Impact Gathering: Authentic Marketing For Stronger Impact
On October 9th, Impact Boom and Mumma Got Skills hosted the fifth panel for Impact Gathering: Authentic Marketing For Stronger Impact. Impact Gathering is a 6-part webinar series of Candid Conversations With Women In Impact-Led Business.
Panelists Yasmin Grigaliunas, Kaylene Langford and Alice Pritchard-Davies joined Carlie Dole to speak about the current issues surrounding being a female with strong impact, with the particular focus on how to successfully market impact-led businesses.
The Panelists
Yasmin Grigaliunas
Co-Founder, World’s Biggest Garage Sale
CEO and Founder of World's Biggest Garage Sale with the mission to connect communities for social and environmental impact through the circular economy, ensuring they create maximum impact to make a difference. Yasmin has had a dynamic career in all things: sales, business development, manager/leader, project management, training & admin, HR, customer experience, intrepreneur & entrepreneur.
Kaylene Langford
Founder, Startup Creative
An expert in bringing people, ideas and resources together, Kaylene Langford has established a reputation for empowering individuals to harness their passion, create viable businesses, and ensure they thrive. She draws on her diverse experience and global perspective to encourage clients and audiences to explore non-traditional pathways to achieving their goals, giving them the tools and support they need along the journey. She’s an effective business coach, podcast host, inspirational speaker, engaging facilitator and informative educator and soon to be author. She mentors individuals and groups, develops robust educational programs and coordinates best practice accelerator programs.
Alice Pritchard-Davies
Co-Founder, Huddle Childcare App
Co-Founder of Huddle App. Alice is a tech entrepreneur on a mission to build stronger communities, where everyone has access to the support and resources they need to thrive. Founder of a platform connecting parents with trusted flexible childcare. Skilled in leadership, strategy, marketing, fundraising, budgeting/forecasting, stakeholder engagement - and building brands with passionate fans.
Carlie Dole (Moderator)
Founder, Mumma got skills.
Carlie Dole is the Founder of Mumma Got Skills, a social enterprise working to provide Post Natal support through creative experiences. Carlie is also a specialist Arts Teacher and works at Impact Boom in mentorship and communications.
Carlie has been on a journey since giving birth to her son to understand how women work, juggle, balance, thrive and survive in life and work. She is an advocate for female leadership, impact entrepreneurship and a new way of doing business for good. Impact Gathering is the passionate beginning of a greater project to come.
Highlights from the Panel
(listen to the podcast for full details)
[Carlie Dole] - Let’s start by hearing a little bit about your journey, including where you began and where you are now.
Yas, would you like to start?
[Yasmin Grigaliunas] - Thank you so much, Carlie. I started off as a pizza delivery driver in Year 12, thinking I was going to go to university, and then I ended up just working my way to where we are today, starting off the World’s Biggest Garage Sale. Back in 2013, I was thinking we were solving donor fatigue, and [instead we ended up] realising that we had stumbled upon this enormous opportunity to have social impact around the circular economy.
We've never actually had a World's Biggest Garage Sale in a garage. And today, we are Australia's first and only fully operational circular economy precinct right here in Brisbane, where we take products that would otherwise lay dormant and forgotten by communities and corporates, and we rescue the products. In the process, we put them back into a resale retail market by providing 50% of our jobs for young, vulnerable members of our community. We went from six people when COVID hit to a headcount of 25 today!
That's amazing, Yas. What a great story.
Kaylene, can we hear a little bit about you, where you began, and where you are now?
[Kaylene Langford] - Absolutely, thanks for having me and I'd like to acknowledge the traditional elders on the land that I'm speaking today and pay my respects to elder's past, present and emerging. I run Start-up Creative, and I started in social work, so I was a youth worker for kids at risk. Then, I went on to advise the Queensland Government around best practise for youth services, got pretty burnt out in the system with red tape and things not moving quickly enough.
On the verge of burnout, I started doing some personal development and trying to figure out why I was so miserable and dove into the world of business and entrepreneurship start-ups.
Then I realised, “this is me and this is the next generation.” We want to move quickly; we've got lots of ideas. We're tech savvy, and no one ever told me I was an entrepreneur.
I just threw myself into learning everything about business. I started a magazine, I used to run a facilitated course to turn your passion into a business, and my business has evolved over the last five years into a podcast. I do one-on-one business coaching events, workshops, online resources. But my biggest passion is helping people to find their passion and turn it into a viable business. Just freeing myself from that nine to five rat race that really got me stuck, I realised there's more to life than hustling to this five-day work week that I hated and living for two days on the weekends, and I just needed to get out. I knew that this isn't living. As I learned about businesses, I quickly realised it was really hard to find engaging and beautifully designed business advice that could be easily implemented, especially in the creative space.
I was meeting lots of creatives who were super talented, but I didn't know how to make the connection between, “yes, this is my talent, and I could make money off it”. I started bridging that gap. I've just actually submitted the first draft and final draft of my book to a publisher, and that will be out soon. It's called How to Start a Side Hustle.
Kaylene Langford.
Wow, so many things. That resonates so much, especially around the creative people. I feel like we're always a bit lost in that we’ve got this idea, but then how do we act on it? That's really great, thank you for sharing.
Alice, can you tell us a little bit about your story?
[Alice Pritchard-Davies] - Mine's similar to Kaylene, in that I got really frustrated with the corporate world. My background is 15 years in marketing and advertising for some of the world's biggest names like Virgin Airlines, which was an incredible experience. But I found myself really frustrated at the slowness, as well as the politics in big organisations. I'm just not good at internal politics. I left my corporate job five years ago, and one of my best friends and I started having a conversation. We were noticing that all our friends who were having their first babies, the rhetoric around that time while obviously joyful, included a lot of frustrations in terms of parents not being able to look after themselves as well anymore, and how that obviously has an impact on their families.
We also noticed there's a longer-term impact when parents don't have the support that they need. Parents are giving up social lives and careers and particularly women, of course, are giving up their careers when they have their first children. While we didn't have kids, we wanted to fix that before we embarked on that ourselves.
That's how we started Huddle, which is a mobile app that connects parents with trusted, flexible childcare options. You can book a nanny or a babysitter that's recommended by your neighbours and friends, on demand or in advance, and you can find full time or part time care through Huddle.
One of our purposes is really around that gender parity space as well. Where interestingly, the number of dads using the app rather than mums has doubled since COVID-19. I think there's a bit of an insight there that more dads are at home and realising how hard that juggle is, so, we're stepping up to the fight, which is awesome. We're now a community of over 20,000. It's been a long, hard journey, which I'm sure we'll get into. I’m really excited to be here and chat more about it.
That is so good. I love that the data does show dads are fully understanding the lifestyle, and also that you'd started that before you had children. That's clever, because I'm riding that struggle with a two-year old!
[Alice] - Actually, the name Huddle comes from the collective noun for penguins, and penguins are known to share their childcare quite equally between the mom and the dad penguins. That’s our background to our brand as well.
It's so good. I love it.
Yas, if marketing is about telling our story, what are some exercises that we can do to plot out that story authentically, so that we can lead with our impact?
[Yas] - I hear this all the time, the question how do we lead with impact? Also, how do we make and tell that story? I think it's got to start with the truth, and a non-manipulative way of just representing who you are. I just came back from a 40th birthday celebration for a company I worked at for 13 years, and I had tears and lots of memories from the time I spent there. One thing that I recognised is that throughout my entire career I had there, and when I got transferred to where I am now, with what we do…
it takes so much less energy to just be who you are, and not fake it till you make it.
Just be that scrappy, authentic version of who you are, imperfections and all. I just feel that for us, we say it's not perfect, and it's okay, a little bit less ‘show’ reel, and a little bit more ‘be’ real.
That means that sometimes people are going to know the good, the bad and the ugly about you. That's actually part of the beauty of the story and the outcomes for us. Our customer retention is not about how much money we've invested into a marketing campaign, it's actually into how we are telling our story. If a story resonates, then the right people will work with us. If our story doesn't resonate, then the wrong people will come into our orbit, and waste our time. I feel like for a long time, maybe in my early 20s, I did put the suit on a little, and I acted like a killer woman in a male dominated industry and had all the successes.
But I had to always minimise some of the authenticity of the tears and the more feelings-based stuff, especially the love, but not because anyone told me to, just because I had this perception that I had to. Eventually, I just went, "You know what? I want to live my truth." It's not that I wasn't, it's just that it was a little like the icing on the cake was maybe a bit diminished, because I was a bit worried maybe about what people might think if I marketed a different way or told a story in a different way.
But when you do shackle yourself from that, and just say "this is who I am, this is how we operate," then you attract your tribe. It's really actually a tribe that builds both you and your business capabilities. I feel one might be the recognised figurehead of a brand but let me tell you, I did this a lot for our business in comparison to all the people that are in our orbit and in our circles. For me, it's about just be who you are.
A lot less show reel and instead demonstrate that through action. Don't dress it up, just be who you are always and then it's utopia. For me, when we lead with love, and for me when I let go of these misconceived notions of trying to fit into a system that didn't fit me, I just felt so free and so real and if anyone ever talks to me, it's all of me. Everything is honest, true, transparent and authentic, with impact and love at the core, and I wouldn't want to live any other way.
Sounds like you're in a good place, Yas. I think that being authentic is all you can be, right? Tell your story, warts and all! It can be scary I think to be that honest.
Alice, you've worked in marketing for 15 years. How have you been taking the things that you've learned into your impact led enterprise now? What are some of the tools that you've employed to build your audience so far?
[Alice] - I think one of the biggest things that I took into my own business from my background was the importance of brands. A lot of tech start-ups in particular, they might be actually tech people or developers that don't have a marketing background. We saw our marketing skills as an opportunity to stand out and really do things differently and connect authentically with our customers and audience, because we didn't see our competitors doing that effectively.
Definitely, my understanding of brands and connecting with customers is the biggest thing I had from the very beginning, and I focused on getting that right. As Yas was saying, in the world of social media, people expect to have an insight into the people behind the business.
Particularly when you don't have a lot of resources behind you and when you're starting out those authentic connections and word of mouth is so powerful, and it's a really big opportunity [often missed].
From the beginning, we tried to do things really differently, and really authentically and put ourselves out there, which, as you say, is scary. But it really paid off for us because there was a human face behind our brand, as compared with our competitors, who look like a faceless tech company. We enjoy it as well, it's fun. We love talking to our customers and engaging, and so that really worked for us in terms of getting constant feedback from my customers about what they wanted. They really felt invested in part of our product development. I think also what we knew from the start is that we didn't have these huge brands with huge marketing budgets.
We needed to have a different strategy. We had our brand down pat, but we were really focused on PR and making it to that third party with credibility, because we knew that we didn't have the marketing budget to tell people about what we're doing ourselves. We amplified the payoff through our own channels, and also through paid channels. That's basically been how we've grown from the site. I would say to people with your own little businesses, don't be afraid to pitch your PR yourselves. I know at Impact Boom you teach people about this as well. People are so supportive of small businesses and young businesses and start-ups and they're really interested in their new ideas.
I would say chat to someone in the media like a PR specialist. You don't need to pay someone, but you can get some hints and tips on how to kind of do that yourselves. That social approach and I guess that credibility is pretty important for a new business. That's how we went about it, although many of our advisors were saying don't focus on PR, because it's not in your control, which is very true. It does take a lot of pitches, and probably a lot of luck, but I think if it comes off, it can be really worth it. It's worth a shot.
Awesome. Thanks, Alice, that's really good.
Kaylene, we might go to you for now. Talking about social media, we can get taken over, right? You've got this new business, you're looking at the stats, the likes, the followers, you’re using e-books and courses and people saying this is how you gain followers. But then you get caught up in this loop that if I don't have enough, then is my business valid? Is my business worth it? I guess to me, surely authentic marketing isn't about the tricks and the shortcuts, it's about something that's real. With your experience, how do we start creating that strategy that works for us?
[Kaylene] - It can be a very dangerous downward spiral if you're tracking the likes and numbers. I think going off what Alice and Yas have just said, it's about that authentic voice, and less about ‘faking it’.
I think on one level, we can say this is our story, and this is our authentic voice. But then I think it’s good practice going from PR, it's also saying, “if this is our story, what's the part of it that's going to really cut through and break through?” It's going to be a shareable story, which is just human behaviour, right?
It's like if you're at a party and you meet someone, and they tell you a boring story, you don't repeat it. If someone tells you a favourite story about that this funny thing happened, the word then spreads. There are a few things I’d like to break about the myth of social media, we've built a following of nearly 68,000 followers, but I would say 40,000 of those came before the algorithms happened.
I've had days where I jumped to 69,000 followers, and then I jumped back down 300, and it got into my head. I had to remove myself, and the reality is for those listening that Instagram isn't what it used to be. Those who do have really big followings got in early, and there are people who have got even bigger followings than me. But we got in when it was a really genuine connection, and when you could post really good content, and it would be shared, liked and seen.
That's just some peace of mind for everyone, it's not what it used to be. There's a few things that have helped me over the years, one being that I remember I was thinking, “I want to get 20,000 followers”, and somebody said to me, "Why are you hustling for these people that don't know about you? There's 20,000 people who are looking at you who are wanting advice, wanting support. They've already given you something, they're already committed to you, and you're worrying about these guys. Why don't you turn around and go, how can I be of service to the 20,000 people who have already said help, who are interested in what you have to say?"
I think that's where you can start to ask that question of, “who am I speaking to? What are their needs? What problem am I solving for them, and how can I be of service?” I think those are the questions that are going to help you pull out your authentic voice.
Then, I have a meditation practice, and the days when I've written content I will do meditation. I will sit down with my journal, as soon as my meditation finishes and say, "How can I be of service today?" I tune in to the people and the coaching clients, and then the questions I get asked, and the feedback I'm getting, and then craft an Instagram post or a blog post or some sort of content from that. When I'm in that flow and I do that, there's hunger and I just have to put something up. That's when you get that real cut through.
I think asking, “how can I be of service” and I think the other thing that people are looking for is, “what's your genuine engagement”. I've had brands reach out to me, and I've done work with Microsoft, and all sorts of different big brands, and what they're actually looking for is user engagement. I would prefer my coaching clients to have 1000 followers or even less, 200 followers, and 50 people who are really highly engaged. That's a really good percentage. I think more about engagement rather than numbers, because the numbers are just a mess right now. There are bots left, right and centre, who follow and unfollow with fake accounts. You want to actually look for the face behind the brand.
I think we underestimate the ability to humanly connect through this platform. It was meant to be social, it wasn't meant to be an advertising billboard of curated niceness.
This includes commenting back to people, replying to DMs, going and engaging with other people's accounts, don't show up on social media just to get your numbers. I've always run my social media, and I always try to reply to every single comment that gets left on any of my posts. That's the kind of stuff where people know that they can get to you, and they know that you're really there. This isn't just me trying to get you to give me something, it's an exchange where I can provide value, and you're going to come along for the ride. When you actually provide value for somebody and you get an outcome, they get a problem solved and the value added to their life, which is the core reason businesses exist, you're either adding value or you're solving a problem.
When you do either of those things with your services or products, then what we underestimate and listen for is that coming back to good old-fashioned customer service. You're activating an emotion, like when you get something for free, and it's great. That's going to trigger serotonin in the body because they're going to remember that, and so they're going to come back to the brand. They're also going to go and tell people on your behalf, which is free PR, right? Showing up to your audience with authenticity, consistency and a genuine mission to serve them and solve their problems, it feels really counterintuitive. I know people are saying, “but I need to get likes. No one is taking me seriously”. I promise you it feels like a slow burn, but this stuff works. This stuff will cut through and it might be slow, but customer experience is a really powerful way to grow your following.
If somebody has had a good experience, they'll go and tell 50 people, and then those people will tell another 10 people. Making sure that when you have that customer who's saying, "hey, I want something to grow," and they like and follow you, don't take their attention for granted.
Value that they're giving you that attention because attention and time is the most sought-after commodity right now. With a saturated marketplace, it's a privilege to be speaking to that audience. Have a real think about, “are you showing up to be of service? Or are you showing up to feed your ego, or make it look like you're a big deal?” I know it's hard, but it's addictive. I wrote about this in my book, Social Media Is Designed.
This is another thing. It's designed the same way to activate the same parts of your brain that a pokies machine would. That's why you swipe, and you get the little light bulbs that pops up and you look for that light. That's a pokies machine. They've done studies to show that it lights up the same addiction components of your brain. Know also that social media is a business model, Instagram, Facebook, they're running a business, so they don't really care about you. They're there to make sure that people are engaging with content that's going make them money.
I want to clap, that is incredibly spot on. It is that exchange, it’s a love language, right? Connection, that's what we're looking for! That resonates so much, thank you for all of that. Also, meditation is great! I really just started and I'm only 14 days in. It's the one thing if people can just make that time into their day, everything is more authentic.
Alice, let's go off of what Kaylene was saying, is good authentic marketing a balance between giving free information and selling our idea? If this is so, how do we make that balance?
[Alice] - Well, I'm actually going to say I don't think there's a contradiction between authenticity and selling. If you've got something really valuable to give, people want to hear about it. If you've got a product that people are connecting with and using and loving, I don't think there's any shame in getting the word out there and yelling from the rooftops about it. Our marketing strategy for a product for us is like a content strategy. It’s is more around drawing people into broadly understanding what we do. People don't think direct sales messages are in any way authentic, but they actually went really well for us, because people are so busy. As Kaylene was saying, you're overwhelmed by messages. You need to be kind of simple and straightforward and single minded with your marketing communications, if you aren't having that direct response.
I think the most important thing is just to analyse the data and know what impact you’re having, not just doing things and not knowing what's happening. You may know that your content marketing strategy is drawing people into your website and getting brand awareness, but it might not necessarily be directly converting immediately to app downloads and paying members, whereas Instagram analytics show quite a direct link from Instagram posts about joining our community to downloading and posting jobs. I don't think there's a contradiction there. The other thing I would say with an Instagram strategy is that with everything just look at the analytics. Facebook, Instagram and Google Analytics give you so much insight.
Huddle Co-Founders, Millie Zinner and Alice Pritchard-Davies.
It's really great to focus on one or two channels that perhaps your competitors aren't winning at. For us, our competitors are just nowhere on Instagram. Therefore, we designated that as our main channel with marketing. That's worked really well for us and our specific audience.
[Kaylene] - It's meant that we can stand out and start with a small niche of our target audience and then learn about our product and grow up from there. I think if your direct marketing communication isn't working, it's probably about your product to market fit more than your marketing. I don't think there's any shame in just being direct with sales messages at all. That's my opinion.
I think it’s interesting looking at your analytics. Something that I advise is what we just mentioned, which is understanding your target market. An example that I often use is a lady that I met, who did kids clothing and targeted her ads to when a mum is online. I'm not a mother, but all my siblings and best friends are, so I know that I can't call them before 4:00pm and 8:00pm, between those hours, it's unheard of.
It would be interesting to hear that as we've got real time data from that around whether you guys use that strategy, because you're so niched and I think this is one thing you take away, is to go and get to know your target market. Don't try and talk to them when they have no time or energy to talk to you and be really clear about exactly what Alice said. Yes, do the good free content. But when you're here to ask them to take action and spend money with you, you have to time it right. There's no point running an ad between 4:00-8:00 pm to parents.
[Alice] - Absolutely, school pick up. Literally would not get any engagement or response from anything around school pick up time. Sunday nights when the families are finally relaxing at home at the end of a busy weekends is when we'll get like the most jobs posted for the following week, they're thinking about planning ahead for the following week. That's when we'll get the highest email open rates, et cetera.
Just as you were saying, knowing your customers, looking at the data and looking at the response from each of your different messages and analysing that to continue to refine it and improve it.
But then I think also, just as Kaylene was saying, talk with your community and care about what they have to say. Our customer service goals are so incredible. Turning around a negative experience that a paying customer has had for years is such an incredibly powerful thing. Just having those people there to care, listen and really understand what the customer wants is so important. I think the marketing can be great, but unless the customer experience is great, it's not going to get you very far. Really focusing on the product market fit and the customer experience first, and then going in hard with your marketing is important. I wouldn't be spending lots of money on marketing until you've really got that part of it nailed.
[Kaylene] - Then when you do that, it sells itself. All you have to do is put it in their way and say, “hey, we understand you, we know you've got this problem. Here's the solution.” You don't come across salesy because you're genuinely just going, "hey, this is going to help," and now they're looking to you. This is exactly what I've been needing.
[Yasmin] - We say it's not selling, it's storytelling. People think because we're this well recognised brand that we've spent a tonne of money on marketing. We haven’t spent that much. We've never done a Facebook ad; we've never done an uplift. We've never done an Instagram ad, and only because we're in the middle of launching a brand-new website. We will start to invest in those marketing things when we need to and want to, but all of our business so far has come from word of mouth, or just authentic storytelling that cuts through organically online. I don't know how many likes we have, I don't care. I care about if a customer has commented, are we responding within five minutes? Are we authentic? Are our messages the same? Are we all using the same words, culture, feels?
If a customer complains, we get excited about it because it's an opportunity to deliver. Raving fans and customer service are what have made our business thrive. The one thing that will irk me is if a customer's inquiry message sits idle for five minutes.
Even if I got a message right now and the rest of my team went out on the floor, I would sneakily respond to that customer because I'm not going to let them sit idle. No one is above it. I don't care what your position is in the company and I don't care if it's midnight.
If you're online and you see that ping, you answer it right then and there because that is how you grow a business. People tell stories about you. They become your advocates, and you don't actually need to spend a tonne of money on marketing.
[Kaylene] - That's absolutely nailed it, because I think that's where understanding the problem and being able learn for yourself requires you to become the observer when you're a consumer. What do you like? What don't you like? What is it you want? What do you expect? We're consumers all day, every day. I love doing this as an exercise, and just as a quick example I had been eating on the run lots lately. But I went to a burger place the other day.
A burger joint is fast food, you're not just sitting down. It's a kind of service, you don’t just sit out on the grass. It took half an hour for them to make my burger, and they were coming to closing time. There were four staff members working, just fluffing about doing nothing. They were doing some cleaning and putting tables away. There was one guy slogging it out in the kitchen and I looked at that experience. I thought, “what's the most important need?” Customers come here to get a burger on the run and go, right?
When I looked at that situation I saw the owner, and I just wanted to shake him and say, “even if you're not a cook, or chef, and you don't know how to run that kitchen, get in there and toast the buns or something. Don't worry about piling stuff up over there, because my biggest need and why I walked into your shop is to get food.” Get in there and do whatever it takes. I asked to refund my burger and I said to him, “it's taken half an hour.” He said "Oh, sorry." For me, really understanding why I am coming to you and focusing on solving that to your absolute best ability is important.
[Yasmin] - We had to adopt Facebook Marketplace and Gumtree while we couldn't run events to sell stuff, because that's what we do. We get products into our precinct, and now we can't invite 10,000 people in. Instead, we had to make a release. It's not a pivot, but our entire team are responsible for ensuring that customers know what we have so that when they buy from us, we can make money and then hire more people. I said to my team, “Gumtree inquiries come through, and we're all logged into the one account.” If I’m going to purchase something, let’s say I need to buy this new water bottle, I can see it on Gumtree and make an inquiry. I can say, "Hey, is that still available?" Then, I don't even hear from that person for hours. I'm already on to something else. I've already asked five other people if their water bottles are available, and I’ve bought it from someone else.
That is the example that we use for our team. Even just hustling and being responsive and proactive, right? Be proactive, not reactive. If you sit and wait for your customers to come, you're going to be sitting and waiting a long time.
But if you actually are going out there and thinking, “who would want this water bottle, which Facebook group would they be in, and where would they be?” [It’s really] how do I put it out there? If I answer them really quickly, they're going to say yes, and then they're going to come in. That's what's grown our business for the last six months, is that attitude of hunger to survive and thrive because we made a commitment to not fire anybody or stand anybody down when COVID hit, and how do you do that when most of the revenues are generated from an event where 10,000 people walk through the door, and you can't run it anymore?
You have to hustle hard, and you all have to be proactive, not reactive. I just get the team to think about how would they feel if they wanted that product really badly and no one replied because it was after five o'clock? Right now, we have to be responsive when customers are responding to us. It's not necessarily the business model moving forward for us. But the ethos of the experience and intimacy with the customer is what we are. That's the messaging that we like to send to empower our team.
As women, we're traditionally very good at undervaluing our worth. I certainly have been in the past. You seem to have this inner confidence, [and my question is] have you always had it? Or is it something that you've found along the way? Because I think that would be really helpful for our audience, if you could share.
[Yasmin] - I think it's probably a little bit of both. I think I've always felt it on the inside, but I’ve not always acted on it. Look, my one of my favourite books is The Little Engine That Could, and the little engine happens to be a female. She's this little engine and she wants to get up the mountain and everyone tells her she can't do it. The big burly engines say, "Well, I'm a big engine and I can get over the mountain, how are you going to get over the mountain?" She says, "Well, I think I can. I think I can. I think I can." I'm really old fashioned, and I think it goes back to if you say you can, you will. If you say you can't, you won't. All these really simple philosophies that don't require a degree and don't require decades of commitment to educating yourself [can come from things like] The Little Engine That Could. Take on her philosophies.
If you think you can, you will, and if you think you can't, you won't. I've always felt really different out there, and sometimes I've not thrown my own light out in the past, because it shines so bright in people's eyes that it freaks them out.
It's not that I'm better, it's just that I either energise or exhaust people, that's just my personality. It's just who I am, and that's okay. It's okay for people to not like who I am. It's okay for people to dislike me, because we don't all need to be the same, and if we embrace our differences, and find our natural genius, then I actually feel like it's those differences that really connect us.
For me, I probably have been shackled a lot from caring about what people think. My mum got breast cancer at 44. I am 44 now, and my mum passed away two years ago this month. When I realised that she had breast cancer, and my mum’s sisters had breast cancer 16 years ago, the first thing I said to my husband is, “oh my god, once we have kids, I'm totally taking my boobs off. There is no way I am going to be getting breast cancer.”
This was all before Angelina Jolie did her thing. But you know what, I'm really ashamed of it, even when I said it back when my mum was 44 and made that announcement. I still remember when I was at Mount Coot-tha, where mum told us all she had breast cancer, I said it then. I wasn't brave enough to actually go through with it until Angelina Jolie did it? Then the whole world accepted it as a thing. Because someone famous went and removed her breasts to prevent getting breast cancer, she gave me permission to do the same thing.
That's disgusting, right? Why did it take her to trigger me to go do it? I did it in 2014, I have no nipples now and I’m really comfortable telling people. I took a proactive approach. I have a 1% chance of getting breast cancer. It's freaking awesome, right? But it's not even about that story. It's about the act that it took someone else to judge me, for me to then accept the quirkiness and authenticity of who I am. I'm a proactive person. I'm going to prevent things I can prevent and control it to improve my life.
I guess what I'm saying to everybody out there is if there is something inside of you that you want to do, and it sounds so crazy that you think you're going to lose people in your orbit, then those people don't deserve to be in your orbit. Please don't wait for someone famous to do it. Go and be that first mover and the market maker and just go do it. There are people out there like me that are going to cheer you on and support you. If you feel crazy, just connect with another crazy person and go on and do it!
That is so insightful, what a story.
Alice, bringing it back a little bit before because you are a professional in the marketing space. I and a lot of the people that I know that are in small micro business are happy staying there. Marketing is not something we know at all. At what point do you think that people like us need to look for external support? I know we've talked about telling your authentic story, but sometimes that's even hard. I guess I ask when do we go and seek out PR, and what does that mean to small businesses?
[Alice] - That's a really good question. It's funny when you've been doing something for so long, it becomes unnatural to think [it’s a skill that I have].
You realise that it isn't like that for a lot of people, there's strengths that they have, and it's more foreign to them. I think you should definitely go out and get external support. I would suggest getting your brand's tone of voice and your brand image right.
I think that's important too, to make sure that it reflects your purpose, your values and your culture, so that this is a consistent image that you're putting out there to the world. I think it actually really helps you define your brand values and what your business is about and what you care about.
It helps you become more creative with your content and with your storytelling, because it defines what you want to talk about with your audience. We really care as I said about gender parity and gender equity in the childcare space, taking responsibility for the children because it's important for us to empower women to follow their dreams, and to continue their careers and start businesses, et cetera. That's a brand value of ours, and this wealth of content that we can talk about. I think it's really important to do that early on, and you can talk to a friend who works in marketing. Talk to me on LinkedIn or whoever if you don't have any money at all. People in the start-up world are great, and I cannot believe how lucky I am for the support I've had along the way. I always just want to give back.
Our business is all about community and supporting each other with kids. But my co-founders and I we just love community on the building a business side as well. People are happy to help and provide advice and tips, and so generous with their time. I would say just ask someone that you think will be a good fit for you to have a chat with, to get that confidence up to start a brand book, just to get it down on paper. It'll iterate, it'll change, it'll evolve, but it's a start. If you do have a bit of a budget, by all means, go to a small boutique agency, and pay a little bit of money to get it done really well.
In terms of ad spending, I think that should be probably the last thing you should do. Once you've got a product market fit, a two-way communication with your customers, you're utilising all your free channels, PR, and other business partnerships, then you're ready to actually spend some money on marketing.
It's probably important to talk to an SEO expert, and a Facebook or a digital marketing expert, just to get you set up with the basics. But it probably isn't something that you need on going in the long term unless you have significant revenues and budget.
Certainly, in those areas, there's quite a lot involved and they're changing constantly. As Kaylene was saying, the algorithms are changing. You kind of need to be in it to make sure you're not missing a trick there. I'd also say that it's really important to get in there on your Facebook ads and your analytics and understand that even if you are getting external help because you want to be able to take that back ideally and run it yourselves in house.
That's super practical advice. Did you want to add to that?
[Kaylene] - I was just going to say, it is really good advice that Alice said in her first answer at the beginning which is to play to your strengths. If you're watching people kill it in their Instagram lives, and you couldn't think of anything worse, then don't go and try and compete in that space. Maybe you're really good at photography, or maybe you're really good at writing emails, or blogs and things like that. If you try to do everything and do what everyone else is doing, then you're going to get caught up and you'll lose track. It's better to do one thing, do it really well, track it, and see how it works. If that works, do more of it. Then, when you feel like you've exhausted that, bring in a new marketing strategy.
Really effective and cheap [marketing strategies] for start-ups out there are free ones through collaboration, exactly like we've been talking about today. When you do something from an authentic place, you tell your story and you can actually find likeminded brands who can leverage each other, whether it's a giveaway or events like this. Finding ways to collaborate and use a guide, that was one of my biggest growth strategies. I think when podcasts and magazines are telling you other people's stories, that's a collaboration. As a result, they're sharing and getting in front of your target market. Then, I would highly recommend building an email database. From day one, even if you haven't started yet, start collecting emails because I think the downfall is that people say, “you liked me on Instagram or Facebook, the first thing I'm going to do is tell you to buy and give me your credit card details.”
You've got to think of it like a dating app, which have scenarios where you say, "look, we matched on this app over here. Great. Now, do you want to get married?" That's pretty much what you're doing if you go, "You like me, why aren't you buying from me?"
What the business and marketing world will teach you is a sales funnel, where you create warm leads. It's all technical jargon, but it really just means that you're creating a funnel where you're constantly throwing the net and telling people you exist. Eventually, you'll get better and better at that and will be able to do it really quickly.
Again, this includes going to Gumtree, which is a huge net that allows you to target your market. Then you want to move them down the funnel. The first step you might do is free content on social media, then ask people to join your mailing list. Then maybe you give out a free download and now allow them to spend $20 with you, and then $50, or $100! But to assume that you are going from completely free anonymous content or engagement with your brand, to credit card details [and I've studied this with my book], consumers are actually getting less and less trusting of brands, because there is so much click-bait and people who aren't providing what they saying they are.
Your job is to build a relationship, a rapport, and understand the needs of your target market, and slowly move them down. Some people will just come in and go. I get clients who say, "I've just listened to every coaching podcast that you have signed me up for, how long can I work with you?” Others will say, "I've been following for two years, and I've done that online course and I’ve come to that event. Now I'm ready for coaching." It's a slow burn, and it's relationship building. That will cut through, and everything we have talked about today is a part of that.
If you get one paying customer, serve them to your absolute best ability and then they will go and tell 10 more people. Track, ask, engage and take them on the journey with you. What do you need? How else can I be of service? How was that experience? What else can we do?
[Yas] - I love what you said about being conscious of giving people takeaways. We always talk about relational value not transactional. We want to hear the feedback on our page, not just requests for you to buy from us. You can't just run a marathon in three seconds. It takes hours. It is about giving continuously, and then you might get something back. But don't give with the expectation to get back because that's inauthentic. I'll give you a little example of what works for us. We'll get an alert about who's followed after today; we use HubSpot, so we track all of our customer data. If I talk to a customer, I write down what they said or what I promised, and I tag my team so they know everything that I might have committed as a promise. But even when someone reaches out to me on LinkedIn, my brain just says, "Oh, I wonder what triggered them to connect?"
I will go and ask, “Hi, Alice. It's Yas here. Thanks for connecting with me on LinkedIn. I see we share a number of mutual connections. We both know, Carlie and Mumma Got Skills. What brought you by today? Is there anything I can help with? Was there something in particular that you were interested in?” Ask the question and be human, because Alice might say, "Oh, my God, I'm so sorry. I was meant to send a note, I did hear you speak on this podcast.”
All of a sudden you start a relationship that's not transactional. It's meaningful. I want to know why people connect with me because I would never just connect with someone without telling them why, because I want to create meaningful experiences in life that go far beyond the transaction.
Anyone can make money, making money is easy. It's the boring part of business. Making a difference is the thing in your life that is going to make you rich. Be different and ask crazy questions. If someone follows you on Twitter, go ask them why and create a relationship with them. That's my takeaway. Don't just hook up with someone on LinkedIn and expect them to connect with you without telling them why you care.
Kay, you already started to answer it, but [Debbie, a webinar guest asked] if you accept your quirks and are happy to showcase your authenticity, do you have any tips on how to start peeking out? What is the most relevant information to then market with?
[Kaylene] - I think understanding your target market and asking them what qualities they like similar to yours. If somebody says, "Oh, looks like you're doing really well. You're killing it,” I will then ask, “what is your perception? What are you saying? Why do you think that?” If they say, “I love your podcast,” I can respond with, “great, which one are you listening to? Asking them if you can get those running surveys, is a really good tip. In terms of accepting your quirks, I do think a lesson that I've learned is through really bad times in business where I've been overgrown and wanting to shut the whole thing down. It was exhausting being on social media all the time with family stuff going on in the background.
I tried to make sure that I processed that first, and I moved through it. Then if it's relevant, I'll share it from a grounded centred therapy place which my therapist helped me to work through. I think also what Alice talked about is what maybe isn't being done in this space. For us, it was straight up business advice, presented in a beautiful, creative looking way. If you outline your quirks, make sure that you're finding ones that your audience is actually going to want to connect with or want to be a part of the business model.
You still have to be a professional and understand what their needs are. Is it even more relevant to use your usual quirk in that way, to meet their needs? What Alice was saying around points of difference, that's what it is. Then making sure again that quirk is for you. Most of my podcasts had a little ‘e’ next to them because they're considered to have expletives because I'll drop an ‘F bomb’. For me, it is a quirk of mine and my mum who watches my Instagram lives will send me a message and say, "Stop swearing." But that's straight up business advice from me, just thinking, "I'm just going to say this how it is," sorry, I'm just going to make you a podcast how I want too.
Great! Alice, do you have a closing comment?
[Alice] - I just wanted to say thank you to all you amazing women. It's been really inspiring for me to have this chat. I think we're celebrating our differences and being authentic. Another way we try and stand out is through our teachers. You don't get this cookie cutter babysitter who just ticks all those boxes and has had X number of years’ experience. We have Spanish, yoga, and even art teachers, and they're all fabulous, incredible, different people. I just wanted to say I really have appreciated this conversation. I think it's been really beautiful and lovely to connect with you all.
Books and Resources Recommended by panelists
From Yasmin:
The Little Engine That Could by Watty Piper
From Kaylene:
How To Start A Side Hustle (to be released in 2021) by Kaylene Langford
