19 Months in Business Kicked My Ass & Taught Me A Powerful Lesson
After 19 months of roller coaster business with Fat Panda Design (or at our URL) www.FatPandaDesign.com, I’m hitting the ‘restart’ button on everything and starting from over — and for good reason.
I’ll admit — I’m terrible at holding myself accountable, especially when it comes to my Fat Panda Design website blog.
Back in January, I spent 12 hours creating an entire editorial calendar, jam-packed with interesting topics, clever titles, and even went as far as labeling each article with a “buyer persona” it would aim to connect with.
I labored over this spreadsheet and generated 6 months worth of juicy ideas, excited to craft and publish new articles every single week.
And then — I blew it.
It’s been exactly 3 months since I’ve personally written an article. The last piece I wrote was 5 Tools to Create Images for Social Media (it’s actually a pretty useful piece, imo).
There’s also the guest post that was published 2 months ago, about How to Increase Your Website’s Traffic with More Content, which was authored by my friend Allan Caeg from NorthStories.io. (Thanks again, buddy — I owe you a beer one of these days).
But besides that, it’s been dead-silent on my end — and frankly, it’s time for a change.
I believe that I honestly thought I could just set what I had built on autopilot — that the pipeline would forever remain full based on past efforts.
And now, I’ve proven that that mindset is complete and utter bullshit.
If you’ve reached a state of complacency, well, welcome to the beginning of the end.
I do believe that I can turn this ship around, though, and rebuild the foundation, stronger than before.
However, in order to do so, I need to personally change. I need to step up to the plate, accept the reality of the situation, and push forward with crafting a SOLUTION, instead of wishing for the problem to just vanish.
Your mindset can make or break you and whatever you’ve set out to do in life.
It’s time to hold myself accountable for what I set out to do — the brand and identity that is “Fat Panda Design” has been the center of my entrepreneurial focus for the past 19 months.
I set out to create a (hopefully successful) web design & marketing agency, completely bootstrapping the entire process.
At first, I devoted so much time to building personal relationships with my followers, connections, and small but growing audience.
That helped Fat Panda Design grow pretty quickly in the beginning.
It went from an idea born in the dank basement of my little old childhood home in Akron, NY — to an actual business that generated revenue — and enough to actually afford a life that I had always dreamed of — perpetual travel and adventure.
I think during all of the travel and adventuring, though, I lost sight of what nourished the roots in the beginning and helped the seedling begin to sprout.
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Right now, it feels like I’m watching the petals wilt away — and I only have myself to blame for this.
Things were going great — when I was actively writing, creating, diving into the minds of my (potential) audience — attempting to connect the dots between their pain points and the solutions that I could (or should) offer them.
Actively creating, crafting, communicating, sharing ideas and thoughts with others, and doing my best to offer no-strings-attached value whenever I could, to whomever I could, was what helped Fat Panda Design grab attention in a noisy digital world.
Sadly, though, I stopped doing what was working, in a vain attempt to “growth-hack” my way to a steady pipeline of leads.
I stopped connecting on a personal level with my small, but growing audience. I tried to be everywhere, all the time, attempting to reach as many people as possible.
I replaced genuine interaction with automation tools and techniques — I thought I was “scaling up” using these methods.
In doing so, I lost the personal connections I had worked so hard to build, and instead grew a massive “ghost” audience.
I went from caring about the small following that actually engaged with me and my tweets, my articles, my facebook posts, and ideas — to focusing solely on “numbers” and “growth-hacking” my audience size.
So now I’ve ended up with a fairly “large” following — 22.6k+ followers on Twitter (with less than 0.1% engagement), roughly 8.5k connections on LinkedIn (with less than 0.05% engagement), and virtually no engagement on my Facebook page.
So today, I vow to step back, and focus on what worked in the beginning, and what truly matters — you guys. My audience. My connections, my followers, and even the few fans I have (you guys are amazing)!
It’s time to focus on regaining your trust, delivering value on a personal level, and engaging with everyone again.
It’s time to get back to creating, connecting, and engaging my audience.
Thank you to everyone who’s been there with me from the beginning, and has stuck with me ever since.
I especially appreciate those that have helped me along the way by calling me out on my bullshit, and showing me first hand how I was causing my own failure. You’ve helped me see what needs to change, and how to go about it.
I couldn’t be more thankful for that.
-Ben, aka Fat Panda
Interested in learning more about how I plan to absolutely destroy my sales figures month over month for the rest of the year?
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