Self-Discovery in Entrepreneurship | Felly Day

In this episode of The Profitable Creative, host Christian Brim interviews Felly Day, a content marketer and entrepreneur who transitioned from being a virtual assistant to running her own content repurposing agency. Feli shares her journey of self-discovery, the importance of self-trust in business, and her desire to create a flexible work-life balance that allows her to travel. She discusses the challenges of building a team, the balance of outsourcing versus personal involvement, and her vision for the future of her agency. In this conversation, Felly discusses her journey as an entrepreneur, focusing on the importance of marketing strategies that allow for time freedom, the challenges of family expectations, and the value of real-world experience over formal education. She shares insights on building a business with the intention to sell, embracing technological changes like AI, and understanding client needs to manage churn rates effectively. Felly emphasizes the significance of trusting the process and adapting to the evolving landscape of entrepreneurship

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Transcript

Felly (00:00.341)
Thank

Christian Brim (00:02.786)
Welcome to another episode of the Profitable Creative, the only place on the interwebs where you will learn how to turn your passion into profit. I am your host, Christian Brim. Special shout out to our one listener in Marina del Rey, California. Never been there, but I love the song by George Strait. I'm not gonna sing it. So, you know, actually I'm not a country fan, but my wife is, and so I have to be.

I know all the George Strait songs even though I detest country. Anyway Marina Del Rey is a beautiful place. Joining me today, Feli Day of FD Studios. Feli, welcome to the show.

Felly (00:42.245)
Thank you so much for having me. I have not. I have not spent much time in California and I do not listen to country music so I don't even know it.

Christian Brim (00:43.99)
Have you been to Marina Del Rey?

Christian Brim (00:52.322)
I won't torture you by singing. But if you're going to listen to country, the older stuff is the, know, George Strait and backwards. Don't do anything since then, except maybe Garth Brooks and maybe Toby Keith, but that's not even really country. anyway, why don't you tell the listeners who Feli Day is and what she's about.

Felly (01:18.165)
Yeah. So my name's Feli. I am a marketer by profession. I am a Canadian by birth and I started my business because I don't like the cold or the snow and I didn't want to live in Canada, but you know, I live in Vancouver, which is the warmest part and it was still too cold for me. Yes.

Christian Brim (01:32.75)
Mmm.

Where in Canada did you live?

Okay, yeah, mean, okay. It's not like you were stuck in Toronto or something.

Felly (01:44.571)
No, no. And I did spend two years in Alberta in the Rocky Mountains. And after two weeks of negative 30 degrees, I think it's like negative two Fahrenheit, I basically had like that, what am I doing with my life moment? Exactly. And I bought a one-way ticket to Australia. So it kind of kickstarted everything. Much warmer.

Christian Brim (01:53.262)
Yeah.

Christian Brim (02:00.072)
Yes, questioning our life choices.

Christian Brim (02:07.234)
Very nice. It is warmer there. I've heard I've never been there. So you're coming to us live from Australia? Okay. Okay. Perfect. That's the I love that. I love the Nomad. Yeah. I mean, Australia was a former penal colony. So, you know, it's got a different vibe. France is probably more refined, I would guess.

Felly (02:17.339)
No, actually, I live in France now.

Felly (02:35.577)
I really liked Australia's vibe. I'm in France because I married a French guy. And Australia's really hard to live in if you're not Australian and don't marry an Australian.

Christian Brim (02:46.816)
I see. Okay. All right. So how long have you been married?

Felly (02:50.661)
September, I'm like, how long is that? Six months? Longer. Eight months?

Christian Brim (02:55.948)
Well, congratulations, you're still a newlywed. Very nice. Did you meet your Frenchman in Australia?

Felly (02:58.039)
Yes.

Felly (03:03.205)
Now we met in Mexico.

Christian Brim (03:04.982)
Of course, of course, why not? Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego? It's where in the world is Philly Day. Yes, all right. So tell us what you do in marketing.

Felly (03:12.393)
Basically.

Felly (03:17.833)
Yeah, so I run a content repurposing agency. Essentially, we take content that people have already created, like podcast episodes, and we turn them into more content, like blog posts, emails, social media.

Christian Brim (03:31.202)
Perfect. And how long have you been doing that?

Felly (03:34.153)
It'll be six years in August.

Christian Brim (03:36.246)
Nice. And is that what you started doing? I mean, has that been your whole gig the whole time?

Felly (03:40.473)
No, no, I started as a general VA. I discovered being a virtual assistant through a travel blogger and thought I will do anything to be able to travel and not be fixed to Canada for income. So I took on every job I could find until I landed on content writing, content creation, and then it just grew from there.

Christian Brim (03:53.805)
Right?

Christian Brim (04:01.74)
Why did you land there?

Felly (04:03.773)
I liked it best. did like social media management. did tech setups. I did all sorts of random jobs that people would hire me for. And I found the creative aspect of content writing to be my favorite and something that I realized I could continue doing and enjoy.

Christian Brim (04:05.228)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (04:13.069)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (04:22.062)
Were you a writer before? Or would you have considered yourself a writer?

Felly (04:28.167)
I mean, it's one of those like what defines making you a writer. Like I've never written a book, but yeah, I like the idea of writing, obviously a travel book, but I did grow up like writing in the diary. I started a blog when I was a teenager. Like, so I would consider myself always a writer.

Christian Brim (04:34.464)
You're literate, I guess, is that's the benchmark.

Christian Brim (04:51.66)
Nice. Any novels in the work? No, not that ambitious. Yeah.

Felly (04:54.677)
No, I have an idea. I have an idea, but I've never sat down to like outline write it. It's just a later project.

Christian Brim (05:04.46)
Have you read the War of Art? okay. Steven Pressfield is the author. War of Art is one of those quintessential creative books. He is, I think my daughter actually introduced me to it, who's a figurative oil painter.

Felly (05:08.166)
No.

You

Christian Brim (05:27.81)
But he was the he was a screenwriter and a novelist. He's most famous for The Legend of Bagger Vance, which was turned into a movie. But he writes about the resistance. That's what the book War of Art is and how creatives meet this resistance when they are working in their creative genius and how to overcome it. So I would highly recommend the book.

In any case, you were you were meeting the resistance in writing your novel. Are you going to share us share with us an idea, put it out there into the universe so it's real?

Felly (06:02.485)
Mm-hmm.

Felly (06:06.965)
I mean, yeah, it's based on a true story, of course. A travel story of someone that I met when I went to Bali. And it's funny because I didn't like Bali when I got there. And I think it's very, very hyped up currently for a travel destination for digital nomads.

Christian Brim (06:14.016)
huh, as all good stories are.

Christian Brim (06:21.826)
Okay.

Christian Brim (06:31.202)
Okay.

Felly (06:34.503)
and I found it not great. And then I met someone that just essentially changed my life. So it's like, need to have it like, funnily enough, I have it all like mapped out in a journal when I was there, because I like had that moment of like, this would make a great book, but it's never translated into a actual manuscript.

Christian Brim (06:44.04)
yeah.

Christian Brim (06:52.193)
Okay.

Christian Brim (06:56.428)
Well, the way this podcast goes is I find interesting things and I tug. So how did it change your life? I'm very curious now.

Felly (07:00.297)
Mm.

Felly (07:05.917)
I mean, do you believe in the concept of kindred spirits?

Christian Brim (07:11.886)
I suppose so. I'll stipulate that for the conversation. Yes, I do.

Felly (07:16.583)
Okay, even like not even kindred spirits. What's the other one? Twin flames and just the fact that like people can be mirrors to us. And so I met someone that really showed and made me question a lot of my choices and a lot of like where I was at in life. And the big thing that I realized was that for years I hadn't let myself trust anyone.

Christian Brim (07:27.113)
Okay.

Felly (07:45.619)
And so it started a catalyst of like self-trust and learning to trust other people, which changed a lot of other parts of my life as well.

Christian Brim (07:46.126)
Mmm.

Christian Brim (07:55.872)
And how old were you when you had this epiphany?

Felly (07:58.709)
Ooh, 2018 was seven years ago? I was 23.

Christian Brim (08:06.56)
Okay, this is interesting. All right. I may come back to this. Okay, so when you decided that you wanted to work on content, how did you go about turning it into a business? Because that's what the show is about is like, know, okay, I'm good at or that I love some thing. How did you turn it into a business? How did you approach it, I guess?

Felly (08:11.733)
Okay.

Felly (08:32.445)
Well, yeah, well, as I had mentioned that I started as a general VA and so I was taking any projects, any clients, anywhere I found them. found a client through Craigslist. I found clients through Facebook groups. found clients through Instagram. And then as I worked with more people and developed a skill and developed services essentially to sell.

I started getting referrals. So my agency actually grew because I had so many of my current clients recommending me to their clients. And it was right when the pandemic hit and business kind of boomed, everyone wanted help. And so my business grew from there, was through referrals and through word of mouth.

Christian Brim (08:58.774)
Mm-hmm

Christian Brim (09:16.746)
interesting that your name is FD Studios because that brings to mind like production. Not what I would normally associate with writing. So do you do a lot of video as well or is it it just written copy?

Felly (09:24.117)
Mm.

Felly (09:38.653)
We do do short form videos.

Christian Brim (09:40.938)
Okay, and do you produce those or do you have others? Nice. Okay, so did you build your agency on the VA model? So you use other VAs or other independent contractors or do you have any employees?

Felly (09:44.477)
I have a gene.

Felly (10:02.293)
Yes, I built it with the independent contractors. I don't have employees. I have a content writer, team I have a content writer a video editor and a agency manager

Christian Brim (10:15.488)
Nice, very nice. And you've built that in six years. So what is your role in the business as you see it?

Felly (10:23.753)
My role currently is marketing and sales and then strategy overseer essentially. Like I can be tagged in if anyone needs me to step in, like my team members needed vacation or something came up, I can step in. But essentially I'm like the overseer and not in the day to day.

Christian Brim (10:26.657)
Okay.

Christian Brim (10:43.35)
Was that a conscious decision? Okay. Let's talk about that. Why? Well, it's an important thing because I think you have figured it out at the ripe age of 30, if my math is right, that you have a business rather than a job and talk about that journey or transformation or of being a VA and like you doing the work.

Felly (10:45.077)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (11:12.94)
to I've created this business where others do most of the work and I'm doing marketing and sales.

Felly (11:21.599)
I mean, I think there's a lot of factors that have gone into the decision of how I've grown my agency. The first one, what I would say is when I started as a BA, I remember saying very clearly to my dad, I want to work less hours and earn more money. And he said, life doesn't work like that. And I said, watch me. But I also would like to sell.

Christian Brim (11:36.014)
Mmm.

Felly (11:43.667)
my agency, like big five-year plan, 10-year plan maybe, is to be able to sell it and to be able to sell your agency. They don't want the founder to be part of every single step and they don't want you to be the face of it. Like I used to be called Feli Day VA and so that's where it became FD Studio because I wanted to take my name out of it. Well, it's still kind of in it, but someone else could take the initials and make it whatever they wanted, right?

Christian Brim (12:00.248)
That's catchy.

Felidae via.

Yes, yes, you could. You have a lot of options with FD for sure. OK, so you hit on something. OK, how did you come to this knowledge like that? I want to work less and make more like.

I say that because that's not common knowledge, right? I think a lot of people are stuck with the belief that you have to work hard to make money. Sounds like your dad was kind of maybe stuck in that belief system. So how did you come to the understanding that that's not always true?

Felly (12:52.245)
I would say it's because my main driver, besides not wanting to live in my country of origin, is that I want to travel. And to be able to travel means I need to be able to have travel days where I'm not available because I'm flying or on a boat or out of service. I want to be able to go places that aren't like resorts. So again, out of service, spotty Wi-Fi. And I want to travel long term. I don't want to be like

off for one week, I want to be offline for a month. So it was always that I need to have something that works without me. And that's also where the idea of selling the business comes from, because it's like a lump sum and then I can build something else again.

Christian Brim (13:23.266)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (13:37.71)
Okay, you're not getting it. Most people don't figure this out, right? Like, so how did you figure it out? Was it watching others or, well, let me rephrase the question. When you decided that you wanted to have more flexibility of time and therefore you wanted to build this out so that the business was not dependent solely on you,

Felly (13:40.053)
You

Christian Brim (14:05.619)
Were there challenges that, that you had like in your, in your beliefs, like this isn't possible or how do I do that? Or like.

Felly (14:17.171)
I wouldn't say I had challenges in my beliefs because I see other people do it. know, like seeing other travel influencers, travel bloggers. I knew I didn't want that style of business where I was purely a content creator selling a brand. It's just, it doesn't inspire me. It doesn't get me up in the morning. I like working with other people to help build their content more than maybe building my own content.

Christian Brim (14:23.042)
Okay.

Christian Brim (14:45.71)
Yeah.

Felly (14:47.145)
So I knew it was possible because I see these people doing it. I would say the challenges that I ran into was around my capabilities to achieve that more than is it possible.

Christian Brim (14:58.55)
Hmm. Okay. So you saw others that had done it. So, you know, it's possible, but then the question was, do I have what it takes or understand what's necessary? Okay. All right. I'll, I'll, I'll go with that. what were the biggest challenges in, in, building that team out and building the business that you wanted?

Felly (15:09.033)
Mm-hmm.

Felly (15:26.855)
A big one would come back to self-trust. I did a lot of therapy and work on my ability to trust myself and trust the path that I was on because part of marketing is a boring side, right? Like the waiting for the results. You know your strategy and you know you know what you're doing and that will work. But sometimes there's that lull between like,

Christian Brim (15:30.286)
Hmm.

Felly (15:55.891)
the creation period and the development before things actually take off. And so there was a lot of periods of second guessing myself and

Christian Brim (16:06.882)
Mm-hmm.

Felly (16:09.583)
my decisions and my ability. And yeah, I think there was a lot of journaling involved to get to where we are now.

Christian Brim (16:17.13)
Yeah. Was there, was, are you at the point, where you trust yourself? Like that, that you say, okay, there's some things I don't know. We're going to try it and see what happens, but it's, it's okay. I trust, I trust the decision I'm making. So are you at that point now?

Felly (16:40.053)
Yes, I am. actually, I don't know if it was two weeks ago, I wrote a thread that I said I'm in my boring marketing era where I'm doing the tasks that I know will make a difference, even though I'll go on Instagram and watch videos or go on TikTok, right? And my brain is like, I could do that. I want to do that. I want the virality. But it's not what, it's not the period I'm in right now. I'm in the like, we're being consistent and doing the things we.

have already proven work.

Christian Brim (17:12.054)
Mm-hmm. Yes. Yes. A lot of business isn't sexy. That's for sure. and it's easy as an entrepreneur to get distracted. that I suffer from what I call shiny, object syndrome, you know? and I think personally for me, part of that is I like solving problems. like learning. so,

Felly (17:17.374)
Mm-hmm.

Felly (17:29.289)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (17:41.63)
Like I've got this AI project I'm working on and for my company and I'm like, I have to question myself like, why are you learning this rather than going and finding somebody that already has a much better understanding of it and letting them do it? And kind of, you know, struggling between is this something that I need to be doing or is it something that, you know, someone else can do for me?

Do you still struggle with that? Like I do.

Felly (18:15.743)
Yes. Like being a marketer myself, I want to do all my marketing. And currently I do the marketing for my agency. And it's something that I've thought about and looked into. I've even like tested a few different ways, but I've never found the right solution, I guess. And that is outsourcing my marketing to someone else.

Christian Brim (18:22.327)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (18:27.16)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (18:46.134)
Hmm. Yeah, that would probably be a real big challenge since that's your business, right? Yeah. Yeah. there there's a parallel story. I remember many years ago, we actually hired a company to do our internal accounting and, I really liked the person that owned the company and she was very competent, but at the end of the day,

Felly (18:50.303)
Mmm. Exactly.

Christian Brim (19:15.63)
it was one of those things that I couldn't outsource. Like, because I, I had a certain level and certain expectation that a third party was never going to be able to understand. I have been able to transfer 95 % of those responsibilities to an internal person so that I don't have to do that. Right.

Uh, and, that's a different thing. I think when you, when you have an employee, uh, it's a, I don't know, maybe, maybe this is just in my head, but you know, this person is a long-term employee, been with me for more than 10 years. And you know, this is what he does on, on a regular basis, but he also understands me and he understands the company. And so it's just a different dynamic than, someone that's not in the company.

Felly (20:07.21)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (20:14.158)
I don't know if that makes sense.

Felly (20:15.495)
Yeah, bringing a third party in, like they have their own processes instead of coming in and taking on your processes. And even if they have techniques or methods to take on your voice or your systems or that thing you like that's really particular, it's still never quite the same.

Christian Brim (20:23.661)
Right.

Christian Brim (20:32.896)
Right. He knows the questions I'm going to ask. Right. And that's very important. mean, know, like I don't I haven't quite got him to the point yet where he starts proactively answering my questions. Like he's still reactive in that. And that's totally fine. But to your point, it's like if you outsource something

Felly (20:36.853)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (21:01.248)
I don't know that you ever really get that level of understanding from that person. And it's not like they can't. It's just, they don't because the relationship's different.

Felly (21:05.491)
Yeah.

Felly (21:11.701)
And it's like, will I spend my time redoing what they did or will I accept what they did and not be happy with it? I haven't figured it out yet.

Christian Brim (21:17.664)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (21:23.928)
Yeah, yes. No, mean, and I think that you don't have to. I I think you could potentially have other people do aspects of it that you're comfortable with, maybe your own team doing aspects of it. But for most entrepreneurs, their highest value to the company is the

promotion of it, the selling of it, the marketing of it. mean, no one believes in it more than you do. No one understands it the way that you do. anybody that does it other than you is going to be a substitute. They're not going to be the original.

Felly (22:01.585)
Exactly.

Felly (22:16.297)
Yeah, that's exactly it. And that's why like with the marketing, because it is my profession, outsourcing it every time I'm like, it's just not, it's not where I want it.

Christian Brim (22:27.168)
No, but to your point, mean, you know, if you want that time freedom, that, you know, marketing can't be just turned on and turned off. needs to be consistently done. So how have you, how have you managed that with, with your time freedom?

Felly (22:31.881)
Mm-hmm.

Felly (22:46.901)
Currently, it's about the platforms I use and scheduling to those platforms. Like I have a podcast and I have an email list. So those are all scheduled a month in advance or more, especially if I know I'm going offline. But what I noticed last year when I went offline for my wedding was that what had been leading people into my funnel was my activity on threads. And so when I disappeared from threads,

Christian Brim (23:11.171)
Mm.

Felly (23:14.463)
things really slowed down and I only really had the warm leads that were already in the funnel purchasing and coming to me and asking questions and booking calls versus new people. So it was like I had to reboot the machine when I came back from my wedding. And so after that, it was like, well, how can I make sure this doesn't happen? And so the current strategy is to not use social media as my lead generation, which is...

Christian Brim (23:40.61)
What are you looking at instead of? Right?

Felly (23:43.253)
podcasts, guesting on podcasts, getting in front of other people's audiences and blogging to get on SEO more.

Christian Brim (23:52.76)
Do you have somebody that can cover the sales or discovery calls when you're offline?

Felly (23:58.261)
Currently no, but that's like the future plan would be like if I have a good funnel coming in from a not social media visibility, then to have someone take over the sales part because the marketing is more evergreen.

Christian Brim (24:02.03)
Yeah.

Christian Brim (24:17.432)
Yeah, I love that. Okay, I'm gonna pivot. Your dad said you can't do that, that's not the way the world works, I'm paraphrasing you and him. Was that, I talk on the show a lot about entrepreneurial experience. Was your family entrepreneurial? Did you have any entrepreneurs in the family?

Felly (24:21.215)
Mm-hmm.

Felly (24:45.013)
No, not a single one. My family is like engineers, teachers.

Christian Brim (24:49.91)
Okay. And so did you, did you know early on that you were an entrepreneur? You may not have said that word, but like that you were different.

Felly (25:04.306)
I wanna say no.

Christian Brim (25:07.318)
Why?

Felly (25:09.257)
Because...

In a way, yes, I knew I was different. I knew I didn't want a nine to five. I knew I didn't want an office job. I knew I didn't want set schedules. really don't like the wake up every day at the same time, eat the same breakfast, come home. I don't like the rigidity of what were sold in school. But original plan was to be a baker. When I was in high school, I thought I was gonna go to pastry school and open.

bakery. So it's like in a way that is entrepreneurial. No, but he's a really good chef. He doesn't bake though.

Christian Brim (25:44.334)
Is that why you married a Frenchman?

Hmm, okay. I mean the French are known for their pastries and their baking, you You sure that wasn't a secret motivation? don't know. to, something to un... You know. Yes, yes. Were you trouble in school?

Felly (25:54.727)
They are very good. I will admit they are very good.

No, it was his cooking though. That was definitely part of it.

Felly (26:10.065)
No, I actually did really well in school, but at the same time I was very much like, I know the system and can play within it. Like, there was definitely teachers that didn't like me because I was like, I know exactly what I need to do to pass and to get the grades and to, you know, like make it through school. And then I'm to do what I want to do the rest of the time.

Christian Brim (26:19.522)
Mmm.

Christian Brim (26:35.924)
Yeah, I think that you sound like my daughters in that like me, I wasn't that smart. I just bucked the system. So I was trouble. Not that I got expelled or anything, but like my teachers hated me because I hated school. I loved learning. I loved learning, but I hated that you said rigidity.

Felly (26:57.993)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (27:03.982)
You know, I am definitely not a, I'm definitely a D-vergent thinker. I'm not a convergent thinker. And the school system does not play nice with those mindsets. They want you to fill out the little bubbles and make the correct answer. And I'm like, what if there isn't a correct answer? What if you're asking the wrong question?

Felly (27:10.229)
Mm-hmm.

Felly (27:28.347)
Exactly. Like my school system that I had in Canada was that you needed a certain number of credits to graduate high school. And when you finished grade 11, you had that number of credits by the way that the schedule was structured. But to graduate, you needed grade 12 English. And I basically went to the school system and said, can I only take...

grade 12 English, because that's all I need to graduate. And they said, no, you can't not take classes. You can only have one free period. So I took seven electives and grade 12 English. I took three cooking classes. I took like, I took nothing serious in my grade 12 year, essentially. And then I ended up.

Christian Brim (28:05.96)
That's not that's not the way the system works.

Christian Brim (28:18.017)
Nice.

Felly (28:25.269)
I even ended up dropping a few of them because I was like, I don't like it. And I took study blocks instead. But that was like my approach to the school system was I don't actually need to take any classes except for grade 12 English. I will be in grade 12 English every week, every day. I will not care about the other classes because they don't matter. I was French immersion. So I did French from kindergarten and I stopped it in grade 11 and I challenged the test.

Christian Brim (28:44.056)
Did you take French?

Felly (28:54.975)
for the end of the year to get the grade that the people who take grade 12 wrench get.

Christian Brim (29:00.77)
Did you go on to university? Okay.

Felly (29:02.483)
I did not. I did not go to university.

Christian Brim (29:06.306)
And do you, I had this question asked of me and I'm gonna ask it of you. Do you think like the formal education is as important to succeed as, well, like if you were advising a younger person, would you advise them to go to university?

Felly (29:32.807)
I would probably not. I mean, it depends what that person wanted to do with their life. If they said they wanted to be a doctor, I'd said, you have no choice. It's university. But if they were someone like me who wanted to work in marketing or they wanted to be entrepreneurial or they didn't know what they wanted to do, I would recommend that people travel first because I think that you can learn way more traveling by yourself, not with a group of friends and not through a tour company. I think you can learn way more traveling.

even if it's just six months, then you could in a year of school. And also you then don't have the massive debt of the education system. But no, I don't recommend university for most things in life. think, especially in the entrepreneurial world, I see a lot of people who have degrees and they've never used them or their degrees aren't relevant to what they ended up doing. 18 is too young to decide what you want from the rest of your life.

Christian Brim (30:29.632)
I would agree with that, especially for boys. don't know about much about our prefrontal cortexes are not developed. So really to me, university is just kind of like a buffer to keep you from the rest of society so you don't screw everything up. Just here, we're going to park you here for four years and you can continue to grow up and then we'll let you out. What advice would you give your younger self in?

Felly (30:32.18)
Especially for boys.

Felly (30:49.289)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (30:58.67)
from an, well, not necessarily from an entrepreneurial standpoint, any standpoint.

Felly (31:06.517)
I think the best advice I could give my younger self would be that it will work out because I spent so many years in uncertainty. I left Vancouver and I went to Alberta because I didn't want to live there, but I didn't know what I was doing with my life. And I ended up working in seasonal work. And then in seasonal work, I was kind of like, what am I doing with my life? This isn't going anywhere again. Ended up in Australia.

After my one year visa in Australia was done, was, what am I doing? I'm going back to Vancouver, now what? And so there was a lot of periods.

Christian Brim (31:37.326)
Were you sentenced to Australia? mean, like, no, that was short. Okay, all right. Sorry.

Felly (31:41.349)
No, no, I just wanted to not live in winter anymore because Alberta was eight months of winter.

Christian Brim (31:45.856)
Okay, all right, fair enough, fair enough. there's, know, no, go ahead, sorry.

Felly (31:50.705)
Yeah, but I was just going to say there was a lot of periods where it was like kind of going through the motions, you know, like I'm going to go to Alberta because I got this job. I'm going to go to Australia because I got the visa and I've always wanted to. I'm going to go back to Canada because my visa is done. And it was like, I don't know what's next. I don't know what I'm doing. I didn't have a five year plan. I still don't really have a five year plan. So I would say like.

It's about, again, trust, trusting that it will work out, that what I'm trying to work towards will work.

Christian Brim (32:29.496)
Did your parents or your family try to talk you out of the entrepreneurial journey?

Felly (32:37.841)
every single day. No, no, they're done. But when I was in Alberta and I was like, I found the VA work and I was like, I'm gonna go to Australia, I'm gonna figure things out. And then even when I came back to Vancouver and I started building my business and my clientele, my parents would say to me all the time, like, why don't you go to school and get a real job?

Christian Brim (32:39.466)
Still? Okay. Okay.

Christian Brim (33:03.982)
Yeah, that's not gonna work. Yeah, I mean, I don't know about you, I'm a horrible employee. I haven't been an employee in 35 years and I couldn't be, I'd be fired. Okay, so I'm gonna pivot one more time. You said that you want to build the business to sell it, which I think is brilliant. What are you

working on in the business now to make that happen, make it saleable.

Felly (33:37.493)
Currently, it would be client growth, bringing on more people, making sure my systems can handle more people, and then hoping to bring on more team and just make it bigger.

Christian Brim (33:47.694)
Okay, how much bigger?

Felly (33:51.101)
We're, we sit around like three to five clients a month right now. And I would like to sit around like seven to 10. So double.

Christian Brim (33:56.832)
Okay, so double it. Okay. What kind of timeframe are you thinking?

Felly (34:04.213)
For client growth, I would like it in like two years to be booked out with 10 clients, like wait lists kind of thing.

Christian Brim (34:11.584)
Okay. Do you think, do you find that the technological changes have hurt or helped your business and its sale-ability or its growth prospects?

Felly (34:31.475)
I would say it hurt Ben helped because I had a lot of resistance to AI. And when Windchatt GBT really started taking off last year and I had a lot of like thoughts around like, am I going to become irrelevant? Is my whole business going to become redundant in the next year? But then I started like experimenting with it actually like.

Christian Brim (34:38.424)
That word again.

Felly (34:57.377)
using it for myself and I've built a couple of custom bots that I do use in my agency for creation and for ideation and like support with our packages. So now I think it helps.

Christian Brim (35:08.29)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. I, I think, I think there are still some people that are from a business standpoint, resisting this change, that, that they're kind of whistling past the graveyard thinking that it'll go away. and they have this underlying anxiety that it's going to fundamentally disrupt their business model. And I would say you're right. It is,

Felly (35:28.693)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (35:37.958)
I even, even if your business isn't content, I think that it's, it's going to affect every business. And I think that you have to be out front of it. I think you have to say, I need to learn it, to embrace it. Like I am with this stupid ass project. but you know, I, I think your natural reaction to change is to resist it. Right.

Like we want, we want to stay comfortable where we are. but I don't, think there's a dangerous place to be.

Felly (36:15.197)
No, think there's like not much happens in the comfort zone, right? Like there is no growth in the comfort zone. And if we want to keep moving forward, there has to be some level of growth.

Christian Brim (36:28.27)
Yeah, I mean, I think maybe maybe it's more generational. Like older people like me had this idea that, you know, as an entrepreneur, you'd reach some point and then it would be coasting. Like, you know, you built the business and then you, I don't know, fuck around. I don't know what you do, but did. But that's not reality. It may have been a reality. It's not a reality anymore.

Did you ever struggle with that idea of like, I'm gonna reach a point and then it's gonna be coasting? Do you ever think?

Felly (37:05.307)
I had this conversation like this year with friends that I was like, shouldn't it be easier? Like I'm about to hit six years in business. Shouldn't this be easier by now? But I think so much has changed over the six years between AI and how many AIs there are now and all of the improvements, but also just the economy and like global market has completely changed. We went through a whole pandemic, you know? So it's like so much has changed with

Christian Brim (37:10.38)
Hmm.

Felly (37:33.993)
buyer's behavior with my ideal clients, with everything, even social media platforms. Like I use threads a lot and threads didn't exist three years ago.

Christian Brim (37:44.504)
Yeah, no, you're right. Who is your ideal client? Who's your target?

Felly (37:50.397)
Entrepreneurs with long form content, either podcasts or YouTube.

Christian Brim (37:54.92)
No specific niche beyond that.

Felly (37:58.471)
No.

Christian Brim (37:59.661)
Hmm.

Christian Brim (38:03.178)
Interesting. I say that because I think one of the biggest decisions, most impactful decisions in my business was that further narrowing of my target market that I really resisted, that word again, for many years, often unconsciously. And so,

I asked that question to ask if maybe you're in a similar situation, like you're kind of not further defining a target market on purpose, but maybe you should. I don't know.

Felly (38:50.471)
I also don't know because I also have faced a lot of resistance with ideal clients and going like deep, deep, deep on exactly who. And yeah, like before I would say anyone that's creating content, right? Like if you've been creating content for more than six months, I can help you. And it's like, now we focus on people who have long form content. And I think that it's made a difference. Like we...

Christian Brim (39:07.448)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (39:13.293)
Mm-hmm.

Felly (39:16.861)
are targeting more specific, but also are getting more ideal recommendations or referrals, not recommendations, but yeah.

Christian Brim (39:25.624)
Do you see any commonality in the people that you attract?

Felly (39:34.641)
Not that I can pinpoint. Like, I tried to explain it to someone once as there are people that I think are cool, but it's like, that's not, that's not a specific category.

Christian Brim (39:48.896)
No, but I think it is an important factor. that actually is one of the questions we asked our team when we defined our target market was, okay, look at the, look at the people you're working with now. And one of the, was two questions. One, who do you like working with? And two, who values what we do? Right? we, we didn't approach it the right way. Right way.

Felly (39:51.189)
Mm.

Christian Brim (40:19.0)
But I think working with people that you want to work with is very important. You've got to have that resonance with people or it's not any fun. But the reason why I ask that is I'm thinking that there have to be... So you essentially solve what problem for your clients?

Felly (40:45.747)
we help them triple their visibility.

Christian Brim (40:50.004)
Visibility defined how.

Felly (40:52.979)
visibility as in their reach online.

Christian Brim (40:56.824)
So those are traffic metrics or engagement metrics.

Felly (41:01.557)
traffic.

Christian Brim (41:02.776)
traffic. Okay. Do you have, if you triple their, their traffic, what does that do for their business growth?

Felly (41:18.205)
more leads, more clients, yeah.

Christian Brim (41:18.286)
Is it a straight conversion? mean, like if I'm converting 1 % of my traffic, am I still going to be converting 1 % on three times the volume?

Felly (41:32.253)
Ideally, but this is where we do work with people who aren't new, right? Our ideal clients are established to some degree. They do have the systems to support the increased traffic. They do have the funnels that are proven to continue converting that traffic. They're coming to us because they want more traffic.

Christian Brim (41:38.54)
Right.

Christian Brim (41:53.614)
Okay. So yeah, I mean, I think one of the things, all business owners fail at to some extent is truly understanding the problem that they're solving. and, marketers specifically get lost in, I don't know, I'm saying you, but, but a lot of marketers get lost in that.

those metrics like we're increasing, we're increasing traffic, we're increasing conversions, et cetera, et cetera. But don't go further down the line to say, okay, your job as a marketer at the end of the day is to increase sales and to increase the rights sales. know, and, and, and if you are deep into that understanding for your client of who the ideal is and

what their buying decision is like and that journey, then you can increase the sales. I'm rambling. I went to a mastermind. I was invited as a guest to a mastermind of digital agency owners. And so these are people that are doing all the things, but they're still relatively small. They're not mega-agencies.

And I was shocked to find out that they had on average and they were totally fine with it. It was expected that they churned 60 to 70 % of their clients a year. And I'm like, doesn't that seem like a disconnect? Like if half of your clients leave every year and that's considered good.

Aren't you doing something wrong? Right? You're missing something.

Christian Brim (43:55.906)
What do you say?

Felly (43:57.973)
I I am also in that, that I do have a high churn rate. And I think it depends on the service that you do. Like when I see which of my friends who run agencies have high churn rates or not. Because for me, with how much content we create, a lot of the times our clients will say after the first three months, what our like minimum contract is, they'll say, well, I have enough content now. So I'm going to go away.

Christian Brim (44:24.462)
Fair enough.

Felly (44:27.039)
for two, three months and then come back. it's like, I've had this conversation, like how can we lessen that churn rate? Like, do we give less content? Like that doesn't seem like the right answer. Do we need to create a better system to make sure that they're using every single piece of content within the retainer, but then it's like about people's marketing strategies and what type of content they're getting, right? So.

Christian Brim (44:29.176)
Fair enough.

Felly (44:53.429)
Ternary is really interesting for me with agencies and I don't know if it's always a bad thing.

Christian Brim (45:03.02)
Well, it wouldn't be a bad thing if you completely solved their problem in six months and yeah, that's true. Although, like, if I had...

Felly (45:06.815)
Mm-hmm.

Felly (45:14.195)
Business model wise though, it's not ideal.

Christian Brim (45:16.948)
Right, right, right. So if I hire a marketing agency and they give me more sales than I can handle, know, their activities generate sales. mean, that means that my operational process, whatever it is I do, is full, right? I mean, like that's what that signals to me. Like stop

Felly (45:19.349)
you

Christian Brim (45:46.624)
stop sending me leads, I can't handle them all. Well, that could be that they don't have the right sales process. They're getting unqualified people. They're burning up bandwidth. It could be an onboarding problem for them. Like, you know, they're not able to get those people into their process. Or it could flat out be, I don't have enough bodies to serve this number. And I guess...

My, my thought on that is at the end of the day, the deeper you go in to your clients and figure out what the problem is, like, why are you telling me to stop? Like, is that a good thing? the, the more insight you're going to have into defining that target.

Just some thoughts. You know, I have to.

Felly (46:36.597)
No, I agree. It's definitely like when you when people leave, it's important to send like the feedback forms or have closing calls, right, to understand like, why are you leaving? What could we have done differently? Is there something we could have done to keep you and then making changes accordingly?

Christian Brim (46:54.678)
Yeah. And, and, and I think a lot of the problem is also that the people that are answering those questions don't truly understand the problem. Like I was just told we don't need anymore. Right. Like, but I don't know what the problem is over there. Why are they can't? Yeah. Feli, I feel like we could go on for days, but, you have, I'm sure a exquisite dinner, prepared for you by your.

Felly (47:08.339)
Mm-hmm

Felly (47:23.874)
Can you hear him cooking? I can.

Christian Brim (47:25.376)
No, but I'm just surmising of Time of Day and you said he was a good cook, so I want to let the listeners know how they find more about not Feli Day VA, although that is catchy, FD Studio.

Felly (47:44.341)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, so you can find me on the internet, felleaday.com. I'm on Instagram, threads, LinkedIn, Felleaday everywhere. And then all I talk about is my agency. So you'll see it mentioned everywhere.

Christian Brim (47:59.246)
I love it. Listeners will have the links in the show notes. If you like what you've heard, please rate the podcast, share the podcast, subscribe to the podcast. If you don't like what you've heard, shoot us a message and tell us what you'd like to hear and we'll get rid of Philly. Until then, ta ta for now.