We recently connected with Victoria Yassem and have shared our conversation below.

Victoria, appreciate you joining us today. Can you tell us a story about a time you failed?

Failure is all in how you look at it. I fail every day, multiple times a day actually. As a mom, wife, and business owner- I mess up all the time! If you look at these times and learn from them it’s not really a failure anymore is it? There was one time a great connection and a friend of mine referred me to a client he was working with to help with their marketing- well it took me forever to reply to their email- I had too many emails ahead of theirs and missed it. When I caught it I said “I”m so sorry! This email fell between the cracks” then proceeded to set up a call with them to discuss the details. The day of the call came and my reminder didn’t go off! I didn’t realize it until it was too late and was panicking! Sweating, my heart racing, I felt like I was going to puke! In my 15 years in the industry, I have NEVER done this! I was sick over it. I was disappointed in myself and had no idea what to do next. Anxiety was at level 3000 and I called the referral source and told him what happened and he was understanding. I was freaking out- it wasn’t just my reputation I messed up it was his!
I reached out to the client profusely apologizing and after they aired their grievances they still decided to continue the conversation.
I have never felt so crappy- I beat myself up over it for a long time after that. We’re talking for a couple of months. I met with my business coach who told me ” Stop beating yourself up sh*t happens and there is nothing you can do to change what happened, it’s all in how you deal with it.”
I used this incident and changed my processes. I have since slowed down and checked and answered my emails more frequently and paid more attention to what comes across my inbox. And check my schedule multiple times a day to make sure I don’t miss any more meetings.
The biggest issue I realized I was having was my attention was being spread too thin and I wasn’t able to concentrate on my responsibilities as the President. I learned to delegate more and let go of other things that weren’t 100% necessary for me to do and delegated them to my team.
It’s tough when you’re going through these situations but looking back it was 100% necessary for them to happen so I could grow personally and help set processes up in the company for efficiency.

Victoria, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Victoria Yassem is the current President and Owner of Red
Ball Consultants, a nationwide digital marketing and consulting
agency. Victoria earned a BA in Communications from Towson University
and has over 15 years of sales and marketing experience in a variety
of industries. Victoria founded Red Ball Consultants in 2019 to share
her knowledge and experience with other driven small business owners
looking for insight into the marketing and advertising fields. In less
than three years, and despite the challenges of the recent pandemic,
she has grown the company and its book of business to achieve a
formidable presence in the Baltimore and Harford areas. Victoria’s
podcast with Nicole Hearn, called “Mad Girls in Marketing,” has been
heard internationally since it went live in October 2022. Victoria is
heavily involved in the Endorphin Project, a non-profit that assists
individuals with limited resources and access to achieve health and
wellness through fitness. She is the Vice President of the Harford
Business Network, a member of the Harford County Chamber of Commerce
among other organizations, and volunteered her services and expertise
as the past marketing chair at the Discovery Center at Water’s Edge and is on the board of directors for the American Advertising Federation of Baltimore and on the board for the Baltimore County Business Association.

Red Ball was a happy accident, it was supposed to be a part-time “side hustle” and it morphed into something I would have never imagined! We primarily work with “blue-collar” companies and help them grow their brand and build their pipeline using social media. Red Ball has a state-of-the-art system that makes it easy for our clients to transition and continue their marketing efforts. Taking over all social channels, creating the content, filming the videos, and having a completely done-for-you service.

We’d love to hear the story of how you turned a side-hustle into a something much bigger.

Red Ball was initially a side hustle. I was going to start it as a sales organization where we taught sales professionals how to do their job with hands-on training. Social media was going to be offered as an additional service that was going to be contracted out. Our first client was a social media client and it’s taken off! We had to pivot and I learned what was going to make the most sense for the business and its future. We’ve since grown it to have its own merch store, a physical office space, multiple employees, and a podcast. The biggest thing was knowing when to pivot and how to change the internal structure to reflect what we needed as an organization. It’s constantly changing and growing and we are required to be flexible in how we approach things.

How do you keep your team’s morale high?

I have had a large number of crappy managers in my career. I’ve had managers lead by fear, I’ve had managers start an unnecessary conflict between employees, and disrespect on high levels, and when I started my team I wanted to make sure they felt heard. So we have team meetings every day for only 10 minutes and if for some reason I can’t be on it they will email me what’s going on that day and what I can do to support them. I also treat them like humans and expect that they will have lives and things will happen or even that they will care about Red Ball as much as I do. My goal for each one of them is to get them to the next level in their career and put my time into them to help them grow and develop. I”m not their friend, though I am always here for them if they need me and they know that. Keeping boundaries for them and you are both important. They need to know what is expected of them and what they need to do in order to do their job well. And most of all have fun. Work can be stressful but that’s not how it should be all the time! Stay positive and create an environment in that you would feel comfortable having tough conversations in.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.redballconsultants.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/redballconsultants/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/redballconsultants
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/victoria-yassem-00535a97/