New Year. New You. Welcome to 2024.
Hey there, I’m Jillian Kendrick and welcome to the Momentum Marketing podcast. I’m a mama, a wife, an entrepreneur and a three time best selling co-author in each episode. You’ll get real world, practical advice and strategies and maybe a parenting tip or two along the way. If you’re ready to create a business that supports your family and your lifestyle, then you’re in the right place.
Hey, there, it’s your host, Jillian Kendrick. I am so excited to be back with you for another episode of the Momentum Marketing podcast. I absolutely love doing these podcast episodes. I hope you enjoy listening to them as much as I love making them. Coming up with topics, writing down my ideas and sharing my 13 plus years of online marketing and world knowledge experience with you has really been just so much fun and such a pleasure and I really love doing it. And as always, I love hearing from you. So if you have any feedback, have questions, wanna know anything, feel free to email me, hello@jilliankendrick.com.
So it’s 2024. Welcome to a brand new year. How do you feel about it? Let’s call out the elephant in the room. 2023 was a hard year for a lot of people. I know I could name five people just off the top of my head within like my social group, friends group, who have all said that 2023 was the hardest year that they have ever had. And they are lucky to have made it out alive. Which sounds really depressing. But honestly, it’s refreshing. It’s beautiful that they made it out alive. It’s a blessing that they’re still here and that they’ve gone through those trials. 2023 was hard for me too. It wasn’t a perfect year. It wasn’t a banner year. It definitely wasn’t my best year in business. And even though there was a lot of bad, there was also a lot of good. And going into 2024 now, we’re a couple days into it, if you’re looking to do some annual planning and you wanna get a jumpstart on preparing yourself for this next year. Not only do you need to work on what’s coming? But I like to take a little bit of reflection, reflection through gratitude, reflection of not making the same mistakes over again and reflection of growth. For me, especially 2023, I’m gonna be super vulnerable right now. But 2023 for me was a hard lesson in accepting and being grateful for the growth and the progress that I made regardless of whether or not it was the amount of progress or the amount of growth that I wanted. That was a hard lesson. It was a hard lesson to feel stuck in a place and know that it was where I didn’t wanna be and right where I needed to be at the time and to sit with that and accept it was really hard, man. That was, that was hard. I don’t know if you went through any of that, but I would love to hear about it.
Genuinely, 2023 was wild too. I had to hire a team member and fire them immediately, I had to let go of a long term team member that we had. I had to make decisions based on what was necessary for the business to survive and thrive, moving forward to live, to see another day. And that was hard.
I also learned a lot of really important marketing lessons like running a couple of big promotions like my, if you have been following or listening for any period of time, you might have seen my Black Friday promotion, which if you haven’t listened to that episode, I think it’s number 44 I would highly recommend go back and listen to that episode because it’s really good. Grab the download, you can find the link on the blog, download the debrief because that’s really good as well. And the debrief and the episode kind of go hand in hand. So I would have it out and listen to the episode at the same time. I was able to six X my ad spend, which is really, really, really good. I sold five units of the product that I was selling and have my proof of concept now to go and create that as like an ongoing offer, which is amazing. It’s awesome. I’m really, really excited about it. That’s one of my Q1 goals for this year. But it was also really hard running an even bigger promotion, not seeing the results that I wanted, getting some really good results, seeing really good numbers and then seeing a couple of pitfalls within the funnel going over those with my coach trying to figure out: what does this mean? What does this number mean? Why is it good? Why is it bad? Why is this happening? Why is the number so good? But the sales are down? Ok. Why is the open rate up? But this is down and interpreting that? Right? So that was another really big lesson for me in 2023.
Again, if you’ve been listening for any period of time, you know that we have been trying for a second baby and going through fertility treatment stuff. And I’m really excited to announce that we are pregnant. Really, really excited to say that. We found out actually just after Halloween we found out and it’s been a couple of crazy months of, lots of morning sickness. No vomiting, thank goodness. Lots of exhaustion. Me falling asleep every night at like seven o’clock. And now that I’m past that and I’m into like the 12th week. Not only do we finally feel comfortable telling and announcing that, but I am actually starting to feel better, which is really nice. I spent the last two months of the year, really like 1/6 of the year just feeling awful, just feeling like I don’t have the energy or the capacity or the brain power or wherewithal to do more than just maintain because right, like I’ve had morning sickness. I was nauseous. I was exhausted and pregnancy in an older age and granted by older, like I’m only 37 it’s, I’m not that old, but I suppose I’m old by like pregnancy standards because anything over 35 is like a geriatric pregnancy, which is complete bullshit by the way. But this one definitely hits harder and hits different than with my first, with my son, when I was 33. It hits much differently. And having another kid to take care of and all the other things and running a business and da da, da, da, da, da, da, da. So you could imagine first trimester exhaustion on top of normal exhaustion. Anyway, it was just the double whammy for the last two months of the year for me. And so I really had to just accept that all I can do in this moment is maintain and that’s it. I just had to accept it and as much as I want to rerecord my webinar and get my ads back up and running and fix this and tweak that and write more emails and make more podcast episodes to get ahead and write like all of the things. I just didn’t have it and I had to sit with the fact that that was ok and that’s all right. Now It is, because I’m feeling a whole lot better and we’re through the holidays and we’re through the exhaustion and right, like, hindsight is always 2020. So it’s easier to look back now and say, ok, I didn’t love that. I don’t particularly like not being or feeling as productive as I want to be or no, I could be. But man, in the moment, it’s so frustrating, having these ideas, having plans, having things written down even to the point where I had an outlined list of exactly what I needed to get done and I just couldn’t do it and I had to be ok with that.
Can you relate? Did you go through anything similar in 2023? What was your 2023? Like, are you lucky to have come out of it alive? Are you excited about the new Year? Are you missing this past year? There are things, as much as I will continue to complain about 2023. And I think a lot of us have and will continue to feel the effects of inflation and, and the upcoming US election and you know, other stuff happening in our world. There are definitely things about last year that I will miss a lot. Most especially with baby number two being on the way and knowing that I really have until what July, maybe even June to, to set myself up to do some things that I’ve been meaning to do for a while that I now I, I and I’ve said this before about my first son. And if you’ve watched any of my webinars or trainings, I talk a lot about how my, my son and being pregnant four or five years ago, really saved my business and helped me excel at the time because I had two due dates, right? I had a date of when our baby was going to be born, our first baby. But I also had, I had a due date to get everything aligned in my business in a way that I hadn’t felt that urgency previously because when you have all the time in the world, you think, oh, I can do that whenever, but when you actually have a real deadline, when something is finally looming for you, it hits differently, right? So now I’m feeling that sense again. I’m feeling this sense of OK, I have basically until the end of June to get my shit together. And honestly, I feel simultaneous, who this is a very vulnerable episode for me. This is great. I love this man. I love this stuff. I love that quote that says, never mind. I love the Berne Brown quote that says “we cannot be brave with our lives if we’re not willing to show up and be seen when we can’t control the outcome.” But the one thing that I do have control of right now and maybe you feel a sense of this or have in your life too. I feel the control of the time that I have. I know that, ok, I have till maybe the middle end of June before I really feel bad and like, don’t wanna do anything and can’t roll over and just feel awful and right, like I have this looming deadline and I feel that sense of urgency and pressure, but I also feel a sense of freedom in that I know what I wanna do with the time that I have.
Which is why. So advice, number one, go back, reflect, look at your 2023. What did it mean for you? What did that do for your life? What lessons did you have to learn? What did you accomplish? What did you stumble at? What do you have to keep going with? What did you not do or not finish that you want to complete this year? But then the second task for yourself is OK. We’re looking forward. What are those deadlines even if you make them up? Can you give yourself a due date? Can you give yourself, can you let me fix that? Can you manufacture the same sense of urgency with my looming quote unquote, due date for my second baby and due date for my business. How can you recreate that for yourself? And what can you get done that you’ve been putting off? Because remember and I say this to myself as much as I’m saying it to you, everything you want is on the other side of the work that you are avoiding. I am equally guilty of that as probably anybody. But the things that you want, what you want in life, what you want to accomplish, what you want to achieve in your business, what you want to do is on the other side of the work that you’re avoiding. It’s on the other side of the thing that you’re afraid of. It’s on the other side of the thing that you don’t know how to do.
So what does that mean? Going back to our task list for 2024? Thinking about annual planning, thinking about analyzing and preparing for the year. What does that mean? If it’s something you don’t know how to do, is it worth learning how to do or is it worth hiring somebody who is an expert at that thing. So you don’t have to do it yourself or maybe you don’t have the budget to hire. And that’s ok too. Is it something you’ve been putting off because it’s not easy or, you know, it’s going to take a long time. Well, how much time is it going to take, really? Can you quantify that, that mountain that we’ve made up in our own heads? Because if it’s 20 hours and you broke it down into an hour a day, you can get that thing done in a month, maybe faster. And then it’s not such a big daunting mountain. So I would encourage you not only to think about what do I want to do? What do I want to accomplish? What’s coming up? What’s happening? What are my goals? But then secondary to that is what do I need to achieve that goal? Number one, what do I need to achieve that goal? Number two, how can I set a realistic deadline for myself or somebody else to achieve that thing? Three, what’s the one step that I can take right now towards accomplishing that goal? And maybe it’s as simple as put it on your calendar and you do it next month or maybe it’s jump on upwork and hire someone, maybe it’s something else. And then what are the three steps that I need to do to get me that much closer to achieving that goal?
If you can do those 4 or five things you will be light years ahead of everyone else who is trying to do their annual or quarterly planning for 2024. And let me leave you with this final thought. And again, I say this to myself just as much as to you. Make peace with what has been, make progress with what is and make plans for what will be. Have an amazing 2024. I am so excited to be on this journey with you.
If you haven’t looked into the email compliance stuff that I had talked about a while ago, go back and look at episode number, go back and look at podcast episodes number 42 and 43 because there’s some big changes coming to Google. We’re going to talk about that very soon and you really have until February 1st to get it done.
Thanks so much for joining me on this episode of the Momentum Marketing podcast. If listening to this has brought you value, improved your life or given you insight on how you can build your own momentum, then please share this with a friend. And if you’re ready to grow your business on autopilot, then I want to help you get there easier and faster with a free copy of my entrepreneur’s survival kit. Just leave a review of this podcast wherever you’re listening right now. Hopefully, it’s a five star review and you love it, then screenshot the review and email the screenshot to hello@jilliankendrick.com Once we confirm the review, we’ll send you a copy of the survival kit totally free. Thank you so much for joining me and I’ll see you on the next episode. All content is written and recorded by Jillian Kendrick Copyright 2024. All rights reserved.
The Momentum Marketing Podcast
By Jillian Kendrick
Episode: #49
Topic: Time Management for Mama Entrepreneurs
Contact: hello@jilliankendrick.com
Follow IG: instagram.com/automatedmama
https://jilliankendrick.com/link-pineapple/
