Why Confusion Gets Expensive

Amy Dardis 0:12

And I'm your host, Amy Dardis. And in this episode, we are diving into the cost of confusion and misalignment in our business and the price that we pay both internally and externally. And this sounds terrible to say, but I do feel like I'm a little bit of an expert in this field because confusion and misalignment has played such a major role in my life, in my business, for the last 15 years. And it has been a journey of really wrestling with this and having to come to terms with this of why I have been dealing with all this confusion and misalignment and seeing it not only in my business, but also seeing it in the businesses that I've worked for and worked with, and realizing that there are so many consequences of this. So when we have confusion and misalignment in our business, I think there's really two areas that we pay this price. We're going to see it externally. So we're going to see the practical, tangible business side of this. So we're going to look at what does confusion and misalignment look like in our marketing and messaging? What does it look like with our people and culture? What does it look like within our operations? And then what does it look like within the customer experience itself? And those are often the symptoms. Those are the things that we're like, yeah, I have a website and it's not converting, or I'm wasting money on ad spend, or I'm having turnover. Like those are symptoms of a lack of clarity within your business or a lack of alignment because you're lacking clarity. But then there's also the internal cost. Like there's an internal price, and that's the consequences that we end up paying on our soul, on our identity, on our confidence, on our peace. And so we're gonna first start with what does it look like in the business side of it, right? So we'll we'll stay a little bit practical and then we'll

Marketing That Never Converts

Amy Dardis 2:35

kind of go into the internal side. So I've shared this story before. When we were building our web design and marketing agency, we did not have a clear idea of our own identity, like who we were as a brand. We didn't really have a good grasp on who our target market was, who we were trying to serve, how we were different from other agencies in the marketplace, how we were able to set ourselves apart. We were kind of always just looking at, well, what are other agencies doing and copying that? And so, because of that, we had all this flip-flopping. And so, kind of that's where I want to go first is when we have confusion and misalignment in our business, it shows up in our marketing and in our messaging. And so for us, what this looked like personally was rewriting our website a million times. And while a million is an exaggeration, I would say I have rewritten our website at least over a hundred times without any exaggeration. I have written so many landing pages so many times over so many years, not only for our web design and marketing agency, but even trying to fully figure out my messaging for clear authentic brands and finally wrestling with this to the point of having that breakthrough. So when we were working with our clients within the web agency, so we had other businesses coming to us, and they also were needing to have their website redone because they were struggling with messaging. A lot of times a business will want to have their website redone because they're struggling to generate leads. And so it looks like redoing the website so that they get found online so that they can communicate effectively and be able to convert visitors into leads, or they will look at different marketing agencies in order to help them run ad campaigns in order to generate leads. But the idea is always the same that we are wanting to grow the business, we are wanting to generate more leads, and so we're looking at our marketing and our messaging as a way to do that. But the reason it's not working oftentimes goes back to this root level of clarity. And most of our clients actually already had a website, but it wasn't working for them. And the question was, well, why? Like, why are you unhappy with it? Why are you struggling with it? What's prompting you to want to switch providers or have this redone? And the answer was always like, Well, we don't feel like it accurately represents us, like it's outdated, and it isn't doing anything for us, like it just has a bunch of information on there, but it doesn't reflect our brand and it's not generating any business, and we want it to, we think that it should be. Or we would have clients come to us and be very frustrated because they had been working with all these other agencies, they'd tried all these different forms of marketing, they'd done flyers, they'd done radio, they'd done TV, they'd done Facebook, they'd worked with lead gen campaigns, and they had felt like they had spent so much money trying to generate new business and not seeing it make a difference. And we had experienced this same pain within our own agency and our own business of for us, it was easy to rewrite our website. Most people aren't as comfortable, and so therefore don't have the ability or the time or the skill sets to be able to rewrite their website as many times as we did. But that's what we did, and that was just what we knew. And so it was like, oh, let's just rewrite it again, let's just re-update it, let's change the colors, let's change the font, let's change the outline, let's change the offer. And it was just over and over and over again of trying to find something that would work. And not only did we do this with our website, but we tried multiple different types of Facebook campaigns and ad campaigns and YouTube campaigns. I mean, we have spent thousands of dollars in marketing, in I would say wasted ad spend. I mean, I think I've spent so many thousands of dollars in ads that did not generate any leads. And a lot of this comes back to one, not being clear on our target market, not being clear on our identity, our offer. And so that really ends up being the foundation for a good campaign is knowing who's your target market, who are you talking to. But then there's this level of authenticity that has to be there. And for us, we were always missing that. We were always trying to be someone that we weren't. And your audience can feel that. Our audience could feel that. That's why I could sell so much better in person just building relationships because there was authenticity there. There was connection, there was trust, there was relationship. But I didn't know how to carry that over from what I did in person into my marketing and into my messaging. And my audience that could see my campaigns or land on my landing pages, they felt the inauthenticity of it. Like they felt the disconnect, they felt the fakeness. And so none of those ads ever converted. So all that time and all that money and all that redo over and over and over again over the years, that weight, that burden that ended up getting heavier and heavier and heavier. You know, as a new business, you kind of expect it, it's it's part of the process, it's part of the journey, this trial and error and figuring some things out. You can't just walk into it knowing how to do everything. But for us, going through this year after year after year, it really started to weigh down. And it almost made it worse. It almost made it like once we redid the landing page once, it was easier to do it again, and it was easier to do it again, and it was easier to do it again. And it just became this slippery slope to our detriment. But the reason that we were able to grow that business and make it work is because most of our marketing and sales happened offline and in person, they didn't happen online. So the other

Wasted Ad Spend And Inauthenticity

Amy Dardis 9:55

area we're gonna see this external price that we pay is in our people and in our culture. And this I got to see firsthand when I went to go work for the gas and welding distributor. And that's what first opened my eyes to it because then I actually got to see the ins and outs of how often we made hiring mistakes and how painful and detrimental that was. And realizing that, okay, we would spend, you know, how much time and energy going through the recruiting and interviewing process and spending money on Indeed and job postings, and then the time that it took to interview candidates and do background checks and go through that process and then to make an offer and have someone on board. And then there was a lot of time and investment that it took to get employees trained and up to speed. And then to see employees not work out, to see them only last six months or a year or a year and a half, that was so painful. And to feel like we were always coming back to the drawing board on this and looking at this process and seeing, like, okay, what is it about this process that we're doing wrong, or where can we do this better so that we can avoid this vicious cycle, so that we can avoid this constant pain and turnover, because the more wrong hires you make, you could make a wrong hire and it would, they wouldn't always leave. Sometimes they would stay, and then you would see the consequences of that. You would see how a wrong hire would come in and they would cause a lot of drama and they would cause a lot of friction. And honestly, one of the employees that I had hired, who actually worked for me in my department, ended up being a wrong hire. And the problem was this person was really good at their job. And so I was like, Oh, it's gonna work out, it's gonna work out. Like they're really good at their job. But then I saw all of the internal drama that this person caused. And I there was so many conversations and there were so many meetings and there was so much miscommunication, and it wore down on me, it wore down on the team, it wore down on the employee, and it was awful. It was, it was so awful. And eventually that employee ended up leaving. But man, I made so many stakes, mistakes along the way in that, and it wasn't just something that I paid for, everybody paid for that. And so when we bring the wrong people in and they stay, that ends up hurting processes, it ends up hurting the team, it ends up hurting just the culture and the morale and the environment of what it feels like to be at work and what it feels like to be in the room. Or you hire someone who is fun to be around and you do have that connection with, but they don't have the natural wiring to be able to excel in the role. And then there's mistakes and they're not getting it fast enough, and they're not getting trained up to speed at the level that they need to be. And so you spend more time and more training coaching them only to see that they're not hitting goals, they're not getting the results, and then that ends up hurting that customer experience because the customer is like, I asked for this, and this person didn't deliver, or they got my order wrong, or you know, and then you're dealing with that fire, and then that tension and that friction is starting to weigh on the employee, and it hurts the reputation of the business. And so then you're paying for this cost of having someone who just doesn't have the natural wiring to really thrive within the organization. Or you go through this hiring process and you make the wrong offer, and you realize early on, maybe three months in, maybe six months in, that this person just is not gonna work out. But then you go back to posting the job description and you go back to interviewing candidates. And the more you do this, the more it starts to eat at your own confidence and the process itself. And you start to believe that, man, there just aren't good people out there, and this is just what it is. And then we start to settle and we start to compromise, and that just makes this whole cycle worse, and it really does end up hurting our brand reputation, it uh it also hurts just our internal team and our team's ability to trust us as leaders to make good hiring decisions. So then, because we're not making the right hiring decision, and we have a mixed team,

Hiring Mistakes And Culture Damage

Amy Dardis 14:55

we have a team of people who are amazing and they align with our values and with our vision and what we're trying to do and our work style, and they thrive within the role because they have the natural wiring. And then we have some people who just they they don't align, they don't have the natural wiring, they don't share our values, and then you have this internal friction, and that ends up hurting the experience of the customer. Like when the customers walk in and they feel that tension, they feel that disconnect, they see that apathy, they see that disengaged employee, or the way that employee shows up at work today, they're just there to punch a clock, they're not there to thrive, they're not there to try and serve at the highest level, and the customer feels that. And so then that ends up hurting just your reputation within your business, and you have safety issues and you have compliance issues and you have process gaps, and your team doesn't trust each other enough to be able to brainstorm together and innovate and problem solve because they're constantly being pulled in 10 different directions, because they don't have the right people or they don't have the trust that they need. And that just ends up hurting everybody across the board, which really ends up leading into your operations. And then because we don't have clarity on who we are or what makes us unique or what we're really gonna hone in on, or the type of experience that we're gonna provide, it ends up leading us down a path of saying yes to the wrong opportunities, walking through doors that we shouldn't, building processes that we were never meant to build, keeping you stuck, fighting the same fires over and over and over again. So then you end up being reactive instead of proactive. And I think about in our own story, so we were always a little bit confused on whether we wanted to be just a web design company or a web design and marketing company. Like, did we want to go down this marketing route? And because we didn't know that, we always opened the door for both, but we didn't have the internal structure or processes set up in place to really be able to deliver both. And websites and web design projects, that was our bread and butter. That's the thing we love to do. That's the thing that we're really good at. But then some of those clients would want marketing and we would want to help them. And so we would say yes. And we would, we ran Facebook ads and we ran Google ads. Only with that, it's like not only do you have copy, but you also have a lot of creative. And we weren't set up to do creative, nor did we have the natural wiring within our business or our people to deliver the creative that was required to make it a really great campaign. So we ran marketing campaigns for some of our clients for a few years, but that ate at us internally, just never feeling like we were serving them as well as they needed to be served, but also not knowing where else to send them instead or not wanting to back out of our promise or our commitment to them. And it just being like us feeling stuck because of that. Like we were stuck between a rock and a hard place, and not having the time or the capacity to really invest fully into becoming this like great marketing company, but also not having fully the desire to either, but feeling this obligation that we needed to do this, that our clients wanted us to do this. So for a few years we did go down that road, but then eventually that that pressure, that burden, I just couldn't shake it. Like it just it gnawed at me all the time. And I just felt like such a fraud and such a failure that we ended up making the decision that we were going to get out of the marketing space completely, and we were going to solely focus on just websites and web design and content and more the strategy side, more the brand discovery side, because that was where our natural wiring was. That was where our skill sets were, that's where our passion was, that's where we felt called to. And that was a really hard decision to basically turn down and say no to a lot of revenue at the time. It ended up actually hurting our business financially quite a bit to go to these clients and say, hey, look, we're actually getting out of the marketing business. And so we're letting you know. And here are a couple companies that we recommend that we could help switch you over to, but we are no longer going to be providing marketing services. And I remember going through that and it feels so hard at the time, and it did hurt, and there was a price that we paid, but the relief that came afterwards, the peace that came afterwards of knowing, like, okay, we are just a web design company and we're going to be the best at doing this thing. We are going to be the best at helping clients articulate their messaging. And we're not going to be double-minded. We're not going to be stretched so thin. And just being able to move forward with that, and that helped a lot. But because we'd done that before, because we'd said yes to marketing and then no to marketing, and then yes to marketing and then no to marketing, there was there were all these things internally, there were all these processes and pages that we then had to sign up for and then cancel, or pages we had to rewrite or get rid of. Because at one time our website was talking about marketing, and we had a Google Ads page and we had a Facebook page. And then we had software and resources on the back end that we would use in order to manage those campaigns. You know, we had different, we had specific analytics software that we were using that was more robust and required for marketing campaigns versus just web design campaigns. And then when we decided to get out of that, then it was okay, well, then let's cancel all of that stuff and let's rewrite these pages and now. Just focus on that. And so here's all this time and effort that we had spent building up these processes and building up this messaging, only to then pivot and turn and change our mind and go back and do something else instead. And so rewrite the landing page, rewrite the messaging to be more focused on web design and brand clarity and positioning yourself strategically. And while some of these things you just can't avoid in business, I mean part of it is just like the learning time of it. But I even think back in this last year of building clear authentic brands and how many times I rewrote my offer and I rewrote my site. And it took days, it took weeks, it took so much time. I remember at one point I had been listening to Russell Brunson's expert secrets. And I had sat through one of his selling online challenges or conferences and had learned a lot. So I'm not to say that these

Operations Chaos From Saying Yes

Amy Dardis 23:10

experiences weren't helpful and giving me good ideas along the way. I've I learned a lot. However, I can take things and run with them too far without checking for wisdom and discernment. I can get an idea in my head and just go for it and then change my mind a month later, and then change my mind a month later, and then go back to what I originally decided I was gonna do. And so I had read the book Expert Secrets, and he had talked about this one-to-many selling and doing a webinar and doing slides and explaining your offer and teaching and then running ads to that. And so I was like, okay, I'm gonna do this. Well, part of the problem is that I am terrible at building slides. I have zero graphic design skills. And so I remember I was building out these slides to be able to launch this webinar, and I was, it took me days and days and days to do this. I mean, this was just like just it was so painstakingly slow because it was the first time I'd ever done it. I didn't know what I was doing, and I remember, I mean, just for like two weeks straight, just kind of working at all of the pieces of this funnel. So we had to get the click funnel set up, and we got I had to create the presentation, and then we had to do the landing pages, and then we had to do the email sequences and just putting all of this exhausting time and effort. And this was leading straight into a burnout, which I then did hit that wall and burn out. But I was just like, no, I just I just need to do this, I just need to push through. And I remember this happening right as school had gotten out for the kids for summer. And so here the kids are excited. This is gonna be my first summer home with them in a while where I wasn't working full time for somebody else. And I had been telling them like things are gonna be different and life is gonna be better, and I'm gonna spend more time with you. And I spent the first month of their summer basically working nonstop all day, every day, barely even leaving my computer to eat or to make dinner because I was working so hard on trying to build this out, following somebody else's framework and somebody else's method, and putting all this time and energy into something, and then did it for a while and it didn't, it didn't feel right. I didn't see any results from it, I saw no fruit from it, and then got burnt out and then stopped everything in the mid-summer, basically being like, What am I doing? Like, what am I doing with my life? What am I doing with my time? I feel like I am laboring in vain. And this kind of just leads me into this internal price that we pay. And really, this is the thing that like this is the problem. I mean, yes, going back and forth in business, it is expensive. There's so much time that we spend that we don't ever get that time back. Money that goes into recruiting, money that goes into marketing campaigns that don't work. I mean, I have been and experienced all of that, but that's not the stuff that keeps me up at night. The stuff that keeps me up at night is the choices that I made because I was trying to strive in my own strength, because I was being inauthentic to who I am and how God created me, because

The Webinar Funnel Burnout Story

Amy Dardis 26:50

I was seeking the world's strategies or anyone else's strategies instead of God's leading based on how he had wired me and what he was calling me to. And because of that, it was costing me peace, it was costing me joy, it was costing me time with my children, and it was hurting my relationships. And I have seen this happen in different seasons of my life, from when my kids were really young and we were struggling to build up our business, and it was costing me my marriage because all we could focus on was let's just build this business. And if we build this business, then it's gonna fix everything else. And so, at the detriment of having no peace, no joy, no time, no laughter, we were surviving, we were not thriving, we were not learning to be content in every situation, we were not trusting God with our resources, with our time, with the calling. We were just just in agony always, like internally, spiritually, just agonizing over everything. And I look back on that season and I regret so much of it. I regret the joy and the peace that it stole from me because I was always thinking, I'm just gonna fix this and then I'll be a better mom. I'm just gonna fix this and then I'll fix my marriage. I'm just gonna fix this and get this business stuff figured out. And then days would go by and weeks would go by and months would go by and it and it would nothing would change. Like my business didn't get better, it didn't change, I didn't fix it, and everything else just continued to get worse. And by the grace of God, he didn't bless that business at that time until he was like, You are going to work on your marriage right now. You are still going to start dealing with your identity and your control issues and your anger issues, and you are going to learn to be a better mother now. And I started to do that. I started to fix my marriage, I started to try and understand my wiring and how God created me and what he was calling me to. And I started looking at my life and how I was spending my time and being like, why am I living a life that I don't even want to live? And I started with me on the inside and saying, God, who am I? How did you create me? What's my natural wiring? What's my natural gifting? How can I lean into that? And once I started to do that, that is when my business started to change. That is when I was like started to really take the time, learning to surrender. And it is a process, and this was years in the making, but that was the catalyst for change. And then I look back at this last season of again launching a new business and the price that it's paid, that I have paid internally, like questioning my identity, questioning what it is that God has called me to, trying every other tactic in the book. I've done the webinar and I've done the Facebook ads and I've done the level 10 offer, and I have spent hours and hours and hours working on these things to exhaustion, to like mental exhaustion. I call it like going into my work hole because I just get consumed with it. And it weighs on my peace, and I start to get angry and I start to get irritable and frustrated. And I can't even have a conversation with my kids because my brain is so fried from what it's trying to do in the business that is going against what God planted in my heart because I went through a burnout season. I totally stopped working. I laid it all down and surrendered it. And God gave me wisdom.

The Internal Cost Of Misalignment

Amy Dardis 31:00

He told me exactly what to do. And I felt so much peace with that. There was such a breakthrough with that. And for six months, I was like, man, this is exactly the life that I want to live. I know what I'm doing. I feel clear on this. And then just as time went by, I just started to veer off just a little bit at a time, just making this compromise here and this compromise here. And then before I know it, I was reverting right back to this, reverting right back to redoing messaging, redoing websites, and then going through this again and then being like convicted because it, you know what? Like through it all, God took me right back to what he told me in the summer and in the fall, which is takes me right back to a vision that he gave me in 2018. Eight years ago, like he planted this seed in my heart and I wrote it down. And I have been praying for it, and I have been like trying to bury it and let it go. And then he brought it up again in 2023. And it's like, this is a God-sized dream and it is a calling based on all these experiences, based on everything that we have lived through, all of these ups and downs, and finally coming to this place of like, okay, God, like I am done being blown and tossed by the wind. Like, my I have lost all sense of confidence in myself because here I am so sure I'm gonna do this one thing, so sure I'm gonna do this webinar funnel. And then a month later, being like, nope, I'm not gonna do this webinar funnel, I'm gonna do this instead. And then, like, nope, I'm not gonna do this, I'm gonna do this instead, and just losing my confidence along the way, losing just my sense of direction and hope along the way. Just it eating at me so much to the point where I'm like, God, why would you use this? Like, why would you use this? Because I've messed this up so badly.

Speaker 1 33:09

It's cost me so much, and I don't even care about the money stuff. I don't care. Like, what I care about is the time. What I care about. What I care about is every moment and every summer I've lost with my children because I put other things over them. What I care about is how I chose work over relationships and the cost and the price that I paid for that.

Amy Dardis 33:49

And the price, it doesn't just happen right away. Like, we we make this compromise, we make this little pivot, and we're like, oh, maybe maybe I got it wrong. Maybe, maybe I just heard God wrong, and I'm gonna, I'm just gonna do this. And then nothing ha nothing bad happens, and so we're like, okay, this must be fine, and I do it again. Or and whether it's it's like, oh, this must be right, so I'm gonna redo my messaging again, or this I'm trying to hire somebody, and I know I should hold out, and I know I shouldn't settle, but man, it's hurting not having this person. So I'm gonna hire him, I'm gonna give this person a chance. And you don't feel it right away, you know, you don't feel that, like, oh, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna try this this marketing strategy. I feel like this is what I should be doing. But inside, you know, like you know there's not peace with that. But you're like, but I feel the pressure, like I'm running out of time. I gotta make this work, I gotta make this happen. And little by little, we just we we compromise and it costs us our peace. It costs us our joy, it costs our ability to be content in every situation. It costs us our hope because we start hoping in this world and hoping in our strategies and hoping in our business instead of hoping in God, instead of putting our hope in the one who called us to this, in the one who created us, the one who is orchestrating all of these things before we ever even knew to ask for it. And so we start doubting. And then because we're doubting, we're we now have divided loyalty, and now we're being blown and tossed by the wind, and we're going this way, and we're going that way, and we're trying all of these things. And it's like no matter how hard I tried, and I worked so hard, and I put hours and hours and hours into this, and it was like no matter what I did to try to fix it, I never got anywhere. And in the meantime, it's like I was losing out on the things that meant the most, on love, on joy, on peace, patience, like the the fruit of the spirit, because I wasn't abiding in him, I wasn't being connected to him and trusting his vision and his purpose and his dream and his calling for my life. And I think I'm like, well, I'm a business owner, I gotta make this stuff happen because no one's gonna come and save me. But it's like when you do business the world's way, that is what the message is. But when you do business God's way, you are running on a completely different set of principles, on a completely different set of beliefs. And so I ended up finding that nothing ended up working until I came back to this clarity, clarity around my identity, clarity around

Returning To Clarity And Closing

Amy Dardis 36:50

what God is calling me to, clarity around my natural wiring, clarity around like the purpose and God's calling on my life and the story that He has brought me through, all of these experiences with the marketing agency and with Clear Authentic Brands, and with moving and with working for the distributor. And it's just like all of those things. God was orchestrating all of it, he was giving me everything I needed. I've always had everything I've needed, and it's just trusting in that, and it's coming back to this sense of clarity first, and finally surrendering that and being like, God, I'm gonna believe for this, I'm gonna trust you with this. I'm not gonna fight it anymore because I have 15 years of fighting it, I have 15 years of paying this price, and thankfully, like in your grace, like you have covered me. Like you have you have been there for me protecting me from myself through this all. You've protected my marriage, you've protected my family and my kids. You've you've just you've given me time and peace and the opportunity to rebuild this your way. And I'm so grateful for that. But there's a cost, right? There's a cost to this chaos, to this confusion, to this misalignment when we don't show up the way that we're supposed to show up, when we don't show up authentically, when we don't align who we are with what God's calling us to, with how we speak, with the people and the connections that we have, with the opportunities that we seek out, with the opportunities that we say no to. And there is a part two to this. So stay tuned for that. So this was about the cost and the price that we pay for having chaos and misalignment, but the story doesn't end there, right? Like the story doesn't end there. God creates beauty from ashes. So stay tuned for part two on what the blessing of having clarity and alignment in your business leads to. So, as always, you can learn more at Clearauthenticbrands.com. But that is all for part one of this, and I will see you next time in part two.