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Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday. My name is Darrell Darnell, when we were kids my brother once hit me so hard that my tooth went all the way through my lip, and I believe that if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living. In today’s episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday I share lessons I learned from being a planner.
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Friday Forum
Friday Forum is your opportunity to Share what YOU’VE learned, so that other listeners and I can learn from YOU. It can be a message as short as 30 seconds or several minutes long. It really doesn’t matter just as long as it’s something that will benefit others. You can participate in Friday Forum by calling and leaving a message at 304-837-2278, emailing an audio file to feedback@goldenspiralmedia.com, or clicking on the Send Voicemail tab on my website, GoldenSpiralMedia.com.
What I Learned Yesterday:
You know what I’ve discovered? Life almost never works out exactly like we plan. I am a planning person. We decided last fall that we were going to Hawaii this September, and I immediately started planning. I shopped airline prices almost every day for 7 or 8 months so that I would know the moment I saw an exceptional deal. As a result, I saved over a thousand dollars on airfare.
I’m not just that way about travel. Before I launch a podcast there are dozens of things that I do to prepare for it. I plan out various bits of music, I think about what the format of the show will be like, when the show will be recorded, what I want the artwork to include, and many other things.
I’m currently going through the process of creating a dedicated portal for my clients that will improve communication, streamline file sharing, and allow me to include assistants and other staff members in the work flow. Before I ever started working on the website, I spent a lot of time thinking about what my needs were and planning how to meet those needs. I looked not only at what my needs are today, but what I think my needs will be a year from now and beyond.
In spite of all my planning, careful thought, attention to detail, and desire for excellence, I know that the web portal will not go as planned. There will be things that I overlook. There will be things my clients will want the portal to include that I didn’t think of. There will likely be a few bugs that will have to be worked out. After all, that’s the way life works.
You may recall back in episode 6 of Stuff I Learned Yesterday that I had a major career moment where this lesson of change became a reality for me. I spent 19 years working for a bookstore chain. The first 7 of those were in operations working in various capacities at various stores, including 2 years as a store manager. After that I spent 18 months working in the merchandising side of the business. That is, I was responsible for buying, promoting, and managing inventory for over 13,000 books. I also had to determine which ones of those books would be featured in our newspaper ads.
I only held that job for 18 months because I wasn’t very good at it. There are a variety of reasons why I wasn’t good at it. Most of them are my fault. But the bottom line is that I was dismissed from that position, but not fired from the company. I then worked in operations for another 3 years and during that time I went back to school and got a degree in computer programming. About 6 months after my graduation, the company decided to start selling on the internet and they wanted someone who was familiar with technology, operations, and merchandising.
While I had certainly never planned on failing at buying, that failure taught me a lot and set me on a path that positioned perfectly for the future. Even though I’m a planner, I never would have planned my path to take that direction. Looking back on it now, I wouldn’t take a different path even if I could.
A similar thing is happening to me right now. I knew my time was coming to an end at the bookstore for nearly 2 years before I actually left, but I needed to get things planned out before I could resign. The turning point came when I met Stuart Crane, the owner of a new podcasting network called TV Talk. After meeting with Stuart, he contracted with me to handle many of the needs of TV Talk. Stuart asked me to oversee the selection of shows, acquisition of hosts, making sure everyone had the right equipment, getting all of the hosts trained, developing artwork and music for each show, and producing each show.
The great part about TV Talk was that the work could be done in the evenings when I got home from my job at the bookstore. Even the production of the shows happened at night since the TV shows that TV Talk covered were not daytime shows. So for 5 months I worked at the bookstore during the day and then worked on TV Talk stuff until about 2 am. I then slept for a few hours and then did it all again.
It was tiring as you can imagine, but I needed a client like TV Talk to get me financially secure enough to be able to walk away from the bookstore. During those 5 months we were able to save nearly every dollar I earned from TV Talk and give us as safety net.
After I left the bookstore things with TV Talk exploded. It was great. It was so much work that I was still putting in nearly the same about of hours as I had been while working both jobs. The money was good, but I wasn’t getting to spend time building Golden Spiral Media or securing other clients. I didn’t like the idea of having so much of my income tied to a single client.
Once we got into 2014, my work from TV Talk hit a plateau. I was relieved a bit because I was also producing 6 to 8 hours of Golden Spiral Media podcasts each week. Trust me when I say that 6 hours of podcast content is a whole lot more real world time. Again, my days and weeks were completely filled with very little time to try to grow the client side of my business.
And then spring arrived.
TV Talk trimmed back their business quite a bit. I sort of mentioned it in episode 18 of Stuff I Learned Yesterday. While this meant that I took a big hit to my income, it also gave me some breathing room. Around the same time, Almost Human had wrapped up and that had also freed up some of my time. I began spending dedicated time trying to land new clients and I had some success. In fact, hardly a week has gone by over the last two months that I haven’t worked with at least one new client that week. Most weeks have given me the opportunity to work with 2 or 3 new clients.
My client’s need vary. Some of them need some troubleshooting help. Others need advice on where to start or what to do next. Some of my clients need help choosing and setting up equipment, and others are looking for someone to take the audio production of their weekly episodes.
Over the last two months I’ve been able to compensate for the decline of TV Talk income with the growth of other clients. It’s worked out really well. Again, it’s not exactly how I would have planned it, but at the same time, had I not planned for what got me to that point, I would have been much worse off.
And this brings me to where I’m at today.
TV Talk has decided not to produce anything for summer shows. For me, that means that I won’t be getting any income from TV Talk this summer. That’s a big fat bummer. But, it’s also filled with big fat win.
Because I won’t have any TV Talk work to do, I’ll have even more time to focus on building my business and working with clients. I’ll have time to work on things like the client portal I mentioned, record some training videos for my clients, and add some more product reviews to our YouTube account. Those are all awesome things!
My income for the summer may or may not cover what I need to pay all my bills. It will be close, and we have the safety to help us out. So while I’m certainly not crazy about the possibility of dipping into the safety net, that is what it’s there for.
But here’s the biggest win of all. Remember back in episode 36 when I said I was working 12- 16 hour days but I was working on bringing that down to a more balanced place? Well, I’m there. I’m now working on my client work during normal working hours. If a client calls after hours, I let it go to voicemail. If they want to meet on a weekend, I reschedule to Monday morning.
I’m spending a lot more with my kids now, and it’s fantastic. Again, this hasn’t worked out exactly as I would have planned it, but that’s a good thing.
Here’s what I’m learning.
It’s important to plan. I’ve always been a planner and I always will be. But life will change, and sometimes it changes with no warning. If we plan wisely, then we’ll be in the best position possible for when life does change.
Encountering change can be the absolute best thing to ever happen to us. It’s also in moments of change that we get to look at our situation and make improvements. We can change our trajectory and adjust our aim. When it happens, figure out where you want to go, organize a plan on how you’re going to get there, and then expect change to cross your path along the way.
I’m Darrell Darnell and this has been stuff I learned yesterday.
If you’ve enjoyed this episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday, I would be grateful if you’d leave a review in iTunes.
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