Ep. 212: The 24/7 Marketing Flywheel That Will Free Up Time and Grow Your Business With Victoria Hajjar

“It’s the biggest mistake you can make for your future—neglecting to build your own marketing engine”  – veteran Chief Marketing Officer, Victoria Hajjar.

Do you ever feel like you’re on a hamster wheel, always serving clients but never finding the time to grow your own business? And are you ready to build a marketing engine that works for you instead of the other way around?

Tune in to this week’s episode  and listen as Victoria shares how you can move from burnout to brilliance with a 24/7 marketing flywheel that scales your business and frees up your time.

Victoria Hajjar is a seasoned Fractional Chief Marketing Officer with nearly 15 years of experience helping women founders transition their businesses from six to seven figures. Having built ROI-focused marketing systems for entrepreneurs worldwide, Victoria has mastered the art of creating sustainable growth strategies tailored to resource-limited businesses.

Be sure to sign up for my newsletter to stay updated on future episodes.

WE ALSO TALKED ABOUT:

• Why mindset matters: The hidden psychological barriers holding entrepreneurs back from investing in their marketing systems.

• The 24/7 Marketing Flywheel: A six-step framework that transforms your marketing into a self-sustaining engine.

• Building the right team: How to hire help strategically, even on a tight budget.

• Leadership habits: Why quarterly reviews and weekly meetings (even with yourself) are non-negotiable for success.

• Niching down: How specificity in your marketing can lead to exponential results online.

RESOURCES MENTIONED

• Victoria Hajjar’s End Marketing Overwhelm Guide

• Victoria’s LinkedIn Profile: Connect with Victoria

Invitation: Get regular access to tips, techniques, and advice from myself and other experts about growing your business. 

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Trudy Rankin is the host of the Online Business Launchpad Podcast, Director of West Island Digital and the founder of the Online Business Lift-Off program.

Affiliate Disclaimer: If you click on links on this page and then make a purchase, I may earn a commission (at no extra cost to you).  I am a proud affiliate of these resources because I use them in my own life and business.

Transcript

Online Business Launchpad Podcast

Episode 212: The 24/7 Marketing Flywheel That Will Free Up Time and Grow Your Business With Victoria Hajjar

Trudy Rankin: Do you ever feel like the shoemaker without shoes? Someone who’s constantly helping clients, but never having time to work on your own business? I know I feel like that way sometimes, but what if you could finally build a marketing engine that works for you, freeing up your time to scale and grow. In today’s episode, I’m speaking with Victoria Hajar, a Fractional Chief Marketing Officer with a passion for helping women founders make that leap from six to seven figures.

She’s here to share her tried and true marketing framework complete with real stories from her career and smart strategies for getting the right team in place even if resources are limited. Now Victoria’s advice on creating a sustainable 24 7 marketing flywheel will help you shift from being overworked to operating your business like a CEO.

Victoria’s years of experience working with founders worldwide to build ROI or return on investment focused marketing systems means that she knows what it takes to get off the hamster wheel and get set up for success. Her journey in [00:01:00] developing her framework will inspire you to take actionable steps to reach your goals.

Trudy Rankin: Welcome to the Online Business Launchpad podcast. I’m Trudy Rankin, and I bring you stories, tips, and advice from online entrepreneurs who have overcome problems and challenges to get to success because if they’ve done it, so can you. My mission is simple. I want to help you solve the challenges you face as an online business owner so you can have more time and money for yourself and your family and more choices in how you live your life.

And today I have got Victoria Hajjar with me. Now, Victoria has got an amazing background and basically she’s, been a fractional chief marketing officer and has been working with women specifically who want to move from sort of the six to seven figures of revenue coming in [00:02:00] and and eventually profit coming in for their business.

And it can be tricky doing that, especially when you are a solopreneur and you’re too busy doing all the things to do the marketing, but in order to. Keep on growing your business. You need to change the way you do things. So Victoria helps people do that. So I’m so pleased to have you on the podcast today, Victoria.

Thank you for being here. 

Victoria Hajjar: Thanks, Trudy. I’m so excited to be here and share a little bit about my experience and maybe help get some women out there listening to that next level and open their minds to what that could look like for them. 

Trudy Rankin: Yeah. So I’m excited to, to hear what you have to say.

So let’s just go ahead and get started. And if you could just tell people a little bit more about yourself and your background, where you’re from, and then we’ll move on to the next bits. 

Victoria Hajjar: Yeah we definitely have something in common, which I didn’t mention is we’re both, of course, from the States, but I after university packed up and I also moved all the way around the world I picked up and moved to Shanghai when I was in my twenties, and that’s where my career began.

I [00:03:00] had this wonderful opportunity to jump into marketing. I had, come from various background and, English and journalism and all these things that you do when you’re in university. But my first job out of college truly was, in Shanghai, working in the expat scene.

Actually working for some Australian entrepreneurs. And that was really my first parlay into entrepreneurship. These two folks I linked up with, they had fundraised. So it was my intro to, investors and all that world. And, and from there I proceeded about 10 years of what I like to call trial by fire.

Growing into a marketing role. First being the marketing assistant to the marketing manager, to the marketing director and eventually stepping into the shoes of chief marketing officer for various organizations and working hand in hand with founders over now, probably almost 15 years. So it’s it’s been such a ride, but one thing that has marked my experience is.

Being like many of the listeners out [00:04:00] there, knowing about marketing, having good marketing instincts, being able to see, get some production out of some areas of marketing. But what I really learned to foster and develop out of the need is, what kind of systems can I put in place in order to make all this a lot easier?

Because as there’s just so many pieces of marketing. And I think that is exactly why, people like you and me, to have someone that’s giving that outside perspective, to be able to organize, even just organize thoughts is so useful. So yeah, so I’ve really developed this framework that I have used again and again, all over the world, really based on, how do we build a lean ROI driven marketing team to help us execute all of the marketing.

And it’s a real leap from doing everything yourself to finally understanding how to get the right folks in to help you a [00:05:00] little bit. Because again there’s so many pieces of marketing. 

Trudy Rankin: It can be overwhelming because there’s the whole psychology of marketing. You’ve got to be able to understand who you’re serving and get into their heads.

You’ve got to be able to, attract their attention. There’s lots and lots of moving pieces, but as I was mentioning earlier, before we jumped on the call or started recording the, one of the biggest barriers for certainly for a lot of the listeners to this podcast, but for a lot and lots of entrepreneurs, solopreneurs is that you get stuck in this gerbil wheel of.

Serving your customers and trying to do enough marketing to keep that customers coming in. But when you finally get to that stage of where you’ve either had enough of that and you really would like a life, or you want to grow your business beyond this particular point and you realize that you’re stuck.

Because there’s not enough time in the day to both serve your customers and do the project work that’s necessary [00:06:00] to take you to the next step. So I’m really interested in hearing you talk a little bit about your framework, because how do you actually use your framework and your experience to address that specific challenge or barrier?

Victoria Hajjar: If I can say one thing, right? Trudy, you help service providers package up and get a digital offering off the ground, right? And open up revenue channels that way. And I would have to say to anyone that’s out there that is in this position, And so many of us are speaking like I’ve been there, are in this position where you’re like, I’m the shoemaker that has no shoes.

I’m serving everyone, but I’m not building my own engine. I can tell you, it’s the biggest, it’s the biggest mistake you can make for your future, by not, focusing on building a marketing engine for yourself. And I’ll talk a little bit about what that looks like, because, we need to make sure, and as a sidebar, I think a lot of it, and [00:07:00] maybe you, I don’t know if you agree with it.

I think a lot of that is a mindset issue. So I think that there’s, and I, and again, and I’ve been in it, I think, I want to do well for the clients. Of course, we all want to do well for our clients. But when we put our clients needs always in front of our own, and we don’t take the time to build the infrastructure that we need What happens is that when we do go to say, I want to scale and I want to work with Trudy to create a course or a digital offering that’s going to open up this revenue, what happens is that Of course, that offering becomes that much more difficult to sell.

Of course, it’s possible to sell, but if you put the infrastructure in, building brick by brick, even before you have a digital offering, that by the time you have something new to sell, that you’ve already, have an audience that’s ready, willing, and able to make that purchase. So I think we have to first knock on that mindset issue and [00:08:00] say, no one’s being a hero by not, focusing on their own audience building or their own community building or their own list building, because there’s just so much to do for clients.

There is also though the practical piece of it, right? There’s only so many hours in the day. And I know you’re a mom. I’m also a mom. And it is a challenge, right? How much physical time we can dedicate to our businesses. And that’s where I really encourage I encourage all the founders that I work with to start thinking in a systems mindset and understanding that making small investments here or there to build this infrastructure, this framework that I will share now it will pay you back tenfold in the future.

So when I’m, so I typically work with female founders that are at that plateau, right? Where they say I’ve burnt out, I have, I’m doing all of the things, but specifically, [00:09:00] Women that are saying, I just don’t know what is the, how to get to the next level in my marketing. So we talk a lot about growth levers.

What are some of the growth levers? And oftentimes a growth lever could look like building out a digital offering, right? So that’s inside that you could have more offers. But what I do is really assess, we’re assessing four specific areas of our business. First, when we’re looking to get to next level, we look at our brand communication strategy.

And what that means is not creating a new brand or doing anything wild. It’s really looking at the assets that we currently have in our business in terms of copy, in terms of website in terms of imagery, in terms of social posts, all this stuff, and making sure that we are communicating properly, our brand, that we’re really, that we’re really living our brand, because our marketing strategy should be bringing our brand to life, but [00:10:00] we want to make sure that we’re bringing the right image to life, because many times what happens, and I don’t know if you’ve run into this Trudy, but this is something that I’ve seen a lot, looking at the brand, looking at the ideal client avatar, it’s something that people do usually in the beginning of their business. But then as you get rolling and you start serving clients and opportunities come before you, sometimes maybe you stray to serve a totally different type of person.

Maybe you find out you’re actually connecting better with this, that, and the other. So we do that exercise once and we don’t look back at it. And what could happen is we look at where our business is today versus what we’ve planned for and they could look completely different.

And maybe we stop being strategic along the way. I don’t know. Have you seen that? 

Trudy Rankin: I’ve seen that, I’ve seen that happen so many times and I’ve had it happen to me as well. You have to actually be really aware [00:11:00] and try to remember to go back and take a strategic look at your business on a very frequent basis, actually.

I think it’s interesting. I have, I want to swing back to something that you said. And of course, as soon as you said it. My ex chief information officer, hat fell onto my head and I went … 

Victoria Hajjar: I saw it., 

Trudy Rankin: Okay so when I was working as a chief information officer, one of the things that I discovered was that most people tend not to have what I would call a systems mindset.

They seem to not even know what that means, and as soon as they hear it, it feels like a technical term, and it lights out, the lights go out in their eyes, and they’re off somewhere else. Can you explain in very simple terms, what you mean by a systems process, or systems? 

Victoria Hajjar: Okay, yes.

Okay, so we’re jumping, I’m going to swing it back to what I was talking about before, but let’s jump to what this is, because this is very important. [00:12:00] Over this 20 year career I’ve had this great opportunity to go into many people’s businesses, and I’ve been tasked with growing building a marketing department and leading them to success and getting that ROI and hitting those, that, those goals.

 I started picking up in my career and having to do that for multiple businesses, because I’m not a marketing agency as a chief marketing officer, I go in and I assess, I lay the strategy, I build the team that is needed and then set the KP, set the key performance indicators, all the metric goals and lead them to success.

And before I had a systems mindset around that, It was like a complete nightmare because I was, at some points I was managing just in different marketing teams, upwards of 15 to 20 people. And I was like, there has to be a better way. But one of my biggest hacks in my career has always been being very hungry to work with more [00:13:00] established founders, because with each more established founder that I got my hands on to work with, I, I unlocked, I uncovered the systems that they put into place, right?

And I adapted it to my own. So when I talk about systems mindset for marketing management we’re talking about how are we really managing the marketing and sales like beasts in our business? I suggest, and this is how I run my life. I have this very specific leadership meeting cadence that I do with my teams and for myself and There’s three specific types of meetings that you have to have for yourself, for your team, in order for everything to be running smoothly.

So we’re not talking systems, anything complicated. We’re talking about three different types of meetings that make life much, much easier. The first without a doubt, I’m sure you’ll agree, is a quarterly review and planning. Quarterly review and planning has to happen every single quarter. But here’s the [00:14:00] trick.

Many women I speak with, this is now I’m going to get on a soapbox. Many women I speak with have freelancers, individual contributors, maybe an agency working in their business, doing various things, right? Because we’re, many of us, we don’t have full, a stack of full time employees working with us. Maybe we’ve got a lot of different types of people, right?

But what that breeds is this, I want to say feeling bad or some, I don’t know what, where it comes from, but it’s like they, that a lot of women I speak with don’t feel comfortable bringing everyone together for a quarterly review and planning. Because it’s something you would do in corporate or something you do with your employee team.

So that I think is you’re missing huge opportunities if you don’t bring everyone together once a quarter to really set your goals, right? And get everyone moving in the right direction. [00:15:00] So that’s once a quarter. And from that meeting, we need to establish, of course, the quarterly goals. We need to establish what are, the tasks associated with it, what are some key markers there, and then the second meeting we need to run is a weekly marketing meeting with all of these same people.

And this is where, again, folks feel bad. And I will give this caveat. Sometimes agencies do give like a pushback. Like they don’t want to show up to a weekly meeting or something like that. In my experience if someone’s not willing to show up one hour a week to get clear on what needs to get done and report on what they’re doing or whatever for a growth startup or scale of business, it’s not like the right.

So I think you really want to get people that are really in the mindset of wanting to collaborate, wanting to do well, wanting to grow together. So second meeting is the weekly marketing meeting. And then the third meeting is. A, and the cadence depends on how big your team is [00:16:00] this, but you take some of your key players and you do a one on one with them once a month or even once a quarter.

But it’s a time to really connect and foster relationships with those individuals. So three minutes, it’s the quarterly review and planning. It’s the weekly marketing meeting, and it’s your one on one with your key people. And if you get into the rhythm of doing that each and every quarter, each and every month, each and every week, you will, you’ll begin, you will begin to systemize.

The most important things that you need to get done in your business, which is checking in with those quarterly goals, making sure that they get done right. Being there to support people properly with their regular day to day tasks in a weekly meeting. And the other key thing that’s very important in the marketing meeting is making you check in with your data, like getting into the habit of checking in with those key metrics to be following and look at them with your team.

And [00:17:00] have your team be reporting on those metrics. And I know for some it feels a little bit uncomfortable to, to give that to like the person you found on Fiverr, for example. But bring them into the fold. I’ll tell you there are more times than not I’ve been so surprised. Even freelancers and these individual contributors, they want to do well, they want direction, they want the barometer on how they’re doing.

Those are the systems I speak with. Now, of course, we can, there’s marketing funnels and there’s systems that can go deeper within that, but from an operational level, those three meetings, are the way to get on the right track and make sure that you are focusing on the most important things and the team is executing the most important things.

Because as you mentioned, it’s so easy to forget about your goals, about your ideal client avatar because we’re so busy and we’re pulled in all these directions. It happens to all of us. 

I think that’s a really good way of describing just a way of thinking about systems and it’s basically a way of doing [00:18:00] things.

In a repeatable way that actually give you the results that you want. So it’s like the step by step side of things. And you can go, yes, you can go deep into the detail. And, but as you said, as an, at an operational level, it is, it’s about your weekly, monthly, yearly, quarterly habits, and the things that you do that bring you step by step to success.

So I think that’s really helpful, 

yeah. And I think that’s, and I think that for anyone that’s looking to get to that next revenue level in their business, yes, we can sit and talk about getting in the weeds about the marketing funnels and all these things, but what really starts to flip the switch is when us as business owners, we step into that leadership role for real.

And it’s scary. It’s scary when we’re not controlling everything, but actually that’s how we grow and scale our business when we’re able to see things from the 10, 000 foot view [00:19:00] and hold to the folks that are executing for us. And again, it could be our employee, it could be our virtual assistant. The difference is the standards that we hold people to, and with kindness, with grace, with all of these things.

But I think that, many businesses get stuck and don’t really see great success because from the leadership level, we’re not coming with that. That energy, that vision, that tenacity, I’ll tell you, and this is like things that I’ve extracted from the most established founders I’ve worked with.

And I’ve had the opportunity to learn from extraordinary founders that have exited businesses. I’ve worked with women that have grown unicorn companies, so billion dollar valuations, and I really sat as a student saying, what do these folks do differently, right? And it’s the systems mindset that I say and these, and this framework that I’ve built out [00:20:00] that I’ve learned, but so much of it is, as we say, it sounds cliche, it’s mindset, but it’s, how do you show up to lead your company?

And have the confidence to work on those highest level tasks where we all get sucked into the email and respond to Karen because we don’t want Karen not to think that we forgot about her or whatever. And these little things we get into instead of that big picture. So the Leadership Meeting Cadence really helps you to zoom out.

And then for all of the other little the funnels and all those stuff, that’s where we can find folks that are going to sit in the weeds. And it’s their highest value to sit in the weeds. But those folks that are really good at execution, what I have found is that, we expect that they’re also good at leading themselves and looking at the strategy, but they often need that guidance and help in order to, for us to get the most out of [00:21:00] them.

Trudy Rankin: I think that’s a really good point. I’ve got a couple of questions. I’m going to start with the first one. One of the, one of the objections that I run into, Every now and again, and it doesn’t really surprise me because I have heard it so many times, and it’s a real, it’s a real issue, it’s a real challenge, for someone who’s just at that stage where they do want to start bringing in a team, they would love to bring in a team, but the thing, they look at their finances and they go, I can’t afford to hire somebody.

How do I afford to hire somebody? I’m only just barely paying the bills as it is, bringing in enough to pay my bills, but how do I afford to bring somebody in? And especially then they also looking at the extra load that it’ll take to, figure out exactly who you need and then find them and all that sort of thing.

How would you, what would you say to somebody who’s gone, I can’t afford somebody, but I need somebody in order to grow? 

Victoria Hajjar: All right. 

So this kind of goes back to this framework. So as I mentioned. I have a four step framework for creating a [00:22:00] thriving ROI sales driven marketing department and it starts with that brand.

So the first essential work we need to do before we bring anyone on, this is what’s really important, is do this essential brand communication work and make sure that we have absolute clarity on who we’re talking to, what problem we’re solving. I, and I would say, honestly, the path, the fastest path to cash is as niche as you can get, because that’s going to help you.

Yeah. Okay. You agree with me. 

Trudy Rankin: But please expand because listeners sometimes go, what do you mean, niche down, that could be, how do you niche down so small.

Victoria Hajjar: Okay, I love this. This is a metaphor I’ve used a lot and I feel like it really is a good one. So a lot of us as service providers, and this is, this has been me 100%, have grown our business for a lot of referral, right?

So many people are referrals, right? And through just events [00:23:00] and meeting people and networking, right? And that’s a great strategy and you can close Often close people at a higher rate, and it’s great to meet people face-to-face. The problem is it’s not super scalable, right? You’re one person. Now, why do we close people at a higher rate when we’re face-to-face with them?

Or when we have that warm introduction and we, and the conversation is open, it’s because. As service providers, when we’re in front of someone, even if they’re not a specific niche or specific avatar, because we’re humans, we can feel and guide the conversation in the way that we know that other person needs, right?

We know we can serve the person in front of us, maybe they don’t fit the perfect mold, but because we’re, Emotionally intelligent, we can play ball, right? We can ping pong back and forth in conversation, like what we’re doing now, right? That’s a give and a take. The thing is with digital marketing, we don’t have that opportunity [00:24:00] to be in front of people directly and really change and mold the conversation according to what is the needs of that prospect that’s in front of us.

So the best we can do in the digital world is get really focused in on the specific person or the specific problem that we’re going to solve. Because as specific as we can, what we have, In the internet is just the millions of people that we can get in front of that fit into that niche. Now, when we’re in a networking event, maybe out of a room of 50, maybe one or two are like our perfect niche, but in the internet and the worldwide web, we have access to all of the people that exist that fit that niche.

So we have this depth of opportunity online. But the problem is that if you’re not speaking to one specific person or that one specific problem, you’re going to get [00:25:00] scrolled past. You’re going to get missed. People are not going to, they’re not going to make that connection. And we hear it all the time.

If you’re speaking to, if you’re not speaking to one specific, but speaking to everyone is speaking to no one. It’s never been more true online because it’s just, there’s so much saturation everywhere. And the only way we can stand out through a scroll, for example, is if we got a hook that’s going to connect with our person.

And the only way we can develop a really good hook is if we are very specific on who we’re reaching. And by the way, We need to do that again and again and again. So if that one person that’s our perfect person sees that hook, they get hooked three, four, 12, I think it’s like 12, 20 touch points now people need before they like register that you can help them.

So it’s more like an efficiency thing on when we’re digital. And the other thing is in that efficiency lane. If you pull it further into, okay, what partnerships can I do? What, where can I advertise? As niche as you can, it’s [00:26:00] way, way more cost efficient, right? And time efficient to become known in one circle, really become known in one circle, instead of just putting your foot everywhere on all these people you could help, right?

So basically in terms of the, somebody thinking I can’t afford somebody, The first step is to actually go in there and get super clear on who you’re helping. Make sure that it’s narrowed down. You’ve got very specific, you have a very specific understanding of who that person is so that you’re talking to one person.

Once you’ve got that in place, what do you do next in terms of changing your mindset so that you can afford somebody to help you? 

So the next piece, so we’ve talked a lot about brand, right? So the next part of this equation is building your marketing growth strategy. So I, as I conceptualize it, I call it your 24 by seven marketing flywheel.

So your 24 by seven marketing flywheel, it’s now we’re getting, now we’re talking about funnels, right? But this is The six [00:27:00] step process that all clients will go through from first knowing about who you are and what you do all the way into being ready to buy with you and, in the end becoming that raving fan, right?

So building out your 24 by 7 flywheel, the way that you do it, and I actually, I have a free resource for anyone that’s curious. If you go to my company’s called Ugly Ventures. Because business can be ugly sometimes. So it’s ugly with an I. U G L I V N T U R E S dot com. Backslash resources. And you can find a guide on how to end marketing overwhelm.

It’s going to walk you through the state, the steps of the 24 by seven marketing flywheel. What I love about this flywheel is it turns your marketing into a systemized process. So instead of throwing spaghetti at the wall, your task is to map out, to plan, what am I going to do for these six stages of the [00:28:00] flywheel?

And it’s very clear in the guide what the stages are, but the first step, for example, is aware, right? The awareness. How are more, how are people knowing about who you are and what you do? After that is engage, right? How are we getting contact information? It’s not brand new stuff, right?

It’s client journey. It’s all of these things. We know vaguely that we have to bring people into our world and get them ready to buy. This flywheel tells you step by step how to do that. But what you’re going to want to do in this moment, this person that’s feeling a little bit hesitant to bring people on is really map out my suggestion, just one tactic that you could do for each one of these six stages.

So you’re going to say, for the awareness phase, I’m going to, for example, do a partnership strategy where I’m going to find other folks to work with, and we’re going to introduce each other to each other’s audiences, something like that. And what is really key here, if you have a small team or no team or limited time money, is [00:29:00] just doing one thing well for each one of these stages, right?

And so when you look at the one thing that you could be doing for each one of these stages, Now we go to so first is brand, next is marketing growth strategy, third step is team. So the way we build an ROI driven team, or we really pinch our pennies when we’re getting help in our business, is to get so clear on that 24 by 7 marketing flywheel that you understand the one or two things that you might need some extra help with.

That’s going to free up your time so you can do the sales, so you can generate the revenue. And oftentimes it is really scary to bring on people to help you in your business if you haven’t before. I get it, but I think that oftentimes if we are in a systems mindset, we can think maybe we don’t need to bring someone on for a retainer forever.

Maybe when we assess that flywheel, we think, you know what, it would be [00:30:00] really helpful if I just get someone to help me create a landing page here. And maybe you can go on Fiverr and you get someone for two or 300 bucks. To help you do it. It’s not thousands of dollars investment, or maybe you look at that flywheel and you’re like, you know what, I really want to leverage social media more, but I can’t bring on a social media manager.

Here’s one of my hacks. I’ll go to Fiverr and I’ll look for a content creator and I’ll get someone to just create like 12 social media posts. Or 20, and maybe it’s like again, maybe it’s 300 bucks or whatever, but they deliver you a month’s worth of content and then you can schedule out that content.

You can say, oh, what performed, what didn’t perform? You can keep the ones that did well. You can get rid of the ones that didn’t. And you can repurpose that, keep you going for a little while. And then maybe you can get that person to create, maybe next time, they’re only creating 10 pieces for you because you can use some of the other stuff, or maybe you found some time to, to upgrade some of the [00:31:00] stuff based on, some feedback you’re getting from the metric.

So there’s ways that you can begin to get help in small ways in your business for small investments. that are going to help you just move a little bit faster. So the third is the team. And it all starts with mapping out the flywheel and seeing where the gaps, seeing, what’s missing from this system here that maybe I need some extra hands to help me.

And it doesn’t necessarily mean I’m a full, like a full time or even a full part time person could just be a project basis. And then I’ll just end up this whole, the whole system because the fourth level is the leadership piece. And the leadership piece is just what we talked about before the leadership meeting cadence.

Am I showing up regularly to do my quarterly review and planning to check in on my marketing, my weekly marketing meeting? And by the way. If anyone out there that has no team and they’re all alone, you have to still lead yourself. This is the game changer. You have to sit and do your quarterly review of planning.

[00:32:00] You have to have a marketing meeting with yourself every week where you look at the data and you say to yourself, what’s working and what’s not working. That you make the KPIs for yourself. Okay, I need three social posts to go out this week. I need to make sure that it’s done, or I need to get, I need to do one workshop with a part, whatever, but you have to set your targets for yourself and check in with them every week.

It’s the only way you’re going to move forward. And believe me, I know it’s so hard, but it’s the only way to move forward, honestly. And if you have that level of like severity to it and you’re like, listen, either my business is going to thrive. Or not survive. And the only thing I need to do is really be setting some goals for myself some targets for myself when it comes to sales and marketing.

Checking in with ’em every week, and even if you’re not reaching your targets or whatever, that process of doing it regularly is gonna help. Your brain think in a different way. It’s going to help open up some stuff, things for you. [00:33:00] And I’ll say one last thing is it’s in the beginning when you’re not tracking metrics and maybe you’re not getting the results that you want.

It’s really painful. It stinks to look at that. And you’re like, why am I not hitting it? Or, Oh God, I hate I hate opening up the scorecard. Cause I just, I’m just failing all the time. But what happens is that when you sit with that, It’s a very important process because that uncomfortable feeling that maybe makes you feel sad or whatever is also a motivator to help you do some different Google searches, to tap on the shoulder of some friends, ask their advice, get some other, get some experts to just audit what you’re doing or give you some suggestions.

You start thinking outside the box. 

Trudy Rankin: I think that’s, that is so important. And I love that you said that even if you don’t have a team, you have to lead yourself. And I truly don’t know any better way than doing what you said, which is the quarterly planning, [00:34:00] the weekly planning the, basically, cause I, I do this myself and I also do it with my community.

We sit down on a quarterly basis. We do the whole year at the beginning of the year. Quarterly plans, and then monthly plans, and then we have like weekly check ins, and this is for the people in my community, so they don’t work for me, they don’t work with me, they’ve got their own businesses. But it does make such a difference because you’d be you probably wouldn’t be stunned, but I’m always stunned at how far off course I end up getting by the time I’ve been working for two months towards some goals.

And then I look at my goals and I go, oh, hang on, what have you been doing, Trudy? You’ve got to get back on track. 

Victoria Hajjar: Well said, and I went on this track for years, and it would be like a joke because I would open up my. My quarterly planning thing, like three months later. And I’d be like, I didn’t even remember that I wrote that.

So you, and it’s because life, and that’s why I think there’s such, people talk a lot about a gratitude practice, right? Where it’s like every morning, write three [00:35:00] things you’re grateful for. It’s a beautiful practice because That the bringing yourself back, our minds, we go a million miles a second.

We have to take the time to bring ourselves back. And so we can get it with the gratitude practice, but when we’re trying to create something in our business or kind of to just move anything in our lives, the more that you are taking stock and bringing yourself back and re just simply reminding yourself of things you need to do helps you stay focused because I don’t know about you, but.

Trudy, it’s like the second that I don’t have a clear marching orders for what I need to be working like in that hour, like I don’t fly off the handle, like Lord knows I’ll be like trying a new social media scheduling tool, or I’ll get into some workshop that has nothing to do with anything I’m trying to accomplish.

Because there’s so many, there’s, So many things pulling us in so many directions. 

Trudy Rankin: Bright shiny object syndrome. We all suffer from it. 

Victoria Hajjar: Yeah, we all do. [00:36:00] Yeah, we all do. 

Trudy Rankin: So I think that’s a really good reminder to all of us listening and whether we have successfully, built massive, huge businesses, or we’re still building towards the level of success that we want, it’s worth paying attention to that.

And that, That’s self discipline of making sure we’re really clear on what we’re doing and that we’re checking in with ourselves to make sure that we’re on track. Victoria, that’s been just so really useful. I know that listeners are going to be really excited to, to hear what you have to say and to then start to apply some of this in their business.

So if people were interested in getting in touch with you or maybe even reaching out to you, where would they go? 

Victoria Hajjar: Yes, I love to hang out on LinkedIn, I’m there every single day and if you have a specific marketing thing that you want to work through, you have a specific question, send me a DM.

Sometimes I even get on, hop on a LinkedIn live and do some live coaching if anyone needs help with a specific marketing thing. But yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn. And if you, again, at ugliventures.com\resources. [00:37:00] I have that how to end a marketing overwhelm that walks you through the flywheel process.

I also have one about brand communication, so how to upgrade your brand communication, that will, is enough to really help you get started and on the right path to implementing some of the things that I talked about today. Yeah, so I would love to see you on LinkedIn.

Trudy Rankin: Fantastic, and I’ll make sure that I put all of those links in the show notes so that people can find them later on. Victoria, thank you so much. 

Victoria Hajjar: Thank you, Trudy, it was such a pleasure to meet you.

Trudy Rankin: Thank you so much for listening to this conversation with Victoria Hajar. I hope you felt inspired by her, I hope you felt inspired by her ideas on taking small but powerful steps to build a marketing system that practically runs itself. Victoria’s story about watching founders transform by putting systems in place, even the ones who started out saying, I can’t afford help, was a really great reminder that every business can grow with the right strategy.

So if you found this episode helpful, I’d love it if you subscribed and left a review. [00:38:00] Your feedback helps more listeners find the show, and it lets me know the topics that mean the most to you. So here’s to tuning, so here’s to turning your vision into reality with practical steps and a sustainable plan.

And until next time, keep building your business, and remember, you don’t have to do it alone.

Resources

• Victoria Hajjar’s End Marketing Overwhelm Guide

• Victoria’s LinkedIn Profile: Connect with Victoria

Today’s Expert

Victoria Hajjar

Victoria Hajjar is a Fractional Chief Marketing Officer passionate about helping women entrepreneurs break through growth ceilings to achieve sustainable, scalable success. With nearly 15 years of experience building ROI-driven marketing systems, she brings a strategic, no-nonsense approach to helping businesses thrive.

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