter the year. I think as we look forward, this is a great time of year of reflection and also a great time of year of optimism. As we look forward to what we can create, pivot, change, improve as we move forward as business as human beings, which. It's always important to me at the end of our time together today.

You're going to have an opportunity to ask us questions. So feel free to drop those questions in our chat here. And of course, stick around to gain our insights to those questions that you guys bring in. All right. You guys ready to do this? Alrighty. So let's dive into just have a quick conversation about what it was to be alive in 2024 as a service provider.

So it was, I have all the use. I love alliteration, but it was unusual. It was uncomfortable and it was uneasy. And I'm going to add one that I didn't plan on, but unreal,  right? Like if you have been in business for the last couple of years, then 2024 was like, I can't call it a cherry on top, but it was the cherry on top.

And I think that that cherry is going to continuously change, but. 2024 was unusual, uncomfortable, and uneasy. That's what it created for a lot of us. I do feel like this is more of a steady state of business. So if you're new to business, this is probably.  The environment of what you can expect over the next three to five years.

This is what business was pre 2020. And so for those of us, I know many of us on this panel have been in business for ourselves over the last five, eight, 15, 20 years on our own. We've seen seasons like this and we're all still here. So for those of you who are joining in, who were like, this was just a really tumultuous year, know that we have ridden through.

Many seasons like this and you can too. It required us to be innovative, creative, and that skill that every single person who is here today has, which is grit. This last year was quite different than some of the years in the past, but I'm really looking forward to what we have coming for us. So. There, I didn't want to start this conversation today like pie in the sky.

Nothing was weird about this current year of 2024 because it was absolutely weird. Um, so there's no elephant in the room about that. So I want to start today by celebrating you. If you are still in business, you're still using those amazing skills that brought you here. We're here for you. Every single person that you see on the screen or hear from today.

We are here for you. We have dedicated our professional journeys to making sure that you have the success that you are due. We have been in that path and we love to see you. To celebrate you. We saw a lot of shifts this year and these shifts affected the lives of service providers. And, um, in saying that some of us have selected to join or elected to join.

In a full time capacity where maybe we were building businesses fractionally. And some of us have actually, we've all had to pivot to innovate, to be creative. And at the end of the day, Everybody has worked really, really hard. So the economy was the greatest driver of this change. And of course that causes people to be more frugal to spend differently.

And we were all doing that on the human side, right? Your groceries were more expensive. Your. Yeah, I mean, your utilities were more expensive. Gas was more expensive, and that's as a consumer. And so if you think about that from a business owner's perspective, there were going to be changes, trickle down changes.

And that is actually what affected us as service providers. As people we wanted to hold on more and we saw businesses holding on more as well It created an unknown territory which created different behaviors And so i'm going to open with our first question today and veronica and jordan I'd love to hear your perspectives on this The first question I have is besides the obvious economic changes that I just alluded to People and businesses spending less holding on to more What are the shifts that you saw service providers  see or experience in 2024?

Go ahead, Veronica.  Oh no, I wanted Jordan to go first. I always love supporting Jordan. 

Here we go, Jordan.  All right, well, pass it on. Uh, so yeah, I really think that one of the bigger shifts that I saw for service providers and conversations and mentorship and all those things was  kind of the rhetoric around AI, which, you know, has its thoughts and feelings about right and the rhetoric in the world globally versus online business.

Online businesses were kind of used to things a little bit faster than the rest of the world. And so, yeah, But there's a lot of rhetoric around  taking your jobs and no longer having these opportunities. And I truly believe in my heart of hearts, like monthly retainers will never go away. Like they will never be something that just disappear because businesses will always need people to do things. 

And so, you know, even though on a grand scale, people are hearing about Microsoft and all of these big players and how they're taking AI and using it. I think that There is this scarcity around like, Oh, if my company is trying to have me use AI, that means they're trying to get rid of me. And what I actually like to think of it as is actually the way that people are wanting to use AI is that more can be done because you're in less of like the minutia.

And so. I'm choosing and what I've told my mentees to choose as well is like looking at this as how can we just be as efficient as possible and be able to a lot of times shorten the timelines of things getting done. And so when we have that mentality, I think that it allows us to again, not really hear all the rhetoric, Can be very real for a lot of people in the online business space and online B2B space.

I think that truly we're wanting to use it as a tool to again, make our teams better. So that's something that is very real, but also very exciting.  I like that. Okay, let me build on this because this is what I like to do with Jordan. If I could snuggle her, I would. Um, it's really interesting. I felt like the first half of 2024.

Have you heard the advice where just hack your credit card, like literally just like cancel the credit card and then just see what services you would sign up on a new credit card when you just don't know what's been like operating in the background of like reoccurring charges on your phone? You know, I felt like everybody had that same attitude with their teams.

Let's just hack everybody and see if we still need them. And that's like, what the hell? What just happened? So it was really interesting because the beginning of 2024, I just saw teams getting slaughtered. And team, I define team as anyone providing help to the organization. I'm not saying team is W2 status, the opposite.

Team includes 1099, retainer, hourly, I don't care, intern. Anybody who's helping the company grow or achieve goals is team to me. That's how I define it. So I felt like the beginning of the year teams were getting slaughtered and it's because business owners freaked the beep out, like, right, like fear was the emotional palette of 2024.

That was a really stifling political atmosphere. So like it was the modality, it was the feel. And then I noticed the tide changed in the summer, all of a sudden people were like,  I'm drowning. I'm like, I guess I needed those people after all, but they were still being cheap AF, right? Like think about the cost of gas and eggs and all the things of just living life.

Like I don't, it's so stupid how bad things cost right now, right? So then everyone's like, okay, well, I need team again, but how can I get the best for the cheapest?  That was the attitude. And they have all the expensive leaders. So if you were in a leadership position, whether fractional or not, those are usually the first ones to go.

I even watched, I don't know if you know, the company called marketer hire, it's like a big organization. And they were really competing and taking business with these like corporate recruiters that would take a 15, 20 percent off the top of whoever they like, you know, matched all of a sudden even marketer hire was like, You can find marketing assistance and you can find marketing aides.

And I'm like, what are you competing with Upwork now? Like what just happened? So we, I could even see at the corporate level and in the entrepreneurial space online and offline that then there was like a shift for more team. I had more requests for people in my black book. second half of 2024, but there was always like the cheapest for the best.

So that was my general observation and you not having a leader to manage you, then the expectation was that you should manage yourself. And project manage yourself. Super fun. Who said that was fair? It's not fair. Keeping it real.  Yes, I love that. And you do have a very unique perspective in that you're in the ears of a lot of business owners.

So I love what you said, Jordan, about AI. I think both of these are just so, so real. We talk about AI in our community quite a bit because People are asking that question. Is this going to replace me and productivity? We've been focusing the fact that we as operators and service providers crave productivity, right?

How do you actually make more? You make more by being more productive, right? Assuming that you are looking at your business in a scalable way. So productivity is huge. The other thing that I would say that AI is helping us with as service providers is it's allowing you to perform at your highest level.

Level because it's able to do some of the faster, easier, less complex work for you. We all know it's giving you a good grounding spot or, or launching pad. And for our community, it's allowing us to step into strategy a whole lot faster with a lot more confidence and a lot more ease. I actually think that implementation will, human implementation will never go away.

Human management will never go away because it's human to human, and then there is no amount of strategy that can be built with just a computer or a robot. And so I hope that that affirms all of you who have had the question about AI. I like to shift that AI conversation more into how it can really help us to empower us to step into strategy.

As soon as possible. Um, and then, of course, everything you said about team. I co sign on that 100 percent already moving into our second question. When you think about service providers who have had success this year, and I know if you're sitting there and you're like, I don't know anyone who's had any success around me.

You're not looking far enough and you're not looking at yourself. Deep enough, because if you're still in the game, you are successful. So when you think about service providers who have had success this year, what about them and their business model or the strategies that allowed them to experience success?

Sarah, I would love to hear what you have to say. I know you're so close to this and you have a lot of successful people in your community. Absolutely. And I feel like the AI thing is such a big piece of this. And I mean, I always, um, I think. You know, it's like that we used to joke when we were kids like positivity for life, like I'm kind of that like hopeless optimist, but I found that embracing AI and just like you said, Natalie, it ain't going to replace us so you might as well embrace it and having a growth mindset.

Generally speaking about most things in life and especially business is where it's at. And so one of the big things that we do inside of our community is we teach our OBMs how to leverage AI,  especially in relation to things around ROI, AI and ROI. So return on investment, because as we already Mentioned and kind of dug into.

I don't want to, like, you know, beat the dead horse. But yeah, the economy kind of sucks. And so a lot of our clients need to understand R. O. Y. And in order to understand R. O. Y. From an O. B. M. Or any kind of managerial. And this goes for any kind of service support professional. You need to know what the metrics are.

And so sometimes All the time. I'm asking AI. Hey, here's my conundrum. What are some good KPIs? Or, and I know that Jordan will love this because we're both like really into systems and systematizing things, but like, hey, can you sort of refine this SOP or this launch plan and help me to identify key metrics?

Because when you can convey those back to the client, They're like, Oh, you are really providing an R. O. Y. And sometimes as online business managers, because we're managing the things were not necessarily a salesperson. It's hard to kind of make that connection. In addition, I've noticed in my own business and in our agency, from the perspective of those bigger clients that we work with, that SAS products and software are getting better at making connections, my friends.

And this is a really exciting thing for me because I really rely a lot as someone who's not based in North America on Facebook ads, surprise, surprise. And I need to understand that detailed journey of my clients and. What they're doing and how they are interacting, and I find that there's a lot more software.

I just had a call with high rose earlier today, like those kinds of softwares that do the whole journey and map it all out. And I think that that is going to make it. better for us in 2025. At least the hopeless optimist in me feels that way. Um, but that is what we do in order to help our clients make those informed strategic decisions.

So when it comes to, um, what strategies have worked, I think it's just being able to actually, um, eloquently speak to metrics and what has worked in their specific business, as opposed to emotion, because it's been really emotional AF. This year and like the highs have been high  where they've been, but the lows have been really low.

And so it's really important to constantly be able to tell the story with metrics so that it's not personal. It's like, Hey, it's not like, Oh, you had a crappy launch because, you know, you're in a bad mood and things weren't going well. It's like, Oh, actually here are some metrics that tell the story in a way that is just personal.

better and less subjective and more objective. So I would say systems, focusing on ROI and metrics. I can go next. Um, I love that so much, Sarah. And I'm going to piggyback off your optimism because I think as service providers, it's really important for us to like, take a step back as economy's crazy. You know, I'm in community with a lot of just like, local friends who are business owners, a tub repair guy and a, you know, a mom and pop bakery and things like that.

And is it rough out there? Yes. But guys, the people sitting in this room, we have, like, there's a couple things that make a really great business. Um, one of those things is just a good business model. And can we all just like have a sigh of relief? That we have chosen a really great business model service based businesses with reoccurring revenue I'm going to piggyback that on there as well Our businesses that have the ability to have very high Profit margins, right?

It's just a good business model high profit margins low cost of goods, right? Some of us have like Zero cogs at all. We have no cost of goods in our business. You can have 50 60 70 80 profit in your business Where i'm talking to business owners that are literally Scraping by don't know how to pay their employees because they on the good days.

We're operating at five percent profit margin so I think it's just really important for us to like think about like We really are super blessed. Um, and then the question, like who, the people who had success this year. So I'm going to do this case study style, because I think that when I look at our students, not the ones that like, Oh man, you got a few clients, but the ones that like blew up this past year and had crazy success, because yes, the success stories are out there.

The ones that I have seen have great success, have done a few things. Number one. Good model, reoccurring revenue. And that is another thing that is beautiful about our industry is that most of us don't mean thousands of people say yes, hundreds of people to say yes. Most of us can get four, five, six, you know, less than 10 people to say yes, to have a really incredible business.

Right. And so I think that that reoccurring revenue is. Part of that, right? And it's a theme that I see with every single one. So if your packages aren't reoccurring, it's a question of like, is there something you know? Oh, I build websites. Great. Can you do a website and have a reoccurring monthly package that you add on on the back end?

Right? So that's one. And some of these things have been even before this past year. But I'm just again, my students who have had great success. So The other thing is and not everyone's gonna love this. So just hear me out is, um, is being open to utilizing a team. And I know some of us are solopreneurs through and through, and there's no wrong answer.

If that's what you want to do, that's great. That's another thing that's awesome about the service industry is you get to choose. You get to decide what this is going to be and what it's going to look like. But I would Allow yourself to open up the possibility that if you haven't thought about utilizing a team in some way, and again, it can be a slow thing.

And I think that, well, I'll visit that in a second, but like  having a team truly does allow you to operate in your highest value. So whatever it is, if you are a visionary, but you can also do like social media, or you're great at sales, but you can also do the operations. Like if you have a team, then you are really able to double down at the thing that you are great at, which really does cause you You more happiness in your business and it allows you to make more money because you have more people doing the things right.

You're limited by your own hours. So I'm going to go visit my friend, tight East, who is about to have her. Um, she's one of my students has been following her journey for the past two years. She's going to do 2 million in her business this year. How did she do it? Reoccurring revenue, a high value, um, niche.

So she eventually not on day one, but she eventually niched down to roofing companies. So she literally, like she doesn't say this on her website, but she has told me personally, I'm looking for millennial aged roofers. that are doing a million dollars or more in their revenue, like in their company, right?

And so high value niche, reoccurring revenue, and a team eventually, right? And I think that that's the thing. Some of us are like, I want this to be right now. It's like, no, it's okay to start off as, as a general VA, or it's okay to start off, you know, Where you're at right now. And then slowly business is the art of the pivot.

And I see so many business owners, especially this past year, when things went a little crazy, they're like, well, that's not working. Let me scrap it and throw it away. Let me try this. Oh, that's not working. Let me scrap it and throw it away. But art, like literally business is the art of the pivot. Like, let's go this way.

All right. This is working. Let me do more of what works. And then less of what doesn't work. Okay, that's working. Let me do more of what works and less of what doesn't work. And if we're just reinventing the wheel all the time and just stay and just double down on what's working, which is what I'm seeing my successful students really do, it makes a big difference.

So high value niche, build a team, reoccurring revenue, and just let yourself be in the stage that you're in as well. If you're here and you're like, I just started, this all sounds like a lot. That's okay. Allow yourself to be in that stage. And just to kind of jump in there to talking to those of you that are just getting started, what I've seen people who are in the early stages of starting their service provider business, what I've seen those students who have been most successful this last year really leverage is, um, number one, tapping into networking with their local communities.

There's So I can't stress enough how many opportunities there are in your local community. If I got in my car, I think I've talked about this last year and I really just, you know, pat myself on the back, predicted that local businesses were going to be such a huge, um, hiring sector in 2024.  And also I'm seeing that continue to just grow and expand in 2025 students that leverage their local communities had so much success.

With connecting with potential clients, thinking of case studies of a couple students that were able to go into their local networking communities and land five clients within one month. These are more of your traditional type businesses. Therapists, mental health facilities, uh, roofers, those type of service based contractors to like Abby Ashley was just talking about real estate agents.

There's so many types of clients, industries in your local community. If you got in your car and drove to the nearest strip mall, there's probably. Five to 10, 20 plus, depending on what type of community you live in businesses that don't necessarily know you exist, but do need some form of support. So students that were willing to connect with people locally in person, which can be kind of scary, had a lot of success this year. 

Also, we saw a huge demand  for.  General virtual admin assistance. A lot of people looking to outsource that, um, looking at kind of our job board and what positions students did land clients in a lot of general admin services. And one thing I saw within that, that I haven't always seen as much is people looking for a general VA  also wanting that person to take on some specialized services as well.

Like people were trying to, I think it was. Veronica mentioned, get the best for less. I saw people wanting to get a bunch of support and a lot of different areas and classify it under the general VA umbrella, which typically in the past it's been, Oh, I need someone to handle the admin, but I also need to hire someone to specialize in my podcast and someone to specialize in running my Instagram.

I saw people trying to blur that a lot this year, which.  Good and bad pros and cons to both of that, both from the business owner side and the service provider side. But if you are someone who is willing to kind of dive in and learn new things, there was a lot of success for you. I saw a lot of success for you in doing in 2024.

And then, uh, last thing. Consistency in helping women get started.  Consistency. So we do in my program, we run a monthly challenge to land your first or next client. I saw students that went from enrolled to quitting their jobs in 3, 4, 5 months because they did back to back to back challenges and were able to land their 3 to 5, 6 ish retainer clients  pretty quickly.

When you talk about starting a business, And being able to replace your income and quit your job in 6 months, that's kind of insane. But students that showed up and committed to making that a daily part of their routine, maybe not every day, take some rest, take some breaks for holidays and such, but those that stayed with it predominantly throughout each week, each month, saw really, really rapid success and able to reach their income goals pretty fast.

Yeah, thank you. So thank all of you guys. Those are some really great insights And I have to say I would have come up with a few of them, but not all of them We in our community have seen a lot of strength in leveraging our local market And so I want to piggyback off of what Michaela had just shared The reason that I believe that you have seen we have seen all of us have felt kind of the broadening of more general roles than specific roles is because we, with the skill set that we are learning in an online educational capacity, which at one point we were able to be very specific to a lot of us met because we were focused on the online business owner.

Now that we see this skill being able to be extremely effective. Offline, which it always has been, by the way, I had a 15 year corporate career with these exact same skills. And so have many of his women here that is not new, but we're now taking these skills that we thought were really specific for online businesses and moving them into this offline space.

Well, these offline business owners haven't always looked at our skills or even known that these skills exist. Do you remember personally, like I remember when I left corporate and I found. This online space. I was like, Oh, my gosh, I had no idea this existed. That's exactly what's happening for our offline, you know, businesses.

They're looking at us like, Whoa, I had no idea that this person was available to me in a small capacity. I thought I had to hire full time or part time or nothing at all. Right? So they're expanding and because they're green to or new to the type of work that we can provide, the level that we're able to provide, the models that we're able to provide, they're blurring kind of what we've already matured through, right?

And I'm coming back to the whole general versus specialty thing, which is always up to you. You get to decide what you want to do. It's very important for me to never impose a particular way for you to monetize your life. And to monetize your skills. So that's my take on that question. Thank you, ladies.

Um, we're going to wrap up here with question number three. Actually, we have one more bonus question after that, but question number three, what do you feel was the most helpful marketing or visibility strategy for acquiring clients this past year in 2024 specific to service providers? I'm going to start with Emily and then we'll go to Tasha. 

I want to piggyback off of what Veronica said because my ears perked up when she said, I know what they're saying about you. And I know there's no magic bullet to being more marketable or visible. Everyone has their own context. Like what works for Jordan might work different for me. LinkedIn might be my platform, your audience might be hanging somewhere in person or online or at conferences.

But the truth is the best marketing, the best visibility is being so good, so damn good that your clients and your peers are doing the prospecting for you. And they're talking about you in the rooms you're not in. And so how do you get to that level, especially coming out of this economy? Uh, Veronica is talking about people are trying to get more for less, like they've been burned.

This economy has dipped a little bit and I think we're kind of almost coming through it where. They're really kind of being careful who we hire. I don't think business owners have necessarily gotten better at hiring, but I think they're looking more for more specialties and people who know what they're doing.

And it's up to you to present yourself as an authority on this. Whether you, Get in bed with them and sign that contract and they're paying for you for cheap or not. Like you got to watch out for that with your own boundaries. But like I am seeing the jobs that are high level. Like I accept job leads into my work group and we ask, what's your marketing budget?

And yeah, some people have very low rates, but we're seeing a lot of people with like decent marketing budgets submitting for jobs. And so how can you get really, really good at your job and actually do what you say? Communicate to the client.  Follow through and create like a client experience because that's everything right now.

It's about mastering your craft, developing your skills and doing the best work for the current clients you have because you're going to hear advice about networking and collaborations and all of that starts with you being really good at At your job and it sounds like very boring advice, but i'm hearing what the people are saying veronica's hearing that too And they're frustrated out there.

They've been burned the economy a couple years ago they could just scoop up anyone and think that they were gonna be good at this service and we've just gotten more sophisticated we've been Buyers are more skeptical and this is a chance to really stand out differentiate yourself and Come to the table with good marketing assets You audit your stuff, make sure you look like an expert, and then you can demand those higher rates too.

So I'm excited to hear what Jordan says.  Oh wait, I think it's my turn. 

You are totally fine. So I want to take this specifically from the perspective of the agency owners that I work with. And what I've seen is working really well with With their visibility is them not trying to do it themselves and bringing their team into the front marketing and the forward facing marketing.

Because what often was happening was that the agency owner was doing all of the marketing themselves. And then they'd get on that discovery call and like, surprise, I have a team. And then the client would be a little frazzled or upset or not. feel like they understood that, right? And they, because the agency owner was the only one that they saw on all the social media, they started becoming enamored with that person instead.

And then they would get on the discovery call and be like, Oh wait, you're not going to be doing the majority of my work. Like, how do I know that your team is an expert? And so when you bring your team in to the marketing on the front end, in your social, um, introduce them this month, I have my membership.

Uh, clients all doing a challenge where they have an ugly sweater, like contests with their team and they, you know, they take a picture of like every team member takes a picture in their ugly sweater and then that's how they introduce themselves and stories and on social this month. Right. And we do a combination of something like that for Thanksgiving for last month, November, we did like their team's favorite dish and the recipe for each one of them.

So really bringing them into being seen as. People personalities within your agency as well as then introducing their skill set their expertise So that clients can get comfortable with them and build that know like and trust before you even get on that discovery call The other thing that I think is working really well is widening your circle And so what I mean by that is saying Sometimes, especially if we've been in business for a while, our circles start getting smaller and smaller and smaller.

And so sometimes we have to go back to being intentional about how do we wind those circles? Is it different Facebooks that we need to be a part of Facebook groups that we need to be a part of? Is it different in person networking? Is it different conferences? Maybe we've gone to the same conferences over and over and over, and we need to go to different ones or just reach out to people and ask, who can you introduce me to that you think I should know, right?

I love asking that question a couple of times a year. Because I always get to do coffee chats with new and interesting people that can widen my circle and that can introduce me to new networking opportunities that will eventually bring me business.  I love it. I have a couple of thoughts I would like to share to Emily.

This is more in line with what you were saying, but I have a saying internally that is skills before sales or skills lead to better sales and you need to Gain the skill and believe in the skill before you go out there and expect to command or demand higher rates. And so you're here because you've learned from somebody here today.

That's how you were invited to this. You care about investing in your skills and I applaud you for doing that. Continue to zone in on the thing that makes you, you right. And guess what, if what made you, you in 2020 is different than what made you, you and feel confident in 2024, well gum,  I hope that every single one of us as an improved version of who we were a year ago, two years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago, that's.

That's the evolution of greatness. And I believe that we're all on that exact same journey. So continue to invest in your skills, believe in those skills, and you will, can, and will demand higher rates on the backside of this. Some things that I have seen working inside of our community of directors of operations are the really leaning into LinkedIn.

I know you can pick your platform. I'm telling you what worked for our community. LinkedIn has been incredibly powerful because it is agnostic of online or offline. Every professional lives on LinkedIn. It doesn't matter what kind of business model you have. And so LinkedIn has been incredibly important.

The other thing we already talked about, this is local networking. When people tell me, Oh, Nat, I need to change my avatar or this avatar is not working for me, or I can't get this to resonate. I'm like, Ooh, Where are you looking for this avatar that you've defined? A lot of times we're thinking of, Oh, online business coaches and course creators, and there's no more of them.

I can't find any more of them. Well, of course I'm going to challenge you there, but I also want to make sure that you're widening the places off of what Tasha just shared, you know, You're widening the places in where you're looking for that avatar, right? It may not be as easy as it was before, but there's a ton of different places to look for them.

Just like Abby, as she was talking about earlier, roofers, who knew that there are many communities of roofers. I have a peer and a friend and someone that I've mastermind with that is a female leader, owner, founder of automobile repair shops. Right. You know, females don't typically, we don't think females lead those, uh, girl, I was wrong when she told me that I thought, man, you must be one in a million.

And she's like, not, it's just the way that the world perceives this profession, but there's a ton of females doing that. So what was she able to do? She was able to be very specific, but widen it, right? It wasn't just in her local community. Now she started looking on the internet. For other females who lead automobile companies, which is just, you know, our brains don't go there first.

So what we have seen be successful is to looking, expanding where you, if you have defined the avatar, I promise you it exists. So dig a little bit deeper. Look. Close. Look far. Ask people where they think that they could find. And I promise you, you'll come up with something brand new for you to develop and to grow in. 

Um, already. So, we're going to do something really quick here. Everyone's going to respond, um, to this. And let's see. What is one thing that once worked for service providers that no longer will? I'm going to start with Abby.  Um, I say in a, I mean it sounds dumb to say it's been four years, but in post covid world with the rise of ai, human connection, so that's the local networking that's adding personality into your marketing.

That's just being like a real person when you get on discovery calls and just some kind of human connection.  That's where it's at. I just saw the chat that I'm next. Okay, I'm going to say because businesses are prioritizing expertise that relying on generic skill sets, offering broad generalist packages without any kind of clear differentiation, whether that's the service, the industry or the client, I think that's going away. 

Yeah, so I think relying only on like one or two referral partners to be your whole pipeline and just totally being like, these two people have been giving me folks for a year, two years, three years, so that will never change. And so I think that again, the widening that Tasha talked about, but just really thinking about, okay, how can I just dip my toe at least into other ways that I can be getting clients and getting exposure and visibility. 

One thing that I think will be going away, which maybe it was never really something that worked either, but I, I see this as kind of a mindset from people wanting to get started is putting yourself out there a couple times, hoping something works and that being it, you're going to need to build that consistency.

It's going to take grit. You will be shocked at how someone you reached out to month one, maybe doesn't become a client then, but they become a client three months down the road. So. Stick with it. Don't give up. I'm going to say it's the one size fits all approach to things. I just think that once upon a time, it was very easy to package things up and sell them.

But, and I know I see this a lot in the OBM with our clients, um, and the managerial stuff is that like everyone's business is so unique, especially as SAS products take over the world and there's not complicated tech, but everybody's tech stack is. It's own thing and everybody's business is his own thing.

And entrepreneurs are, you know, their own hot mess. So coming in and actually offering a specific strategic solution for their problem is definitely where it's at than just expecting them to kind of fit themselves into a box, which we know they can't do. All right, very good. Yeah. Similar to Jordan, I think a one pronged, um, Lead generation strategy is not working.

And so passively waiting for referrals to feed your lead generation pipeline is not going to be the way that you get to the revenue that you want to make the type of business that you want to have, um, because when you're waiting for other people to do the work for you, you take yourself out of the driver's seat and this is your business.

So having a referrals as part of your lead generation strategy, but not a hundred percent of your lead generation strategy.  Okay, I'm going to say the sexy, well, the not sexy, but I think it's sexy answer. Um, get your contracts in order, period. I, what's not working is where your contract is so ambiguous to start.

So then your client then starts shoving in whatever they can because it's like the junk drawer of a contract. Don't do that. And also don't take their word for it that they will pay you in rears or they will adjust the contract after you've already adjusted your services. Stop doing that to yourselves.

You won't be taken nearly as seriously as you want to be, and you're not going to get paid what you deserve. And I've just seen a lot of really good people get screwed on their financials because they didn't show up like a boss with some good contracts.  All very, very good. The thing I'm going to end on that I would say worked at one point and is not working as effectively anymore is being as exclusively sharing and marketing your services on social media.

There's just too many social channels that are popping up. Um, you probably don't need me to tell you all of this, but I believe when I came into the game, there That was the easiest way to get clients and, uh, today for the way that I have grown, it is one way, but it is not the only way. And so thank you all for really helping me to talk to our service providers today about kind of the woes and what 2024 really was like.

Wow, so much goodness today from all eight of us. I hope that you have enjoyed learning and hopefully you've gotten some really good nudges and maybe some confirmation and hopefully a whole lot of excitement as we move forward. In our next podcast, we are going to talk about what it looks like to move forward.

So I hope that you will join us next week in the continuation of this first part. Most of all, let's tie up 2024 with a big pretty bow. Maybe we need to put it in the file drawer and just tuck it away. I believe that we have all grown through this past year and we've got a lot of growth on the horizon in 2025.

Thank you for hanging out today for part one of the State of the Union for Service Providers. You'll hear from us in the next episode, so make sure to join us.

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