What Worked & What Didn’t in Our Small Business in 2020
Last year I wrote a blog post about some of the challenges and successes of 2019, and you guys loved it. We thought perhaps this should be a yearly series - a sort of diary for us to look back over our years in business. It will be fun to reflect back in 20 years and see the “small” challenges we faced and the “huge” wins that we accomplished as a baby company.
Also, 90s perms are a perfect example of why we should reflect year over year on “what worked and what didn’t work”... so here we go!
For context, in 2020 we again *almost* doubled in annual sales, we hired our first actual employee vs. subcontractor, started running legitimate payroll, and grew our team despite the global pandemic and chaos. I’d say it was a great year to have already had a successful online business!
What Worked and What Didn’t Work in our 2020 Business Strategy
What didn’t work in 2020:
Taking on too many clients.
Project management is a huge struggle for many businesses, including ours. Our project manager, Julie, has been a lifesaver when it comes to keeping projects on track, but we still experience the occasional project that goes beyond the timeline. When that happens, the project snowballs into other projects that are just starting; it makes for too many projects to manage at one time. I think we’ll always be looking for ways to improve our processes, workflows, and efficiencies and that will be a primary focus for 2021.
Overly complicated project management systems.
In the 2019 blog post, I wrote that complicated project management systems didn’t work for us. This was still true in 2020, but we decided to give Asana another shot to help keep track of deadlines. This time we went into Asana with a simple objective - don’t overcomplicate the process! We definitely did not want to become overwhelmed with more work just to keep Asana up to date. Turns out, Asana works for some of us, and not others, but the most important thing is that it makes life easier for our project manager, Julie. It’s important to remember that nothing is a magic fix and programs will only work if you use them.
Google Sheets didn’t work for client social media content calendars!
With our social media clients increasing in 2020, there was a lot more content to manage. For Mica, who manages our social media division, Google Sheets were not making the cut when it came to managing content. There was a lot of duplicate work and it was not easy to collaborate with clients. That’s when we discovered Airtable, which has been an amazing tool to manage the content for various social media platforms, email marketing, blogging, and more for our clients (and us!). Stay tuned for a coming up blog post where we talk about our experience with Airtable, and why we love it.
What did work in our 2020 Business Strategy:
Taking the leap and hiring our first full-time employee.
While it was one of the scariest decisions we’ve made as business owners, it was necessary to get to the next level, and we found a fantastic human, Mica, to hire. Her support and reliability 40 hours a week working with our social media clients and HeiPro’s digital marketing strategy has allowed Elizabeth and I to focus on other areas of our business.
Investing in our own SEO.
This is quite literally how our biggest client ever found us. As a digital marketing agency, we obviously know the importance of search engine optimization, but oftentimes our own business is last on our list to take care of. This year, we decided to make sure our SEO Specialist, Clem, added the HeiPro website to her list to make sure we are growing our domain authority.
Hiring a new business advisor.
With growth in our business came new sets of challenges. Our new business advisor is keeping us accountable to financials, our leadership, setting us up for HR success and more. We absolutely love working with him - if you’re interested in hearing more about our experience, don’t hesitate to reach out to me and I can make an introduction.
Implementing Gusto in our business as our payroll processor.
Hiring our first full-time employee, meant processing payroll! This was a new endeavor for us, but Gusto made payroll and HR super simple and streamlined. We can even pay our subcontractors using Gusto which is awesome because payments are deposited directly in their bank accounts; that means no credit card processing fees!
Closing HeiPro and taking a solid break between Christmas and New Years.
Our first time truly closing our business. If we had a physical location, our doors would have been locked! While it was an incredible break to be with our families and we got to truly unplug and recharge, taking that much time off meant we had to prepare and make sure our projects and clients were in a great place before we closed up shop. Hustling to get that much work done before our Christmas break was a lot of work, but totally worth the sense of accomplishment in the end.
I know 2020 was a strange year for so many people given the pandemic and election. My heart goes out to so many business owners who truly struggled given what was (is still) going on. I am so grateful that things did not change for us in the slightest. We are fortunate to have already had an online business, doing most of our internal and external meetings virtually. We also do not have a physical building with overhead or employees we had to send home. Luckily for us, the pandemic truly pushed the need for a digital marketing strategy and strong online presence so it did not affect our sales and revenue.
I am sure there were many more challenges and successes over the course of 2020 for us, but these are my key takeaways. I hope you enjoyed it!
Please note: This blog post contains affiliate links which means we may receive a small commission when you purchase a product through an affiliate link on our website, an email, or on social media.
Cheers!