How I course corrected my worst business year - Part 2

You dialled into episode 1 where Cherie talked about TDP's no-good-very-bad-year... but episode 2 is where we talk about how Cherie - quite literally - CLIMBED her way out of that no-good-very-bad-year.

This year [21/22FY] was that one point in TDP's x11 year history where even Cherie, wired for perpetual optimism, says this was the moment where she thought to herself: the only reason I'm not closing this business right now... is because I *actually* can't afford to.

And so she persisted, and TDP went on to hit its best EVER season thanks to that persistence... and we are breaking it *ALL* down in this episode.

From half a million dollars down, to
BEST YEAR IN BUSINESS > EVER

This episode was proudly sponsored by Mel Browne Money.

Key Takeaways: 

• Why a full business audit is the first step in a business turnaround 
•  How business clarity can help a founder rebuild confidence and fall back in love with their business 
•  Why cutting operational expenses can improve profitability faster than chasing more revenue 
•  The hard truth about people-pleasing leadership and the courage to be disliked in business recovery 
•  Why financial visibility and founder-friendly reporting matter when making tough business decisions 
•  Why systems, operations, and workplace culture matter more than revenue growth alone 
•  How hiring for kind genius, not just talent, can strengthen a service-based business 
•  Why business recovery happens one good decision at a time, not through hope alone 

Hosted by Cherie Clonan [@cherie_thedigitalpicnic] and co-hosted and produced by Steph Clifford [@stephssocials] 

Follow us on Instagram @theclimbpod_

Check out our agency @thedigitalpicnic > we teach digital marketing, and we can manage yours, too. 

Transcript

Sponsor And Show Welcome

Cherie 0:00

This episode is brought to you by Mel Brown Money, who makes dealing with your finances simple without the jargon or finance bro energy. Mel is a financial educator, best selling author, and former financial advisor who's helped tens of thousands of people understand their money, invest with confidence, and actually build wealth. And if the word wealth feels icky, think about it this way. She helps you build choice. Through her courses, webinars, masterclasses, speaking, and books, Mel brings both the heart and the smarts to finance. Because the truth is, you're never too young, too old, too broke, or even a little bit broken to get better with money. And that's exactly what Mel helps you do. Welcome to the Climb, a podcast about the messy, brilliant, relentless journey of building something meaningful. As an introvert who believes in adding value, not noise, every 40-minute conversation is built to respect your time, but also actually teach you something useful.

Steph 1:01

Today we are covering how Sheree got out of her no good, very bad year. This is the Hope episode. It is episode two. So if you haven't already, please go back and listen to episode one. Episode one is the tunnel of shit in the Shawshank Redemption, and episode two is getting to that island. So if you've just come from episode one and feeling a little bit, you know, uh heavy, wait, we're gonna lighten that mood right now. So, Cherie, kick us off. Get us to the hope and get us to the island.

The Full Business Audit

Cutting Costs And Hard Calls

Cherie 1:31

Uh, island life looks good on any founder. I would wish island life on every founder, and if they have team, their associated team. I'm relying on people having listened to the tunnel of shit episode to understand even what the island actually means as a reference, but also what it took to get us there and even just work out the timeline. So I'm gonna take you all in this episode to 2023. Um, and first I want to walk you through what's required to get to the islands. And so, spoiler alert, it's a full freaking audit. If things aren't working, you can't finger to the wind on this stuff. You can't, you know, hope and pray. Um, or look, hey, no shade to anyone who thinks they can like please teach me how, but uh, all of my hoping and praying didn't do quite as much as what my audit and my full audit did, and that took me, you know, a long time to do. But in this stage, I was just all in on assessing the damage because there was some serious damage. Um, and I'm gonna say that I actually found so much clarity within all of that assessment. And for those who've joined from episode one, you'll have heard at some points how devastated I was to even at some points have had this business. Like I was just really down and out as a founder and definitely regretting some life decisions around, you know, launching a business. Um, so I need to let you know that not only was the audit so beneficial in terms of what I got from just insights and data and you know, um, so much more, it actually made me fall in love with my business again. So I'm so glad I started there, Steph, because I don't know that I could have proceeded to much, if anything else, if I'd not just gone all in on that audit and fallen in love with the business again. Because it got me back to believing in it because I could sort of pretty well see what was not working, where it all really was going wrong. And I referenced in episode one that the tunnel of shit really did begin before the tunnel of shit officially began. So I started actually with the easier stuff after that audio, you know. Like I I recognized, um, oh, there's just even some top-line cultural problems here, you know. Um, some of them were pretty easy. For example, I even just did top line things like gathering my team around, and I just sort of said, hey team, please don't refer to me as rogue cloning. I don't like it. It's not looking good on me, it's not making me feel good, you know, and it's changing how I lead. It was really infantilizing. And I, of course, said to them all, I know this description is, you know, has really endearing origins. And I described it to begin with, but it's just taken a bit of a dark path. And I thought, if I'm gonna get this business out of the shit, I need to have a team of humans who actually believe in me and believe in the fact that I can. So Rogue Clonin was never going to, you know, um get us out of that. So for those um who aren't aware, that was a real nickname for me around um most of the years preceding. I was just like, Cherie's rogue, she's loose, um, not to be relied upon, you know, and so on. Never um said it honestly out of malice at all, but just like, ah, Cherie, just being Cherie, you know, and it's like, uh, I need to do, you know, we need to do better than that. So losing that title to me felt like finally getting, you know, a seat at the table again. From there, I significantly reduced operational expenses, not only via wages, um, but also in in some of my auditing, I realized we had Girl Bossed far too close to the sun. The offices that we had were so wasteful. Um, we did not need at least half of the space that we're in. Um, so we downsized. Our landlords were so incredible and moved us across to a smaller place. Um, no harm, no foul, just like, yep, I understood. Let's get you across here immediately. Um, so that was really helpful. But beyond office reduction, I had to do some hard stuff, Steph. And in episode one, I talked about how much of a head in the sand um, you know, baby leader I had been. And Dave even referred to some parts as Piss Week. I had to put some pretty big girl pants on for uh a recovering people laser. I had to pause policies at TDP that meant a lot to me. So the reason why was we just could not afford them. And we were acting like we were this cashed-up business with these policies that we couldn't even afford to sustain. So I'll give you some examples of what I had to remove in that 500k down era. It was life leave. That was costing our business close to $80,000 per year. To be so honest, I didn't think it was making the impact that it should have been anyway. You know, uh, that's two extra weeks of annual leave per year for each person, for example. For those who don't understand what the life leave policy was, it was one paid uh day off work per month on a day of their choosing. It just wasn't doing what we needed it to do. It definitely wasn't reducing sick leave. In fact, it was increasing it. So we were finding that folks would take life leave and then it would be a sick leave the next day, which became a four-day weekend. Um, I don't mean this in an absolutely not at all um an accusatory way. I'm just putting a HR hat on here. And if you roll out a policy, you need for there to be like benefits, and it was actually just double cutting us, you know. Uh couldn't have needed resourcing and team more, and we were copying um extra days, you know. Uh with that, we had to remove paid birthday leave. That was a really rough one for me. Birthdays just matter so much to me. Not my own. I well, yes, mine too, actually. But I really care about other people's birthdays. I really do. I want them to be genuinely happy on their birthday, you know. And this one really hurt. Um, I had to halve our parental leave policy. Uh, we had been paying 12 weeks, which honestly isn't really that much. Um, when you look at if folks are going to council, I think it's some wild, wild amount of weeks, which I wish I could do, but as an indie agency, absolutely not. So we had to reduce parental leave from 12 weeks' pay to six, and that one hurt me because I had a really hard time as a postpartum mum both times. Um I raised my babies without a mum, and there was no village. Um, there was just fuck all support, you know. Um, Dave and I genuinely did it on our own, and I wanted to do better. So yeah, that one really was hard. That took so much bad arsery to just in my mind be so hard, you know, on things that I really cared about. So, not because of these policy changes, but all in all, at this time, I actually upset a lot of people for a plethora of different reasons. There were redundancies, there was reduction in operational expenses, there was X, there was Y, there was Z. I was really unpopular. Um, and that's okay. Popularity has never mattered to me. Um, I was a geek all throughout primary and high school, so I've never chased popularity, but I don't want to be permanently disliked. Like no one really wants to be. You know, you don't wake up and think, oh, I can't wait to be disliked today. Um, I had to have a lot of hard conversations. I'm gonna be really honest with you, every time I upset someone, I just kept repeating that all-important reminder to myself of remember, Shere, when you were pleasing everyone. I actually ended up more disliked when I was trying to please everyone and definitely disrespected. And if nothing else matters to those listening, I was 500k down. So even when you're trying to do everything for everyone, you're down, you're out, you're disliked anyway, definitely disrespected. Um, so if we're just focusing on ROI here, um there's not much of an ROI on trying to be everything to everyone. I can definitely give you that spoiler alert here. So I would say though, what gave me hope was at this exact time, as much as I was disliked in this era, um, I was receiving just little moments, micro but meaningful to me, of feedback from some folk within the team. I've got a direct quote here because I've still um got it saved. It just reminds me to have the courage to be disliked. Um, and this particular person who's still with us today, um, and I admire them so much, such a leader. They said, I know the hard stuff is still to come, and this may sound odd, but I'm so glad to have you back. I can still see the real you again, and it's fucking inspirational. I love that. Oh, I was like, wow, uh really? You sure? Yes, I'm feeling really disliked right now. Um, but no, that meant everything to me at that time because I thought, I think what's obvious to me is for too long TDP had attracted folk to the business who wanted to hang out in comfort zone. That's what the nicest place on the internet does. And I say that inverted commas. We never gave ourselves that tagline, our community did. I loved it. I just didn't realise how damaging that could be. Steph, you won't even, I don't even know if you noticed it. Um, as of two weeks ago, I actually updated it to the kindest place on the internet because nice is bullshit. Did you notice? I did notice.

Steph 10:51

Oh my god. Only because I think in our Sunday Growth Club membership, um, you were discussing bios and so you'd have ours in there.

Cherie 11:01

True. Oh wow. Details orientation. It was important, you know, because there's, you know, obviously such a difference. So I think that piece of feedback reminded me while I'm upsetting folk, I think I'm upsetting them because all of the the comfort of comfort zone in general was being ripped away from them. And we needed to pivot fast to a growth zone. We needed to attract people who wanted to come here to do the best work of their careers. We needed to just build out try-hard energy, you know, um, and really define what kind genius looks like at the digital picnic. It's that comment, it's people who can sit in the rough and the tough and, you know, actually enjoy it, um, which meant everything to me. So around this period, I came to the realization that the 2023 and beyond, you know, TDPR needed to be a completely different breed of TDPR. Um, so we kind of went all in on this sort of saying around like it's one team, one dream. There's no individualism here, you know, we're we're a team. Um, I don't want that weaponized. Um, I don't want to be like, oh, well, you know, you've got to do everything because one team, one dream. I'm really clear on that. Um, but yeah, we really sort of agreed as a team on one particular uh innovation day that it felt very finding Nemo. So at that point in TDP's history, we felt like we were that final scene in Finding Nemo where uh there's a basket of fish and the boat has captured them all. Um, the boat is the enemy.

Steph 12:33

For those that haven't seen Nemo, here we go.

Cherie 12:37

She loves the Disney spin.

Steph 12:39

Really in-depth look into that final scene. Absolutely. Sorry, please get going. It's a lovely picture being painted.

Finance Clarity And Mount Profitability

Cherie 12:47

But we're the fish in the basket. And when you think it down and out, I've always thought, well, one fish is going to get captured, but if we all band together, we can go against the boat. And so that was the energy around this time, and it was needed. So yeah, we swam against every boat imaginable, and there were a lot of them at the time. Um, and yeah, really worked hard to free ourselves from that um proverbial net. We now had full-time in-house dedicated finance support from Mama Finance, Michelle Howe, head of finance here at the digital picnic, still to this day. Uh, and we moved away from a really dangerous reactive approach with regards to TDP's uh finances, and now we're so proactive. Uh, we even have forecasts, who to thunk it.

Steph 13:34

Wow.

Systems Reset And Kind Genius Hiring

Cherie 13:36

At the same time, I demanded that all financial data be relayed to me in a way that I could understand it as an autistic, you know, woman with a dyscalculea profile. So for those who might not even know this, even maybe about yourself, I can't read uh spreadsheets, especially if they're in a font called Ariel or Ariel. Ariel, let's go with Ariel. It's not all Disney show. I I preferably love Poppins. Um, it's the kindest neurodivergent-friendly one for me, and I've heard that is um across the board. Um, so I was really honest with Michelle about what I needed, and I needed some colour coding. And once I um actually had data presented to me in a way that my brain could understand, it was I was unhinged. I I was a brand new person. Um, I knew exactly what the fuck we had to do was, you know, I just it has never been clearer to me and is still to this day something that I completely understand. So, you know, I studied that data long enough to know what we needed to do, but I needed to get the team on board Steph. So I, another analogy for these poor human beings listening to this podcast, and this is really niche, so I'm not expecting everyone will understand this one, but I'm a 1980s kid and I grew up when it was just TV, there was no Netflix, there was, it was just whatever the flip was on. Uh, we as a family, and this is giving big the castle vibes, but we loved The Price is Right. And we would all sit down and watch The Prices Right together as a family. Uh, when I say all, my dad, my sister, and I, um, massive family unit, and we loved it, but there was one particular game in The Price is Right with Cliffy, like Cliff the mountain hiker, and they yodled. It was like Yodole, he-hoo, as he's like going up this mountain towards maximum, you know, dollars on the show. I built the same thing for my team. I got it illustrated by a beautiful graphic designer friend from Your One and Only, Tara Ladd, put it up in a huge printable, massive magnet that went on TDP's whiteboard. I had the revenue targets as the flags that we needed to get to. So there was like, this is breakeven for the month. This is where we actually get to breathe, and here's where we get to grow. So there were three different moments that we could have in terms of how much revenue was being pulled into the business. I wanted to make it so clear we're not going to celebrate breakeven. Otherwise, this is nothing more than an expensive hobby and no shade to the team, but you are a really bloody expensive set of friends to have, you know. So I'm like, we're not here to break even, you know. Australian slang would say something like, we're not here to fuck spiders, you know, something like that. Dave, my husband says this all the time. Um, so we meant serious business. We called this mount profitability, and the team needed that. They really, really needed it. They needed the transparency, they needed to know what was to be celebrated versus what wasn't because they hadn't realized that we were just celebrating goddamn losses, not even break-even, you know. Yay, you did good, you dug a hole, you know, like it just meaningless. And I'm so grateful that uh I'm just actually grateful for my innovative brain with that stuff. Like, I know it just seems like a magnet when you hear it, but it was so much more. It was like, this sounds very chat GPT. It wasn't a magnet, Steph, it was a moment. It's a visual representation exactly of the climb. You're doing great, Sherry. You're doing great. We climbed that mountain, mount profitability, you know, and um only recently I've just uh maybe a couple of months ago taken that magnet down. We don't need it anymore. We are so clear on what we need to do as a business monthly. We don't need a freaking mountain, we don't need to play yodeling music like we did a few times. Like we are so clear, but in order to get us there, we needed an ongoing visual sort of you know representation. So around this time, the biggest wins that we experienced in 2023 were hate to say it, but operational expenses reduction, um, which really taught me what I already knew. Um, and that is that you can turn a business around just by focusing on cost control far more than you can ever turn it around via focusing on increasing revenue. So the biggest lever you can pull when you're in the shit is operational expenses. You know, you will do so much more in terms of even just breaking even or God hope, like profitability if you focus on OPEX instead of, oh, we just need to add more. Um, what's the point of adding more if something's kind of broken anyway? You know? So that was a really important lesson, you know, for me to learn around that time. If you haven't nailed systems, ops, or workplace culture, no amount of increased revenue is going to save your ass. You know, it really won't. So I around this time tasked myself with the mammoth task of overhauling our systems, our ops, and our culture to reflect the vision that I'd had for TDP from the beginning. I worked on everything right through to even just updating JDs. We didn't have updated JDs, you know. Took me about six weeks to completely overhaul them all. I used AI to help me, it was incredible. And I just felt so proud. Again, I know I could have outsourced this, but I needed to fall in love with my business again. So these were like love projects. Doing each one made me feel so effing proud. Um, I fell in love with each role and what it could do for this business by just overhauling something as simple as a JD. And I did something with those JDs that's still heavily celebrated online, where I just made them so neurodivergent friendly, all brains benefit, but really spelt out what that person needed to do, you know, within that, um, within that role. And it also showed to them where you can go beyond this, what's required to get there. And then they can click on the next role available and see what the salary bandwidth is for that, because we're very open with you know, sharing salary ranges and so on. So I kind of figured out that around this time it was obvious to me that the secret to scaling a service-based business really well is only hiring for kind genius, not mean geniuses. So I shared a little while ago, about a year ago now, that back in my tunnel of shit era, I felt like the digital picnic felt like the digital prick nick. And it's not a nice way to word it. It's not that we had any pricks, it's just it was prickly behavior, you know. Um, I don't think anyone, you know, is inherently just a prick. It's just that it felt prickly at the time, and I didn't like that, you know. So I needed to move away from any kind of mean genius and more towards what is kind genius. And I got that through my business coach. I mean, I came up with the kind genius, but she had introduced me to the ideal team player framework from Patrick Lincioni. So, you know, the the definition of ideal person to have on your team is someone who's humble, hungry, and smart. And I realized, well, that's pairing two of those words together, that's the kind, and then the smart is the genius. And I need all three because I've had people on team who've got the kind, but unfortunately not enough genius within the role to sort of succeed within it and an unwillingness to be mentored. That's a danger spot. But I've also had the genius without the kind, and they're the workplace bullies. No one wants to work with that. So that was my big sort of wow, okay, kind genius, huh? I've got to recruit for that, and that only. I'm not gonna say I got it right every step of the way, and on an ongoing basis, I won't. But what I know now is I'm a different person these days, and if I invite something into the workplace, and especially within the first six months, I've got an opportunity to make sure, is this what was represented in the job interview? Because if it isn't, we need to have some conversations and I can either coach that person towards kind genius, or sometimes they recognize I don't want to be here. I've made a mistake, you know. So I'll do the hard things and you know, have the hard conversations because I now know I'm crystal clear on this. I will never hire mean genius again. I just won't. I don't even understand it. I can't relate to it like it's that viral internet meme like go to therapy, take a pottery class, hug a fucking tree. Yeah, you know, sort out your issues, but do not apply for a role at the digital picnic because we do not want that here. Not I, we.

Steph 21:57

It's kind of like you know, how people label their Customer. So like their customer might have a name and they talk about the customer and all of its traits. It's like we've just done the same thing, but for our hires, it's like this is what our employee is. It's a kind genius. It does these things, it speaks this way, it acts this way. So true.

Grit, Gratitude And Entitlement

Cherie 22:16

It's like its own little JD that now you so true. You've just made me in this moment as we're recording, Steph. Now I want to go back to year 10 biology or something and do the anatomy of a kind genius and put that into our onboarding deck for team. Love that. I feel like people, you know, need to understand what does a kind what is a kind genius, you know. Somewhere around this period, I'm timeline is a little blurry because this was a rough time, so I'm not going to get like crystal clear accuracy on exact even months, to be honest, but especially dates. We will need every single date, unfortunately. Yeah, this Sure, you are in court. We need on this day at this particular under oath, did we not mention that? Right. Um, but somewhere in the mix, somewhere in the I guess climb to the island, I invested a significant amount in team-wide training with my own business coach, leadership consulting, um, parts, you know, um, additionally to that as well. We explored everything that the digital picnic is and what it isn't, and we agreed as a team on what our non-negotiables, you know, are and were. Our big realization from this training, though, was that we actually had a grit problem in that there was a lack of grit, unfortunately. Um, a lot of them sort of said, I have a lack in grit. Um, and I was like, wow, that's so accountable.

Steph 23:38

How would they have defined grit at that point?

PR Momentum And Firing Well

Cherie 23:40

Um, one person in particular who I've had so much admiration for ever since said, Hey, Sheree, and this was in a group discussion with um a really safe facilitator for these conversations. They said, Um, I started out gritty, but the longer you spend at a workplace like this, the more you take it for granted. And I'm in that stage. And I was like, You are kidding. I'm so flawed by your honesty. I actually really appreciated it because it reminded me of a guy that I used to date who was like the nicest guy. I he used to frustrate me. He was too nice. Yeah. Yep. I was like, just be a bit of a batter. Yeah. Do something. Yeah, yeah. And so when that person shared that share, they shared that it was what contributed to decreased grit, you know. Um, and I really admired that. So we identified a real lack of grit and a bit of a lack in gratitude as well, taking what many in the team described as a really good workplace for granted, like I did for that guy that I used to date. Yeah, you know, I just was like, oh, too nice, you know. And so what that resulted in was a real entitlement problem at the digital picnic. So yeah, I think, like I said, what what sort of inspired me the most at that time is that the team recognized it together. They named it. I never, I sat deliberately, really silently that day. I just listened. You know, no one's meant to ever be the hippo. That means highest paid person, you know, within the room. I'm not, but people would assume I am, you know. And so I recognize that most people would assume that I'm the hippo at the digital picnic, so I need to keep my mouth much more shut. I have to listen to others, you know. And so that's what I did. And, you know, with regards to all of that, we sort of named our biggest cultural problems and then did our best to work away from them. It was really inspiring, um, to be honest. It was a bit of a turning point. It didn't fix anything overnight for anyone listening who thinks, oh, okay, I'll just invest in this and gather the team and say out loud, we have a grip problem or we we have entitlement creep within the workplace. It doesn't, it this took even from that day, I would say still 18 months to get to a much better spot on our lack of grip problem. Also, one of the better decisions I made at this time, and you won't believe it when I tell you this, because you're thinking, wow, half a million dollars down. She's investing in X and she's investing in Y. And now I'm about to tell you that we also invested in Z, which was PR for the first time for the digital picnic. This brings us to about 2024 or more towards the end of 2023, uh, but kicking into 2024 with momentum. Um, and that was through um a beautiful PR boutique by the name of Odette and Co. We four times the investment within two months. Yeah. It's surreal. Incredible. I know. I continued to hire well, really well. That kind genius energy was really contagious amongst the entire team. And it just reminded, you know, even our long-term TDPers and you know, kind geniuses that they are, kind genius. I did also fire well. It's just really hard to sort of say out loud. I I'm just sharing this to give people permission to know that you're allowed to fire if it's not working out. I fire really well, and when I say that, I mean with so much integrity. I always recognize that it's a full-time job to look for a full-time job. So we pay well beyond the one-week notice that is meant to be given before six months is up. Um, and that's because I, like I said, it's a full-time job to look for a full-time job. I've never hired to fire. That's not the goal. It's a lot of money to recruit for one role. Time, money, just all of the things. Um, our onboarding is really generous, even in terms of what we gift folk when they join. So trust me when I say this, we don't hire to fire. But if it gets to that point, I want to make sure it's done with as much integrity as you know, humanly possible. So I focused on making sure that if something hasn't been nailed, we need to fire as well as we're hiring. You know, um, not everyone is going to work out the at the digital picnic. And if they're not right for us or we're not right for them, more importantly, I'm not going to shy away from those hard conversations anymore. Um, around this time, we signed dream client after dream client after dream client, and the values alignments just got so much more obvious. It was really inspiring. We were doing victory laps around the offices, Steph. And now, even to this day, we're at a point where we have a full portfolio of clients who aren't just clients. They're we would consider them very dear friends. We are at a bare minimum, a genuine extension, you know, to their internal team. I guess in amongst all of that, we drove multiple leads to the business that were some of the largest retainers we had ever experienced at the digital picnic within our history. And I can assure you that throughout all of that, we stayed clear on what was most important to the digital picnic, which was to focus on transformation, not just transaction. So, you know, that that felt really special to go from a period dating back to 2021 where folks were dramatically underpaying and uh sometimes treating us pretty poorly, you know, to a much better spot. I watched the profit and loss spreadsheets go from consecutive monthly losses of 50 to 100 to consecutively green, sometimes by 97 cents.

Steph 29:10

We'll take it.

Awards, Salary Fixes And Joy

Cherie 29:11

We'll take it. It still counts. When you've gone from 100k losses to um seeing the PL become green, and I guess maybe this sounds arrogant, but knowing that you played a huge role in that, and for anyone who's ever doubted me, and I've got so many, uh, what could Cherie do? She's so rogue, she's so loose. Well, put that PL in poppins and you just look out. I can do a lot. And I think really proudly I delivered on a promise that I've forever made to my team, which is the minute I can, I will. So as long as there's a business justification for something and an ability for the business to do it, I would. Um, and so as a result, we looked at our salary bandwidths. Um, this is more towards 2024-ish. And I needed them to be more competitive. Again, I wanted to surpass industry standards, I wanted to out-compete. Um, we were lagging, you know. And so we updated every salary bandwidth within the entire organization. That was monumental. It is so hard to do that in a service-based business. Um, it has such a big difference in terms of how much new revenue you have to bring in every month. Um, but we did it. We reintroduced life leave and birthday leave and all of the other operational costs that we'd cut in 2023's recovery era. Um we made multiple internal promotions, but this time it was based on a freaking genuine justification. We also made multiple external hires and we hired really well there. And then towards the end of the year, and this is now getting us into 2024, we actually won two of the largest awards you can win within our industry at the BT Awards. They are our industry's best awards. And um, they were named, we were named as the agency who was breaking through glass ceilings, which was so inspiring. And I won Woman of the Year for 2024.

Steph 31:10

Woo!

Cherie 31:12

With a mouthful of cheese.

Steph 31:13

Yes, that might be another story in itself.

Cherie 31:16

Oh my lord.

Steph 31:17

Moments of your life where you wanted the earth just to swallow you up.

Cherie 31:21

I really did. I didn't know there was such a thing as woman of the year at this particular industry event. We thought we were going there because we'd been nominated for the People's Choice Award. And I actually thought we might have it in the bag. I I went in not arrogant, but just so weirdly confident, which is so unlike me. You know me. I would never walk in and think, ah, it's ours.

Steph 31:43

Yeah, no.

Energy Tracking And Final Lessons

Cherie 31:44

Oh, we just got too caught up in our own commentary with people saying, I voted for you every day from different freaking IP addresses. And I just was like, I think I'm feeling so confident. We didn't get it. And I thought, oh, uh, that hurts, you know. Um, but I was like, it's okay, it's totally fine. We're just kind of a really great night as a team. And then we went we got numbed uh for the breaking through glass ceilings and won that. Um, then it gets to the end of the night. We had no idea there was this private award that no, it wasn't on the agenda. Um, and I heard them saying something about woman of the year, and I was like, wow, actually, Steph, I can remember my exact thoughts. I thought that must be such a genuinely impressive human. I just thought, are they gonna bring out like I pictured that being like Australian of the year? And I thought, I wonder, what do you have to do to achieve that? And then you just stood up. Yep. So I'm sitting there and I'm thinking, I can't wait to hear whoever this person is. What's their story? Uh, mouth full of cheese. I'm living my best cheese platter life at this point. There's cheese, there's fig, fig jam, there's you know, just uh crackers, it's it's the whole thing, you know, mouthful. Um, and then I heard Cherie cloning. Um, and Jesse on our team screamed. Danny just blinked and stared, and Cassie was like, that's you, girl. Um, and I was, I just thought, oh my lord. Yeah. Um, and so yeah, walked up, accepted the award, um, was so unprepared that I spoke about cicadas for like five minutes straight. It was brutal. I I said to the team, I know you took the video. Can you please delete it? I never want to see that. That was humiliating. I just never would have thought that that would be me after the well, it that time it was rounding out the best year I've ever had as a founder, which was 2024. That is the happiest I've ever been in my entire TDP existence. I worked with incredible humans within the business. Even uh folks who didn't work out, it worked out really well when it didn't work out. You know, we we ended it with so much integrity. So it was the best year I've ever had. You could not wipe the smile off my face, the smile off my heart. And yeah, I'm just I'm really glad I had that year. I'm forever grateful for it. And so for this episode, I'm gonna finish it up here by saying if you are stuck in a tunnel of shit, it's possible to get to the island. Uh it takes a lot of grit and a lot of business acumen. It takes courage to be disliked. Um, you have to make really hard calls. Um, you have to look at yourself and start to really ask hard questions of yourself, like, what patterns am I allowing to keep showing up to pull me back to the same place? Because I was recognizing it didn't matter who, there was no particular name attached to some of this stuff. I knew if I kept letting these same systems run me, we were going to be in a pretty bad spot. Um, it would just be a new person doing the same old shit that I'd experienced in 2021. And I didn't want that for me or our team anymore. So I looked in, called myself in and up, um, and went on to have the best year I've ever had as founder.

Steph 34:59

Yeah. Wow. And to think literally, yeah, a few years before you were genuinely wanting to get out of that business.

Cherie 35:06

If I could have afforded to close it up, it would have been closed.

Steph 35:10

Yeah. What do you think you would have done?

Cherie 35:13

I would have worked for a particular political party who'd offered me a role.

Steph 35:17

Wow.

Cherie 35:18

Yep. Um, and I couldn't feel more values aligned to them. The salary was, I still to this day will never come close to earning that. Um, at the digital picnic, and that's okay. I'm I'm happy now. It was a really, really tempting offer. I nearly took it.

Steph 35:33

That's so interesting to know. Like there really was another path that you could have taken.

Cherie 35:37

Yep, absolutely.

Steph 35:38

I'm glad that you didn't.

Cherie 35:39

I'm glad too. I'm really glad, you know. Now we work with them in a different way. Yeah. Agency side. Yeah. Yep.

Steph 35:46

So that's the end of a big two-parter. If you do have any further questions about episode one or two, definitely jump in our DMs at the climb pod underscore. Or you can have head over to at the digital picnic on Instagram as well, hang out with us there. But I guess for anyone that is in their own worst year, what would be something that they could do this week, for example, to start turning that around?

Cherie 36:11

Yeah, that's a really good question. And I think beyond the obvious that was mentioned in the episode, like you'd have to start with an audit, right? But we've already spoken to that. So hopefully folks have felt inspired to do something there. Something really big that I did that I didn't mention in this episode was uh at a particular point, I needed to seriously get real about what was adding energy to my life as a founder, but also I think more importantly, what was draining my energy as a founder. So I actually created a really basic spreadsheet. Like I'm not much of a spreadsheet, bro, if I'm being really honest, but I can definitely follow one, you know. And so I set up this particular spreadsheet that was so simple, it's too embarrassing even to share. Like, you can do this at home, kids, you know. Um, and it just had columns dedicated to energy raise versus energy drain. So what was giving energy and what was draining it? And then I colour-coded it because I wanted to have a really quick, easy way to look at was there a particular colour that matched a theme that was heavily draining on energy each month and/or quarter? You know, and then when I got to the end of the year, I just wanted to be able to look at it all almost bird's eye view and say, what colour am I seeing the the very most in either of those sections, like energy rays or energy drain? When I looked at energy drain, this might surprise you, Steph. There were so many categories I came up with that could drain my energy. There was only one colour every time.

Steph 37:38

Oh, I don't know.

Cherie 37:41

I don't even know I'm allowed to share.

Steph 37:44

Okay.

Cherie 37:46

Um people. I people are an energy raise for me. It's people management that is the drain for me. Like I just I don't get high off of really say sometimes even super basic complaints. I'm just like, I is this real? Like I sometimes can't believe that that would slide into my inbox, you know. And it just, I'm like, oh my lord, I don't even know what to do with this, you know. Um, so that's okay. It's not great, actually. It's not a great attribute of mine, to be really honest. But that's why I've invested in having ahead of people and culture here, because there are real human beings out there who get really high from that. They would say that's energy raise for them. It's not for me. I like to save my energy on the sometimes smaller things so that I can um do what actually raises my energy, which is lead an overall people and culture vision. Yeah. So it was only one colour. And it is, if I could get really specific, I get drained by folks hanging out in probably victim mode too much rather than creator mode. Um, I don't like folks who constantly raise problems with no solutions attached to them. That just drains me in a really big way. The profit and loss, that those spreadsheets are important, but so is tracking a founder's energy. So, you know, what's your profit raise and what's your loss drain and track that all year? And if there's some recurring themes, you need to take action on that. And also what's showing up most in energy raise, uh, we need more of that.

Steph 39:16

Yeah. Yeah. It also makes sense though, because I mean, in such a growth phase, everyone is feeling that, like at all levels of a workplace. So it's only natural that people are like issues are gonna happen, or you know, confusion over what's changing and what's staying the same. And absolutely. As I said, like people just be peopling and we can't do anything about that. That's just natural.

Cherie 39:38

Couldn't be more accurate. People have every right to be people.

Steph 39:42

All right. So looking back now, what are you most grateful for? What are the lessons that you come out of that year and you think, yeah, I'm kind of grateful for some things.

Cherie 39:51

Oh gosh. Yeah, look, the building out of a business acumen I could never have built had I just had every year in my business owning life be easy sunshines, lollipops, and rainbows. I actually don't think a really easy ride in business builds business acumen really well. Actually, it's the harder stuff. It just it's like Jumonji level 900 on your business acumen build out. Um, so I am now really proud of the business acumen that I have. Um, I actually genuinely believe that I'm really qualified for the role that I'm in. Whereas before I would say parts of me felt really impostery, but now I know I'm the right person for the role at this point in time. It could be that I this business grews to the point where I'm like, oh, I'm a bottleneck. And I will do the right things with that as well, because I've also got enough business acumen to recognize if I'm a bottleneck, I would hire someone to solve that, you know, very quickly. But yeah, really grateful for business acumen development kind of on crack for lack of a better word, but it just did something to my brain chemistry. Yeah. Yeah.

Steph 40:56

My final question for you is do you think that every leader needs to go through a bad year?

Cherie 41:02

I wouldn't want them to have that. I don't think anyone deserves to have really tough years in business. But to quote the great Australian movie The Castle, it's like there's wristles and then Daryl says, Yeah, but it's what you did with them, Doll.

Steph 41:16

You know?

Cherie 41:16

So if you're gonna have that bad year, what are you gonna do with it, Dull? You know, and um, I'm really glad that I was able to go in uh with I think energy that predates anything that business acumen built within me. I mean, to be so honest, like growing up in a 1980s foster care system, I was never gonna collapse over one bad year in business. You know, I've been through far harder stuff than one hard year in business. So I think I had the right profile to navigate a really hard year. To anyone listening, um, all right, so you've got some wristles. One bad year. What are you gonna do with them, Del?

Steph 41:55

I love that. Thank you so much for sharing that tree. And I hope that anyone who's listening to this who is having a bit of a tough year can see that no matter how hard it gets, there is an island at the end of that tunnel.

Cherie 42:09

There is, yeah. Island life is just one good decision after another, and then it gets you to the island. It's like a board game.

Steph 42:16

Yeah. It might not feel as fun as a board game at Monopoly when everyone's fighting. Yes. So thank you so much for listening. If you want to support our potty, you can subscribe, and we will see you next week.

Cherie 42:33

Thanks for listening to the climb with Cherie Clonan and Steph Clifford. Here's to growth, grit, and bloody good stories.

Steph 42:43

This episode was brought to you by Mel Brown Money, who makes dealing with your finances simple without the jargon or finance bro energy. Mel is a financial educator, best-selling author, and former financial advisor who's helped tens of thousands of people understand their money, invest with confidence, and actually build wealth. And if the word wealth feels icky, think about it this way she helps you build choice. Through her courses, webinars, masterclasses, speaking, and books, Mel brings both the heart and the smarts to finance. Because the truth is you're never too young, too old, too broke, or even a little bit broken to get better with money. And that's exactly what Mel helps you do.