Hi everyone

I'm having unsustainable growth. AGAIN. I'm so excited by and tired of this. And I'm so grateful and gleeful.

In the last months, 3 of my past clients reached out for work. Two of them were crunch-time things. They'd both swapped to another designer and then came back. I have no idea why they left in the first place. I was given the other designer's designs and asked to continue and evolve the work. I did. No ego there. Just curiosity. What was it that made them leave? What was it that made them come back? One of them agreed to debrief so we're meeting on Thursday.

The third doesn't have as strict of a deadline. I'm turning it around by the end of the month. Which is tight for me. I'm in grad school. Rob's launching his course. Two other previous clients reached out to my partner for his work and we had to redo contracts and amend them because one of them is notorious for not paying (but we have a soft spot for him). Ok, so we got that grounded and scheduled. Then I fell sick. For like 10 days. Coincidence? 😁 

Now, another group reached out to me about doing a design workshop. In the fall. I want to do it. I love that group. But how? I feel so drained. And excited. Hand in hand. Talk about non-dual. So then, of course, I got a migraine. Which I managed to handle without meds, but jesus. 

My personal creative initiatives are falling to the wayside or I'm quickly losing grip on them. I'm overwhelmed. I don't have the systems in place. This is why I abandoned this the first time around. It grew so unwieldy. I couldn't ground it. Stabilize it. Structure it. And be consistent. I retreated.

Yes, there are a lot of perks and I really shouldn't complain. 2023 was our best year yet. But then my uncle died. So, our revenue at the beginning of the year was less than $500/mo because I left the country and dropped everything. I turned away multiple new clients because I couldn't manage across the huge time zones. With grad school too. 

Now, our revenue is over $3k/mo since I re-engaged after coming back in June. I'm back in the US and have been able to usher things forward again. The momentum is building. But I can't ground it. And I want to give up. I just want to walk away again. I'm tired. I'm so tired. In my bones.

I love what I do. But it's so unwieldy. I don't know systems. The bulk of what I do is talk to people. It's how I get clients. I netcare. I give. I listen. I read. I support. That's how I work. But then I'm drained. So I can't delegate out that piece. I could delegate the design piece, but the last few teams I've managed, it's been awful for multiple reasons. One situation, we needed a legal advisor to extract ourselves. Plus, I love design. Someone told me about a service she uses called GoBloom and that seems like a sustainable way to build things. https://www.gobloomcreative.com/

So I really need to ground this. And that requires systems. And I don't know where to begin. Do I just do an analysis of where I'm spending my time? Do I automate the onboarding? Do I work on templates? Do I hire a VA? Do I look into AI VAs? 

UPDATE:

I took everyone's comments and put them into ChatGPT and then asked it to create a list and put it in order of most to least urgent!!! So I'm going to spend the next few weeks executing on this list: https://docs.google.com/doc...

I fucking LOVE this community 

Hi Everyone,

The 111 Club (next meeting is tomorrow 9/17 at 3 pm Pacific!)

A monthly Co-working/Study/Support Session

Third Tuesday of the month 3:00pm Pacific

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/9...

“If you knew you could unlock your success path within 111

experiments, how quickly would you do it?”

– George Kao

This is a monthly group focused on George’s 111 Formula.

which is a disciplined way of building your business based on doing

the following over a 12-month period:

40 content experiments

20 market research

20 collabs

10 stage 2 content pieces

10 gentle launches

6 Joyful Pro skills

5 client/student case studies

Perfect timing!

The best time to initiate the 111 Formula is now.

During each 1-hour call we’ll:

Review one of the 111 strategies.

Talk about results/learnings from the past month 111 actions.

Plan 111 actions for the coming month.

Co-work on our own 111

Best,

Mike

I FEEL COMPLETE. THANK YOU!

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I looked and the next available feedback session is at the end of September and I need this a little more urgently. Happy to hear from anyone

So this is a revamped offer. The feedback that we got is that a lot of the students are still trying to figure out how to even apply for jobs and they're not at the interview stage yet. They said the price point is very good. I added that we will guide them on spotting scams and applying more efficiently for jobs. Introducing them to netcaring here.

The other feedback we got is that 6 weeks is too long. They feel that the time commitment of 4 hours a week is a lot. Keep in mind though that this is for coding interviews which definitely need to have a deep level of instruction. I don't think we can decrease the instruction time for all the topics that come up in these very specialized interviews with specific coding languages etc.

Please don't hold back and don't worry about my feelings at all. I really want the truth. I'm not scared of it and don't need anything sugar coated or to make it feel nice for me. I want to arrive at something valuable and actionable. Thanks!