We officially started as Scoop on January 1st, meaning our first quarter was a big deal.
When we started off, we had a solid plan, but oh boy, we were in for a surprise over the first 90 days. Things evolved rapidly and I feel like we got more done in the first quarter than a lot of people get done in a year.
Here’s a look at what happened in Q1 – wins, losses and lessons that may help you grow your business.
Wins
When we started off the quarter, the plan was for Scoop to be a digital marketing agency. We’d literally spent all of 2015 mapping out how things were going to go, but we’d overlooked one critical thing.
Before we even started, as we were bringing together two existing businesses we were very close to capacity. Add a list of clients signing on in January, and we were full.
That was a win, as the transition to a new brand was incredibly smooth and well-managed, But about 28 days in, we had a frank conversation about the pace of our growth – we had to either hire another full-time person or cap our number of clients.
Within a matter of days, we had to say no to new leads and decided to focus on creating other sources of leveraged income like courses.
You may be wondering how this was a win? First of all, it was the biggest test of our partnership that we’d ever really had. This was a hard conversation for us to have as we were worried the other one would disagree on our direction.
I’m SO glad we both had the balls to have this conversation as we were in the exact same place. By having this realization early on and being honest, we were able to regroup and act quickly by moving up some plans we had for later in 2016.
I also qualify this as a win as saying no is HARD. Especially when you know you could meet some big revenue numbers if you were willing to work that bit harder.
Turns out, having time off, vacations and not working weekends won out. In fact, looking back at the quarter, I worked much less than I had in most of 2015, and as a result I had way more fun. (As did Brittany!)
Losses
Speaking of losses, we made less than we’d projected for the quarter as we didn’t take on as many consulting or project gigs as we’d planned. (Sanity for the win!)
Our final revenue number for the quarter was $101,146.88, which, given the rather large pivot and conscious choice to slow our growth, we were happy with when all was said and done. We managed to make more than we’d planned with courses with the addition of ConvertKit School.
(Note: We’re sharing revenue numbers as perspective so you have a clear container for what we’re talking about. These results are factual, not boastful. Sharing them actually makes me super queasy, but transparency is a core value for us!)
One of the biggest challenges we had in Q1 was with our team. Jo, who is part of the Scoop team full-time was off for the first 8 weeks of the year, which meant Brittany, and then a contractor, had to pick up that slack on top of everything else. Then one of our core team members had to take a personal leave, so we had to scramble to get someone to fill in for her.
It was challenging, and it took a little extra management, but we survived.
When it comes to our team, the one thing I think we didn’t do a great job of going into Scoop was defining roles better and merging our processes and standard operating procedures. Lessons learned big time on that front, and I think in month 5, we’ve hit our stride as we all know what’s what.
Lessons You Can Take Away
Q1 was a bit nuts, especially as we tried to keep the “not working weekends” and balance the reality of running a new business.
Here are the biggest lessons we learned that can help you:
Productivity for the Win
By putting a firm limit on our work time, we had to get super focused and not waffle about on social media or exploring a fun new idea we had in the shower.
Brittany and I both rely on the 12 Week Year model to plan our weeks and keep us focused. Weekly accountability and blocking our time for specific projects means we can get things done much, much faster. (We break this down in more detail in our new audio training which you can grab here.)
Mastering Your Mindset
We’re not coaches, and we’re definitely not mindset experts, but we both brought a lot of mindfulness and intention to our work and lives this quarter.
A big part of this was focusing on getting really comfortable with experimenting, along with our money mindset. Even if you don’t realize it, your money story is a big part of whether you succeed or fail.
Given that we were bringing two successful businesses together to form Scoop, money was at stake. This meant we talked about money ALL the time and I fully believe that this was a big contributor to our success. We knew exactly what we needed to do, and there were times we worked together on a specific money goal for the week.
If you’re not in touch with your money, get it organized and get very clear on exactly how much you do (or don’t) have. Clarity breeds success.
Systems, Systems, Systems
As a creative, I have a love/hate relationship with systems. It feels too rigid in a lot of ways, BUT I know how critical they are and I love them when they’re done.
Our systems saved our bacon more than once this quarter as we were able to pick things up to help team members, and quickly fill in roles as needed.
Even if you’re a team of one, find something where you can benefit from formalizing the steps and creating a repeatable process. That way you’re more efficient every time you work on that task. (Time saved means you can get more done OR have more chill time!)
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