Behind the scenes at a Grand Rapids marketing agency. Revenue goals, client production days, web design projects, and what running a small business in West Michigan looks like.
Monday started with a cold. Not the fun kind of Monday where you wake up early, hit the gym, and feel like you could take on the whole week. The kind where you sound stuffed up on camera and hope nobody notices.
I think the cold was a sign from God that I needed to relax.
If you have watched the vlog for any amount of time, you know my default is go. Normal for me is momentum. Normal for me is working on projects, moving things ahead, pushing the business and our clients' businesses forward.
I talked about this in last week's vlog, the idea of momentum having three settings:
Mine gets stuck on forward. That has helped me build this business since 2020 and it has helped our clients grow too. But you cannot do that forever.
"I struggle with taking that time to relax."
So the weekend before this week, I did nothing. Hung out with Ellen. Ate good food. Went for walks. Went to church. Did grocery shopping. It was chill and it was exactly what I needed. Still nasally on Monday, but ready for the week.
If you are running a small business in West Michigan and you feel like you are always in forward gear, this is your reminder that neutral is a real setting.
Quick context for anyone new here. Launch Kit is a marketing agency in Grand Rapids, Michigan. We do websites, SEO, photo and video content, organic social media, and paid ads management for businesses across West Michigan.
Our goal this year is $750,000 in sales. Last year we did $667,000. Moderate growth on purpose.
Here is where we sit:
I built a chart last week comparing this year to last year and the gap is real. The gray line is 2025 and we are sitting significantly above it. The team has been cruising. We onboarded a few new marketing clients in January that have been genuinely fun to get up and running.
That is also part of why I have been so stuck in forward.
Random side quest this week that turned out to matter more than I expected.
I was getting hit with brain fog around 10:45 or 11:00 every morning. Lightheaded, kind of dizzy, foggy. It bothered me because I like being in tune with my body. If there is something I can do to avoid feeling like that, I want to do it, because it affects everything downstream.
Higher quality of life. Higher quality of work. Higher quality relationships.
So I changed breakfast. Two rotations this week:
More protein, less carbs. Both were phenomenal. Consistent energy all morning. I also started taking magnesium at night plus B12 and D3 in the morning, so I cannot tell you exactly which change did it. I am not a nutritionist. Claude gave me the recipes.
I listened to Modern Wisdom with Chris Williamson this week and Cal Newport was the guest. He writes about productivity, focus, and deep work. I have read Deep Work and Slow Productivity and both stuck with me.
His point on modern knowledge work is that email and instant messaging created a context switching problem. You bounce from one topic to a totally different topic, over and over.
"The context switching is what's actually using the most brain power. It's not the project itself."
That connects straight back to the brain fog for me. When I protect my mornings for deep work and respectfully do not open my email inbox before noon, I have better energy and way less crash out later in the day.
Here is the part that is a little uncomfortable. We get rewarded for fast email replies. Complimented. Thanked. So people keep doing it, and it is quietly hurting them. That is a dangerous cycle.
I am not saying ignore your inbox. I am saying be mindful about how you treat it.
Tuesday was a double.
Porous Pave. Connor came by the office for a pulse meeting where we review last month's analytics and plan the next 30 days. Fun backstory: he found me through my own organic TikTok and sent a DM. His family owns the company up in Grant, about 30 minutes north of downtown GR. They make a permeable pavement product you have probably walked over downtown without noticing, usually around the trees. We maintain their website, shoot photo and video content twice a month, manage their social, and run their Facebook ads and Google ads.
We asked the Porous Pave crew for their favorite application. Answers ranged from bunker liners to patios to tree surrounds. Connor said trails, because runners tell him it feels better on their joints.
Lead Scout. Chris came in for a content shoot. They build canvassing software for trades based businesses. Evan had five video ideas prepped and knocked them out with him. Cool startup vibes and a lot of growth potential.
Thursday we went mobile. Three locations in one day.
That is what a real production day looks like. Not glamorous. A lot of driving. A high viz vest.
Thursday at 4:00 we hopped on the weekly Launch Kit Mastermind call. We cover whatever is top of mind for marketing, organization, and productivity. Go High Level, HubSpot, social media, web design, SEO.
Friday I took Lucy, our newest team member, to the Chamber of Commerce for two website meetings. One with a longtime float spa client in Traverse City who was in our first five clients ever. One with Andrew, a new client building a site around his ADHD practice, who will use Go High Level for email marketing and paid consultation bookings.
Great first website project for Lucy. She is excited.
Ended the week with 8 miles. Felt a little heavy, still shaking the cold, breathing was not the best. But it felt good to be out there.
Anyway. Neutral for a couple days, then back to forward.
Still working on the neutral part.
Want to go deeper? Inside the Launch Kit Mastermind you get 1:1 access to me, weekly Q&A calls, our ClickUp templates, Go High Level snapshots, our actual SOPs, and the Claude prompts we use every day. There is a 7 day free trial so you can join this week's call for free: https://get.launchkitdesign.com/home
