Ep 2: 4 Lessons learned from one year in small business

Social School by Blank Page Marketing

Danni takes a look back at four lessons learned at one year anniversary mark for Blank Page Marketing. 4 Lessons Learned from One Year in Small Business: AUDIO TRANSCRIPTION Please excuse any typos as this was completed with audio dictation. Welcome to Social School. My name is Danni Eickenhorst, and today we’re going to talk about the first year of a small business. I wanted to talk a little bit about Blank Page Marketing, because last week we hit the one year mark for Blank Page and it was a really meaningful moment for our business and our team. Next week, we get to have a party and celebrate (because I’m big on celebrating milestones). It really got me thinking about the sharable lessons that I’ve gotten from my first year as an entrepreneur and what would I share with others thinking about taking some of the same steps. A little bit of background, when I first decided to go out on my own it was 2007 and I had my own company, and the first time around it was mostly content focused. I’ve been given some freelancing copywriting and SEO writing things from people in my life, professors and friends and I realized that you can make some money with it. I tried my hand at writing content for a living and I found that it was a really really hard and one of the things that I did that certainly didn’t make my first year any easier was inviting friends and acquaintances to jump in on projects with me, thinking I could blend these great friendships with doing what I love professionally. Despite the number of gifted and talented people I folded in there to work with me, it was a matter of me realizing that I’m not a great supervisor; I have really high expectations of people and I don’t always communicate what I want very well. I’m much more of a big picture dreamer and much less of a tactical kind of manager. I’m happy to get in the zone and code out something on my own or execute a big project on my own, and I like working collaboratively in teams but for some reason supervising is not my thing. I find that I don’t like being viewed as the Almighty Overlord of the project and I really didn’t know how to manage at that point in my life. So, I ultimately took a contract that turned into employment and left that behind. At that time, that was a really good choice then. A few years, later after having got a lot more supervision under my belt and learning how to empower people that work with me and how to support them in their own creative rights without feeling like a terrible supervisor, I thought, “You know, I’ve worked with some really creative people. I really do enjoy the freedom of working for myself and it’s time to approach this idea once again to see if I can make it work.” I’ve had the good fortune at this point where I decided to make the jump working with some amazing amazing people in my career, who I knew would deliver quality work and to live up to my expectations and who I would also enjoy working with, who were incredible professional and so far it’s been really great. I announced my big change through LinkedIn and social media and it was really well received, it was scary doing that because you don’t know what people are going to think if they’re going to support you, if they’re going to ask you if you’re crazy because you got kids and all these things, but it was a great response. And most of my first year of business I can draw a line back to the moment that I announced on social media. A quick shout out to Janice Branham who was one of my first clients that took a chance on me and saw the work that I’d done up until that point and gave me a shot to work with the Oasis Institute nationally to help them with their strategy and various projects. I’ve been so grateful because this year so many people have supported the work that we’re doing and I certainly wouldn’t be talking here today on a Monday in the middle of the morning to you guys if it wasn’t for them. So, I would say the first thing that I learned this year was that being socially authentic can pay off. Lesson #1: Being socially authentic can help grow your small business I was worried; I guess I’ve always been a bit of an overshare on social media. Most of you probably already know that I’m never going to run for political office any day soon because it’s already out there, everything I’ve ever thought I probably tweeted or blogged. So it never occurred to me not to share every step along the way of growing a small business and at one point my friend Jen pointed out that that was kind of a gutsy move on my part sharing each and every client we got because people would be watching and if we failed they’d see that too. But pretty much every contract we’ve gotten this year I’ve shared that on social media because I’m truly excited to jump into these products and I’m really thankful to the people that have chosen to put their faith in our work and so all along the way we kind of announced when we start with someone and people watch the work that we’re doing and luckily we don’t fail so far and we haven’t had that situation arise yet and so we’re good to go. I think that we’ve been really authentic and open this year about the highs and the lows and there’s nothing more emotionally draining I’d suppose than owning your own business but at the end of the day I can’t imagine doing anything else. So, I’m a big believer in gratitude and celebrating every milestone along the way and so we have done that very publicly with everybody and in this beautiful way people have gotten behind us and really been rallying team for us. People that I really respect and whose work I really admire has come out and offered to do work with us, people who I have long wanted to work with have also hired us for projects and so what a year it’s been. So I would say the first lesson right out the gate that we learned was just being open and honest and sharing our experience, not everything has to be sugar coated we certainly haven’t aired any dirty laundry. There are days where it’s a little more difficult than other days and you know we ask for help on those days and we throw out our questions and we seek support, we’re never afraid to ask questions we’re growing a business like so many people before you, and people want to know what that’s like because so many of you are also considering something similar and if we can share some of our wisdom, our experiences along the way and help you avoid a stumbling block or get you in a stronger position when you’re a year into your small business, then that’s totally worth it because we ’ve had the benefit of learning from people like Seth Godin and some of the other thought leaders that have written it down or developed their own book and everybody’s experience in launching a business is going to be uniquely different. There are some common threads that you and I have that perhaps I can help you get a little farther, a little faster with fewer headaches. Lesson #2: Learn to value your time it was pretty quick out of the gate that I had my first request for a cup of coffee and pick my brain and all that I normally would get. And it was really difficult for me to say no because when somebody comes to you and they’ve got a non-profit campaign and they need some help or a small business and big dreams and to say no to that it’s really hard, those are my people. And so I had to and I would blame it on my husband because that’s the way I was most comfortable doing it and it was the truth and I promised my husband that when we went out on our own and I made a go at this business, I would point every minute of my time into this business and so if I’m going to give you advice or strategy I am going to have to charge you for it and I’m sorry to do that. And so some of the people that came and asked me and I had to turn away were very very understanding; in fact I’d say all of them were. Some later told me that they totally respected my ability to say no and they knew that it was difficult for me and others ended up hiring me and those that couldn’t afford to I have since worked into one of our classes giving them a free seat when we’re pretty well booked up and maybe have a chair or two that I can give away. I try not to just fully turn anybody away, I tried to give back where we can or try to connect them with someone that may be could help them. And so valuing my time was a huge lesson this first year. Lesson #3: Do more of what works The third lesson came from Travis a friend of mine who’s brilliant, he worked at the Venture Café Foundation. He is a brilliant consultant, he is exactly who you want to talk to if you’re starting a small business or you want to look up Venture Café and see what support they can provide you. Luckily we’re friends and I was able to sit with him for a while and chat and the advice he gave me is funny, it’s the kind of advice I’d probably give a client but I couldn’t see it for myself. He said, “Okay, so here we are this far into your business. If you were to put the sources of your client onto a pie chart, what would that look like? How much comes from your website and SEO? How much comes from social media? How much comes from word-of-mouth?” When he said that, I had this moment where I thought, “How did I not see that nearly all of our business comes from word-of-mouth or happy clients that either come back or referred someone?” We don’t really get a ton of new business off of social media or our website. We keep those up because we want to share our journey and we definitely use those channels to showcase our knowledge and also to pass on knowledge that authentically help people who want to do for themselves. But it was near 100% of our business was just from happy customers or people that had worked with me previously in my career and that was a huge wake a moment. The minute I stopped putting all of our focus elsewhere on blogs and webinars and all that, although we still do it just because we want to truly empower people and educate people, but when I just put that focus on the people that have referred business and the people that we do have business with currently and trying to cultivate those relationships further, then we got too much business which was a beautiful problem to have at the one year mark. So definitely take a minute as you get into your business, 6 months in, 12 months in and as you’re considering your marketing mix and how you’re promoting your business that should definitely be the first question you ask, no matter what your business is you really need to know where your business is currently coming from and what is the path that they take to get there. It just happens that my path is a little bit shorter because it’s people that already know me and have come forward and wanted to work with me or people who have worked with me and are referring folks. So that’s a pretty easy path to follow but truly that’s a no-brainer that took me a little while to get. There are so many things you’re considering your first year out that sometimes the obviously gets missed. Lesson #4: Rome wasn’t built in a day The final bit of advice I would give to somebody starting out a business is don’t expect in the first week, month or few months that you’re going to have everything figured out, you’re not going to know what your business is going to be necessarily right out of the gate. Definitely make a plan and try and stay within the lanes, don’t get pulled off of focus, every entrepreneur out there seems to fall into the trap of getting distracted by the next shiny thing out there; so definitely make a plan and try to stick to it. But you’re really not going to have a sense of who you are until you have a chance to be something. And so we were nine months and when we started the business I said I want to start a company that empowers small businesses and non-profits, to get the kind of marketing help that they need which is unique because they more than anybody else really struggled to have time, talent and resources to pull off most of their messaging and campaigns. And for a small business or non-profit the results of their marketing are absolutely critical to their survival and so I just felt this urgency to try and find a way to serve them. And so we wanted to create marketing solutions that were scalable that somebody could say come to us and say here are my business goals, here is my budget, how can we get from point A to point B with the resources that we have? And we would find a way, whether that’s holding their hand and consulting with them, managing some of the pieces or giving them the education and tools they need to actually execute themselves so that was the plan. Nine months into it we took a moment and said is that what we’re doing? Are we doing what we set out to do and if not what are we doing? And what problems are there that we’re seeing on a regular basis and how are we solving them for people? And lucky for us we were, we largely found that we were delivering on what we hoped to deliver on all along and I think that was just because we were mindful, we sent out those channels and we tried to stay in your lane. And we could have gone a million different directions with our business, at end of the day we said no, we set out to do consulting and manage marketing and education and if it’s not in those lanes we’re not going to take it on right now and that’s been great. By stopping and taking a look at where we’ve been and what we’ve done this year we’ve also seen that there are other areas of value that we provide to other layers, other problems that we fix all related to this work. But it gave us more of our marketing message, it gave us a little bit of self-awareness of our work, a different perspective on what we do, and a moment to pause and look at what our real value is; but we didn’t get there overnight. My first few months I don’t know how much of my time I spent testing various project management softwares and trying to get our logo settled and getting our website just how I wanted it because I felt like people were watching and I needed to do this well. And I lost so much sleep and so much time over it and that’s fine, that’s my process, that’s how I do but if I could go back and tell me something a year ago it would be chill out, you’ll get there just do your best and we did and I’m really happy with where we are right now. Our website is always a project in development, our social media ups and flows but we do the best we can and legitimately the best thing at the end of the day we really are helping small businesses. We really are helping non-profits and there are people like 30 clients this year that have come back to us and said ‘thank you, I couldn’t have done this without you I really feel like the help you gave me went to my success’ and that’s really what I care to measure at the end of the day, for me that’s success. It’s a book of business going forward and it’s that we set out a mission and we’re actually achieving it. So that’s it, enough about me you’ve had two whole episodes of just me. Next week we’re going to have Wesley Hoffman on the show, we’ve got Vernon Ross coming on; we want to talk about social skills in a digital age and how social media blends with real-life interactions and networking and kind of the pros and cons of that. And we’re also going to have Matthew Hibbert on in a couple of weeks, we want to talk about social and digital marketing for a public agency he works for Metro and so there’s a lot of good stuff coming up so I encourage you to keep listening, please share. And a real heartfelt thank you to everyone who has supported our business this year whether you sent us a referral or shared our podcast or retweeted something, God Bless you. I love every minute of what we’re doing and if you listen to this soon enough, the 15th we’re having a party at Plush here in St. Louis 5 PM till close and we’re going to celebrate our first year. That’s a huge milestone, it may not seem like that to business that have been around for a long time but it is, we’re so happy to have gotten to this point and it really is all thanks to you. So please send us your thoughts at blankpagestl on twitter, blankpageconsultingstl on Facebook, blankpagestl is our website. We want to hear from you what you want to hear? What questions do you have? Thanks again see you next time.