Sam Birkett 0:12
Well, hello everyone, I should say Merry Christmas really all sort of pre-Merry Christmas, I suppose if you're listening to this before the big day, if not, I hope you had a good time. We are here with Marketing Meanders with Sally and Sam and we've... well we've basically decided to, I say summarise the year, we thought we would get together because it's been a little bit we've both been, I think, rather busy over the period leading up to December, and then the Christmas break and we thought, well, it's been a good time for reflecting as well now as we start to sort of trundle down into the Christmas holidays, and we're filling up with Christmas spirit. We thought let's look back on a well... quite a year, I think everyone's had quite a year in various, various ways and it's yes, it's been emotional and it's been a lot going on, of course, and there's much more to come in 2022, of course, but from a marketing standpoint, and I suppose I would add in here as well, as a freelance standpoint or a small business owner standpoint, I think there's been particular lessons that we've probably learned or things that we've changed, we've done we've adapted during the year. So we thought, well, let's try to say let's share three each of our ideas around what we've done, how we've adapted and developed. But maybe it might turn into a melding of a meandering melded meander of multiple things that we think we've learned, we've tried to stick to three each. But they are relatively similar.

Sally Green 1:42
That won't happen, Sam, I mean, it's sweet of you to think that, but really.

Sam Birkett 1:45
We can't possibly limit ourselves and make it neat and tidy. So anyway, what we'll do is we'll take you through our lessons learned from 2021 and then hopefully, some of these might resonate with you and I'd be interested to hear what you have learned in the year as well. But I'm just going to hand straight over to Sally to kick us off with her first lessons learned.

Sally Green 2:09
My first one is to take time, because actually, it's not often that when you're working, you tend to work all the time, it's constant, I've got things to do, I've got a list, I've got a tick list, I've got to do this and then that leads into this and if things but actually COVID actually made a stop for a moment, it made us stop. It may have been because the people who were working with closed down, or the budgets got screwed up, or whatever reasons you had to stop and I think it's really valuable to recognise how much you got done, because you were taking time. So you had to think, Okay, I haven't got these three blogs to write because that's not going to happen just at the minute. So what shall I... Oh God, I know, I'm actually going to either teach myself how to write a better blog, so do some research and thought about how to do that. Or actually try to do a slightly quirky one, maybe I'll write something that's a bit weird, because I can try it now. Because I haven't got to post it immediately. I can try it, think about it, look at it carefully. But I think I'm going to take into next year, actually don't do everything at top speed because it doesn't necessarily make it better. Well there are some things that you might have to do to absolute top speed. Bang, that's brilliant and sometimes that is very successful. But I'm going to make myself put my foot on the brake and go right. I've done that. But now I'm gonna take a break and think about it and to take some time to think you were talking about earlier, Sam, about actually doing some conscious thinking outside the box every week.

Sam Birkett 3:45
Yeah, absolutely. Well, that completely ties in with one of my three areas really, which I think was, as you say, taking time and it was sort of there's been that enforced sense of having to sort of stop and do things differently. I mean, I suppose we found earlier in the year with with with lockdown in particular, the whole thing of you go, Oh, gosh, well, I used to be charging around doing this, that and the other travelling meeting people. So we've been forced into having to sort of stop and slow down but it's interesting, because I think the pattern of my year, I mean resonates for that really this whole thing of, I suppose it's slowing down in terms of, you know, not doing as much of the normal stuff outside of work in a way and then actually on the work front I was becoming rather frantic and it was only until I suppose maybe the summer and then after the summer thinking about and yeah, as you said the podcast episode I did before, which was about taking time to be creative and actually the benefits of slowing down, how it can help all of your work because trying new things is one of the really big things isn't there about you know, you actually have more of a conscious focus of saying I'm not just going to do everything in the same old way and be on the treadmill. But also that thing I just found that just taking more time for myself to slowing down just a small amount. So even if it was going out for a walk or something, or just coming back and going, but I'm not just going to jump into getting on the screen and doing I don't know, right writing that, that web copy, I'm going to sit down with a book to look through, you know, a notepad or something, or I'm actually just going to do something different, like having a walk like doing something else and I know it's a bit of a luxury to be able to do that to a certain degree being a freelancer. But then, when I did it, I come back and I just felt immediately refreshed and so much more creative and in the zone, as they say, for writing in particular and it was only from just saying I'm sort of taking time to have time, taking time to do more and it was something I knew before, almost like sometimes, you know, you learn these lessons, and then you forget them through the necessity of this, this, this and this, but they go ooh, hold on, step back and then you slot in again, don't you? So I definitely echo that.

Sally Green 6:06
Because we always feel that I think we've been taught to believe that taking time is actually a waste of time, you haven't got time to do that, you've got to do this, this and this. Actually this, this and this will get done quicker. If you've taken a bit of time to breathe, and think, okay, stop, think, prepare and then those things, because you're well, you're all wound up as well. So your brain is doing 18 different things and it's all confused and bothered and actually, if you just switched off for a while, it can put itself in place. It's why we dream because what your brain is trying to do is kind of sort all the mess out that's in there and put it in place and put give it structure and clear out. So you need to kind of give yourself time to dream.

Sam Birkett 6:48
Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, it's so I mean, I've been looking back at the moment into the dear distant days of childhood and thinking about things I think, I think probably the Christmas going on and you know, my kids obviously being very excited and you know, you think back to your own Christmases as a child and, you know, you imagine how you were at the time and I think one of those crucial things I remember being terribly excited by, it wasn't the location or anything I remember one in particular was like Christmas Bazaar, or something my mum was helping with and I was there my sister and one of the school friend whose mother was also helping apparently and this Bazaar and or setting up for it. So it was like a dark Friday night and we sort of hit like under this sort of staircase and this large function building and we created, I remember being one of those magical moments in my childhood, we created this amazing kind of, you know, imaginary world to do with like Christmas and Father Christmas and everything happening and it was extraordinary and I remember just so many as probably it felt like hours and hours and hours, it was probably like 45 minutes whilst we had to be quiet somewhere and it does make you think about daydreaming about the whole, the... I think part of it, is that sort of that release of childhood not having that sort of, oh, gosh, I got this in my calendar next and this and this and this and as you say it is that sort of being freed up and I think this time of year, hopefully if people do get to actually pause properly over Christmas, I'm not saying they should be doing work stuff. Of course, they should be enjoying time with their friends and family. But it does enable you to have that space doesn't it and then that's when ideas and things, certainly to me, they seem to come to you.

Sally Green 8:25
They gel Exactly. Because the other thing I'm going to do to give myself time that I was mean to do and never ever do, but I'm going to really be quite strict with myself is actually switch my emails off sometimes. So when I sit at my computer, the only thing on it is a Word document and that's all I'm thinking about. So I haven't got little pop-up sounds of an email as arrived or oh my god, I just need to check my diary or that kind of thing. Actually, the only thing on the screen is a blank Word document or possibly nothing. I'm going to write it down with a fountain pen.

Sam Birkett 8:56
Yep. Oh, absolutely. I mean, got the multiple tabs. That's been an interesting thing. We've had been on so many zoom calls this last year having to apologise to people to why I'm sharing my screen and go, Oh, ignore all the tabs, or I see other people's screens, they go oh my goodness, it was so many tabs open and and that is a perfect sort of summary for me or, you know, example of how you can be... you feel like you're sort of I've got so many balls in the air. I'm juggling and getting things done. It's like the confusion between that and actually being productive and saying, Well, I'm being really productive because I have one thing open. That's the thing I'm on right now that's what I'm doing and if that has to be completed, that has to be brought up to a certain point and then pans over to someone and then I think you know that whole that thing because it particularly with this last year of being so much more on the screen and rarely, you know travelling and talking to people, making notes in meetings perhaps, yeah, absolutely and being focused and productive on the task at hand.

Sally Green 9:55
It's what we tell children to do this all the time. Only do one thing at a time. So you know, if you're doing an exam you're not doing answering question one and question six at the same time. But that is effectively what we're doing, when we're on Zoom, because you can actually see what tabs you go, Oh, God, that looks interesting. But what that is, while I'm talking, oh, I wonder if anyone will notice if I open that and just quickly read it.

Sam Birkett 10:20
Well, that's it and I think actually, in particular, I would say for, well, for anyone, I suppose but particularly, I think, with marketers mean, I've noticed, I mean, the thing that you know, you can be I mean, with my freelance projects with people, I can be working on lots of different work streams, as I call them at multiple times and you can end up with a situation where you've sort of got, you know, one client's Twitter account in one set of windows and you've closed that down and pauses in the background, then you're on to a LinkedIn thing and the other window, then you're on to Canva designing this or whatever, and then you're on to a Google Doc, and you're putting the copy in and it's the whole I feel this immediate sense of relief, when I close those things down. I'm petrified. I know if other people have this, but I'm petrified to close down a set of Windows in my browser, in particular, as I think, Oh no, but I have to then go and reopen all these things, again, to get them open, but I think, but hang on a minute, how much time you actually spending on clicking on those windows and doing anything on there? Or are they just there as a sort of almost a digital comfort blanket to sort of say, Oh, well, I've got that running? What does that do? It doesn't actually do anything? You know, actually, you know, if you said, Well, today, or this morning, I'm focused on this project, then what good does it do to have something else running, just slowing your computer down, basically, and then you'll be like, Oh, I'm on a zoom call.

Sally Green 11:37
Also people aren't going to notice that you're on Twitter if you're not doing anything? If you've got Twitter open doesn't mean anyone's thinking, Oh, good heavens Sam's got Twitter open? They're not going to know because you've not done anything.

Sam Birkett 11:49
Exactly. This is the thing, and you sort of think, Oh, it's just this whole, it's almost again, as it's so easy to, you know, the technology we have enables us to sort of go, oh, well, I'll be doing this, this, that and there are lots of things. But actually, you know, again, we're mismatched because we're not designed really to be over a long period of time anyway, to be doing multiple things all at the same time.

Sally Green 12:13
And particularly you Sam because you're a boy and I believe that you can't multitask. Whereas, obviously, I'd find all this much, much easier.

Sam Birkett 12:19
Oh of course, it would, it would just happen, like that would be perfect and this is it. It's the whole thing of thinking, well, yeah, I can't, I can't possibly be doing all these things at the same time. So just stop and calm and one thing at a time which is so much more important, particularly say when there's just so much, you know, you're just looking at a screen for like, I mean, if it's probably not that much more perhaps, than when, you know, if you're in an office, but then it's the breaks in between perhaps which you miss and the walking to a meeting, which I think we're travelling to a meeting. That is probably a bigger difference and it's probably those brakes, which are really important. So I would have said even then, actually, when I wouldn't be doing that, still far too much time, probably on the screen jumping around on things and so yeah, just that sort of, I suppose we're saying that points of keep calm and just step back, find some space, find some time because there is always time, that's another thing. You quite often think, oh, no, I've got no time for anything. You know, which is total rubbish, isn't it? You almost have to call yourself out, don't you and say, that's not actually true.

Sally Green 13:38
Just occasionally, and you can probably count these on one hand for your entire life, that you actually ran out of time for something that was set because you had so much to do not because you'd kind of goofed on the timings, but because actually, you had so much to do that one day kicked over into another new missed an absolutely crucial deadline, you have missed a plane or you know, all these kinds of things. The number of times that's actually happened is probably virtually never.

Sam Birkett 14:07
Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's it, isn't it? And you just yeah, you just think does this really happen or are you creating your own artificial deadlines and things and also that thing of, oh, I can't possibly do this. I can't possibly do that, because that's another thing actually. So melding it, reconnecting into this one about taking time, I think is the thing of discovering, and this is a bit more of a freelancer angle again, I suppose. Apologies to people who are not in this focus, speaking from our experience, again, the whole thing of thinking, Well, some things can actually be done more quickly than you think and that's okay and you don't necessarily have to be sort of going okay, well, no, no, no, this you know, this, this, this is going to take 12 hours to do this thing and you go, Oh, it only took seven and you think well as that happened, and my immediate thing is that was worrying that I've got it together and think I've actually done the right job? The thing is, if you've got processes in place to say, Okay, so as an example, writing a set of LinkedIn posts for a campaign, and you think, oh, that's gonna take quite a while doing this and doing that and you might know roughly how long it will take you to create the actual images to creatives and things and then you think, oh, I need to get all my ducks in a row with what copy I'm saying where my calls to action are, if you've got the correct processes in place where you're checking it, and then you're getting a second pair of eyes, to work with you and sort of do a sort of due diligence almost to say, well, are they correct? Will they actually work? Have you captured the spirit and the purpose of what you're trying to do with objectives and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you do a tick list and you go, well, I've actually done I focused on the task of achieving this. That's the most important thing rather than going, oh, you know what, I think I'll just go back and do a second round of edits, or just reimagine the whole thing again, and do it again, because I almost feel like it needs to. So sometimes you can do things more efficiently.

Sally Green 16:03
And you can massively overthink things, particularly if you said it's going to take me 10 hours, and then you think hasn't, that must mean I ought to do a whole rethink of it. That must mean I haven't made them long enough or big enough, or I've got to have a much more complicated visual background to this, this has got so many and actually, we need to also constantly think about customers, the actual people who are going to be reading this. They also it's like, they don't want to have a website if you're writing web copy, which is absolutely packed with stuff and there are masses of journey directions and it's all a bit much. They want this is you, this is what we offer, go over here. They don't want to be confused. Don't confuse them because you think it ought to take 10 hours.

Sam Birkett 16:51
Yeah, yeah, exactly, and that's the thing, some of these sometimes these arbitrary sorts of timelines, we give ourselves on certain things, you know, because no one quite knows exactly how long or what you're gonna need to do. But until you actually do it, but it's sort of it's the doing, isn't it a lot of the time, because so often you can be sort of planning and planning and planning and you should have a plan. My goodness, yes, you should have a plan, but you do things and then... but it's the doing can then become far more contorted and drawn out that it needs to be, and actually, you're thinking again, so I suppose it's connected as well, to sort of you know, what testing is another thing, which that's not a new lesson, I suppose I've learned but you know, coming back and testing and say, and your processes thinking, is this connecting with the customer? Is this correct in terms of what I use? Rather than I've set myself a whole day to do this and therefore, it should take me a whole day to do it thinking well, no, hang on a second, just actually doing you know, is this a real thing to be doing? Yeah, really, like a reality shift almost back from the sort of, you know, create the intangible kind of, this is how I'm organising myself. So again, sort of organising work, I suppose and then thinking, but actually, what is it that I have actually done and I'm actually trying to achieve? I think it's that lesson is like around just reality checking yourself and I think as well getting someone else to help you, that's another thing. I think when you absolutely need to reach out to others, whether it's people you're working with on a project, or colleagues, trusted peers and people like that, and just having that sort of coaching almost and mentoring.

Sally Green 18:27
This is another meld into something good, which this year taught me is that because sometimes, people who you wanted to check with weren't available, because they were either unwell, or their routines changed dramatically, because of COVID, etc. You sometimes had to reach out to somebody who wasn't quite the right person, or the person you didn't think was the right person and you suddenly find that, wow, this is amazing. I've tried to check this with somebody wasn't expecting like a salesperson when I was actually expecting to speak to a marketeer and they've given me a completely different approach. This is absolutely genius. So I'm going to do that more, reach out to people, kind of slightly unexpected people and see what they have to say, just because it can sometimes make you think, Oh, I've been going in slightly the wrong direction here. Maybe let's do this and actually marketing might have helped you together, you'd have gone in equally the wrong direction because you're both marketers you'll think yes, we must get the call to action, right? Whereas a salesperson might say, no, you're not thinking about the audience person. Right? I've got completely the wrong audience here.

Sam Birkett 19:31
Yeah, absolutely. Well, that's the thing. I think that sort of diversity of opinion, I suppose the thing isn't it? It's sort of having that sense of being able to under, you know, get others to sort of come back and feed back to you on things and achieve that balance of them saying, have you thought about it like this? And you go, Oh, that's yeah, I'll incorporate that in or something I learned for the long term as well, you know, and then the general approach so yeah, I think that's an important one, definitely, getting that feedback and you're not being afraid to seek feedback as well, I suppose.

Sally Green 20:07
You can't get that wrong, you really can't. This is another thing you can probably count on one hand when for your whole life, and people have said, no, that's completely crap and you're useless. I mean, it's not impossible, you might have some very unfortunate colleagues. But largely, people will try and help and even if they say, that's completely crap, and you're useless, they'll probably say, that's completely crap. You're useless. Why don't we work together to make it better?

Sam Birkett 20:32
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that's the thing. Being in a place where you can actually, yeah, progress and move things forward and again, not being afraid to see that something you have done is perhaps, you know, you can again, learn a lesson from it, can't you? Go okay, I can see why that might not be right and then Okay, let's try it this way. You know, it's actually really important to be able to, you know, learn those lessons and be open to learning and changing, developing I suppose.

Sally Green 21:02
And talking to the marketeers is really important, because you can get, particularly if you're busy, actually, very locked in only doing things in certain ways. So I only do LinkedIn or Facebook. That's all I do. That's what I do and actually, when you start talking to other marketers, they'll go, really? Because God, when I do LinkedIn posts, I always kind of back it up with a TikTok video and you say, Oh, yeah, actually and you share a similar audience. So really, I think it's very valuable talking to marketers.

Sam Birkett 21:39
Oh, absolutely. Yeah, definitely. I think...

Sally Green 21:44
It's being brave enough to do TikTok videos.

Sam Birkett 21:46
Yeah. Well, as you said, as you were saying earlier, on the whole thing of actually, you know, moving into trying things differently, and not being afraid to try these different things and understanding how they can actually benefit you. And just seeing what happens really, that's the other thing, isn't it? Because I suppose it's sort of kind of a way reverses into one of my major lessons, which I was going to. It's all melding as we thought, around the idea of flexibility, which I think when we talked to Mike Foster, ooh, gosh, last summer, whenever that was.

Yes, that feels like a year ago.

Yeah. It feels like ages isn't it? I think he was asking about what we learned from COVID, in particular, but I think for me, again, it's it's been really reinforced the flexibility angle. So I've been talking to various people who have, you know, they've had their product, which they've been, you know, they've sold it in a certain way for a number of years and it's relied on face to face, to a large extent and then they've had to radically during the worst of the lockdowns, they've had to reinvent it, they've had an alternative, which is great. But then when you get to this point now, where we are with this, you know, omicron variant coming out, and everyone's thinking, well, actually, now we sort of we've gone through the worst of this, probably, and therefore, you know, we will already recreated our offering and the way in which we sell it and to communicate with our audience, and so on, so forth and you think right, now, is it time to get back to inverted commas normal or more normality as it were? And then it's like, oh, no, no, there's the rug that's been pulled and you go, Oh, okay. So now what? And that's the flexibility, both in terms of your marketing comms and the fact that, you know, you have to be okay with everyone else, you know, your customers have to be flexible and you have to sort of get on the same level with them to make them understand your flexibility because of circumstances, but you have to communicate with them well. But also operationally, my goodness, I mean, various people I've seen who they've had to just, you know, pivot on a penny and reorganise things. So sort of the management side of things the leadership has to be so good at making sure everyone's like, look, this is not certain. We have to be flexible. We don't know what's going to happen. But this is sort of plan A, this is contingency B, this is contingency C and D. It's the contingency planning and I think the sort of having a plan that is flexible, which I know something we've always talked about, you know, having that plan that's flexible. I mean, if you just started even this time last year, and thinking, well, we're in the depths of COVID. So Plan A is this, this is our plan for the year. There's no way that's going to be the same now is it? I mean, we're thinking now everyone's on the cusp of 2022 thinking, Where are we going to be this time next year? Who knows? What can we even plan but, the only way you can plan for is uncertainty almost.

Sally Green 24:46
Yeah. I do think flexibility is really really important and you do have to as you say have contingency A, B and C all these things, but... I'm going to sound really boring now but you'll be much more confident with your flexibility. If you do get be really good eye on your budget. So budget them, don't just go, oh, well, I can't control the budget, because oh, I don't know, because that's what will make you go bust to start with, apart from anything else. But it will also make you feel more comfortable and confident if you can actually say, I know where the money's going. I know what money is coming in. I know what I can spend and actually, if this doesn't happen, I know that I can move this money here, that money can come from there. You do have to keep that as quite a nice firm foundation to all your flexible stuff.

Sam Birkett 25:32
Oh, God, absolutely. That's the thing isn't it, because it's almost I suppose it's this sort of little islands, isn't it really so there are points of stability and there is the bedrock of understanding, well, I know, I've got certain amount of resources to be able to use in this year and so, okay, there's probably going to be a lot of change, the things I plan now, may very well, they may happen, they may change, they may not happen at all. But as you say, I know where I am in terms of the resources I can use and budget I can use during the year. So yeah, when those contingencies potentially happen, and it may be a contingency I haven't even thought of, at least we know where we are. So again, I suppose it's all just sort of the planning but more or less the ongoing processes that backup, all of that work isn't the operational side of understanding. Well, yeah, we know exactly where we are and therefore what we have available to move to a different position, not sort of, as you say, just going well, who knows just chuck the cards in the air and

Sally Green 26:33
We'll just spend the money!

Sam Birkett 26:35
Yeah, then we spent it all, it's all gone. So now there's a massive opportunity because all of a sudden, we discover that, you know, the lockdowns have finished for good, who knows and Omicron has actually disappeared overnight and now we have no money left to do anything. Yeah. Oopsy daisy. Well, that's all for now. Join us next time for more reflections on 2021 and if you want to contribute to the conversation, you can find us on Facebook, on LinkedIn and also you could just Google us basically at Marketing Meanders. So until next time, take care, bye for now.