How to End 2024 Like a Boss
Welcome to the UnCloned® insider audio newsletter. My name is Audria Richmond®, and I am your marketing and launch strategist. I work directly with my clients to show them how to build uncloned brands and launch profitable marketing campaigns. We are the brand that you come to where you want to become or remain the obvious choice of your industry. Hey, y'all.
Audria Richmond®:What's up? What's up? What's up? Hello to my beautiful uncloned insiders. If you're listening to this audio newsletter, that means that you're on our email list, that means that you are a part of our uncloned community, or you're listening to this on Apple, Audible, Spotify, or some podcasting platform.
Audria Richmond®:However you arrived here, hello. Alright? I hope you're having a great Monday. My Monday has been off to a great start. Can't complain.
Audria Richmond®:I feel awesome. And so I was talking to my husband and I was asking him, like, hey, you know, what should we be talking about? Like, give me give me a topic. Right? Because every Monday, I'd be knowing, like, okay, some stuff I know I wanna talk about and some Mondays is like a complete blank.
Audria Richmond®:And if you've been following me for any length of time, every year, I would make this, like, Instagram post, and it would be like how to end the year like a bang. You know? Like, I think it was like how to end 2020 like a bang, you know, with a bang. And one of the things I realized, I haven't done one in many years. And I was like, how about just he was like, why don't you make that, like, your audio newsletter?
Audria Richmond®:And I was like, okay. That's actually really, really good because I haven't done this in so long, and December is a perfect time for it. So here we are. So today, we're gonna be talking about how to end 2024 like a boss. The list that I would share a couple of years ago, some of those some of those things I still agree with and some of those things I would change and update, and so this audio newsletter kinda serves as that.
Audria Richmond®:Alright? So let's get into it. The first thing you wanna do when it comes to ending this year like a boss is that you wanna get clear on your vision for 2025. We have a 2025 annual planning workshop. If you all are inside the community, you already know how to access this.
Audria Richmond®:You just go and click on the classroom area and and purchase it. Okay? Because if you don't have your your annual plan yet, now is the time to go ahead and start planning it out. Please do not wait to 2025 to start working on your annual plan. And once you have your annual plan, if you're struggling with creating your annual plan, it's because you don't have a vision yet for your company.
Audria Richmond®:And one thing we talk about a lot, especially in our community lately, is that I wanna see our clients and community members own the role of being the CEO. I think a lot of the times when people are running their business, they want someone else to take accountability and responsibility for where they are as a business. And the truth of the matter is you are in control. If you don't like what you have right now, you were in control of that. If you don't like where your business staying today, you are in control of that.
Audria Richmond®:And as hard as that may be hard it may be a hard pill to swallow for some people. The truth is you gotta take accountability and you gotta take responsibility. And the only way to have a different outcome next time is to change behaviorally. Alright? You have to change your behavior.
Audria Richmond®:If you're a person that don't typically read books, get in the habit of start reading a book once a month. If you are a person who typically can't sit through a 4 hour course, force yourself to do that. Because at the end of the day, you're gonna have to change your your your behavior and your habits in order to get where you're trying to go next. Right? I know for me, when I was deciding on how I wanted to grow uncloned and I was thinking about, like, what the team looked like, what the offers looked like, what everything looked like.
Audria Richmond®:I had to have a vision. Right? My you know, my team wouldn't follow me if I didn't know where the hell we were going. And so it's important to have a vision, And you may be thinking, like, well, I don't have a team. It's just me.
Audria Richmond®:That you still you need to be got it. You need to know what you need to be focused on. And so having a clear vision is the first step in ending this year, you know, really with a bang and like a boss is knowing where you're heading. And so when you're thinking about your vision, there are some other things you wanna consider. Like, what do you want?
Audria Richmond®:Be for real. What are those things you really, really deeply want and get definite about achieving it? And then who do you need to become in order to receive these things? I know for me, for where I'm heading, I need to be fit. I need to be healthy.
Audria Richmond®:I don't need to be damn near about to pass out every time I walk somewhere. You know what I mean? Like, you know, when I was younger, I was a cheerleader. I was hella active. I was on the track team, and then somewhere along the line, I let work take priority.
Audria Richmond®:And I'm totally about to prioritize my health in a way that I haven't ever done before, and it's not about saying it. Like, I'm not even gonna be like, hey. Y'all look at me. I lost this many pounds. Blah blah.
Audria Richmond®:Like, you just gonna pull up on me and be like, damn, Audree is healthy. Because at some point in time, you get sick and tired telling yourself the same old shit, and you're not doing nothing about it. And so that's where I am with it. I've been telling my husband. I've been telling my friends.
Audria Richmond®:I've been watching YouTube videos. I've been trying all the things. I've joined fitness programs. I've done all the fucking things, but the truth of the matter is it is time for me to take me seriously. And so if you can hear the passion in my voice about me, how definite and passionate are you gonna get about you?
Audria Richmond®:Right? Okay. So we're done with that one. So get clear on your vision for 2025. The next thing you wanna be focused on is getting clear on your business model and your client journey.
Audria Richmond®:So these are kinda 2 different things, but they go together. Okay? So when we talk about getting clear on your business model, what do you sell? How do you sell it? How do people naturally ascend when they're doing business with you?
Audria Richmond®:When you think about your business model, it's really how you like to make money. Like, how do you plan to make money? Is all your revenue gonna come from services, products, events, partnerships, speaking, collaborations, brand deals, deals. How do you want to make your money? How do you make money as a company?
Audria Richmond®:Right? If you had to categorize your business within those various sectors, those business categories, where do your business follow into fall into? Our business a little bit of hybrid. We we have more of a education brand, but we also do coaching and consulting, and then we also have, like, events. Right?
Audria Richmond®:So it's like a lot of different energies kinda combined in 1, but how we primarily make our revenue as a company is by selling programs, products, and services. And so when you think about your business model, what is the pie? Like, if you had to look at your business like a pie, how much revenue was generated from this area, this area, this area. Right? And if you're fairly new in business, you're probably like, what the hell are you talking about?
Audria Richmond®:You wanna get clear on how do you make money. How do you make money as a company? And when you think about your business model, you wanna be clear around how that money comes into the business. Now when we talk about client journey, we're talking about how do your people ascend from one thing to the next. If you know your uncloned brand score, we talk a lot about this in the offers, category.
Audria Richmond®:So if you have your uncloned brand assessment, look at your offers category and see how you score, because that will tell you if you have a very clear, business model that's pretty definite with the client journey. We we ask you a lot of those questions in the uncloned brand assessment. And if you're like, hey. I don't even know what the uncloned brand assessment is. I don't even know what my uncloned brand score is.
Audria Richmond®:All you gotta do is head over to uncloned brand score dot com, take the the assessment, and at the conclusion of it, you will receive a PDF report that outlines your business at a glance, and you're able to see where your brand stand at a glance. So head over to uncloned brand score dot com, get your uncloned brand score, and then you will, you know, know where you stand with your brand. And so you wanna be clear on your business model. How do you make money? I know for us, we killed off a lot of our private offerings, and we're reimagining those offerings.
Audria Richmond®:But from the lunch circle down, we're pretty definite about how that works. How the mark uncloned marketing systems work, how the lunch circle works, so on and so forth. Pretty definite about that. But when we when it comes to my personal private time when I'm working with clients, I reimagine what that looked like. Okay?
Audria Richmond®:Okay. So that's number 2. Alright. Number 3, dump what you don't like. I can't I can't think of a more fancier way to say this, but, like, get rid of the stuff that don't bring you joy.
Audria Richmond®:If you don't get up excited, ready to moonwalk to do the thing, then don't, like, kill it off. Be done with it. Now I'm not talking about the stuff that you have to do for the things you say you want to do. It's a big difference in doing things you don't like to do versus doing things that are required for the thing you want to do. So I don't want you to confuse the 2, but what I'm saying is when it comes to your business, what do you don't like?
Audria Richmond®:Right? If you know for a fact you hate people, why are you offering services? And I'm not saying if you sell a product, you won't deal with services. I mean, you won't you won't have a service component because customer service is a part of that when people buy your physical products and services. But if you're one of those people who just like you don't like certain aspects of what was what is required to do the job, then you might wanna dump what you don't like.
Audria Richmond®:Right? If you don't like selling low ticket products, stop selling them. If you don't like how you're treated with a certain type of client, reimagine what that looks like. Like, use this time to really, really think about what it looks like for you to love your business. And if you find yourself being frustrated with multiple areas of your business, that's a great indication that it's time to dump some things.
Audria Richmond®:Okay? The next one is clean your email list. Alright? Oftentimes, at the end of the year, I like to look at my list and, like, clean my list, but I'm working with my really, really, really good friend Pamela Booker, and she's working with me for the next 6 months on really optimizing my email list. She's a Klaviyo and Shopify expert when it comes to ecommerce, and one of the things that she recently, partnered with me on is our email list.
Audria Richmond®:Right? For our Black Friday campaign, it was a major success. We're talking about 5 figure success. It was a great campaign, but through her email effort, she found out that half of my email list is is not engaged at all. Right?
Audria Richmond®:And so just because people can receive your email marketing, meaning they haven't opted out, they haven't unsubscribed, but they really don't mean anything if they're not opening your emails or not engaging with your emails and are not engaging with your marketing or your communication. And so we're about to really remove about 50% of people on my email list and pretty much start over, Not start over because, like let me let me let me break this down. When we talk about cleaning your email list, there's a lot of, nuances to this, but I'll just tell you what we plan on doing. So we're going to, export those people who are unengaged. We're going to use that list to reengage them through Facebook advertising and see if we can get them to get back in the habit of opening our emails.
Audria Richmond®:If not, we're just gonna export that list and, like, I use I have a drop box where I put all of our exports of when we've deleted our list over the years. That way, if a client ever come back or we need to research that person or reactivate them in any capacity, we're able to see their client journey and have all that data on hand. But for the most part, I'm paying for these people. Right? My my email my email billing rate is pretty high for Klaviyo.
Audria Richmond®:So if I can get half get rid of half of these people and optimize my list and reengage people and keep keep my my list clean, then that ensures that I'm in the deliverable aspect of being in people's inboxes. Right? I'm not going to spam. I'm not going to promotions, so on and so forth. Also, there's a lot of people who have not done that DMARC thing, and I know because there's people list that I've been on, and now all their emails go to spam.
Audria Richmond®:And a big part of that is you didn't do the DMARCs thing or something is going on with your email service provider. So you definitely wanna check out both of those things and make sure that they are aligned because you definitely don't wanna be on a platform where your emails can't even go into the place where it need to be, which is the inbox. It should not be going to spam and promotions unless you have poor deliverability rates. Right? We're not gonna get into email marketing.
Audria Richmond®:You can contact Pam about that. But with that being said, it's very important to understand that you need a healthy, clean email list to be able to properly communicate and stay in the main inbox. Okay? So clean your email list. The next thing you wanna do is update your website.
Audria Richmond®:So this is a good time to revisit your terms of services, your private policies, any policies in general shipping policy, customer service policy, pricing policies, payment policies. Any type of policy that need to be updated, now is the time. Also, update your footer. Sometimes it's like when was the last time your your website was updated. Making sure you have, you know, the updated, aspect on there.
Audria Richmond®:If you got any 404 pages, meaning pages that just don't work when people click the links, get rid of them. Get rid of any page that's, like, coming soon. If it's been coming soon on your site for 4 or 5 years, get get that off your site. I'd be so I'd be so shocked when I go to people's site and be like, coming soon. And just like, when?
Audria Richmond®:When is it coming? You know? So if it ain't coming in the next 30 days, like, take that off your site. Alright? And so you wanna update your site.
Audria Richmond®:Look at your home page. Look at your photos, so on and so forth. We actually need a new website. We wanna, I wanna get a company site developed as well as I I want to update my personal brand site. But for the most part, update your website because your website is your home.
Audria Richmond®:It's the salesperson that will sell for you when you're not available. So when people come to your site, it's like their your your website should serve as a salesperson. If I can't make a buying decision by just going to your site, your site is not properly optimized. Alright? And so if you want our team to audit your website, by an unclone marketing pro, then you can submit a support ticket at uncloned support dot com.
Audria Richmond®:It is a fee. But if you want us to audit your website, that is a service that we offer through our uncloned marketing pros, which is our all of our clients who've been certified through our uncloned certification, they have to learn how to audit. And so we do have an uncloned marketing pro. Her name is Ashley. And so if you need your website audited, I could partner y'all together and get y'all going, but you gotta submit a support ticket at uncloned support dot com.
Audria Richmond®:Okay? But you definitely wanna update your website and make sure that that's solid. The next thing, you wanna audit your product offerings. We talk deeply about this in the 2025 annual planning workshop, but I'll just give you, like, a little quick, like, you know, quick, quick, quick highlight of that. I'm not gonna go into great detail because we got a whole worksheet dedicated to this.
Audria Richmond®:But you wanna look at your offerings and you wanna look at which offerings just don't make the cut. Right? Like I said, in the 2025 Amy planning workshop, we make an entire list of things you need to look at and consider, and then you, like, tally it up. It's it's a whole process. But the point is you wanna look at your offerings and see if they make sense.
Audria Richmond®:Are you generating sales from this offer? Do you feel good about this offer? Do this offer represent what your brand is about? Does this offer make you excited? Does this offer make you wanna go market and tell the whole world about it?
Audria Richmond®:So you definitely wanna be thinking about, you know, when it comes to your, your offerings, do you love them or not? And if you do love them, then keep on marketing them and get rid of the ones you don't. But if you have an offer and you're like, I really like this offer, no, I haven't generated any sales from it, but, like, how can I introduce this market? How can I reintroduce this offer back into the marketplace and get a response? So you can always if you had a failed launch, you can always go back and try again.
Audria Richmond®:Or you can get to that conclusion of the launch and be like, nah. This ain't even for me. I don't even wanna do it no more. Like, let me move on to something else. And that's cool too, but you definitely wanna take time out to audit your offerings.
Audria Richmond®:The next thing you wanna do is thank your best people. Who are the people in your life this year that has really made an impact on you? Can you send them a thank you card? Can you send them a your heartfelt text message? Can you, you know, let them know you appreciate them, that you love them, that you wanna continue your relationship going into 2025?
Audria Richmond®:There's so many people who are like, oh, yeah. We're gonna be doing this together and doing that together, and it's complete crickets. So you definitely wanna get to a place where you are, you know, thanking your people. You wanna thank the people that love you love on you, that respect you, that you genuinely have a really good vibe with. Alright?
Audria Richmond®:So definitely go and thank your best people. And then this I I I put this one as the last one. It was higher on the list, but I I saved this one for last because I thought it'd be a good way to close out this audio newsletter, but I used to say increase your rates, a lot. And I still believe that some people pricing is still grossly under undercharging. Right?
Audria Richmond®:You're definitely grossly undercharging. However, instead of me telling you to increase your rates, I wanna tell you to revisit your rates. And so when we talk about your rates, we're talking about your the investments that people have to make in order to do business with you. And so when you revisit your rates, there are some things that I want you to think about. We recently just did, like, a 85% price decrease on our flagship product, which, you know, is kinda crazy me saying it verbally.
Audria Richmond®:But one of the reasons we did this is because we recently launched the uncloned brand assessment, and we launched it on October 19th, and almost a 1000 people have taken this assessment. I think we're, like, 20 something people away from it being a 1,000. That was the goal, to end this year with a 1000 people have taken the assessment, which is crazy. Right? And every time someone take this assessment, we get a series of data points.
Audria Richmond®:And one of the things that is a consistent thread across the people who are connected to me and as a part of my community is that their brand scores are critical, which means there there's a huge need for a lot of improvements across multiple categories in their brand. And so with that being said, I was like because we we we did a launch. We did the unclone ninety launch, and it's hard like, it it it was a flop according to me wanting to get a certain amount of people enrolled in the program, but it ended up being a blessing because I was able to use the data from a decision making perspective as opposed to me making an emotional, change, if that makes sense. So, like, for instance, you know, all of the systems were priced over $1,000, all of them. Right?
Audria Richmond®:Like the launch system was $2,000. I wanna say the obvious choice bundle was like $35100. The opportunity hour was worth, I think we had that price at a 1,000. No, the content sales was a 1,000. I think the whatever it was, all of these systems are over a $1,000.
Audria Richmond®:Okay? And I was I had to have this really, like, come to Jesus moment, if you will, which is, like, do you wanna make an impact or you wanna just it was all about the money. And, yes, we need to be profitable as a company. Right? Like, my accountant stays on me about this is that, you know, profitability is everything.
Audria Richmond®:But I also wanted to make sure that I'm honoring what I have a desire for, which is to help people build an uncloned brand. I genuinely, genuinely, genuinely desire that. And I had to really look at the data. I had to look at the goals and I had to look at the impact. And when I put my ego to the side and I asked myself, what's more important?
Audria Richmond®:You getting what is worth or you having an impact? I chose impact. It was a very tough decision for me because we spent a lot of money to develop these products. So it's not like, you know, there wasn't no reason to justify. And if you own the Unclown Marketing Systems, you know what you know what it is, the quality of it.
Audria Richmond®:And I had to make sure that I detached my own personal emotion around it and look at it from a, you know, separately from me. Right? And so when I looked at the data, when I looked at the scores from the unclean brand assessment, when I looked at everything, it was very clear that we needed to decrease the price on those, unclean marketing systems, and that's what we did. So we made a huge announcement. We we, 1, polled in a group to get feedback, then we made the announcement inside of our uncloned community.
Audria Richmond®:And then from there, after we made the announcement, I sent out an email, like a breaking news email, and I informed those people. And then I took that same email and turned it into an ad, and we're using it as a retargeting ad to get people to come back to get the systems. If they missed the Black Friday and now they could have this relief knowing that you no longer gotta wait on the next Black Friday sale. Like, you can get it officially at this price because we are making these Black Friday rates official rates. And the response has been so beautiful.
Audria Richmond®:You know, when you whenever you decrease your rates, you have people who pay more. Right? And oftentimes, I even though people pay the people who pay more is you know, it's been over 2 years. One thing that I had to remind myself is, like, those people got way more than the people who are buying it now. So the price is justified in that regard.
Audria Richmond®:We got we they they got they got a whole bunch of bonuses. We did crazy giveaways. It's totally justified. Right? Because I'm a a real big person when he like, I'm I'm really big on honoring people and honoring their investments.
Audria Richmond®:And so, you know, that was an aspect of it that I had to deal with as well. But I said all that to say that, like, revisit your rates, be definite about what it costs, and be able to justify the investments, especially if it's high ticket. So, hopefully, you got a lot of value from today's audio newsletter. I'm going to quickly recap. So number 1, get clear on your your vision for your for 2025.
Audria Richmond®:Number 2, get clear on your business model and client journey. Number 3, dump what you don't like. Number 4, clean your email list. Number 5, update your website. Number 6, audit your product offerings.
Audria Richmond®:Number 7, thank your best people. And number 8, I think that's 8, revisit your rates. So let me know your biggest takeaway inside of our uncloned community. I really wanna know what your biggest takeaway, what are those things you're gonna take action on. And until next time y'all, let's go live an UnCloned® life and build an UnCloned® brand.
Audria Richmond®:Bye y'all.
Creators and Guests
