Not-So Kind Regards

Confessional: Biggest mistakes I’ve made this year in business

• Maddy Birdcage & Caroline Moss • Season 5 • Episode 1

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In this episode of the Not So Kind Regards podcast, host Maddy Birdcage gets real about the mistakes she made throughout 2024, both in business and life, and the lessons she's taking away from them. From people-pleasing to misaligned strategies, Maddy breaks down how to bounce back and learn from those mess-ups, offering advice for entrepreneurs, marketers, and business owners. You'll hear how she’s working on balancing productivity, staying aligned with her audience, and navigating the ups and downs of running a business.

Key Takeaways:

  • Over-focusing on productivity can backfire; give yourself permission to rest and let things unfold.
  • People-pleasing is a hard habit to break, but staying true to yourself is key.
  • Align your content with your audience’s needs—when it clicks, the results speak for themselves.
  • Don’t ignore your gut instincts, and trust the strategies that have worked for you before.

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Not so Kind Regards podcast. I'm Maddie.

Speaker 2:

Birdcage and I'm Caroline Moss. We are done with the digital fluff and pleasantries and we're here to talk straight about brand building, digital marketing and personal growth. This episode is, of course, brought to you by Birdcage Marketing, the forward-thinking digital marketing brand that started this all. We have a special birthday offer running now until the end of the year, to celebrate Maddie Birdcage's birthday. Our no BS birthday blowout special is for the action takers who don't need more advice and want actual, practical steps to take your business forward fast.

Speaker 2:

You get a foundational strategy, valued at $6,000. We'll build the bedrock of your marketing plan so you're not constantly chasing trends, but creating a strategy that works. We will complete a website audit for you, valued at $1,250, where we'll pinpoint exactly what's slowing your site down and give you the actual recommendations to improve it. We will complete copywriting for a welcome flow and one times EDM, valued at $1,500, so you can nail your customer's first impression with powerful, converting email copy. We will give you one week of content done for you on Instagram. That's three reels and three static posts, valued at $1,250. You can stop stressing over content creation. We'll handle it so you don't have to.

Speaker 2:

And then, finally, we will throw in one 40-minute coaching session with a coach of your choosing from the Birdcage team. That is valued at $1,250. So you can get laser-focused advice on your most pressing business challenges. You get all of this at a value of $11,250 and you only pay $6,000. We only have six available until the end of the year. So to get started, book your discovery, call at birdcagemarketingcomau and let's do this. Now back to the episode.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to a very special Not so Kind Regards podcast episode where I am solo because I'm doing confessional style. I'm breaking down all of the mistakes that I have made this year 2024. I'm talking about things that happened at the beginning of the year, things that happened a few months ago and things that happened as recently as last week. Now, these are mistakes that will apply to all types of businesses, all types of entrepreneurs, and especially if you're an agency or a freelance marketer, these will really apply to you. You can learn directly from what I have actually done practically. But what I want you to take away as a listener whether you're a business owner, a leader, a fellow marketer or you just like to tune into the podcast I want you to take away how I'm handling mistakes, how I approach making mistakes and how I overcome mistakes, in order to not let it slow me down, because I believe that the more mistakes you make in life and in business, the more learnings you can gain, and a lot quicker. Now, before we jump into this episode, I want to remind everyone that I have been hosting some very exciting live workshops online. These are workshops designed for people who are not yet in Birdcage Marketing School not yet in Birdcage School, who are not yet full library members. These are people that are just getting started with our approach to digital marketing using funnels, so make sure you head to the Birdcage School Instagram We'll include some links in the show notes as well where you'll be able to get access to our next live workshops. They are super, super affordable, so make sure you join me for that. I'm really excited to take you step by step through what marketing funnels look like, how you can get started with the way we approach marketing so that you can start benefiting from all the blood, sweat and tears and all the mistakes that I've made in the past, and how you can avoid all of them and just get to the good stuff Now.

Speaker 1:

The first mistake that I have made in 2024 has been trying to be too productive. You will know that I became obsessed with the 80-20 principle at the beginning of this year, which is basically 20% of what you do generates 80% of the results that you experience, and so what I wanted to do was only do the 20%. I only wanted myself and my team to be working on the 20% that gets 80% of the results. Why, you may ask? Because I wanted us to have more time for fun in the office. I wanted my team to have more opportunity for workplace flexibility and I also wanted to work less myself. I was doing about a 50 hour week at the beginning of the year and I've been trying to scale that back. In an ideal world, I'm working 20 to 30 hours a week, which that isn't an ideal world. I'm not sure if that's actually possible for me because I just love my job so much and I don't know if that's actually conducive with the life that I want. But that is what I'm trying to work towards, and so my thinking was if we only do the 20% of the things that build 80% of the revenue or the profit in the business, then we have more time.

Speaker 1:

Right Wrong again. The problem with focusing on 20% of the good stuff is that you don't always know which 20% is the good stuff. Now we have gotten so good at tracking our time, at looking at analytics, at having a very well-organized business, that I thought I knew exactly what I should be focusing on. But what I missed was the opportunities that come when you are doing some of the activities that feel like a waste of time but are actually very beneficial to other things. So let me put this into a more clear example so you know exactly what I'm talking about.

Speaker 1:

We basically scrapped websites doing websites for clients about halfway through the year, I would say, because they do take a lot of time. I always say a website build is like a bathroom build you need all of the trades, it takes a lot of time for quite a small space and you can't do particular things without having the other tasks finished. So it does take a bit of time. The other problem that we were having with a lot of our website clients is, no matter what we did in terms of setting very clear deadline and expectations, clients would drag their tails on getting us what we needed Photography, copy if they weren't having us write the copy approvals, domain names, just all of the things that we relied on our clients for they weren't giving it to us because, for whatever reason, if there was a piece of fear, that was there because they were scared to launch their business, or because they just weren't prioritizing their website build on top of other things and they just didn't have very good time management, or maybe it's that cashflow was an issue and they didn't want to get to the next stage. Whatever the reason was, it caused quite a bit of chaos for us in terms of our workflows, in terms of our billing, in terms of our cashflow. It also took Jess, who's our creative director and whose brain I highly value. It really took her away from being able to help me on growing our brands, and so I selfishly wanted to keep Jess for myself.

Speaker 1:

Now here's the problem that arose from that Number one. Websites are most certainly one of those bread and butter services where it's more of a tangible thing compared to the strategy work we do and the growth campaigns or the coaching we might do. And so a lot of business owners, even if they don't know much about digital marketing, a lot of business owners will come to us and say I need a website. That's something I know I need. So if we're not there saying, hey, we do websites for you, we are actually missing a lot of inquiries because a lot of our website clients we would actually be able to sell a strategy to them, because that is our process and we require a strategy before we do any other work. That's why we can deliver such great work.

Speaker 1:

So it meant that we weren't able to get that initial lead for me to then diagnose and sell them the correct service they needed. It also meant that Jess, our creative director, website building. For her it was like creating little babies of her creativity. And what Jess and we all say about Jess's abilities we call her the alchemist, because what she's very good at is taking what people are saying, what they're dreaming up, putting all the pieces together the branding, the colors, the copywriting, the website functionality, the conversion rate optimization putting all of these pieces together and then you have this beautiful branding website, strategic website in the end. And she was really missing being able to do that.

Speaker 1:

And so, by cutting websites yes, they weren't a hugely profitable job for us compared to a lot of the other work we were doing it still was a huge driver of leads which were them missing out on. And that, our creative director she wasn't getting that sense of ownership and that sense of fulfillment that comes with starting a project and seeing it to the end. Instead, she was very much doing more open-ended work with me, with the agency, which she said she just felt like it never ended, her to-do list never ended, she wasn't getting a clear stop, and so that was affecting the, I guess, happiness of one of my star players and, whilst Jess never let anything like that affect her work, I could feel it as well and I'm sure there were other run-on effects of having one of my star people not feeling 100% fulfilled with her job, and so I had to eat my words only a few weeks ago, go back on it and say, hey, we're actually going to start offering websites again. As much as all of that chaos that comes with website building, as much of that, as much as that is a thing and it's definitely the 80% of the work that only generates 20% of the revenue it did definitely have flow and effect.

Speaker 1:

So the second mistake that I've made and I made this one only recently, but I thought I was done with my people-pleasing tendencies and a big lesson that I had a few years ago was that I can't run my business based on what I think other people wanted from me or what other people wanted me to be. I thought I'd very much done away with that type of behavior and, to be fair, I certainly have. I've set very clear boundaries with my team If something's not working for me. I have that honest conversation early on. I have no issue in setting strong boundaries with the people around me and saying what it is that I need. Before I wouldn't even shy away from any sort of conflict. I wouldn't say when I needed help with things that I didn't want to bother anybody else. But I've most certainly overcome that.

Speaker 1:

But this little behavior, what they say, with these types of behaviors that are usually created as a result of a trauma response and remember, trauma is a spectrum so in my life it was clear that I had to be a people pleaser. Maybe it was the bullying that happened in primary school, but it was safer for me to be a people pleaser and do what I thought people wanted from me, rather than actually speak my needs and say what it is that I needed and that I wanted. Now, usually, when you resolve some type of behavior that's based on past trauma, it does come back in another way new level, new devil and so I think this is how my people pleasing behavior came back into effect. It was by doing this mistake that I made only recently, and that was making business decisions based on what I thought individuals in my team needed or wanted or would be better off for, and what's crazy is that it may have been as a result of a conversation we may have had, but nothing like a direct request to be like, hey, this is where I want to take my career or hey, I'd really like this opportunity nothing like that. They were more me guessing what would make these people in my team happier, and so it was changing job roles, it was changing responsibilities. It was, yeah, really making I guess it leans into the taking away the website thing.

Speaker 1:

I thought that by taking websites away, we would not have so many hard deadlines that we needed to meet in terms of servicing, but it had other flow on effects. And so something I really had to do was speak to my team directly, speak to these people in my team and really understand. You know, is this actually? You know, I had all good intentions for this, but I don't think this is actually going to work the way we want it to, and I had to do some of my own self-reflection and really understand that I actually wasn't making these decisions from an authentic place from myself. I wasn't making these decisions from an aligned decision for where the business needed to go. I was making these decisions to make people happy, and nothing good will come from that Making decisions to make other people happy and make other people like you.

Speaker 1:

Even I mean, my team liked me, but I wanted them to like me more. It's clear. Making those decisions based on that is not a place you should make decisions from, and so what I want you to really remember is if you have people pleasing tendencies which most of you do otherwise you probably wouldn't be here you have to remember that when you are making business decisions, they need to either come from a very aligned place with yourself well, they always need to and they also need to be a strategic business decision. You actually have to take emotion out of it some of the time not all of the time, but some of the time and make sure that you aren't just making these decisions to make other people happy around you, to make your husband happy, to make your wife happy, your partner happy, your colleagues happy, your clients happy. I mean you can make your clients happy. That probably is something that you should prioritize, because it's obviously something in your clients need. That is a real realization that I had to have.

Speaker 1:

The third mistake I've made this year is leaning too far into what interests me and sharing that through my organic socials and not meeting my audience where they're at, which is wild, and this probably ties into the next mistake I've made as well. But you will have noticed a lot of my content, especially on TikTok, over the past few months has definitely evolved from less savage marketing funnels advice to mindset advice, to dream life, aspirational advice. That's because that's what was interesting me. I kind of didn't lose my passion for marketing and marketing funnels and marketing psychology, because I mean I could never lose my passion for that. But I've definitely found I've always been interested in personal development, manifestation, law of attraction, mindset work, psychological improvements. I've always been interested in that.

Speaker 1:

But I feel like I really hit my stride and it was like all I was consuming in terms of the content. I was watching the books, I was reading, the podcasts, I was listening to. I was just really, really deep in all of that. And so what I was doing, I was creating social media content around that content because that was the content that I was doing. I was creating social media content around that content because that was the content that I was consuming and that I wanted to consume. This is nuanced, though, because I want to make it very clear that you need to be passionate and have an interest, obviously, and believe in the content that you create. So it does need to be content that interests you.

Speaker 1:

But what I was doing I got too far away from where my audience was at, from what my audience needed from me, and I always say to you you need to create your social media content and your marketing as if you're writing another chapter of the book that your audience is already reading. I was out here writing a sci-fi novel when my audience was down here reading a historical fiction, and so the jump was too great between the historical fiction that they were reading and the sci-fi novel that I wanted to talk about, and so I had to find my way back. I had to find my way back to my audience to understand what is it that they really want out of me, what is it that they are struggling with right now, and where are they not getting answers from anybody else? Because I can't expect my audience to want to meet me over here at the level 10 mindset work that I'm doing if there's no one else talking about how they get from their level one or their level two. No one else can take them on. Get from their level one or their level two. No one else can take them on the journey that I can take them on, and so how could I expect them to find their way to me? And, yeah, some people did, but so many of you were still being left behind, and I'm not sure if you felt that in my content, and if you have, I'm sorry for abandoning you, but what I really had to do was go back to my strategy.

Speaker 1:

Funny that sometimes it's hard to take your own advice. I had to go back to my strategic work, go back to understanding what the schema was of my audience, so that I could give them what they needed from me right at this moment, and then take them on a journey to take them to the level 10, to take them to where I am now, to take them where I want them to be, where I want you to be. This leads me to my fourth mistake. Are we up to number four? My fourth mistake that I made, and that is not taking my own advice. I have spent decades making this work happen. This is decades of experience in education, making this work happen. This is decades of experience in education, but years to actually formulate our certified funnel process, our framework, our approach, our method, years developing it. I can't even tell you how many hours. I don't track my time so I don't know how many hours, but it would be in the thousands.

Speaker 1:

And yet, when everything started to unravel and not work out, because my engagement started going down, which I think was a result of TikTok's requirements changing was evolving to a pay to use model, which we all knew was going to happen, but also me not meeting my audiences where they were at, and me jumping too far ahead and not being me jumping too far ahead and not being within reach enough. When that started not to work so well, I started to get into panic mode and this is something that I feel like you guys a lot of you guys are actually dealing with. You're in this survival mode where you're in the startup stages of your business, or you're still side hustling in your business, or business was going well, but now it's not going as well, and now you're freaking out, even though it's still going pretty well, or maybe business is just blatantly, it's just hands down it's not going well right now, for whatever reason. When you are in panic mode, when you're in survival mode, you are not making good choices. We are not making good choices when we're in survival mode, are not making good choices. We are not making good choices when we're in survival mode. That is why looking after your physical, mental, emotional, spiritual health number one is so important so that you can make decisions from an aligned place, from not a panicked place, from a calm place.

Speaker 1:

What I literally had to do it wasn't until I started going back and writing some new training content that I was like, ah, ah, I'm not doing any of this. I'm not doing the stages of the funnel. I'm not focusing on my audience schemas, on my brand archetype, on our approach messaging. I'm not focusing on sharing my brand story, on sharing client testimonials, on doing that middle of funnel stuff that we know works. I am selling. I knew I was selling still because our revenue actually remained unchanged, which is why it blows my mind that just because silly little numbers on TikTok that they could, because they went down, it could mess with me so bad, even though the revenue in the business was actually very stable. Yet the little view numbers on TikTok were going down, and so I was freaking the fuck out and it made me forget everything that I've ever developed, that I've ever taught anyone else. And then it started to get worse because I was forgetting my own proven approach when I went back to our funnel model top of funnel get attention. Middle of funnel build trust. Bottom of funnel build the sale, make the sale.

Speaker 1:

When I started doing that and specifically using our audience schemer messaging, which is audience schemers if you're not in the school audience schemers is just the way that we like to really understand our audiences and it's based on psychology archetype messaging. That's based on the 12 brand archetypes again psychological based tool. Our ladder of transformation that's another psychological marketing tool that we've developed. All of that stuff should be happening at your top of funnel level because you want to be speaking to people's deepest, dark it's pain points and you want to be understanding exactly what type of person they want to become when they interact with your brand. So it's identity-based messaging, it is schema messaging, it's archetype messaging. That's top of funnel and it needs to be attention grabbing. All of these things need to work together. Trust me, it's not that complicated. It sounds it but it's not. It actually gives you a really clear framework of exactly what you should be posting rather than just fucking guessing. So when I started focusing on that I was like, uh-huh, now it's working again.

Speaker 1:

In the middle of funnel, you need to talk about your brand story, why you do business the way that you do it, what your vision is, what your mission is, what your clients experience and what you can deliver for people. So basically, proving you can do what you can do. And then at the bottom of funnel, I mean I feel like my sales was still always great. It's the urgency, it's the scarcity, it's also making sure people know that it's a frictionless checkout process. There is a, you know, with the full library, for example, we have a 48 hour money back guarantee. There's no risk to it. Making sure all of those barriers to purchase are knocked over and you're selling properly. These are all things that we teach in Birdcage School. It's what our strategies are based on in the agency.

Speaker 1:

It's how I built my successful brands, and yet I seem to forget it all when the silly little numbers on TikTok started going down. So if you're experiencing this as well, and if you've also forgotten everything that you have learned from me or from other people that are doing good work, or that you've learned from yourself, don't beat yourself up. Just get back on track. Get back on track and start doing it, and you'll be amazed at how quickly you can actually get things back on track, just like I have Now. The last mistake that I want to share is I considerably upped my overheads in the business because I took on additional resources and additional spaces. Right, I took them on thinking this was making the best decision for the businesses, and, hey, maybe they have been the best decisions, but they haven't quite panned out the way that I want them to. Yet. They're not doing badly, but it's not as simple as I thought it was going to be in order to recoup and actually make money from these new resources that we've brought in.

Speaker 1:

Something I've realized, though, is that I know that I can make anything work. I know that, if I want to, I will make any type of business brand offer successful, but what if I don't want to do it? What if I don't want to put in that effort? What if I don't want to put my energy to it? That's when things fall over in my life, when I I don't want to and that is feedback that I got from teachers, from old bosses Maddie doesn't want to do something, she won't do it, and so what I've realized about myself and if you're NeuroSpicy, if you're a multi-passionate like me, I want you to realize that you can do lots of things, but you can't do them all at the same time Probably needs to be tattooed onto our foreheads. And if you lose motivation for something, you can't make it happen, you can't force yourself to do it. So you either need to make it someone else's problem or you need to stop doing that thing. You need to just cut your losses and move on.

Speaker 1:

Now I've gone for the first option. I'm making it someone else's problem to grow particular aspects of our business where these overheads have been brought through, because I do believe that they I don't know. I'm not even being honest with myself right now. I mean, if I could throw in the towel right now with a couple of these things, I would, but I'm not going to. Because why am I not going to? This is what I mean. This is a confessional episode. This is like deep inside my brain. Why am I not going to? Because I actually think there's a need for them. That's the answer. I actually think there's a need for these new offerings that we have that are not so directly marketing related but are more adjacent to our brands. There is a need for them. We are feeling a need. There are people, just like me, just like my team, just like all of our clients, that need the things that we are offering, and so I'm not willing to throw in the towel yet, because it is important to me that I support people in every aspect of what they're doing.

Speaker 1:

I think what I need to realize is that if I want this to work, I do need to put my energy into it, and I just have to put my energy into it, because I think it's pretty clear, listening to this and even doing this episode, that these offerings are something that I want to actually work and to happen. I am passionate about them. What I'm probably experiencing is a bit of fear around failure, fear around what that additional work might mean for me and my lifestyle, because I feel like I'm in such a sweet spot right now and there's a few other dynamics at play with all of this which I think may be affecting my mindset, and so I really need to work through that in order to lift out any energetic blocks that are there, but also make sure that my subconscious knows that it is safe for me to be working on these new offerings. Thanks for the therapy session, guys. Okay, what I want you to really take away from all of these things that I've shared?

Speaker 1:

I'm not letting any of these mistakes define me. I'm not letting any, not once. Have you heard me say I'm a failure because of this? Oh, that was a really bad decision. I'm going to dwell on it for six months, not pick myself up and move forward. Oh, what am I doing in business? I don't know what I'm talking about. I don't know what I'm doing. My views are shit. I can't make things work. Have I? Did I say any of that stuff once, except for just then to point them out to you? No, make things work? Did I say any of that stuff once, except for just then to point them out to you? No, because I do not believe any of those things.

Speaker 1:

Those mistakes do not have any significance on me as a business owner and my worth. They obviously have significance on me as a business owner because they affect my revenue to a point. But what is actually crazy with all of these mistakes that I've made? None of them have really affected revenue too hard, and this is because I have built a business that is now very stable. In the past, revenue was always up and down and it was a fucking roller coaster and it was stressful. But because I have such diversified channels, because I have been relying on frameworks that marketing, frameworks that attract in the right audience, even if one channel is a little bit shitty, the other ones pick up and I'm also not afraid to just get in there and just keep trying and figure it the fuck out, revenue has not really dipped. Money in my business is fine and peachy. I'm having more existential crises about shit. Have I made the wrong decision because it didn't have the desired effect that I want it to? That's more what has been a problem for me. It didn't have the desired effect, it didn't work the way I wanted it to, but it hasn't slowed me down, it hasn't stopped me, it's made me just figure out. It's just another way. There's got to be another way. That's just a way that didn't work.

Speaker 1:

Rejection is redirection. Focusing on the mistakes you made is the quickest way to actually fail. If you don't focus on the mistakes and just go well, let's try this, do it this way, then that is how you succeed and in order to do that, you need to have open conversations with people. You need to be self-aware within yourself and you need to be really honest. Just honesty actually Honesty will solve 99% of the problems that you're experiencing in your life. Be honest with people around you, be honest with yourself, be honest with what you want. Do you even want the thing that is not working out the way you want it to?

Speaker 1:

These are all very good questions and I know it might sound like where the fuck is Maddie going with all of this? And a bit random, and this is completely unplanned. This is like literally coming out of my heart, but I wanted to show you. I want to leave all of this in this podcast episode because I want to show you the thinking process that I have behind making decisions, behind making mistakes, behind failing and coming back behind things not working out the way I want them to, but, oh well, that's not going to stop me and I'm going to keep moving forward. Your failures do not define you, unless you let them. That's what I'm going to leave you with.

Speaker 1:

If you took anything away from this episode, make sure you send me a DM at Maddie Birdcage on TikTok or Instagram, or through to the school or the agency, whatever you want. However, you want to talk to us, make sure you please also leave a review if you enjoyed this, because reviews on Apple podcasts on Spotify. They help us grow and we want to grow this podcast because we want to reach more people and be able to provide a lot more in-depth, long-form advice, just like this. If you're watching on YouTube, make sure you comment below If you're not watching on YouTube, did you know that you can watch us on YouTube? I'm talking to you through YouTube and do not forget that you are absolutely incredible and you are capable of so much more than you give yourself credit for, and we can all just really do our best. We should do our best. We can do our best because we are wonderful, magnificent, creative, generous people and we deserve to be successful.

Speaker 1:

Bye, thanks for listening to this episode of the Not so Kind Regards podcast. We hope you enjoyed it. If you did, we would really appreciate if you left a review on whatever streaming platform you are using. It helps us to grow as a brand new podcast and to help many more business owners and content creators reach their goals, just like we hope this brought you one step closer to yours. Remember, connect with us on TikTok at Maddie Birdcage and at Birdcage Marketing, and the same handles on Instagram again. And if you really want to learn how to work with us, make sure you head to our website and book a call. We would love to speak with you.