What have you learned this year? What lessons have you learned from your experiences in 2021? Learning through experience is one of the best ways to grow in life. Our experience is also very personal. It is therefore believable. We can learn from it without worrying about the veracity of the facts, which is not the case with the advice we receive from the people around us.
Albert Einstein said that knowledge is acquired through experience, everything else is just information”. Indeed, experience is never incorrect, it is our conclusions that are not right. So here is my question. Do you learn from your experiences? Before answering hastily, take the time to think about it.
Here are the five lessons I learned in 2021.
Lesson 1: Stop constantly changing your mind
I’ve always had a feeling that people who change their minds all the time sabotage their own success. This year confirmed it to me. What I realized is that a person who sets a goal and keeps changing their mind is wasting way too much time and energy for nothing. Example.
Imagine that a person has a goal to go to downtown Montreal. To get there, she decides to go by car. A kilometer later, she decides to change vehicles and take a motorcycle. Ten kilometers later, she finds it too dangerous and therefore prefers the bus. At the next stop, she doesn’t want to stay on a bus with so many people, especially during a pandemic, so she decides to continue foot.
Two kilometers later, her foot hurts and decides to find a horse. Luckily, she manages to rent one and continues to downtown Montreal. Arrived at the Champlain Bridge, she realizes that she is not allowed to cross the bridge on horseback and therefore looks for a taxi. This taxi finally takes him to his destination. End.
Have you seen how much time and energy this person has spent constantly changing modes of transportation? It’s incredible! Yet that’s what most of us do. We constantly change our shirt. Sometimes it’s very subtle. Today I’m not working, I am extremely tired, even though I had agreed to finish off such an expression of the project. It’s not just giving up on a goal. Any major or minor change that doesn’t help us achieve our goal easier or faster is part of the idea of ”changing our minds”. If you have decided to do one thing, do it!
Lesson 2: Writing one article per month is easy
I introduced the Challenge I write at the beginning of 2021. It was a challenge that consisted of writing one blog article per month to position myself as an expert on the market. This is called expertise marketing. A hundred people were interested in the challenge. Less than fifty registered in the Facebook group of the challenge. In the end, two people completed it from start to finish. So, I wondered about the reason for this lack of commitment.
At first, it was very difficult to write one article per month, but after three months, it became easier and easier. Six months later, it had become a pleasure and nine months later, I am on my 10th article in a year. In fact, writing one article per month is easy. There are tons of resources, tools, tutorials, topics, and books to inspire and help customers.
What is not easy is to develop the discipline required to write. I’m willing to bet it was a lack of discipline that caused some people to sign up and write absolutely nothing. It’s not because they can’t write or don’t have enough knowledge. Writing one article a month is much easier than it sounds: you just must do it! Oh, and by the way one of my articles was published in a newspaper read by thousands of subscribers (in case some thought it was a waste of time).
Lesson 3: Brainstorm before you run into trouble
In business, we tend to brainstorm when faced with a challenge. I had the opportunity to make two business turnarounds in 2020-2021. The lesson I learned is that people tend to brainstorm only when they have a problem to solve or a new goal to achieve (eg launching a new product). The rest of the time, they don’t feel the need.
In my experience, innovation isn’t just about pulling us out of the hole when things go wrong. You can innovate through brainstorming even when things are going well. In fact, if we do it regularly, we become more efficient and we prevent difficult times with the band. Don’t wait for a shortage of money to start thinking about other ways to find new customers. If you wait too long and your business goes into the red, it will already be too late. It will then take you more time, energy, and resources to recover, not to mention the stress that this will cause.
Lesson 4: There are customers who are not worth it!
This one, I tend not to want to understand. It happened to me to have difficult customers, dissatisfied with everything, people who do not want to pay and even some who end up disappearing into thin air. Unfortunately, it took me a long time to recognize them and to admit to myself that I was in front of customers who would be difficult to manage soon.
It’s always the same scenario. It starts with abstract goals, hesitations, delays, missed meetings, invoices paid several days late… and that’s how gradually, clients end up revealing their true nature. When it is done, it is unfortunately too late. We worked too hard… for not much. In these moments, my great generosity is a real scourge, double-edged kindness.
A situation that, again this year, happened to me. At the time of writing this article, I have three clients who have not honored the fees stipulated in our contract. My decision is made, I will never do business with a client again before having verified that this exchange will be mutually positive and beneficial. Otherwise, I’ll just say no! Any customer with a need is not necessarily a good customer.
Lesson 5: Why keep sharing so much content on social media?
Since 2017, I have five social networks, a blog, several pages in site directories and a podcast. Each month, I produce between one and four large format content (video or podcast made by a video production company near me) and several dozen small formats (daily publications). Despite all my efforts, my equipment, my cinematographic montages, and my dynamic music, I struggle to get more likes and shares. My YouTube channel doesn’t even have 1000 subscribers, my Instagram doesn’t even have 350 and my Facebook barely 458.
Faced with this observation, I hired a social network manager. Wasted effort. My clients don’t even take half a second to press the little blue thumb after viewing my content, like their finger really hurts. And next to that I see 15 second kitten videos that have over 500 thousand views? Kittens are much more popular than Aime Premier, it’s official!
All that time and research and money spent on equipment for this. My return on investment on social networks organically is close to 10%. At the end of the year, it was therefore necessary to take a moment to reflect on it and learn lessons. What is the point of making social media content? All the great entrepreneurs and marketing gurus highly recommend it! As far as I know, it was not me who came up with the idea of giving value to customers on social networks to generate more revenue.
Do you feel like you are going through the same thing as me? Do you feel like silly videos with no content get more views than yours? Glad to know I’m not alone!
Here is what I learned as a lesson on this subject this year. We must continue to produce educational content not because we want to go viral, but because it’s the right thing to do! When we have knowledge that can save someone’s life, we have a moral duty to help them! If everyone stopped making educational videos made by the best video companies near me because it doesn’t pay, we would all suffer! Remember how many times a creator saved your life with one of their YouTube tutorials?
And remind me, how much did you pay for his advice? That is what I thought. If you want to keep producing content for your audience, don’t expect too much. Educational content will never be more popular than mind-numbing content. Modern humans thrive on entertainment. Don’t fall into the trap of discouragement. Make content to move the world forward. Do it because “it’s the right thing to do! and it’s good for you!