6 Lessons for 6 Figures: A Q&A from Two Years in Business | 100
I am so excited to finally be here at episode 100! It’s crazy to think I have made it this far into the podcast. Thank you for sticking around this long ❤️! Not only does this podcast episode celebrate one hundred episodes, but we are also celebrating two years in business. With that, I wanted to share lessons in business I’ve learned along the way.
#1 Gas vs Breaks vs Coasting
In the summer of 2021, I was returning to the classroom after an extended maternity leave. I hit the brakes hard on my business. I stopped marketing and completely turned away clients.
In hindsight, I probably…definitely slammed on the brakes too hard because it took four months of pressing “gas” in my business to recover lost time. While there are times when you might need to slow down, try coasting first… Keep the momentum going, but let growth/scale hang out on the backburner for just a little bit.
#2 Hiring Mistakes
I’ve made my fair share of “hiring mistakes” since being in business. My biggest lesson in business is that often when someone seems like a “hiring mistake” - it may actually be the fault of the owner, not the hire. #yikes! Or at least it was for me…. Over the past year, I hired more than one person without giving them clear expectations or tasks to complete. Spoiler alert… they couldn’t read my mind.
I also realized that more specialized hires (like social media managers or copywriters) might cost more, but they also need less direction - which feels amazing when you just want something off your plate.
#3 Importance of Collaboration
For a long time, I was terrified of collaborating. My podcast is my safe space, and it felt very, very vulnerable to step in front of new people.
However, slowly I’ve been opening myself to these opportunities and they’ve allowed me to expand my audience, get visible in new ways, and helped me express my business more clearly. Practice truly makes a difference when it comes to collaboration, and it gets much easier with time.
#4 Communication Changes Everything
I don’t like making mistakes. It can be hard to fess up to - but it happens. I have found that having the tough conversations has actually made my business and client relationships stronger.
Whether I made a mistake, had to delay a project, needed a day off, or whatever the case may have been - people always responded better when I was honest and upfront. This is true for client relationships, contractors/employees and other relationships around you.
#5 Shifting Schedules
In the past two years, my husband and I have dealt with too many shifts in our schedules to count. One of the biggest factors is our kids and their nap schedules. As they have grown up, bedtimes grow later and naps are fewer and farther between, which forces us to reevaluate.
It’s not always been easy, but my biggest lesson in business is to remain flexible. This job is a way to support my family and the life that I want. When schedules shift and change, I have found it really helpful to keep my priorities front and center.
#6 Ride the Emotions
I’ve always been an emotional person, and I sometimes decide to make bold moves in the middle of an intensely emotional time. Over time, I’ve learned to ride the wave of emotions, and then check-in where I land before I make any big decisions.
I also have learned to trust myself and my intuition more this year. The impact of truly listening to myself is undescribable.
Don't forget to follow me on Instagram @heyitsjenzaia and tune in next Saturday for more business tips and strategies!
xo, Jenzaia
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Episode Transcript:
100
Hey there, I'm, and this is Market Scale Growth, a podcast created for ambitious Hey there, I'm Jenzaia and this is Market Scale Growth, a podcast created for ambitious entrepreneurs looking to have a bigger impact on the world, achieve freedom, and flexibility, and ultimately make more money with weekly strategy sessions and inspiring stories from fellow teachers just like you. My goal here is to help you create a customized marketing strategy so you can grow your teacher business beyond your wildest dream.
Okay, so before we hop into the episode, I just want to remind you to download my free guide to Facebook targeting audiences. It has been created specifically for teacher business owners and I go through the warm lookalike and cold interest-based audiences that you need to have set up to be running Facebook and Instagram ads. There are checklists and brainstorming pages so that you know you have everything. But as an exciting special, I'm opening up some audience audit calls where you can hop onto a 15-minute zoom call with me and you'll get my eyes on your audiences so that you can make sure not only do you have all the audiences, but they truly are perfect for your business. So head to Marketscalegrow.com/Audienceaudit to book your free audience audit call today.
Hello and welcome to this very, very exciting hundredth episode of Market Scale Grow. I'm your host Jenzaia and this is a Saturday strategy session with a twist.
There's very little strategy gonna be happening, actually, no twist. Instead, today I have some questions that I have not even thought about my answers for. So, these are gonna be off the cuff. And then we're gonna do a bit of two years in business review. And this time of year-ish is my birthday, my business birthday, and.
I did one of these episodes last year. I'm gonna do another one this year. I can't believe it has been two years. I'm super, super excited about it. So let's dive in with the questions up. First, this is the worst advice you've ever heard for marketing with Facebook ads. I was actually on a call with a meta rep and he told me that you should always use the carousel.
Because, oh gosh, what did he say? You should always use Carousel because people like to swipe when they're looking at ads. And I like my, my eyes nearly popped out of my brain when he said that because I, I don't know if that's true or not, but. I have not had great success with carousels and maybe I need to go back and try them again.
Maybe user-like habits have changed, but in my experience, that is not true. The one good thing about Carousel is, um, how they show the first image and then the next time you see them, they show a different image. So hopefully people will like to be drawn to different ones. But yeah, I was shocked. The meta guy, I would've, I wouldn't have been surprised if he said video.
You should always try videos. But the carousel one surprised me. Um, the other really bad advice. Uh, is always on boosting a post. Let me back up. In one of the first Facebook ad courses that I took, she said you should boost posts like any post, just to get more people in. And the reason that that is terrible, I specifically boost a post in and of itself.
Can be used effectively, but you need to be strategic about what posts you boost because if you post something that isn't gonna draw in your ideal client, you're just gonna have a bunch of who knows what. Like if you post a picture of your dog and you boost that picture of your dog, lots of people are gonna like it, but are they gonna be your ideal client?
Uh, probably not. That's why it's better to boost an educational post, maybe even a carousel, but an educational post that your ideal client would be the one who's liking, comments, and sharing. Right. So those are the two pieces of really terrible Facebook ad advice that I've ever got. Um, next question.
Why were you in Dallas? One of them, on Instagram, is one of the q and boxes that I posted. I was in the airport on my way to Dallas, uh, and I went for a retreat for a mastermind that I am part of. So it was a girl's weekend. We had tons of fun. Did a photoshoot. Those pictures are coming soon. I hope my fingers are crossed right?
Did some hot tea coaching. I got sick, so that was kind of terrible. My body was done after two days with no sleep. My body was just done. Um, my three-year-old did not let me sleep the night before I left, and then I had a flight that resulted in me sleeping in the airport, which is why I had two.
With no sleep. And then my body was like, you know, we're done, we're done. So I got sick. Thankfully I was able to get home still, and um, then I got bronchitis. So that was terrible. That was so terrible. But, um, that's why I was in Dallas for a retreat, a girl's weekend. I was super, super excited to finally travel.
So that was pretty cool. Okay, next question. What kind of email opt-in should I make? I don't have a great answer to this question. Typically, people start with a free PDF of some sort, whether it is a free resource. A sample of a resource, like a T P T product, an ebook, a guide, or a checklist.
Typically, that's where people start more advanced strategies for your free email opt-in would be video training. Whether you call it a masterclass or a webinar or a video training, or if it's a video training series, um, that will be like the next step up, but most people start with that free PDF of some sort.
I do not. Typically recommend resource libraries where they're getting tons and tons of things for free, uh, because it makes it a little bit harder to segment your list and target them with appropriate paid resources after the fact. Next question. Favorite place You've traveled all over Indonesia. I loved Indonesia.
I was there for Chinese New Year in 2000 and. 14. I went scuba diving on a private island for a week and I spent the other week traveling around the country with some really good friends from back home. I was living in Taiwan and they met me in Indonesia, so that was pretty cool. We did like a cooking class and, um, yeah, I love, love, loved scuba diving there.
It was amazing. And it was the first time I remember ever being in a. So that was kind of cool. Uh, my favorite TV show, criminal lines. I have probably watched every single episode of Criminal lines three or four times from start to finish. I go through the seasons now and again. Um, I haven't done it in a while though.
There are a few episodes that scare the bananas out of me. Like every single time, I watch them. Just terrified. I. Remember watching them when I lived in Taiwan. . I lived like a, um, in a bachelor, I don't even know if you could call it that. There was no kitchen. It was just a bedroom and a bathroom. There was a desk in there and like a little single counter space where I had a hot plate, but not a kitchen by any means.
I literally washed my dishes in the shower and the door didn't have a deadbolt. It just had one of them. Like handle locks that you have in a bathroom or whatever, right? So I remember watching some of the scarier episodes in my single bed and being so afraid. That I couldn't even like to lean over to check and see if my door was locked and heaven forbid my door be unlocked, I would not have been able to get up and lock it.
Oh man. Yeah. Good times. Good times. Okay, and then the last question. I know the person who sent this question, I know in real life, and you. You can just come over and get the answer to this question, but it's What is your wifi password? And I just think this is hilarious. Um, I don't actually know my wifi password.
I'm not even joking, like 18 characters. There are numbers and letters and capitals and lower cases, and it's just ridiculous. It's the one that came with the modem there. We got a sticker and. Stuck on the side of the modem in our garage. So next time you're over friends, you can just get the wifi password We have.
We have enough wifi that we're happy to share. And, I'm sorry. It is. So when I saw the question and I saw who came from, I just, anyway, uh, those are the questions that I got. Thank you to everybody who participates. And sent me questions. I quite enjoyed them and yeah. So let's talk a little bit about two years in business.
So I'm gonna do a little bit of a throwback. I'm not a hundred percent sure when my like anniversary is when two years will happen, but it's coming or recently passed because if you have listened to the story of. JD Teacherpreneur marketing started. Then, you know, I have been running Facebook ads for myself and my own business for a while.
I had helped a couple of friends and then a mutual friend of one of those people that I was helping came to me and said, Hey, can I pay you to run my ads? And I said, what? People get paid to do this. And so I kind of did some research and found out that there were some very big agencies and businesses that ran Facebook ads and that maybe this was something I could do.
And yes, I could get paid to do it. And oh, it was quite a panic. I'm not gonna lie, but I'm very glad that I said yes, and I jumped. That decision changed everything. So that was sometime in late November, or early December of 2020, and I haven't looked back since then. So I slowly, slowly started taking on clients and increasing my prices.
And at the time I was still focusing more on my T P T store and the course that I was running. It was a math course for like, not a math course, but a course for math teachers on social-emotional learning and the importance of SEL in math. Slowly I started to focus more on Facebook ads and less on those other pieces of my business.
Truly, t p T is just a passive part of my business, and the math course is no longer available. Uh, it's still in Google Drive for those who did purchase it, but it's not for purchase anymore. So anyway, there's been so much growth. I did not see it coming at all. I knew when. All of this started back in 2020 that I was on a mat leave for my daughter.
I had 12 months off, but I wasn't going back to work for 15 months. And so in Canada, the government, uh, supplements, or not supplements, but uh, pays you a percentage of your income for 12 months. And I decided to not go back in May after the, like May 2021 after 12 months, but to. June, July and August off as well.
And so I knew that I had to bridge that gap, the difference between those three months. And so that was my original goal. And Facebook ads and running those for other people helped me to supplement my income and help support my family in those three months, even to the point where I was able to in the 20 21, 20 22 school year.
So last. I was able to go down to part-time, two days, and then this current school year, I'm only in the classroom one day a week, so it's all thanks to Facebook ads that my business has been able to grow to support me on maternity leave, and then extending my maternity leave to be able to work part-time in the classroom because I love teaching and I'm absolutely not ready to give that up at this point.
My school day is one of my favorite days, but I also really love being at home with my babies and having the ability to have a flexible schedule and freedom over my time and to still support my family. And it's so cool to see how my business has been able to do all of these things for me. And as I said at the beginning of this episode, I went to Dallas a couple weeks ago.
I, it's the first time I've ever traveled for my business and I was able to leave on Friday without taking any time off, and I was able to recover on Monday without taking any time off from my, my real job, quote unquote, from a nine to five. Right. I just, I had the flexibility in my, in my schedule, and I was able to work while I was traveling and while I was on that retreat, so, I'm just so thankful for everything that the business has given me.
Now I have six lessons that I've learned, four, six figures. I haven't hit six figures this year yet, but I am on track if all goes well in December. It's a big month for me, so my fingers are crossed right now, but I'm still gonna share six lessons with you. So lesson one is the difference between the gas.
The breaks and coasting, if you've been around a while, you know that summer of 2021, I hit the breaks. So this is when I was going from full-time maternity leave back into the classroom two days a week. And I was scared. I didn't know how I was going to continue running this business that had been full-time for about eight months at that point, and be in the classroom two days a week and care for my kids.
There was a huge, huge transition that was happening and I was terrified. And so that summer I slammed on the brakes. I like completely stopped marketing to the point where I was turning people away, not like wait list, not. Alternative solutions, just turning people away, stopped, marketing, stopped, everything, like completely stopped.
And then when I got into school in September and I gave myself a bit of time to get in the balance and realized, okay, I can handle this. I hit the gas hard and it's took September, October, November and December. It took four months for me to get back in momentum. And so, The next six months, the beginning of 2022, I really prepare myself to figure out how to find a balance and the difference between pushing the gas full on, hitting the brake full on, and then really just finding that middle ground where you're easing off of the gas, but you are not hitting the brakes, you're just coasting and.
Summer 2022 went much, much smoother in my opinion than summer 2021. And so that like was a huge lesson for me that when there is a transition coming or something scary, you don't have to hit the brakes, you can just take your foot off the gas and coast a little bit and still maintain without slamming on the brakes.
And so that was first lesson. My second lesson is hiring mistake. and a lot of it falls on me. I have had some great hires, some amazing hires, but I've also had some that have been very, very stressful. And if I really think about what it boils down to is me not knowing what I wanted and what I needed from those people.
And so, When you're hiring someone, it's on you. As the business owner, it was on me to provide them with tasks to complete. And so in my case, I did a very inefficient job of providing these contractors with work. And so it felt like a huge mistake and that I'd hired the wrong people. And then when I, it happened a second time and it happened a third time, I.
So frustrated and so upset that I just kept hiring the wrong people, that I stopped and I said, I'm not gonna hire anyone else. I'm going to really look at this and really figure out what the problem is. And realizing, now looking back, that the biggest problem is I didn't know what I needed from them.
And when I hired my podcast manager and I hired my copywriter, I was able to a little bit just pass off podcasts, like, here are the podcast recordings and then you need to do everything else. I don't, I don't wanna have to tell you what those other things are. I don't wanna, and they were able to do it because it's their zone of genius.
And. Where I struggled with the VAs that I was hiring was thinking that I could do the same thing as I did with my podcast manager. Shout up Brittany, who is editing this right now, but thinking I could do the same thing as I did with my podcast manager and that I did with my copywriter of here take it and run with it.
But, These people can't just step into the business and run with it. Right. And I, I realize that in retrospect. So that was a big struggle that I had with hiring. And then I was listening to a podcast recently that she said something along the lines of, When there's something going wrong with a hire, like a contractor or an employee, that she likes to think of it as a process problem and not a person problem.
And by that she means if somebody is struggling, that there's an issue with the process. There's an issue with the steps that they're supposed to be following with your expectations. And that really, really helped me to figure out even more how I could do a better job. I had already. Realized that my, my main problem was not doing a good job with expectations and having tasks for these virtual assistants to do for me.
But when there is an issue with how things are happening, that. It's more beneficial for everybody involved to look at the process and figure out where the process is breaking down versus just assuming that the person isn't good enough or the person doesn't know what they're doing, or you hire the wrong person.
Right? So my next hire, I'm gonna go into it with that mindset, and I've already started a very clear list. The tasks and having hired people with, and giving them the wrong tasks or insufficient tasks, I have a much better idea. And I think that possibly hiring the wrong people is part of the journey, and hiring mistakes is part of the learning experience.
And I, I definitely have learned a lot from that. So that's lesson number two. Lesson number three is the importance of collaborations. I. Started afraid of collaborating. I was, and I still have a little bit of this fear to collaborate and put myself out there, and I have this feeling of safety within my audience.
And when I'm sharing things on the podcast, I have this feeling of safety, but the idea of sharing it to the world and sharing it to an extension, A knowings of someone else's audience terrifies me, and so it kept me small and it kept me playing safe. But now that I've started to collaborate more and that I'm reaching out of my comfort zone, a couple things are happening.
Number one, I am expanding my audience and I'm getting. More visible, but more importantly, I'm getting better at articulating my message. I'm getting better at telling stories that people find engaging and find inspiring, or at least I think I am. I want to think I am. I feel like I'm, I'm honing in on my craft.
I'm, I'm getting more practice. And when you practice something, you get better at it, right? And so collaborations are such a great way to become seen as an expert in your niche, in your specialty. They're such a great way to reach new audiences and every single time. Teach something, you get better at it and it's a better message, and you're more clearer in your message and more specific and more accurate, and your, your teaching just gets better.
And so the more often you can do that to your own audience, other audiences, the, the better you get, the more of an expert you become. And so it's just, there's so many benefits to collaboration and I'm. Glad that I finally opened my eyes to it and finally put that as an important piece of my business and something that I'm really leaning into.
Okay. Lesson number four is that communication changes everything with my clients specifically. I would love if things always went perfectly, and then I never made any mistakes. But what I've noticed is that when you communicate with people, their response is so much more positive. Even if I have to tell them something negative, if I'm able to come to them and communicate it effectively.
Quickly, and I can also communicate what's already been done and what we're doing. Then there's so much more positive of a response than if I try to fix it behind closed doors, and I'm not saying anything and communication is blocked off and it just gets really bad really fast. So, I always recommend, and I always try to myself overcommunicate situations that are happening, delays that are happening, problems that are happening.
As hard as it can be to say those hard things, the negative things over communicating has been one of the, the hardest lessons, but also the best lessons because it just, it just creates a more positive, trusting, transparent. Environment, and I think both clients and the service pride benefit from that.
Lesson. Number five is more of a personal lesson with my family, with my husband, and that is about shifting schedules. We've had many different variations of working schedules that allow both him and I to get time to ourselves, to get time with the kids and to get time. Will work on my business and for him to play his video games, which is kind of his time to himself.
And my business is also kind of my time to myself, but we've had a lot of shifts and some of those shifts have been because my kids, they're now two and a half and three and a half. But when I first started my Facebook ads agency, my daughter was seven months old, and our son would've been 21 months. . So not even one and not even two.
Right. And their nap schedules were very, very different back then than they are now. My son is no longer napping at all, and our daughter is very close to no longer napping. They also went to bed earlier or later. There's been shifts to that. Uh, our daughter at that time was napping three or four times a day and is now down to one nap, right?
So there's been so many changes and that those changes caused a lot of schedule, schedule shifting, needing to happen, schedule shifting that needed to happen. And so being flexible and noticing when a schedule needed to change so that, um, The priorities remain priorities, and I guess maybe that is really the lesson here is recognizing priorities and making sure my time honored those priorities.
And so family definitely comes first. My current schedule, I don't often work before lunch because both of my kids are awake. and we can do family things. We have swimming lessons. Some days we go and see the grandparents some days, so there's often mornings that I don't, I, I just don't work until after lunch.
And then our daughter goes down for nap time. The boys have their boy time and I spend a lot of evenings. Working Right now it is nine 30 at night. Our kids are finally, I mean, they've been in bed for an hour and a half, but because our daughter is about to like going through that shift with her nap, she's been staying up and playing and making a lot of noise.
So it wasn't until nine 20 that things finally settled down and I could start recording a podcast episode. Right? So figuring out priorities. and shifting our schedule to meet those priorities has been a huge lesson. Um, there has been fights and tears and it's been hard. , I will not lie, but it, it has been very, very important if I'm gonna be running this business, that I am also able to live the life that I wanna live and spend that time with my family.
So, Remembering that we put our time into our prior. And making sure that our, our schedules shift to meet the priorities of the season that we are in, I think is my, is the takeaway from that one. And then my final lesson in my six lessons for six figures is to ride my emotions. I am a very emotional person.
I had a human design reading done. About four or five months ago now, I don't really remember a lot of what it was, but what I do remember is I am the type of person that my emotions are like waves, and I often will make a very emotional decision, and it's very important for me to ride the emotional wave until it calms down, until I'm in a more rooted place and then, Often my emotions were right and I can make that decision, but that I should avoid making a decision in the emotional ups and downs, which was very, very powerful for me.
I've also been watching my, like, my cycle emotions and how I'm feeling in different phases of my cycle, and that's been really interesting. The first time I heard about that, the, the cycle monitoring or cycle syncing, I think it might be. I was like totally rolling my eyes. This is ridiculous. But the more I have sat back and watched, the more I realize that 100% I have different energy levels, different interests, and there are different parts of my cycle where I'm like, I wanna burn this business down every single month.
And I know now again, to just ride that emotional wave and it will pass. This two shall pass. And so that's been a huge lesson for me in this past year, is listening to my body, listening to my emotions, and allowing everything to just settle before making any big decisions. Okay. The last thing I wanna share with you is what's next?
How the universe has been pulling me and how I'm honoring my desires and my everything. So if you listen to episode 98, so two episodes ago we talked about how my business is shifting and it is definitely shifting. I am so excited about coaching and supporting teacher business owners in marketing their businesses in a more holistic manner, not just from the Facebook ads, but from a bigger.
A bigger lens in more authentic and sustainable ways. But the universe is just so funny because as I leaned in, I have been sitting on that idea since October of 2021. The idea of holistic marketing and me fleshing out what that that framework was for me came in episode 44, which was October of 2021, and I let that idea.
Bloom or grow and then bloom and really take. Take root inside of me to continue the plant analogy, , uh, before I, I even started thinking of how I could start providing services for it. So it took like a good six, eight months before I started considering what those services would look like, what that new offer would look like, and how I go about that.
And then I took another couple months riding the emotions, riding the waves, really just leaning into it. And testing it out and seeing what it would feel like before I presented it to the world. And when I presented it to the world, I suddenly got an influx of Facebook ad service requests. And I typically get a couple every month, but I'm no word of a lie.
In the last two weeks I've probably got 10 requests, which is quite unheard of for me. That is, is a huge influx of people reaching out. About my services and it's been amazing, but it's also been very fascinating to feel those emotions of, I finally took the step and I finally started leaning in to the holistic marketing strategy piece, and then the universe is saying, Hey, all of these people want Facebook ads from you.
And so I've really been contemplating how I can continue doing both because I love Facebook ads. I absolutely love running Facebook ads and strategizing about Facebook ads and the data and all of that. And so, and I said this in that, that episode, a couple back 98, that Facebook ads are not going anywhere.
I, because I love them so much, I don't wanna just like say goodbye to them. And then the universe is also being like, no, Jen. They're still here, right? But I'm also opening my mind to how I can expand my business into the marketing coaching. So I'm being pulled in two different ways right now, and it's very fascinating.
So if you are looking for Facebook ad strategy, Facebook ads, support someone to run your Facebook ads, I would love to chat with you about that. And if you're looking for, Holistic marketing strategy, coaching someone to support you to create a marketing plan for your business with action steps to actually implement it, and weekly coaching calls where we dive deep together.
I would love to chat with you about that as well. So no matter which direction you're looking for marketing support, I am here for you. Thank you so much for joining me for this hundredth episode. It's been. Quite a ride, and I am super, super excited to see where the next year takes me, takes my business, takes my family.
So thank you again for being here, and I will be back with a more typical Saturday strategy session next week. So stay tuned for that. Coming to your headphones.
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