004: Build in Public Report – 09 Oct 2022

Welcome to my weekly Build in Public report, where I discuss the activities that contribute to me building a $20K/month one-person business (starting from zero) and what I have learned each week. 

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In this edition:

Goals & targetsWebsite traffic updateRebranding update – Authentic Marketer is officially alive!Virtual coworking – pros and consTwitter growth8 steps to creating profitable partnerships + a powerful framework for partnershipsWhat’s next

Goals & targets

As I intended last week, I condensed my OKRs down to 1 objective per “department.”

This updated version makes it clear what the ONE priority is for each area of my business. What I like about this view is that it allows me to get a quick snapshot on progress for each key area. 

One thing that’s interesting to note is that even though the visual above makes it looks like nothing has happened in sales this past week, that’s not true. I’ve had some interesting dialogue with two prospective partners this past week. (More details under the sales section below)

Important Goings-On this past week

1/ Website Traffic update

Organic website traffic continues to trend up, which is good to see. 

I’ve been so focused on writing my weekly newsletter and onboarding my new coaching client that I didn’t have much time or energy for much else. So I dropped the ball on publishing new articles this week.

I plan to rectify that with a 7-day daily article writing challenge next week (and I’ve managed to wrangle my wife Cindy into being accountability buddies for each other).

2/ Rebranding update – Authentic Marketer is officially alive!

I can finally say that my rebranding process is complete and a success!

This has been almost two years in the making, so to get to this point is quite a milestone in my eyes. 

Why did I rebrand Simple Creative Marketing?

1) My old website sucked.

Six years after launching my website, I noticed it had a lot of issues – slow load time, hundreds of pages, lots of plugins, and broken links. It was a downright mess and just too big to clean up.

The proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back (although I associate more with a giraffe because of my height – I’m 6’1″) was that my website wasn’t loading quickly enough, and critical sales pages weren’t displaying correctly.

This potentially hurt sales and became a constant source of frustration for me.

I was once on a sales call with a potential client, trying to sell them my done-for-you case study service. They told me that they couldn’t view the packages I had available. Needless to say, I was embarrassed.

2) I wasn’t a fan of “Simple Creative Marketing” anymore.

It wasn’t doing a great job of representing my brand.

3) Internally, we (and I) were making some changes.

I needed a break. I felt burned out dealing with pandemic life, lockdowns, client work drying up, and being unable to travel outside Australia for a couple of years with my wife.

Six months or so leading up to that time, I felt like my business wasn’t working. This was a reflection of my inner state, and I was not in a good place mentally and spiritually. I’d lost my drive and my mojo.

During the pandemic, I started feeling that something was wrong with how I’d approached business – that there was a hidden cost of chasing fast growth and hustling.

My work had become monotonous and unfulfilling, and I was in dire need of a change. I also needed some time to improve my well-being and think about my beliefs and viewpoints on issues.

So my wife and I packed up our stuff and put it into storage, let go of our apartment in Sydney, and booked a one-way ticket to Portland, USA, to attend a crazy event called World Domination Summit.

This was also around the time that we ended our professional relationship with our excellent part-time VA, Janine Cabato. Janine was asked to go full-time with her other client, and we’re thrilled that she was given a chance to support herself and her family that way.

To read about some of the insights and lessons I gained from this process, check out my new article – Rebranding Small Business: Lessons from Our New Change in Identity. 

3/ Virtual coworking with Flow Club

My buddy George Samuels invited me to trial Flow Club – a virtual coworking startup. They’re a YC-funded startup and their tool facilitates virtual coworking sessions. 

Pros:

If you’re typically working in isolation and find that coworking with others can help you focus and access deep work, this can help.There are a variety of hosted sessions you can sign up for and join. If you don’t feel like speaking verbally to anyone, I was able to find a flow session that was chat-only which I thought was pretty neat. You can add your checklist of items you want to work on for each session or add them as you go.The session typically ends with a recap/celebration of what each person accomplished. Flow Club provides some stats that are useful for a reminder of what you’ve been able to accomplish whilst on the tool

They’re also testing a Flow Lounge function where you can jump in, and do pretty much the same as you would in a standard room – minus any human interaction.

I tested the Lounge function a couple of times and quite liked it (maybe even more than the standard rooms). 

Things they could improve:

There’s no real opportunity to get to know the other participants in your flow session. This makes sense as the whole value proposition is that you’ll get into the flow and get stuff done. Having said that, to me, one of the benefits of joining an in-person co-working space is that you get to meet new people, build relationships and collaborate. So if they could find a way to incorporate this aspect, that would be more appealing to me. When there were 4+ people on I found that Flow Club slows down my computer because of the constant live streaming video of myself and other participants. This might just be because my Macbook Pro is a few years old and probably in need of an upgrade. So you’ll have to test it yourself to see if you experience any issues.

Anyways, if you’re keen on giving virtual coworking a go, you can click here to get a guest pass to try Flow Club free for a whole month (instead of just 14 days).

After the trial, it’s $40 USD per month to keep using the tool. (Note: you can get a free month by referring anyone who signs up for the paid plan).