Every time January rolls around, it feels like we get a vocabulary lesson. Everyone is posting their “word of the year” on social media and explaining why it’s important to them. For me, my word of the year is more than just an Instagram post, it’s my focus for the entire year.

My word for this year is sustainability.

The Branded by Bernel Podcast is brought to you by Bernel Westbrook, lead designer and founder of Branded by Bernel, a design studio dedicated to building strong brands and Showit websites for creative entrepreneurs.

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Why Sustainability?

When the COVID-19 pandemic first hit, I panicked about how to keep my business afloat. Many of my web design clients are in the wedding and events industry, so their businesses were majorly impacted by shutdowns and canceled gatherings. I assumed the pandemic would be over by the fall, so I told myself I just had to get my business through the summer.

I took several steps to make my business more sustainable and survive the next few months, including…

1. Reaching out to my clients to see if they needed to update their brands due to the pandemic
2. Updating my packages to make them more valuable for my clients
3. Offering new services, like my “Designer for the Day” service, to help brands clean up their websites

I realized that adaptability was the key to sustainability. As the year went on and the pandemic didn’t end, even my changes needed to be changed again. 

Sustainable Services in 2021

After adapting my business to stay ahead in 2020, I knew that sustainability had to be my word for 2021. Sustainability in business means that your business has the capacity to endure. Along with adapting old services to be more sustainable, I also want to embed sustainability into all of my new services.

My 4 Pillars of a Sustainable Service Include:

1. Am I good enough at this service to sell it to people?
2. Do my clients NEED this service?
3. Will this service make money?
4. Can I handle offering this service? Do I have the manpower?

Creating Sustainable Business Goals

I also want to learn to set sustainable and achievable goals in 2021. I use a three-step process to make sure my business goals are sustainable:

1. I write down all the steps it will take to reach my goal and then time block the steps in my calendar
2. I develop accountability partners to talk about my goals with, which helps me verbalize them out loud
3. I automate as many tasks as possible to make my goals easier to reach

Links I Mentioned

Honeybook Business Personality Test

Connect with Bernel

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instagram.com/brandedbybernel

Review the Transcript:

Hey, hon. Welcome to the branded by Bernel podcast. I’m your host Bernel. You may know me as the branding and web designer who obsesses over the details. So you don’t have to, we all desire to be great at what we do. Although once we get there, no one seems to talk about the messy middle. This motivated me to set the table and invite industry peers over to share stories about living and working in the creative world. So grab the OJ and champagne, pull up a chair, join the creative community and be prepared to build a brand you fall in love with. This is the brand new bye for now podcast. So I’m sure by now, your social media like mine is covered with people posting their word of the year. I always chuckle in January because I feel like it’s vocabulary month everyone’s posting these words everyone setting these new goals. And it’s incredible, I must say I do enjoy choosing a word of the year as well. But for me, I guess my word of the year is really my focus word. I like to call it a focus word for the year it serves sort of as a Northern Star. If you want to say that all year long, I can check out this word, I put it on a sticky note by my desk. And it really helps me to make sure that my business goals my business growth is really aligning with my word. So there’s a little story that goes with my word of the year. If you checked out the title spoiler alert, my word is sustainability. But my path to choosing that word started on March 12 2020. That was the first day that I heard the word pandemic in relation to the COVID 19 health crisis. So I’m sure prior to March 12, someone had said the word pandemic around me, but that’s the day that it really stuck. That’s the day that the connection really hit for me. And I remember sitting there I saw it actually on Twitter, I think is where I saw the word pandemic. And prior to that the COVID 19 pandemic had really affected the rest of the world a little bit more than it had affected the United States. And so I was sitting and my first thought was, how do I stay healthy?

How do I help the people I love to stay healthy. And then my second thought not too far behind it was, oh my goodness, I run a business. Because with the word pandemic came economic crisis, shutdowns, quarantine, and I was like, Oh, my goodness, I run a business. I was thinking about my physical health, but also my financial health. And I had poured so much into my business over the last four years that I was thinking how in the world am I going to make sure it survives? Now, like so many others, I had no idea that 2020 was gonna last all of 2020 I definitely thought COVID would be a thing of the past by the fall. So I remember writing a note that said, my business needs to stay sustainable through this summer. And so with that, no, I made it to do list. How do I achieve that? So the first thing I did was contacted my clients because I knew if I was this concerned about my online business surviving, they had to be concerned about their brick and mortar businesses surviving. Also a great deal of my web design clients specifically are in the wedding and event industry. So that took off a huge toll on their businesses. I knew that people were going to start canceling. I knew that stay at home orders and mass gatherings, and quarantines and all those words basically meant that my clients were not going to be receiving as much income as they were previous to the pandemic. So that was the first thing on my to do list. I reached out to them. I checked to see if there was anything they wanted to update in their brands, anything you want to change on your website, any new services, you want to offer any services you want to stop offering just some messages even to check with lawyers to see how they could update their contracts or you know how they could make sure that they were protected as well.

So that was my first act of sustainability just trying to sustain to the summer you guys because I really did not think that sustainability all of 2020 was going to be as much of a feat as it turned out to be and then I turned internally to my business and did some self evaluation on branded by Burrell what all of my packages sustainable and what I meant by that is I’ve never been one for fluff I really can’t stand will be People try to sell you things you don’t actually need. But there were still things in my packages that I don’t feel that every single business needed. So what I did was, I made a list of the things in my packages that a business owner would need to keep their doors open, or at least their virtual doors. And I realized that things like E commerce capability, things like good communication, things like a newsletter, having an email address, with their own custom domain, so that it was less likely to go to spam, all of those things became pivotal. They became sustainability points in my packages, if people are gonna keep purchasing this from me, they have to know I’m helping them stay in business. So that was the second thing that I did. And then I started to, as the year went on, I realized that COVID-19 was becoming a way of life, just like mask and quarantines and curfews, which is all still so bizarre to talk about. But I realized that adaptability was the key to sustainability. Because even though I made these quick changes, in March, a lot of these changes had to keep changing, my changes were changing. And so with adaptability came, how do I serve my clients new needs. So nine months ago, who would have thought the car companies will be manufacturing in 95? Mask? Honestly, nine months ago, how many of you guys knew what in 95 Mask were? No one saw that coming. But when the circumstances had changed, these companies use the tools that they already had to pivot.

And so what does that mean for you, I’m not telling you to make facemask, but rather to look into your toolbox, and see how you can serve your client’s needs while staying true to your brand. So for example, in my business, one of the things that I did was create designer for a day where people did not have to purchase an entire package with me in order to get their website cleaned up, you could purchase an eight hour segment of my time, and I went in and just did some housekeeping. The brand audits made to do lists create actionable steps for you to be maximizing your websites we maximizing the user experience on your online home. So if you’re a wedding photographer, I know a lot of photographers use show it as well. So a lot of photographers are my friends. Um, could you offer a package for smaller weddings or a partner with a videographer to offer services like zoom or Skype streaming since even though we’re in 2021, a lot of people are still not comfortable traveling? Or if you’re a shop owner and sell physical products, could you offer a bundle and save package, or maybe insert a card explaining how your product can help them work from home? Or how it can entertain their children? I think that would be very, very profitable. And even if you don’t have a product or service, but you’re an influencer, or you have a podcast, could you share tips that have helped you to stay connected with your audience, your clients are probably struggling to build more of a presence online. And they really need your expertise. So these are all things that help you to stay sustainable, because they’re addressing your client’s new needs.

Your needs are changing, their needs are changing. Okay, so let’s get down to how I plan to use my word of the year in 2021. So that word is sustainability. And sustainability is defined as the ability to maintain at a certain rate or level. So basically, when talking about building sustainable businesses, we want to make sure your business has the capacity to endure. And endurance is a whole different word, there probably could be like a be part word 2021. But you want to make sure your business has the capacity to endure. So part of that is sustainable services. We talked about how we had to adapt a lot of our services, but when building new services, we want to make sure that those are sustainable as well. So four pillars that I check off every time I create a service are what are you good at? So I asked myself, Bro, are you good at that? Are you good enough and that to sell it to other people, too? What are my clients needs? Do they need this service? Not do they want it but do they actually need it and can I express verbally how this service will help benefit them? Number three, what will make money because while money is not the ultimate goal, it’s a hobby if it’s not making a profit, so I need this new service to make money and then number four, what can I actually hate? handle. And that really plays in the sustainability piece.

And not only handle time wise, because we can always hire help. But what can I handle or control that external factors won’t completely take away from me. So for example, if I have a product and most of the parts come from overseas, I don’t have a lot of control over getting that product to my clients. But could I find a vendor locally? Or could I order more and keep an inventory? where I’m located? Those things, make sure that my services are things I can actually handle? Same thing with handling the volume of an online service? Do I have the manpower? Do I have the capacity do I have the space to make sure that I’m serving my clients at the best possible customer experience. So that is how you create sustainable services. And then sustainable goal setting. If you’ve been here, you know that I am a recovering perfectionist, I am a person who hesitates to release anything to the world until I feel like it’s absolutely perfect. Unfortunately, perfection is not attainable. So I really had to go back to the drawing board of how I was going to set sustainable goals. How do I set goals that are not setting me up for disappointment, because disappointment and discouragement really do eat away at you as a business owner.

And so I wanted to make sure that when goal setting it was sustainable last year, around this time, actually, I took honey books, business personality quiz, I love personality quizzes, I have taken the Myers Briggs Personality Test, I’ve taken all kinds of other little personality tests in magazines. And so I had to make sure that took the honey book, business personality test. As a business owner, I will link that in the show notes. So you can take it and I’d be curious to hear what you as business superpower is. But anyway, I am a connector WaveMaker according to this personality test. And so what that means is that I thrive off of authentic connections, networking, human interaction, all of those things are my jam. So that makes sense. I love to talk. But what that personality test really gave me was the ability to clearly see my strengths and opportunities, as well as the helped me to create sustainable goals. Because when I know what my strength is, I want to make sure I’m playing toward that. And when I see an opportunity for growth, I want to make sure that I’m working on that as part of my goals as well. So with every business goal I set, I have a three step process in place to reach that goal. Number one, I write down all the steps it will take to reach that goal. And then I physically assign them all a task block of time on my calendar.

So what that looks like is I have tons of pens in different colors. And I literally write down in my calendar. X y&z for social media is going to take one hour editing, my podcast is going to take two hours, writing show notes is gonna take 30 minutes, et cetera, et cetera, making sure that everything has an actual place and time block on my calendar. And that helps me to combat overwhelm, because I realized that writing down lists tend to create overwhelm, because then you’re staring at a piece of paper with 30 things to do on them. But time blocking, it has given me a clear plan that breeds confidence. As simple as it sounds. This stuff has really allowed me to clarify and strengthen my intentions. And a goal without a plan is just a wish. Remember that.

The second thing I do in setting sustainable goals is I develop accountability partners. Now this definitely makes sense because networking is my jam. And so I love speaking about my goals, literally saying them out loud. When I talk to people about actionable steps it’s gonna take to reach my goal. I not only get the sensory of saying it, but I get the sensory of hearing it, which is great. This is why they tell you to read things out loud anyway, because you get to double take in the information if that makes sense. So I use these people to bounce my timeline off of and this helps me to stay on track from the beginning, and then to set reasonable expectations for working toward my goals, because my friends will say Brunel, did you get that done? And then I’m sitting there like no and they’re like, well then why are you working on X y&z And so that’s really good to have very, very good to have an accountability partner that you tell your goals to and then even tell them the timeframe that you have for that goal.

Even if you don’t think that you’re gonna make it it’s just good To have somebody else aware of the timeframe that you’re trying to stick to. So the third way the asset sustainable goals is by identifying the repetitive task and creating systems and processes that will make it easier to consistently reach my goals. Automation, guys, I love automation. This is huge. As creatives we make a lot of things. We are the makers and the movers and the shakers. But the hardest thing for us to make seems to be time, time management for creative people. Well, that’s a whole different podcast. But this step has really helped me to do just that automation not only helped me to scale my business, but it also helped me to give balance. It helped me to turn off work and to say, All right, we worked on that goal. Enough today. Now let’s focus on some things in our personal life. And so that has helped me to create sustainable goals. And I really hope it helps you to create sustainable goals. So if you’re curious, over the last few years, I have been creating words of the year. So 2018, my word of the year was growth. 2019 was balance. Yeah, we’re still working on that one. And then 2020 was clarity. And honestly, I think the pandemic gave me some clarity. And so 2021 is sustainability. So remember, guys, don’t be too hard on yourself. It’s still some crazy unprecedented times out there but take notes, write down your goals for the year and choose sustainability.

Wow, that went by really fast. As always, thank you so much for showing up in my little corner of the internet. I would love to hear your thoughts on the show. So please, please subscribe, leave a review and share what you learned with friends. Some of the best things in life are freebies. So don’t forget to head over to brandedbybernel.com to check out our free branding goodies. This show notes and more educational resources.