Catherine Langman:
Well, hello there. It’s Catherine Langman here, back with another episode of the Productpreneur Success Podcast. As we draw towards the close of this crazy year that we have been living through 2020, I wanted to record an episode, which I guess is kind of taking stock of the year that’s been and really try and shine a light on some of the good things, really I guess, counting blessings in a way so that we can try and find the good in what has been a particularly difficult year for so many.
Catherine Langman:
I know that there’s so much that’s been written about and said about this year, and a lot of it is pretty negative, I guess, and that’s because it has been a really, really tough year. I don’t want to add to that cache of that kind of content. I really want to create an episode that’s a little bit uplifting, and a little bit inspiring, and really shining a light on some of the amazing things that some very clever people have managed to achieve this year.
Catherine Langman:
I hope that you listeners can use this as some inspiration, and just something that might give you some food for thought and some ideas for yourself moving forward, and also just a little bit of motivation. So taking inspiration from what others have managed to do, and using that for yourself as fuel for what you can potentially achieve as well. And also just, I guess, as a moment to pause and reflect on your own year as well, just to try and find the good in it.
Catherine Langman:
I guess there’s that whole idea or concept of what you put your focus on flourishes, and so we really want to put our focus on the good stuff, right? So I don’t say any of that to belittle the difficulties that I know many of you have been dealing with this year, and I want you all to know that you have my admiration for what you are all living through and dealing with this year, and you also have my support. For those of you listeners who are not already in our Rockstar Productpreneur Facebook group, please, take this moment to join this community.
Catherine Langman:
It’s a fabulous, supportive, warm community and it is a great place to hang out, if you are an ecommerce brand or a product-based business, and you would like to hang out with some really cool people, who can help you, and support you through your business journey. So if you are not in our Rockstar Productpreneur Facebook group, please make sure you get in there, just head to catherinelangman.com/rockstar, and you can join for free. So 2020, it’s been a year, right?
Catherine Langman:
In my own little moments of reflection looking back on this year, I went back to the beginning of my journal for the year. So I don’t personally do New Year’s resolutions in the traditional sense, but what I do do is I try and decide on a word of the year which I use as a bit of a theme for the year, and a thing that can guide me to try and make plans and decisions personally as well as professionally, without locking myself into a specific personal goal, like I must lose weight, or I must do this, or I must do that.
Catherine Langman:
That’s not to say that I don’t set goals in the business that are measurable, of course, I do that too. But my word of the year for 2020 almost laughably was, thrive. Incidentally, I have just finished listening to the audio book called Thrive by Arianna Huffington, which I highly recommend. It was published many years ago now, but I’ve actually never read it before. So I’ve just finished that one. But anyhow, 1st of January, I wrote down some notes, and my word of the year that I decided on was thrive.
Catherine Langman:
And what I’d written down that this meant to me or would mean to me was to flourish, to grow vigorously, to prosper and be successful. And then I’d also written my secondary words to support that were competence and discipline, because I felt I would need both in order to thrive. It does seem slightly ironic, I suppose, to look back and realize that that’s what I had decided at the time. But there were some reasons why I chose those words for myself. The first thing was that my mother became very sick in October last year. It all happened, actually, when I was interstate.
Catherine Langman:
I was running a master class, a two-day event for my bunch of my clients interstate. I discovered, because she kept it from me. She’s a lovely woman, super, super independent woman. She’s very fiercely protective of all of her children’s careers, but particularly her daughters’. Anyway, I found out a bit later that she was in hospital, and I’m actually the only one of her five children who live in the same city and state, and I was not there. I was not there, and she was diagnosed with heart failure, and she was having some operations, and doctors were trying to figure out what was going on.
Catherine Langman:
She reacted very badly to the operations and she didn’t die, but she was very sick. Fortunately, she’s still here, and she has improved a lot in this time, but I suppose it was coming to the new year, she still wasn’t well, at that point. And I had decided that I really needed to be able to be more available and more flexible. I needed to be able to do this in a way that didn’t require me to give up my work, because I love what I do in my business. And I actually also need to earn an income, which I think is pretty normal for most people, right?
Catherine Langman:
I kind of figured, I see other people being able to do this, where they don’t need to be working themselves to the bone and creating a job for themselves where they have to work every day, because if they don’t, they don’t earn any money. And so, that’s kind of what I had set up for myself at the time with the way that I was working. And so, I felt like I wasn’t thriving in the way that I was working. But I felt I needed to change the way that I was doing things, and be able to prove a bit more personally, as well as in my business, and my mom was really the driving force for making some changes in that way.
Catherine Langman:
So that was one big reason. I guess the other thought that came into my mind at that time was from my stepmother, who passed away a few years ago now. I was remembering, she was really, really sick. She had been very sick for many years. It really was a blessing when she did. However, the way that she had lived her life, was superduper inspiring. She was the sort of person who in her personal life or in her career, and she was a career woman, a very successful one, she didn’t conduct yourself in a way where she followed the rules or did things the way it was customary, or expected, or stereotypical or anything like that.
Catherine Langman:
I suppose, for her generation, that would have been pretty difficult to buck trends, and to not follow the rules, not that she was a massive rebel or anything like that, she just lived her life, and set up her life in a way that was meaningful to her. And that was around family, and also having a career of her own and not belittling her own career for her husband, her first husband. My dad thought it was fabulous that she was working, but anyway. So that was in the back of my mind as well, and really wanting to make time for my family and to do things a little bit differently.
Catherine Langman:
So I chose this word of the year, thrive. Like I said, it’s a bit ironic really considering the year that was to come. So what I put in place for myself to thrive was two things. Number one, I implemented some big changes in the way that I work and in my business. So prior to 2020, I was running a small digital marketing agency, and then a big coaching program. That coaching program, had a couple of components that had an online course, and it had my big one-on-one coaching program, and a mastermind group. And so that was a high ticket program and it took a lot of my time and effort.
Catherine Langman:
I was working with some absolutely fabulous ladies, who many of whom I do actually still work with, but just in a different way now. And then personally, what I put in place for myself was a few things. Exercising really consistently, for me, that’s lifting weights three times a week, as well as walking and running in between times and meditation. So they were the two things that are really, really focused on. I thought I can’t do lots of different things. I also have three children, two of whom are competitive swimmers and spend a lot of time at the pool. It’s early mornings, as well as evening, so there’s a lot of logistics in the house.
Catherine Langman:
So I can’t put too many things on my plate. So those were the things that I put in place to help myself thrive. In the end, they were actually the perfect things to put in place, to help me through the whole COVID-19 palaver that was to follow. Of course, things really dramatically changed from March onwards this year, as they have done for everybody. I’ve been able to write a lot of that out, I guess, because I’ve had these consistent practices personally, to help me maintain myself emotionally as well as physically healthwise.
Catherine Langman:
And then in the business, we put the focus by and large on our online course, and also a marketing agency. We have grown enormously in both areas of that business, and I don’t now have the high ticket coaching program at all. So, it’s been a pretty amazing outcome really, from what started, looking pretty scary for everybody. So, let me now shine a light on some of the other people that we’ve been working with this year who have really done some amazing things.
Catherine Langman:
Actually, before I get to that, there’s one other thing that I want to talk about here. So the reason I really want to shine a light on other people’s results, and growth and breakthroughs, not everybody has grown by 1,000%, or anything like that. It’s a bit unrealistic for everybody and all of us to expect to have some overnight miracle success, of course. But there’s this fabulous story around two mountain climbers. I think I’ve shared this story on the podcast before.
Catherine Langman:
But two mountain climbers who were equally experienced were setting out together on this big climb, this adventure, and one made it to the top and one didn’t, despite the fact that they’d had the same training, the same preparation, similar experience and expertise, and skills, et cetera. And the difference between the two of them was that one, every day at the end of the day, he was stopping for the evenings walk ready to make camp and would just stand there and stay up at the top of the mountain and think it’s so high, it’s so far, I’m so exhausted, I’m so hungry and tired, I hurt everywhere.
Catherine Langman:
I’m never going to make it. And the other one would get to the end of the day ready to make camp and would feel equally sore and tired and hungry and in pain, but instead of looking up at what was left to go would look down at the view and he could see how far he’d come, and appreciate that view and feel good about it, before he then turned around to have a look at what was left to go. I don’t know if it’s a true story, but the moral of the story is that, you focusing on the incremental improvements, the incremental growth, and helping your mind to latch on to those good feelings about that growth and those achievements along the way, before looking at the gap that’s left to go.
Catherine Langman:
This is actually a story I’ve been telling one of my sons, who is one of the swimmers, [inaudible 00:14:04]. He’s 14 now and he has massive goals. He wants to get to the Olympics in 2024, which is a huge goal. And a couple of months ago, he broke his collarbone, not swimming, mountain biking, and he just felt so demoralized. He’s repaired his bone and now he’s in rehab, and he is back in the pool, but he’s not swimming as well as he was and just feeling super demoralized like he’s never going to get to his goal. And so, I’ve been sharing that story.
Catherine Langman:
So for those of you who are still a long way away from your goal, and many of the clients that I’m going to give a shout out to and share some of their story in a minute, they’re not at their goal either, right? But it’s really important at the end of the year, and especially at an end of a tough year, like this year, to reflect and try and spot and shine a light on those moments of incremental growth and those little and big achievements doesn’t matter what they are, note them down and gives them some of your attention.
Catherine Langman:
You’ll find in doing this sort of an exercise, that it can help you enormously in moving forwards and achieving even bigger and better things in the new year. It’s going to be a great new year, I can just feel it. So, without putting things in any kind of order whatsoever, and I’m not going to be able to touch on every single person that we’ve worked with. We’ve had a big year. We’ve worked with a lot of people this year, but I’m going to share a few good stories. So the first one I want to call out is Felicia Rusher from istillcallaustraliahome.com.
Catherine Langman:
And Christmas is the biggest time of the year in her business, she runs a gift business and her products are all Australian products, really beautiful stuff, not cheap and nasty touristy stuff. And so Christmas is the biggest time of the year for her, it starts in the middle of the year really. In the lead up to the Christmas last year 2019, she still had an old WordPress Website, which has served up quite well over time. But it was pretty clunky, and the checkout process was terrible.
Catherine Langman:
And the worst thing possible happened to her in the middle of her busiest season in 2019, and that was that the host basically crashed. Her website crashed, and it was an issue with the host. It couldn’t handle the influx in traffic. And she was out for the count for a while and it cost her an absolute arm and a leg to upgrade to her own standalone server. And that’s a lot of missed sales, when your website is down for, I can’t remember how long it was, it might have even been up to a week.
Catherine Langman:
So anyway, in new year, in January, she approached us to design her a new Shopify Website and migrate her from WordPress to Shopify, which was an enormous job for her website. She’s got so many products. She also has a lot of content, she is the queen of content marketing and getting organic search traffic to her site. So anyway, check it out. I’m going to mention a few websites in this podcast and it’s worth looking up on the internet, you can look up the Wayback Machine. You can actually type in a URL and find what that website looks like, in the past on historical dates.
Catherine Langman:
So you can check out some of these websites and see what they used to look like and what they look like now. So Felicia’s beautiful new Shopify Website went live much earlier this year. I actually don’t remember when it was, but she’s been live on her new Shopify Website for more than half a year. But she’s just pretty much winding up her Christmas sales period now, and she has had an absolute bumper Christmas season this year. It’s a record for her. Of course, no issues with her website going down, Shopify is a really great platform in that regard.
Catherine Langman:
Michelle Smith is another one I want to call out here, just in regards to her website. She has curatedwithconscience.com.au, I think, which is a hamper business on beautiful organic and environmentally conscious, sustainable type of products, but beautiful quality stuff. I had hoped to buy some of her hampers as gifts this Christmas, and I’d left it too late, she has now sold out. But that’s an amazing result for her. So she also was on WordPress and was needing to move to Shopify for a few different reasons, I think, usability, stability as well, similar to Felicia.
Catherine Langman:
But it’s easier to use and run and manage herself in the back end, but also, the user experience for customers on the front end is amazing as well. She’s been through some tough times. She’s been in Melbourne. So she’s been operating her business through the longest, toughest lockdown situation, I think worldwide, is certainly in Australia. And also, had some tough times personally as well. And to be able to go through a new website, and build a project, and to also pump out the best sales results she’s ever had in her business, is a pretty amazing achievement. So well down to Michelle.
Catherine Langman:
Another one that I want to call out here is jellystonedesigns.com.au. So Jellystone Designs is a project that we worked on. Initially with her website, she again was on WordPress before, has a bit of a theme here, I don’t mean to be picking on WordPress at all. But she had inherited the website so she bought the business a few years before, but the website was really out of date. It was not really designed to be a fantastic consumer retail website.
Catherine Langman:
It had initially been mainly a wholesale brand, but of course, with everything that’s happened this year, ecommerce retail is kind of where it’s at, right? So we initially redesigned her website, and once that went live, we definitely noticed a big spike in her conversion rate, so no much improved results there. But then really, once that was up and running, and I guess once we could all start to see what was happening with COVID, and we all needed to be pivoting to focusing on ecommerce rather than any other sort of business model, we started working with her on her Facebook advertising, and her email marketing and that really keeps things along in a really big way.
Catherine Langman:
And so that’s been an amazing success story there. I want to call out Baby Loves Sleep. So Maloo is a wonderful, wonderful woman. Again, she’s been in Melbourne in this deep, dark lockdown situation. I’ve worked with Maloo, over many years, off and on. This year, though, we’ve worked together. She’s worked together with my team, in fact, in a much closer way, and she contracted us really to sort of take back over running her Facebook Ads, so that she could get more traffic and obviously, more sales.
Catherine Langman:
But this for her, was such a big decision. And I know that this is not an uncommon situation for many of you guys who are brand owners, and you are manufacturing your own product, where there’s a major, production error and it costs a lot of time as well as a lot of money to fix it, and reproduce things correctly, maybe even switching factories, which is what Maloo had to do. And so she had come off a really tough year, just in the business last year, because this had happened and she was needing to really recoup that lost time and investment as well.
Catherine Langman:
And so this year has been a bit crazy for Maloo. It has been a little bit up and down, but that’s because we keep selling through all those stocks. So she has overtaken her previous best months of revenue, by enormous amounts. And then, sell out and need to wait for more stock, and that the sales keep spiking up again. It’s been really, really amazing to see some fantastic sales growth there. And for the hardest problem in your business, to be keeping yourself in stock, it’s not the easiest one to solve, that’s still hard work for sure, but it’s not a bad problem to have, right?
Catherine Langman:
Another one who has had a similar issue really is Wendy from Up On The Rooftop. We’ve been working with Wendy for a year now. Unfortunately, she’s had to deal with a similar situation as well, where a whole batch, a big production run of her product, her clay waterpots [inaudible 00:23:29], for sustainable gardening in case you’re wondering, they burned in the kiln. I mean, it’s just the worst when these things happen. It’s so difficult to not lose your call, right? It’s pretty stressful dealing with that stuff.
Catherine Langman:
But she’s just had the most incredible results this year. She’s had a big growth from both organic search traffic, as well as paid traffic. And it’s really fantastic to see that happen in a business where you’re not paying for 100% of your traffic, you’re really working equally hard on the search engine optimization, and content marketing to really pick up that organic search traffic. So that’s what we’ve been working on with Wendy this year. And despite the fact that she’s pretty much sold out of stock before the Christmas sales period is over, it’s an amazing result for her this year.
Catherine Langman:
I want to give a shout out to Kelly Walker from Klipsta. So Klipsta was a brand new product invention and a brand new business as well, that she launched in the middle of the year this year, 2020. So kudos to you, Kelly, for taking the plunge and launching in the middle of COVID. You’ve done amazingly well this year. We are also incredibly impressed and proud of you for what you’ve achieved in the first six months of your business, fantastic growth. You’re learning all about running an ecommerce brand and all that goes along with that.
Catherine Langman:
I know that you’ve got some ideas about fantastic new products to create and to launch as well. And so we just can’t wait to see what you do in 2021. I guess, a small part that we play in that, is in the Facebook ad management area, but Kelly you’re doing it all, that’s fantastic. [Vaya 00:25:33] from [Maybe Me 00:25:33] is another recently new business, not launched in the middle of this year, but she… In fact, actually, Vaya, I don’t know when you launched your brand. I know it wasn’t that long ago, because you’ve been in our community for a little while, but anyway.
Catherine Langman:
Vaya came to work with us a few months ago to, initially work with us to run her Facebook advertising, but we’ve also been helping optimize her site. So it’s something that we try and do for all of our clients is, even if we are just there to run your Facebook ads, we’re not just looking at the Facebook ads, we’re also looking at how the whole kind of marketing ecosystem is working, and that definitely includes the website. So we’ve been able to help Vaya to improve her website conversion rate, and that’s made an enormous difference to her sales revenue.
Catherine Langman:
She’s had a record month, or a couple of months, in fact, in the lead up to Christmas. So that’s been super exciting, and she’s really addicted to it now, I think. So Vaya, look out, 2021 is going to be a big year for you. Now I want to jump over to Diana from milkbarbreastpumps.com.au. So Diana is a past client of ours. I’ve worked with Diana for, I reckon, a couple of years, and she contacted me just the other day and let me know that she has been a finalist in this year’s prestigious ORIAS Award Online Retail Industry, Australia.
Catherine Langman:
And she has also almost doubled her growth this year, which is absolutely incredible. She’s sustained that growth over many years now, which is amazing. But to be a finalist in an award like that, a massive congratulations, Diana, you have definitely earned that one, good on you. Natalia Michael from No Nasties, also some pretty exciting growth this year. So she’s made some big changes in her business. So she’s got No Nasties Kids, which is all organic, natural, kids play makeup and other products for kids to play with, and have creative play products, which she launched in the US, I think about a year ago.
Catherine Langman:
And then this year, she also launched her No Nasties home brand, which is a new line of products, obviously, for use in the home and the kitchen and things like that. So she’s launched that. She’s also redesigned her whole method of working, and manufacturing and hiring people that live locally to her to manage making up all of the products and the manufacturer side of things. So really bringing everything home, I guess, and tapping into her local community and really supporting the women around her to give them work.
Catherine Langman:
Again, she’s enjoyed some amazing growth this year, a record month in November. So that was super exciting by a massive margin. And it’s so fun and exciting to sit here and call out these beautiful, hardworking clients of ours and say they’ve had a record month or a record year, and that’s all well and exciting and everything. A lot of work and lessons have gone into those wins. So please don’t just listen to those success stories and think that, “That’s great for other people, but why am I not seeing that for myself?” It does take work, right?
Catherine Langman:
It takes trying things out, and sometimes things don’t work. You have to learn from those, and pivot, and test something else, and so on and so forth. Every one of these clients has been through that. It’s that iterative approach to learning anything and achieving anything really, I think. I suppose we’ve been able to bring our expertise in that process of designing the strategy, implementing, recording the results, and iterating and improving from and optimizing from there.
Catherine Langman:
Another client I want to just call out here is also Jody from Sweet Homebodies. Jody has been on the podcast before as has Natalia actually, and Diana. But Jody has had some amazing results this year. She has worked her bum off. They manufacture all of their own products as well. She has hired a team this year, so it’s not all her. She has had something like 1,000% growth, attributed to the marketing that she’s been working on with us. It’s absolutely crazy.
Catherine Langman:
She sent a message to us a little while ago and she says, “This week has been great. I have had the equivalent of about 1.2 full time equivalent staff help here. Today, I had both of my help is here, my cleaner, it was a full house. I [inaudible 00:30:50] between both of my friends, showing them how to do things. I actually had a chance to look at my stats, and look at these in comparison to last year [inaudible 00:30:58]. This is the screenshots, is 1,000% growth. It shows what a little marketing to do. I can’t wait to get back into all my stats.”
Catherine Langman:
So it is pretty fun and exciting when you see those sorts of stories coming in. All right, I also want to shout out a few wins to those of you who have worked with us in our education platform. So in our business, we have Productpreneur Marketing, which is a digital marketing agency. And then we have Productpreneur Academy, online education platform. And so this year, we’ve done a few cool things, we published our planner book, or actually that sort of hit the market late last year, but really, it’s been on the market this year. And some people have definitely been enjoying that one.
Catherine Langman:
So basically, this planner book, obviously it’s a planner, so it’s there to help you in your business in an ecommerce business specifically to manage your day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month, et cetera. But it’s also a workbook, so it’s got basically a whole marketing planning course, it’s the first part of the book. And so Corinne [inaudible 00:32:11] shout out to you, you gave us this great description of how you were using our planner. And so what you were saying is that your business marketing plan was spinning out of control, and you were weeks behind the work that you were doing, which incidentally, is in our online course.
Catherine Langman:
But you were sitting one day with a cup of tea exhausted not knowing what to do next, and you just picked up the planet and started from page one. And it’s really help you to get back on track. It’s very informative and well planned out. So the planner saved you from yourself, it’s become like a dear diary, it helps you to set out your weekly plan. It’s a great tool that you can sit with the planner and a cup of tea daily now, away from the computer, and all of the distractions that come with a computer like email, social media, et cetera. And you can concentrate on your next week’s plan, forecast, social media content, you can track trends for next year, et cetera. So, pretty cool.
Catherine Langman:
So I really appreciated you sharing that experience. Thank you. We had three periods where we launched our online course this year in 2020. We’re probably only going to do two next year, but we’ll reserve judgment, we’ll see how we go. But we did have a record number of new students joining our program, 2020 was the first time we did it as cohorts. So everyone is starting and finishing together. It was first year as well, where I opened up our agency, so it’s all of the subject matter experts from our agency now run coaching calls with students in the program.
Catherine Langman:
So they get their hand held through the curriculum with the experts, which is pretty cool. So that was really exciting to see the uptake this year in the course. We’ve had a few testimonials coming in as well. I won’t shout out to everyone, because I’ll be here all day. I want to mention a couple [inaudible 00:34:15], and one of them is from Jacqui. Jacqui Afflick has nonproducts.com. Her main product right now is her pre poo toilet spray, which is an all natural product as well.
Catherine Langman:
And so, most recently, she was sharing her results on her Black Friday promotion and… I think she has so much fun with her marketing. It’s really, really very funny. She has me in absolute stitches sometimes, but sometimes I think she thinks I’m a bit mad, and I think she thinks that, “[inaudible 00:34:55], it’s a nice sounding strategy, but that’s never going to work for me in my business.” Anyway, she’s a great student, though, she does what she’s told, and she gets things implemented.
Catherine Langman:
So with her Black Friday promotion, she shared, “I sent my first email yesterday, and sales were immediate. Then my second one today at 11:00 AM, same again, immediate sales. I sent my Facebook ad live yesterday afternoon and it is sitting at a return on adspend of 3.85. My online store conversion rate is 15.48%.” You heard that correctly, 15.48. I’ve never seen that before. That’s just insane. “So my Black Friday, Cyber Monday is going pretty bloody good. So far, fingers crossed the momentum remains.”
Catherine Langman:
Yeah, shout out to you, Jacqui. I have never seen a conversion rate like that. That is phenomenal. And there’s another one that I wanted to share from [Megan Melon 00:35:54] as well, who was sharing her Black Friday results, “Just wanted to come update. So far, I’ve sent out my email every day with an afternoon recent [inaudible 00:36:07] opens, various social media posts in my Facebook ad, which I was so skeptical about, because the audience is so narrow, which currently returns me a 12.3 ROAS.” Woo-hoo.
Catherine Langman:
“I’ve spent $173, so far on the ad, which is set $400 a day for four days. Catherine Langman, I’ve definitely got my return on investment on your Black Friday course, too.” So, pretty cool. Anyway, so we do love seeing you guys in the academy, going through the motions, learning all of this new stuff, and it’s hard. Digital marketing stuff, it’s all techie, there’s the creative side of things, which is challenging for some and easy for others. And then there’s the implementation, which is always techie, and that can be a bit painful for some.
Catherine Langman:
I know [Kylie 00:36:57] from [Moganani 00:36:58], she’s been in our academy for a while now. She recently shared that she’s had 300% growth in her ecommerce sales, which is really fantastic. Because I know she’s trying to move away from her in store. She has a salon, which is on a [inaudible 00:37:14] long days, et cetera. She would like to be not doing that anymore, so she’s still in the process of continuing to scale her ecomm sales. But she’s had an amazing year this year, and she really finds the tech side of online marketing really difficult, and she has persisted.
Catherine Langman:
So I absolutely love to see and applaud everyone who just persists like that, it’s really, really exciting. To finish us off, I’m just going to share a couple of personal wins. For those of you who may not know, like I have mentioned, we have our digital marketing agency, as well as education platform. We’ve actually tripled the size of our team this year, and that has been a massive stretch. Well, it has stretched us all, because we have just been so busy. It’s been insane, really.
Catherine Langman:
So it’s like strapping yourself in and just holding on kind of thing. But it’s been really, really fun to add to our team. A few years ago, when I set out, it was myself and Sally, who I’ve worked with for a very long time. And then Sarah joined us, and then [inaudible 00:38:28], and so it was four of us at the start of the year. It’s now nine, almost 11. So a couple more about to start, and maybe 12 by the end of January. So it’s really, really fun to see that happen.
Catherine Langman:
The other thing that obviously, I started the episode out describing, why I set out to try and thrive this year and make a few changes in the way that I was living and working was to spend time with my mum, and I have been able to do that. So I’ve been able to, go and take her to her appointments and just hang out and have family time with her, and that’s been really essential, but also amazing. I’ve absolutely loved that and appreciated that. And then the last thing that has been the biggest win for us this year is that we bought our forever family home.
Catherine Langman:
We’ve been back in Adelaide for nearly four years, and waiting for the right time to come up and the right home to come up, and this one did. And so we’re very new in this space, and absolutely loving that. So, I’m trying to focus this episode on some of those wins and exciting things and good things. I am not going to talk about how we’re going to take all of this learning and results to inform our plans for 2021. I’m not going to do that in this episode, I think this episode is long enough. However, I do encourage you if you are still listening and you’re still with me here, I really do encourage you to try and go through this exercise.
Catherine Langman:
Take a moment to take stock for the year. If there’s been some really tough times where it just felt like nothing was going right, and it’s really hard to see the good in things, try and turn it into the lesson that you can learn. Try and find a way to see the silver lining, but definitely, put your focus on the good things, whether they were big or small, and write them down and keep that list handy. In the new year in January, or actually, I’ll probably start this late December, I’m going to be recording some podcast episodes to help you with your planning for 2021.
Catherine Langman:
So keep an eye out for those upcoming episodes. I love planning. It’s my favorite thing to do in business. So I’m going to have a bunch of different episodes coming up that will help you in various different aspects of your planning. So do this exercise now reflecting on this year, and keep it handy for when it’s time to start the planning process. All right guys, that’s it for this episode. I hope you’ve enjoyed it. I will catch you next week. Bye for now.