Allobee Radio

In today’s episode, Brooke speaks with Gabrielle Thomas, founder of Gabrielle Thomas Consulting and co-founder of Under the Oaks. Gigi’s connection and love with health and wellness started on the front lines as a nurse in a hospital, then she moved into mental health and slowly made her way into alternative medicine. She worked as a practitioner for a couple of years with holistic nutrition, homeopathy and functional medicine. She transitioned even further into the marketing space for health and wellness providers. 

A couple of months ago, Gigi had an aha moment. She saw the breadcrumbs of her career lead to this moment. When she was 19, she experienced paralyzing anxiety. Fast forwarding to later in life, she lost her mom and she didn’t realize at the time what she was doing but in helping her mom, she was very much involved in her healing process. Going through that as well as the grief process, she was in a very dark time with crushing grief. She realized she needed to do something for herself and for her daughter. 

She started her first business as a whole food mobile service. That helped her compost that grief and it was a catalyst for getting out of the darkness she was in. From there she found healing. 5 years later, she transitioned out of that and into consulting work. She started virtual work at this time. She was pulled into the direction of marketing for health and wellness providers. She knew she needed to do this because it helps people live longer, healthier lives. 

One of the most important lessons she’s learned in her career is you can’t change the outside if you don’t change the inside. So much about business is about courage and being straight with people. Courage always feels like the call to action. A lot of people believe that those who are accomplishing great things and are successful don’t have any fear. There’s a lot to be said about people who are willing to talk about their journey and the difficulty in building your business. 

Gigi’s recommendation to others is being clear about where you are in the process matters. For those that are looking for their first 1000 users, content and press is very important but the tools for longer term growth is around virality and getting something out there that people want to share and get out there. SEO is an important tool as well as paid growth ads. 

A common pitfall is selecting too many growth engines. The key is to master one and go really deep into it. As far as executing within your selected growth engine, Gigi likes to use a simple framework she calls now, next later. What will you do now, what will you do next and what will you do later? 

We need to be mindful of the words we choose and how those words have changed meaning over time. For example, the word diva has changed. It used to be something we wanted to be but it’s become something that nobody wants to be. 

Gigi says we need to become more familiar with how our own minds work and the states of mind that cause us suffering and the states that provide us freedom. Once we understand that, we will know what to do and not to do and how to handle stress and our thoughts. We also need to give ourselves time to stop thinking and it can help ideas come more freely. It helps you move forward joyfully. 

Bio:

Gabrielle “Gigi” Thomas is the founder of Gabrielle Thomas Consulting, a practice management consultancy where she works with health and wellness businesses, brands and private practices as a strategic partner to develop sustainable and scalable systems. She’s also the co-founder of Under The Oaks, a Self Care Centre that is modernizing mental health care by focusing on holistic psychotherapy and diversity. Gigi can be found at gigi-thomas.co

Links:

Gigi-thomas.co

In today’s episode, Brooke speaks with Noemi who was a teen mom, college drop out but now she’s thriving with two 6 figure businesses from the comfort of her home. Her spouse recently retired and now they partnered in the businesses. She earns full time income working part time hours. When Noemi was little, she was in Girl Scouts and she hated selling and she didn’t want to be begging anyone for money. When TikTok came around, she knew she needed an online presence and it started out just for fun at the beginning of the pandemic and then she saw someone post about a day in the life of their business. She got the idea to do that about her own life in little clips. It forced her to get created on what she wanted to share. When her first business video exploded, it created an audience for her because people wanted to follow what she was saying. 

Compared to the TikTok world, she’s small but she’s not worried for it to scale viral like some people are but she’s reaching her ideal clients and audience. First, you want to be teaching something that you’re an expert in or good at. People want to find out how-to because it is becoming a search engine. Those that are teaching something in under a minute or anything under 15 seconds with something that is super valuable are the videos going viral. The hashtags and trending video sounds are also going viral and help you get into the right audience. A lot of TikTok users are becoming affiliates and that’s why they have millions of followers. She has been able to niche down and the algorithm has been placing her with her exact audience of moms, and bilingual moms. 

Noemi shows up as she is, she’s real and TikTok prefers authenticity and the people that do that are the ones that are more attracted to watch because they are relatable. People think they need to be dancing or goofy but she has had success with a boomerang she did. She has gone back on her camera roll and video clips and used those because people want to see what you are doing and it creates a trust factor. Her TikTok followers get funneled into her Facebook group which is where she does many of the offers she has and those people are ready to buy. That for entrepreneurs is very important. You must have the know, like and trust factor or you will never succeed. 

Being consistent, persevering and being patient has kept Noemi’s business going over the years. Most ventures don’t go to the level you want when we are not consistent in business. That idea can be applied to anything. We have to have a reality check of what we have to do first to get to the big goals. Keep the consistency going and be patient because we want to be where other influencers are at but they all started at the same place and persevered to get to the place they are now. Sometimes there are skill sets that must be developed and if you can commit to the time it takes to learn it, you’ll be good to go. 

Her favorite productivity hack is her calendar time blocking. It helps her keep track with what is going on with her family because they are her top priority. When she sticks to her time blocking, she is much more productive and intentional. She has a great team that helps her run her business so she doesn’t have to spend time doing it. She is able to focus on her clients and let the team focus on running the business. At the beginning of the month, she will block out what is happening with her family first and then she will fill in other work-related events. 

Bio:

Noemi Aguilar-Horta, was a teen mom, college dropout, a mother of 2 super fun teenage boys, one beautiful-sassy daughter, and married to her high school sweetheart. Born in Mexico, migrated to California at the age of 1 going against all odds to not just survive but thrive in life.

She is the founder of MamáCounts, a community, and course that teaches the skill set of bookkeeping to other moms, and she also runs a six-figure bookkeeping & tax firm all from the comfort of her home.

She’s owned a successful virtual bookkeeping & tax firm for the past 8 years and has found a way to make a full-time income, working from home, with only part-time hours. She wants to teach other mamas that they can do it, too!

Her passion is to help mamas stay home with their kids, while not giving up their career aspirations. She wants women to have the time flexibility and freedom to be the amazing mamas they are and the confidence to go after their dreams as well.

Links:

https://www.instagram.com/mamacountsbookkeeping/

https://mamacounts.com/mamacountscourse

In today’s episode, Brooke speaks with Cara Tyrrell, the founder of Core4Parenting. She started out in early childhood education and pivoted to create courses to help set up parents for success in raising school, world-ready kids. She has a Master’s degree in Education and knew it could take her different directions, but she started out in the classroom. She saw year after year that kids came to the classroom less and less ready to learn in every area of the classroom. They lacked social skills, emotional skills and how to control that to respond appropriately. She left the classroom prior to the pandemic and had a nudge that knew this problem started at home and happens between birth and 5 years old. She started creating the courses and curriculum. At the time she had this idea, she went to work as a nanny. She was using strategies that became her courses and saw them work. When the pandemic hit, she saw this as her sign to take her courses to the world. 

Cara says it’s vital to see the world through our kids’ perspective. The value of her courses is meant to give you tools to help your child meet the four readiness skill areas. It helps the parent connect with their child and observe who they are and what their struggles and triggers are. It is also learning how to recognize what type of words help your child stop, listen, process and problem solve with you. It helps parents collaborate with their child and develop a relationship with their child while the children still think their parents hung the moon. If we win the toddler years, we’ve already won the teenage years. 

If your kids are out of the 0-5 years, you can still impact your kids by including them in the option to be part of the problem solving. When you as the adult recognize the environment is calm and collected, that is a good opportunity to open a conversation with them and invite them to be an idea maker, they will feel trusted and respected. Maybe their idea isn’t something you can approve but laying out what will happen and expecting them to respond is not the way to build the four connectors. 

As a teacher, Cara knew how to organize her day and she had the framework figured out for the classroom. It was a different ballgame for an online business owner. She wishes she had known to broaden her thinking because she couldn’t walk into the online space and just teach. She had to learn the things she needed to reach the people so she could make an impact. 

Cara makes a point to read The Alchemist once a year. She knows it’s fiction but it’s based on the premise that what we need or treasure is already here. She finds she can get bogged down in the weeds of doing and she goes back to the book and it grounds her. 

Her favorite digital course is her American Sign Language course. It blends a lot of her loves and empowers kids with a voice before they have one. It encompasses 24 signs that we say the most to our kids in their first 2 years of life. It’s one new sign per day over the course of three weeks. 

2023 is very exciting for Cara. On Jan 3, she will be launching her podcast called Raising Gen C and is about parenting post-pandemic. The trailer is up and ready to listen to. Also in early January, her live program for toddler moms will open again to help set up kids to be kindergarten ready. 

Cara has a shirt that says, World Ready Kids will Change the World. That is the legacy she wants to leave. Our world is suffering and we need adults that will add value to the world. Covid devastated our world in a lot of ways but there were people who saw an opportunity to serve the babies that grew up during Covid. 

Bio:

Cara Tyrrell is the mother of two grown girls, an early childhood educator and the founder of Core4Parenting. While teaching preschool and Kindergarten, she identified a pattern of underdeveloped skills sets in her students leading to a professional pivot as an online Early Childhood Parent Educator. Cara has Bachelor degrees in American Sign Language (ASL) and Linguistics and a Master’s degree in Education. Her science-based courses and conscious coaching programs empower new moms to embrace their parenting personal development journey while teaching them how to maximize their baby’s early learning.

Links:

@core4parenting

In today’s episode, Brooke speaks with Jen Liddy, a former high school teacher who left the profession and became an entrepreneur. Today she is a Content Creation Specialist who helps people shift their exact right audience into their ideal clients. In the middle of her teaching career, she realized she was working really hard, was well educated, loved her job, and wasn’t making any money. She wondered what she was doing wrong. She left teaching in 2007 when her son was born and went on to become a college professor. During that time, phones were coming into the classroom and she felt less like an educator and more like someone policing a classroom. It wore her down and she realized she was always looking for an out. She experienced some resistance from her peers as she told them she was leaving education. She was told things like, “you’re just a teacher”, “what about your retirement.” She wants other teachers to know they are smart and creative and can do other things. You don’t have to have a business degree to start a business. She still teaches but the difference is the people she’s teaching want to be in the room and they care about learning. 

Jen says it’s easy to burnout when you’re a business owner, especially when you’re a solopreneur and don’t have a team yet or feel like you don’t know what you’re doing. You’re in a period of gathering information and learning from others and imposter syndrome can lead to burnout. It’s important to be on the lookout for burnout and notice what you’re feeling. Jen’s business went from general accountability coaching to general business coaching and then she found out she liked content and pulling words out of people’s heads. She kept leaning into words being her thing and organized and sequential and she narrowed her niche. The more specific you can be with who you help, the easier it will be to be well known for something. She likes people to understand you can create a business that works for you based on your strengths and the way your brain works for you.

She created a membership called the content creator’s studio. It was an online creation classroom and she marketed it and she always had just over 30 people in it. She knew it was working and realized that people always tell you to go big and scale, and she realized she can’t help a huge number of people at once but can do more with a smaller group. Her challenge has been to trust her intuition. Trusting yourself that you’ll pivot and iterate is hard and scary and you have to take that leap. Surround yourself with people online or following people online that align with you. 

Jen is a big podcast listener and she recommends getting as much information as you can from podcasts versus courses. Find the people who get you and if you do invest in a course, she wishes she would have invested in someone who would have put eyes on her business. Her favorite place for understanding money and business is Denise Duffield-Thomas podcast and books on her money boot camp. Personal development is a big part of entrepreneurship. 

The legacy Jen wants to have is to help people get their messaging and content out there. She wants to show people how to do it in a way that feels good and gets them the clients they want to work with. 

Bio:

Jen left her high school teaching career to avoid a life doomed by grading crappy 9th grade Romeo & Juliet essays. 

In 2013, she made a terrifying leap into entrepreneurship & learned everything the hard way! 

Today, as a Content Creation Specialist, Jen helps personal brands step off the content creation DREADmill, become better writers, & get out of content chaos with strategies that ease-ify, simplify, and actually make content feel GOOD for you

Links:

@jenliddycoach

jenliddy.com

In today’s episode, Brooke speaks with David Bennett, the founder of The Metabolic Body Reset. He has mastered the short form video and has over 200k followers. David has not only grown his following but also a community to teach others how to grow their own short form business.

David’s recommendation is telling people what they want. He can give you the science and biology on the topics he teaches about but he knows people want to hear about their problem and how they can solve it on their own. Sometimes 30 seconds of redirection is what people need to hear to help motivate them. His top video that went viral was his first video and it was simply David holding 5 pounds of fat and it was 15-20 seconds long and he posted it under his business name. He had a half a million views when his son pointed out to him that his video had gone viral. He did another video at the beginning of this year for the 3 reasons you can’t lose weight that your doctor isn’t telling you about and it went viral as well. There’s two things, knowledge and consistency that you have to merge to get to where you want to go. To have those, you have to see results. 

David thought he was going to have to do dancing, lip synching and other things to become popular but he found all he had to be was himself and giving short, little nuggets of information and that is easier than sitting down and writing a 30-40 minute presentation. David took a long form blog post and kept whittling down the original content to make a 1 minute short term video. No matter the field, we all have the content. 

David started with a chiropractic business and he started moving to an online platform with his metabolic platforms and the success with his short term content has helped him move forward with his business faster without spending money on advertising. It helps him with the know, like and trust by getting in front of people. It has helped move people onto his email list and build his client list. If you have a lead magnet already such as a PDF, open it up and use it for 20 seconds and encourage people to enter their email to grab the free content. It doesn’t have to be complicated. You can be successful without the latest technology. 

David wishes he would have had the knowledge to use the technology when he got started to help him get ahead of the game with where he is now. When he first started doing live videos, he used to be so concerned when the kids would walk in on the video but people loved those because you are relatable in those moments. You’re getting to know the personality of the person and not just know the person by their profession. 

The biggest mistake he feels he made was not jumping into social media earlier. He was very hesitant to get on video and he didn’t want to post on all the platforms but realized that’s where all the people are. He tried direct mailings and other traditional forms of advertising but he learned to modify, adapt and overcome by incorporating social media. If you conceive it, then you believe it, and then you become it. 

David’s favorite quote is, Perfection is never done, done is never perfect. You don’t have to have the best lighting, or the best whatever. You never know what is going to be a success but you have to be consistent and you can be successful. He says stop chasing the algorithm but start talking. 

David wants his legacy to be helping whomever he can whether it’s metabolic coaching or short form content. Understanding your why in any field is very important and he wants to leave that legacy to his children and other people so they can reach their goals. 

David recommends when working with content on social media is what he calls the 24 hour rule. There are going to be mean people. He lets those comments sit for 24 hours before he deals with it and most of the time, someone else will take care of that for you. 

Bio:

David is the founder of The Metabolic Body Reset, LLC, the Empowered Living Institute, LLC, and TeachinVideo.com.  David has been working with clients since 2004 to help enable them to take back control of their health and their life.  David has a Law Degree, Chiropractic Degree and is certified in Functional Medicine.

David specializes in helping people overcome and reverse Metabolic Syndrome (weight gain, elevated blood pressure, elevated blood sugar & excess body fat), using the same methods and formula that he used to overcome his own weight and health issues and achieve Metabolic Freedom.  

David has recently expanded into helping practitioners step out of their comfort zone and get amazing results using short-form videos on social media, without ad spend (teachinvideo.com).  He is a member of the Leadership Council of the Perfect Practice Mentorship and enjoys helping guide & coach mentees on their journey to freedom in their business.  

David is inspired by his wife and two children, and in his spare time coaches both his daughter’s softball team and his son’s baseball team.
 

Links:

http://empoweredlivinginst.com   

metabolicbodyreset.com  

teachinvideo.com

@metabolic.body.reset 

@empoweredlivinginst 

@teachinvideo

In today’s episode, Brooke speaks with Bob Sparkins, the Sales Marketing Manager at Leadpages. Bob is a former high school history teacher and he teaches business owners around the world how to leverage digital marketing to impact more people with less effort. Bob’s primary role is the public face of Leadpages by speaking on stages and panels in person and virtually. He supports people who want to share Leadpages with their audiences and the education piece is for their affiliates and future customers so they understand how to build a business online. 

Bob became a high school teacher right out of college and it became a 10 year career. He loved working with teenagers. Testing became more prominent over learning and social studies was never a priority over the curriculum fields. The itch of making more money and impacting the world in a different way developed during this time and eventually became a profitable business teaching others marketing. He got more involved with affiliate marketing as part of his coaching and he did so well teaching others how to use Leadpages, the CEO reached out to him and asked him to officially join the company 8 years ago.

Bob’s biggest challenge in his career was knowing the balance between taking a big risk and playing it safe. For a lot of entrepreneurs, the ability to take a risk is a real challenge especially if you are going from month to month and hoping to be in the black and not in a deficit. He didn’t have big savings leaving teaching and he felt like he was on a hamster wheel trying to generate revenue and it was difficult to have the patience and have a proper launch or repurpose it for each of his products. For the first 4-5 years of his business, he never had the chance to optimize any one thing because of this. If he could do it again, he would have had the patience to optimize one product more prominently and move it forward at a deeper level versus spreading himself too thin. 

Leadpages was created 10 years ago in a loft in MN to solve a problem of helping someone put out marketing pages rapidly without a big team, design skills or the ability to code. If you struggled with WordPress and needed to get a page out there quickly to showcase your business in 10 minutes, you could free up time to help serve people that will join your audience as a customer. You can sell your services or products as well as showcase a LinkedIn profile to generate more leads to buy your main offer. 

Bob fostered building a community and his best advice is to make sure you see yourself as a brand, even if you’re an individual. You may not want to be an influencer but you are that person to the people following you. You are the person they look up to and don’t let your ego shout on the rooftops but you should be proud of the people that look up to you and you need to be visible. Let people recognize you as a face and not a logo of a company or an avatar. They will respond to you as a human being and be willing to be that human being. 

Asking for help was one resource that helped Bob out the most. He knew he couldn’t go to the next level without help so he hired a business coach and was part of a mastermind group. He met his wife at one of these events. He recommends finding someone who can lead a group of people and become a cohort. What he loved about the group he was in, you’re not the only person getting the advice and you can cheer each other on and then be coached by your peer group. He prefers a group with a mentor vs a 1:1 mentor. Another resource was continuing to want to learn. Using a mind mapping software that helps you visualize where you want to go in your business is something else Bob recommends. You won’t spend all your time writing down on a document all the nitty gritty details and it will let you dump your ideas quickly so you can free up some of your brain space. 

Bob’s favorite quote is “that which we persist in doing becomes easier not because the nature of the thing changes, but our power to do improves.” Ralph Waldo Emerson 

Bob hopes to leave a legacy of people having an easier time in whatever it is he has helped them understand. 

Bob is excited about an upcoming training camp. He will be teaching people how to come up with your offer, how to craft the words for the offer, how to turn it into a great landing page and optimize it for sales. 

Bio:

As the Sales Marketing Manager at Leadpages, Bob Sparkins champions the customers of the top landing page and website building conversion platform and the audiences they serve. A former high school history teacher and academic team coach, Bob has taught business owners around the world how to leverage digital marketing to impact more people with less effort since 2006. He is the author of Take Action, Revise Later; and lives in Bloomington, Minnesota with his wife, Therese, and their amusing kids, Kira and Landon. Connect with Bob on the social channels via @BobTheTeache
 

Links:

@BobTheTeacher

Book: Take Action! Revise Later: A Simple Guide to Success in Business

Bio of the Book: Grab this book ONLY if: You're ready to get out of your own way and finally finish what you start; You're eager to achieve bigger results in your business without working ten times as hard or trading time for dollars; You're passionate about helping people profitably, but not sure what to do next; You're overwhelmed by all the choices and possibilities with your business, and you want a clear guide to making more profitable decisions. 
 

Podcast - https://lp.leadpages.com/podcast/

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/bobtheteacher/

Leadpages affiliate link - https://try.leadpages.com/lvfzmytj0jf7

In today’s episode, Brooke speaks with Crunch Ranjani, a digital nomad since 2018. She is a conversion copywriter and content creator. She is a firm believer we need more diversity, equity and inclusion in our communities. Today, she is located in Singapore where she is originally from. She has a residence in Mexico and says it’s a great place for digital nomads. 

One thing Crunch wishes she would have known how much work it is. People romanticize remote work and realistically, you’re not working on the beach with your laptop. There is also the challenge of the inner work to overcome your mindset that wants you to stay in a comfort zone. That is a self limiting belief and may not be true. Working through those ideas can be challenging to quiet those inner demons. It helps to have a support group or community to support you and bounce ideas off. It took her years before she realized she needed that kind of support to help her through those tough times. 

Crunch fell into entrepreneurship and freelancing because she was maintaining a travel blog and a friend told her that she was a good writer and asked her to write show notes for a podcast. From there, Crunch listened to podcasts as part of her job and she started thinking about how she was freelancing and what happened if she took the next step and found more clients. She took the opportunities as they came her way. She heard in a podcast that someone needed a writer so she reached out and then more clients came her way. 

The best resources and mentors that have helped Crunch was the BizChicks Podcast host. It was through her inspiration that Crunch was inspired to start her own business and be the boss of her own business. It takes courage to say that. Heart Centered Entrepreneur Anna Rapp- was her business coach and she helped her build a solid foundation for her business that could support the lifestyle that she wants. Your biggest resource is your network. If you can tap into your network, you can ask who is most likely to send you the right kind of support you need.

Crunch’s biggest tip is to show up and be consistent about showing up. That is how you build those relationships on social media or your website. It’s important to do it even when you don’t feel like it. Those relationships will pay dividends for years to come when you nurture them. 

Crunch’s biggest challenge has been finding balance in all of this. It takes self-discipline to be an entrepreneur because you don’t have a boss keeping you on task. She has also encountered swinging to the other end of the spectrum and not knowing how to have work become all consuming. Having boundaries help you maintain peace of mind and work better in the time you’ve dedicated to working. 

Crunch’s take on impact and legacy is feeling content if she makes the difference to one person. She loves being able to share to people in other communities that there are different opportunities and lifestyles that are possible like her working remotely. Her legacy is that she is sharing her story. 

Bio:

Crunch is a conversion copywriter + content creator for change-makers and entrepreneurs who want to make an impact with the money and influence they have in their business. A firm believer that we need more diversity, equity, and inclusion in our communities, Crunch helps like-minded business owners harness the power of words to get their message heard by more than just their 213 Instagram followers and create a bigger impact in the world.

Crunch’s superpower is writing snazzy blogs and articles, and turning the monologues you’ve been doing on Facebook/Instagram Live into a summoning spell that magically conjures up your ideal clients + appeases the Google gods. When not fingers-deep in writing articles for her brilliant clients, Crunch can be found traipsing the world in search of new places, people, and palate-pleasers.

Fun facts: 
I'm a digital nomad and have been living nomadically since 2013, and working remotely as my only source of income since 2018. It can be challenging to freelance / build a business while traveling - I can share tips on this, and in a way, it really applies to finding that balance as a solopreneur/ freelancer/ early stage startup where you're committed to making your idea work but also want to stay out of burnout.
 

Links:

https://crunchranjani.com/

Instagram

@crunchtini

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Listen as Brooke speaks with Jackie Sunga, a certified master marketer. She has grown her own business to surpass six figures in one year. Jackie is a former educator and in 2017 a music colleague was following her on Instagram and told her she was good at social media and asked her to manage her nonprofit social media. Jackie knew she wanted experience in the digital marketing world and saw this opportunity as her way in. Jackie’s sister saw this and told her email marketing is more effective than social media marketing. This motivated Jackie to research and learn copywriting on her own. She realized how important a skill this was. Fast forward a few years and her husband graduated from medical school in 2020 and she saw this as her opportunity to work full time for herself. That summer she used Instagram to create content and a therapist found one of her reels and reached out to Jackie to help write emails for her course. She had a ROI 7x over. This confirmed to Jackie that she found her niche and pursued this full time. Jackie’s first paid job resulted in a lot of referrals from her first client. Jackie knew she didn’t want to niche so far down to only therapists so she took a look at who her ideal clients would be and removed services she didn’t want to offer anymore and focus on what her clients needed most. 

Jackie wished she had known branding just about her visuals but as a combination of your verbal brand strategy, your message and how that relates to your overall vision as it relates to your business and your core values that drive every decision that you make. The further she gets into brand messaging and studying big brands and what makes them popular, is to be so in tune with what your values are and from there your visual brand strategy can follow. 

As entrepreneurs get started with their own programs, Jackie suggests instructional design/curriculum design is really important. When we get stuck in creation mode, it gets difficult to read the bottle from the outside if the customer doesn’t have your experience or expertise. They need to hear how the product will help them before they hear what module 1 or even the price. A buyer needs to hear a sequence of messages and believe before they get to the product stage. When you build a good product, customers will be able to say where they were before and where you have them now. Knowing how you are different and using the customer’s words to say how you are different in the market will be a game changer. 

The number one skill Jackie gained from her career in education was project management and writing copy and not even knowing it. If you are using emails to persuade people to do something, you don’t even realize you have experience in writing copy.

The biggest challenge Jackie has faced was onboarding a VA and not training her virtual assistant on how to communicate with clients. The VA was client facing and responded to a client in a way that was off brand and it triggered the client to leave. It wasn’t the VA’s fault but if Jackie had created a better SOP, the situation might have been avoided. She realized that even though this was an accident, it was important to make sure she was able to prevent this going forward. 

The resource that Jackie recommends surrounding yourself with a support system that can see your gifts. You have to grow yourself and be confident in yourself first before you can grow your business.  

Bio

Jackie Sunga is a certified master marketer, conversion copywriter, and brand voice strategist. She helps new and established online course creators, coaches, and creative service providers productize their knowledge and launch educational courses, coaching programs, and powerful brands with strategic messaging that scales their businesses. 

Growing her own business to surpass six figures in one year, Jackie specializes in launching, sales copy, and brand voice to help her clients attract perfect-fit customers and boost conversions of their sales funnels. Her approach to sales copy and brand messaging is strategic, data-driven, and fueled by deep customer empathy, so clients can sell without sleazy or pushy sales tactics.

Links:

http://www.jackiesunga.co

@jackiesungaco

Freebie

www.jackiesunga.co/brand-voice

In today’s episode, Brooke speaks with Hani Anis, founder of Anis Collections and the marketing company Kahani Digital. She started her first company in 2017 while she was still in college at the age of 21. She was doing marketing in corporate investment banking and decided to take 6 months off and work on Anis Collections. Fast forward to 2020, when she got a VC job in corporate marketing. She was approached during Covid by her friends in the freelancing spaces. In Sept/Oct of 2020, the world started working again and she had a corporate job, a company and freelance projects. She knew she didn’t have that much time on her hands. She sat down during the holidays with her family and expressed her struggles and she decided she liked the freelance, small business route. She decided to resign from her corporate job. With Kahani, she had all the work coming in but no name, no branding, no employees. She knew this wasn’t what she planned for. It goes to show that starting a business can go an untraditional route. She was able to get traction by word of mouth. 

With her digital marketing company, she didn’t have a business plan like with her fashion company. Her promise to herself was to say yes to opportunity and that will lead to momentum. When hiring, you are investing in your company but in the beginning, that person adds a load initially until they start to take the load off. Her first hire came from a friend who knew someone who needed a job in the industry and as she moved forward, she used interns and contract people found by posting in her networking group. She found that people can be trained in marketing and it wasn’t technical. She wanted to find someone who was a good fit to the team and the client. Relationship building is important and without that, it can hurt you.

The major hurdle she had was internal struggle to maintain clients so it didn’t affect her employees. Her retention rate has been great but it’s something she still thinks about. Work life balance has also been a struggle. She has very clear boundaries for her employees about not working outside of their working hours and balancing their own lives with vacation time. As a founder, she felt like she could never take a break. That didn’t work well. She was working 7 days a week and she realized that she had a team that she could let go things to her team. She gradually got to the point of taking weekends off and making time for vacations. 

Hani encourages other people to take on entrepreneurship where they love what they do on a daily basis. Know you can have fun with it and not have an insane amount of pressure to make it a multi-million dollar thing. Don’t scale it so much that quality is affected. It’s ok if it’s just your passion. Looking back she wishes she would have looked at the moment and savored it a little more. Now she’s at a point where she appreciates the small wins more because those moments are important. When you struggle with impostor syndrome, fake it til you make it. When she started out, she had to fake confidence in public until she built her confidence. 

She hopes to wrap up 2022 but slowing down more personally and giving her team more time to focus on the creative aspects of the business. 

I started out as most South Asian kids do -  aspiring to be a doctor. I did all the AP classes, internships, research, and hospital volunteer work but then eventually got to Organic Chemistry in college and decided that medicine was definitely not for me. Distraught, I came home to my dad and said, " Now what do I do"? We decided that business - particularly finance - would be a good fit and turned out, it was. Fast forward to my senior year of college and with the help of my friends and family, I founded Anis Collections, a luxury South Asian bridal boutique that helps brides, grooms, bridesmaids, and groomsmen find their dream outfit for their big day. This business is truly my passion project and my favorite part is doing fittings with clients and watching them react to my custom creation. 

I still went off and got a full-time position in Investment Banking, where most recently I was working on digital strategy for a Venture Capital firm. Through the pandemic, I was also freelancing and working for Natalie Barbu's agency. I learned that I loved working on small businesses through my agency work and found that being a South Asian founder myself, there was no agency that really catered to that niche. The more I worked freelancing for South Asian-owned and founded brands, the more I realized that this is the market I wanted to help. In February 2021, I quit my full-time position in VC and went freelance full time. Through word of mouth and my network, I was able to book more clients and the business doubled in less than a month of me leaving my job. I then worked to establish a name, branding and hiring out my team. 

Kahani means to tell a story and that is exactly what we believe in doing for your brand through social media and digital marketing.

Links:

Instagram: 

https://instagram.com/kahani.digital?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

Kahani Digital: https://www.kahanidigital.com/about-kahani

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In today’s episode, Brooke speaks with Cassandra Rosa, a business coaching and award winning speaker and author of Now What: Create the Clarity to Achieve Your Dreams. She also hosts the podcast called Clarity Conversations. Cassandra knew she wanted to make a difference in the world from a very young age. She pursued a degree in psychology and in the middle of it, she did volunteer work in Africa and fell in love with it. When she returned from her trip, she felt like she needed to do things the mainstream way but kept having feelings of doing more. After about 6 months, she decided to follow her dreams and left corporate and worked on personal development. She felt like this is the mentorship she wanted to do in her life. She launched her business in 2019 and in 6 months, she left her full time job and started traveling to mentor people. 

Her challenge early on was going through Imposter Syndrome. She wondered why someone would want to work with her when they could work with someone big. It held her back initially but she realized you needed to be a few steps ahead of people to create that authenticity to help people. 

Her biggest challenge was figuring out what she was going to offer. When she initially launched, she acknowledged that she was creating her offering for a prior version of herself and she began to attract so many people and it allowed her to have a deeper connection and understanding what her clients were going through. 

The traditional ways of making money burned Cassandra out in the first year. She learned that it’s important to balance your energies and be in the creative flow state as well as taking the action state. The ambition piece - destination syndrome she calls it, is something she redefined during the pandemic because she can anchor those feelings into each step of the journey and not wait to achieve that. It’s been more fun instead of reaching so far and feeling disconnected in the present moment. 

Cassandra makes a goal to step into a certain state, such as when you want more joy and bliss and freedom, now, what can you do to feel that? The clarity will come when you can get out of your own head. Mentorship a good resource and is important to utilize to get support and using tools like Instagram to follow people who can teach you. 

Her biggest failure was having launches and not hitting numbers she wanted but it helped point her in the right direction and redefining those instances into learning opportunities that can point you into the right direction. Life is a journey, not a destination is her favorite quote because it looks into the gratitude and the presence of the stepping stones and milestones we achieve along the way and basking in that. 

Cassandra Rosa is an intuitive certified life and business coach. She helps female entrepreneurs create fulfilling businesses with clarity and confidence. In her coaching practice, she loves to teach her clients how to clarify their path to their purpose, connect to their inner confidence and create the fulfilling business they daydream about. 

Cassandra Rosa is a healer, Reiki master, an award-winning speaker, and award-winning author of the book Now What: Create the Clarity to Achieve Your Dreams. Cassandra also is a podcast host of personal development and business podcast called Clarity Conversations. It’s available on all major podcast platforms!

I work with spiritual entrepreneurs 

who are ready to…
 

clarify their path to purpose  - Gain clarity of what a fulfilling business looks like for you so you have not only a refined vision and mission but the tools to manifest it!

embody confidence -Form unshakeable confidence so that you achieve your goals without having the fear and self-doubt run the show.

create an impactful business  - Create a business you daydream about simply and authentically so that you no longer feel stuck with how to start.
 

Links:

http://www.cassandrarosa.com

Instagram: Cassandrarosaa

Purchase Now What: Create the Clarity to Achieve Your Dreams

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