Reflecting on 2023 | What Was Good & What Was HARD
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Join Victoria as she wraps up a pivotal year on this week’s episode of The Branding Business School podcast. Victoria candidly shares the biggest risks, rewards, and lessons from the past 12 months. Reflecting on her goal to have BrandWell operate with or without her, she shares the steps taken towards this goal, including hiring two full-time employees, Lauren and Libby, who have transformed their roles from brand and web designers to key operators in the day-to-day business at BrandWell.
Victoria proudly shares that BrandWell has launched more than 70 brands and 75 websites so far this year, with launching over 200 brand and web designs by the end of 2023. Yet, the accomplishment closest to her heart is the creation and launch of The Branding Business School. Listen in as Victoria compares her experiences between starting BrandWell and The Branding Business School, hoping that the joys and challenges she’s faced will inspire your entrepreneurial journey.
Looking ahead to 2024, Victoria reveals her plans for a season of rest and reflection, allowing her to focus on areas where she can make the most difference. With three launches for The Branding Business School planned and a designer retreat in Nashville, there’s plenty to look forward to. As we close this chapter, we invite you to join us in celebrating our successes, reflecting on the lessons learned, and staying motivated for the exciting journey ahead.
Reflecting on 2023 [01:16]]
2023 stands out to Victoria as the most pivotal year as a business owner. In these last 12 months, Victoria has taken more risks than she has in the last 5 years and she’s beginning to step into being the visionary of a company. A goal that she had for this year was to get BrandWell to a point where it could be operated with or without her, and she believes that she has accomplished this goal! In this episode, Victoria talks through some highlights of this year that all came to be, because she was working on this long term vision of taking herself out of the daily operations at BrandWell.
Victoria does not share these highlights as a way to put BrandWell on a pedestal, but rather to encourage you, motivate you, and inspire you. Especially if you relate to Victoria with little one’s at home, if this can happen to her, it can happen to you!
Hiring and Growing a Thriving Business [04:47]
Back in January, Victoria officially brought on two of her contractors, Lauren and Libby, as full time employees at BrandWell. Lauren is the COO at BrandWell and Libby is BrandWell’s Senior Designer and Social Coordinator. Both Lauren and Libby have been with BrandWell for 3+ years, starting as designers but now they are stepping more into the management side of things and less on the client design side. Hiring two full time employees helped work towards the larger vision of Victoria taking a step out of the day to day tasks at BrandWell and allowing her to become the visionary. Victoria is a huge advocate for hiring contractors because it is a really great way to scale your business without having the financial stress or other worries, but with hiring contractors you legally cannot tell them when they are to perform their job. In order for Victoria to step out of the day to day tasks and still remain to protect her brand, it was really important for her to have her primary designers, the ones that were helping her carry out her vision on the daily, to be available Monday through Friday. They needed to be available when Victoria needed them and when BrandWell’s clients needed them, so the next natural step was to convert them into employees of BrandWell.
On top of adding two employees to BrandWell, Victoria has also made six additional hires! Three new designers, a podcast manager, a marketing strategist, and a copywriter have all been added to the BrandWell team as contractors! The more Victoria has hired, the more she has found that hiring is or at least it should be an investment into your business, meaning that when you hire that person should help you generate more revenue, not just an expense. If you haven’t made your first hire, or if you’re just a little bit nervous about how risky it is to hire somebody, as long as you hire them for something that is going to bring in more revenue for your business, then it’s really not as scary as you think.
BrandWell’s 2023 Milestones and Successes [14:43]
As of November 3rd, 2023, BrandWell has launched more than 70 brands, 75 websites, and they have more than 30 that are in progress and set to launch before the end of the year! That’s over 200 brand and web designs delivered for female entrepreneurs in 2023! Victoria is so passionate about motivating women to show up confidently online and she believes with all her heart that BrandWell’s designs allow women to do just that.
The Branding Business School Podcast released 33 new episodes this year, putting the podcast library over 110 episodes! One of the hires made this year was the addition of a podcast manager. Victoria shares that having Elisa on staff has been the reason she was able to release 33 new episodes this year. As much as Victoria loves recording episodes, she got to the point where she wasn’t sure if she should keep going or stop the podcast. She was taking longer and longer breaks between seasons because it is a lot of work to manage a podcast. Thankfully, Elisa has been able to help take some of that off her plate, so that Victoria can just sit down and record the episodes. If you’re interested in starting a podcast in 2024 or looking for a podcast manager, feel free to follow Elisa on Instagram! Victoria also wants to give a big thank you to YOU! The Branding Business School Podcast has over 30,000 downloads and that’s all because of you guys, and Victoria is really grateful for you tuning in each week!
At the beginning of summer, the podcast also got rebranded from The BrandWell Podcast to The Branding Business School Podcast. It was the next right step since the podcast shares so much on brand strategy and where Victoria interviews female founders. It was aligned with The Branding Business School’s goal which is to help you understand strategically how to brand your business and scale your business.
2023 was the year of The Branding Business School. At the beginning of the year when Victoria had a lot of slow days and sleepless nights with her newborn, she couldn’t get the idea of creating a branch of her business that dealt with teaching brand strategy off her mind. 10 months later, after blood, sweat, and tears, The Branding Business School opened its doors to the public for the first time in October. In less than a year, Victoria turned an idea into a business, validating the concept with a live launch that generated more than $20,000 in less than two weeks time. Victoria wanted to share this not to discourage you, but rather to show you what can happen when you build a strong brand. It can be done and it doesn’t have to take years when you know what you’re doing and you invest in your brand. Doors are currently closed but there is going to be a second enrollment on February 19th, 2024. Be sure to keep your eyes open for that, or you can join the waitlist here!
Another highlight that Victoria is really proud of is the fact that she did a lot of speaking engagements this year. One that was especially monumental was when she spoke on the mainstage at Squarespace headquarters for their annual event, Circle Day. It was inspiring but also nerve wracking, and Victoria has a whole podcast episode about this that you can listen to here! At the event, Victoria spoke on the topic of how to charge a premium for your product or service, which leads to the next highlight or milestone of 2023.
Over the years, BrandWell has increased their prices but they’ve always been negligible amounts. But because Victoria was speaking as the “expert” on how to charge a premium price, she decided she needed to practice what she preached. It was time to not let her own imposter syndrome or her own fear keep her from charging what she believes the value of the product has on the lives of the women BrandWell serves. On August 1st, 2023, BrandWell made their most significant price increase, raised by almost $2,000. It was scary for Victoria, but she knew that she was going to be able to articulate the value that BrandWell had to offer to their target audience. Since the increase, BrandWell has seen little to no pushback from any customers and they have unapologetically remained at that price point. When you have a strong brand that is actively driving demand for your business, it does allow you to charge more.
All in all, 2023 has been a really great year for Victoria, BrandWell, and The Branding Business School and for that Victoria is incredibly grateful.
Growing Pains of 2023 [26:12]
In 2023, Victoria went from one child to two children. She went from living in their starter home, to moving into what will hopefully be their forever home. She went from having five designers to eight designers and from owning one business to owning two businesses. Needless to say, Victoria has come very close to her breaking point several times this year. Something that Victoria has to remind herself is that oftentimes, the things that overwhelm her are the things that she's most grateful for.
As her goal for BrandWell was to take a more birds eye view of the business was starting to be met, the need for Victoria to be deep into The Branding Business School was required. Nothing was automated, only one person was hired to help, so for the most part, Victoria was involved in every decision for The Branding Business School. Victoria shares that she was naive in starting this course. She’s grateful that she started it and even more grateful that she finished it, because of what she learned in the midst of it. It was truly a labor of love. Victoria approached The Branding Business School very differently than how she approached launching BrandWell. She invested in the company from day one, everything was to be high quality, she decided to trademark immediately, she invested in brand photography and videography on day one, advertising, legal advice, marketing talent and so much more. When Victoria started BrandWell, she started it on the side of her full-time job, she started it scrappy, and did everything herself.
The financial investment, $20,000, was put into building the course before she ever had her first paid student and that was scary. But looking back now, Victoria is very thankful for all the investments she made into The Branding Business School, because it truly came out exactly like what her vision for it was.
Building The Branding Business School, having another baby, keeping BrandWell afloat and growing, and adding new team members was a lot for Victoria, not to mention adding any other personal life on top of all that. Even though it was a challenge, she doesn’t regret anything that happened. All these things are bringing her closer to her end goal of having a thriving family and a thriving business with thriving employees. Hustle is necessary sometimes but it’s not necessary all the time. If you feel like you’re hustling all the time, then it’s time to reprioritize, take a step back and look at what is working and what is not working. 2023 was definitely a year of hustling for Victoria and she’s ready to slow down.
Looking forward to 2024 [39:27]
Victoria is approaching 2024 with a different perspective. She wants to nurture the brands that she’s already created, nurture the clients and the students that she already has, and less focus on how she can market and get more people in, that’s the natural effect of having a strong brand with clients who are really happy. It will bring in more people and business to your brand. No new businesses next year, no new products, and no new services. 2024 is going to be a season of rest, of course with continuing innovation at BrandWell, and three launches of The Branding Business School, but for the most part, these businesses can operate day to day without Victoria.
The last thing that Victoria is a little bummed about in 2023, is that every year for the last couple of years, she’s held a BrandWell retreat for her designers. With all the things that were going on this year, it was really tricky to find a place on the calendar to fit that in. Victoria felt sad about not having one this year and felt like she let her team down, so she’s really trying to make up for it in Spring of 2024. The third annual BrandWell Designer retreat will be in Nashville, Tennessee!
Honeybook invited Victoria to attend their partner summit out in San Francisco this year, and with everything going on, Victoria didn’t feel right going. She’s already entered her slow season and wanted to be home more with her children during the holiday season. So instead, Libby is going to San Francisco in Victoria’s place and learn all about Honeybook. Look forward to a podcast episode discussing what Libby learned from the Honeybook partner summit in January when The Branding Business School podcast returns with season 7!
Key Quotes
“Hiring is or at least it should be an investment into your business, meaning that when you hire, that person should help you generate more revenue, not just an expense.”
Victoria Marcouillier
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