CEO Stories: Entrepreneurship, Business Strategy, and Online Marketing

We have all been burned by a bad launch, and coach and consultant Mariana Ruiz is no exception. She learned quickly that to scale your sales, it pays to do it slowly and methodically instead of too fast. Her tips for launching with simplicity and creating epic sales over time.

• Mariana did a course launch in Feb 2017 that was a big failure.
• She was launching it via webinar after taking a course that told her to invest heavily in facebook adds.  She invested $1000 to meet the metric. She also had to hire someone to run the adds. This put her all in at $1500.
• She did the launch, and she broke completely even.  It was 2 full months of work that she broke even for.  
• The big lesson she learned was that it was ok to scale slowly.
• She launched an evergreen funnel and was selling a lesson a day.  She thought that a one launch strategy would have similar conversion rates.  This was wrong.
• She knew how to run adds, but she hired someone to do that.  She eventually learned that she was so good at add running, she now helps other businesses do this.
• There is a lot of pressure to grow and outsource.  Look objectively at if you really are good at that "thing" before actually outsource something.  
• Mariana's tips for scaling slowly:  
• • Pairing down offerings- She let go of things that were just working, to pursue opportunities that worked best.    
  • Deciding she wanted reoccurring revenue- Her health coaching was 1 month packages, but it was just a lot of pushing.  She created 6 month packages in her coaching business because it created a longer revenue stream.
  • Hiring people slowly by starting with interns- She likes teaching and having the opportunity to see the people in action and decide if they are a good fit before bringing them on to the team.    
• Mariana did not like just the group coaching where they would take a class and then move on.  She likes teaching and staying in contact.
• The interns actually get to be in the trenches, learning, and working.  They get opportunities that a lot of people do not get in other internships.  
• Internal reflection instead of listening to external factors has really helped keep her mindset strong to trust herself.       
• To move forward after a failure, just trust the process, pick up the pieces, ask yourself how can you learn from this, and how can you use this in the future to do something differently.  

Business Coach Mariana Ruiz hustled to begin her coaching business while on maternity leave. Then over the years she has expanded and her mission and her offerings to serve even more people. She's sharing the story of how she created her success today.

• Mariana was an entrepreneur since she was a child.  She had lemonade stands growing up and even created a business at the age of 7 collecting cans by paying for them and turning them in for a larger profit.  She never wanted to cheap anyone!
• Both of her parents were from Venezuela where they had higher education degrees, but they were not recognized in the US when they moved here.  Both of her went on to get another master's degree. She thought this was the path she also needed to go. She was interested in brain neurology and her first job was as an ICU brain surgeon nurse.  
• She took the profits and started investing in real estate.  She felt like going to school to continue more education was not the direction she wanted, even though her parents pushed this.
• She felt like she could continue to climb the corporate ladder or pursue her side coaching business.  Her daughter was born at only 2 pounds and spent a lot of time in the hospital. Her only choice was to hustle the consulting business while taking care of her daughter.  
• Even now, her parents do still push that she needs a master's degree to be successful.  Mariana had to learn to be confident in herself and her choices. She wanted to do a lot and not just learn about doing in school.
• Before making the jump full time into her consulting business, it was just about having a consistent routine to get the nursing job done, sell real estate, and pursue the coaching side hustle.  
• When she first made the jump, it was a little chaotic.  She had to really dip into her spiritual side with words of affirmations.  She just needed to remind herself that it was going to be ok.
• She focuses on getting up before the kids are awake to do the mindset work.  If she does not, she feels like she spends the entire day just reacting and not prepared.  
• She started off as a health coach simply from losing 80 pounds after her first baby.  She was a nurse and knew she could help other people lose their weight. Mariana utilized facebook for this first endeavor.   
• After learning how to do this in the health coaching, she decided to start teaching moms how to start a business.  Eventually, she branched out from just moms to everyone.
• After branching out to all individuals, she branded Impact Driven Entrepreneurs.      
• Her big focus is helping ethical businesses that make a difference.   
• She has the consulting where she does local corporate marketing.  She has to be 100% behind their mission. Then she has the online side where she does group coaching.  She will add one on ones, but she keeps it to two online programs that she runs.
• To keep from jumping into new ideas, she remembers that there are so many places to grow in the current things that she is already doing.  If she wants to add more offerings, she will give things to her existing members.
• Mariana's biggest advice to others would be to trust yourself.  It's ok to get it wrong but trust yourself.
• Entrepreneurship is all about failure and learning the lesson.   

Everyone has a website -- at least it feels that way. So how do you makes yours special? But more importantly, how do you make it strategic? Your website should help you hit your goals and not just "stand still and look pretty." Website Designer Samantha Mabe is delivering us her best tips to create a pretty and powerful website.

• Top thing people get wrong when starting a website:  
• • They want their website to be pretty more than something that works for them.
• Start with brand strategy- your mission, what you are trying to accomplish, and who your dream clients are.  
• When honing in on the website, you need to know the top 3 goals you want to achieve with the website.  This drives your decisions on what goes on the website, what gets left on, and what goes where.
• Samantha then creates the website vision guide where she pulls out the most important things for the client from the questionnaire.  These help drive the platform used, the timeline, and the content the client needs to write.
• Have 3 goals because everyone who comes to your site is in a different place.  Some people may just be there to view and others to actually purchase. You need to accommodate all people while still making it the easiest for you on the back end.
• Typical goals:
• • Get people to sign up for an email list with opt ins
  • Sell service or product
  • Get people to share your content
• You need to know what the journey looks like for different people that come to your website.
• Most important is to figure out where to put the correct information.
• Give them enough information about you but not everything.  
• Have easily found tabs for the things that you are best at front and center.  
• Samantha leaves off the retainer and graphic design items from her website.  Those are things she offers on the backend and does not want to confuse clients.  
• If you already have a website, she with make sure you have analytics set up and run a test on how easy it is to navigate.  
• Analytics is not a comparison tool to compare businesses.  It is to help you compare yourself overtime.
• Samantha likes to look at where the traffic is coming from, most popular posts, and where the people exit the website.
• Numbers are an easy way to check things if you know where to look and what to look at.  You do not have to look at every number and data that you are given.
• Have someone actually user test your website.  Conduct a user experience test and watch it. See how they navigate and how they interact with it to see if it actually working.  

As a solopreneur, you wear many hats -- CEO is only one of them. So what does it really look like to have all those roles? Do you do them all at once? Or take them in turns? Samantha Mabe is sharing how she balances them all inside her business to fulfill her vision.

• Samantha sees CEO as being the guide to the big picture and not getting caught up in the day to day.  
• When she first started working, she was freelancing and each client was the boss.  They gave direction and deadlines.
• Now she knows that she must be the boss, have the big picture vision, and not letting a client email that pops up change the direction of her day.
• She started an email folder for new client requests.  Samantha would file them, and then get to them on her time frame.  
• She started a podcast instead of just her blog that led her to realize she did not have to do things the way everyone else was doing things.  The blog was a "have to" and was not enjoyable for her. The podcast was a whole lot easier to just talk through her ideas and a better way for her to communicate.
• She started viewing the client work and the CEO work separately.  They both must be done, but she could serve her clients better if she managed her time instead of the clients trying to do this.
• When she chooses educational opportunities, she does keep her clients in mind as to what will serve them better and not just what she wants to learn.
• She starts and ends the week with administration.  She has days that she does not feel like designing a website, so she takes those days for CEO time to brainstorm, journal, walk, or just step away.  Every month she does look at the analytics.
• The first hard decision Samantha made was raising her hourly rates for her retainer clients.  She kept putting of sending the email for a long time, but then she got a great response.
• Another hard decision she makes regularly is putting boundaries around her time and being able to tell people no because the business comes first.
• She and her husband have a shared calendar so that even he knows when she is on a call or very busy.
• The vision for Lemon in the Sea is to support other businesses and help them grow.
• Samantha remembers that she has to say no to things that sound great, but she must do this to stay on track with the goals she sets.
• She limits the amount of time on social media so that it does not derail her ideas and thoughts to lead her to think that she has to do what others are doing.  
• We are seeing peoples highlight reels so everything may not be as perfect as it appears on social media.
• The focus for Lemon in the Sea is to continue to help the clients to get the results that they need to see.  
• You do not have to have what everyone else has.  She does not have any passive income projects and that is ok for her!

Crickets is among the online entrepreneur's worst fears when bringing a new offer into the world … and unfortunately, Samantha of Lemon and the Sea met that fear head-on when she tried creating a new service. After it fell flat, she went back to the drawing board and now approaches bringing ideas into the world in a whole new way.

• Samantha tried to launch a service that was a huge undertaking, and it never worked!
• She wanted to have all customers come to one place for all the website needs.  It included photography, branding, design, and launching.
• She could not find anything like it, and she found people to help with every niche area.
• Samantha worked on the questionnaire for clients and contracts for her workers.
• After all of the time and energy, not a single person actually had interest.
• Samantha realized that she was all in about this.  She did all of this research. She forgot to have dream client interviews or actually talk to people that would be customers.  The team was not super cohesive and excited about the launch either.
• Samantha realized that if anyone did actually buy it, then it would be the first time to run through all of this with an actual client.  They would be basically beta testing on the first client. This gave her a lot of nerves.
• Looking back, she would have talked more to people who would have been interested in the service.  She should have talked to them before getting attorneys and partners. This would have given her more leverage to know it would work.  
• She realized that this entire idea was just not supposed to work.  It has helped her to be more cautious in taking leaps.
• You need to do your due diligence to make sure something will work before just throwing things at the wall.  
• In general, people just see the ideas that work.  Remember that you are missing all of the ideas that people had that didn't work that they are not talking about.  
• Don't be afraid to do things differently or innovatively.  The online space is looking for that.
• Don't throw out all of the ideas from the corporate world.  Remember that they are big for a reason. They have people that are researching, testing, and giving perspective. Corporate businesses have a lot that we can gain from.
• She went back and figured out what went wrong and what she really wanted to do.  The biggest problem was that she did not have a large audience. She now uses the audience that she does have for her research and to further her ideas.  
• You have to set the stage for your success.
• The idea is not dead; it is just on pause.  There is a chance that one day it could be the right time for it.
• Before you invest time and money, do some research.  Figure out who would hire you, find your dream clients, and talk to them.  Ask them if they would really be willing to invest and what they would want out of it.
• Listen!  To yourself and to your feedback.  Even if the feedback is negative, you still have the final decision.  
• Build relationships with your dream clients so they will be honest, but kind, in their responses.

Samantha Mabe of Lemon and the Sea is an "accidental" entrepreneur, and once she dove in, she found that lots of clients were getting their deliverables then not using them. So she devised a way to fix that and get bigger results for herself and her clients.

• CEO of Lemon in the Sea.  
• Samantha just kind of happened to be an entrepreneur.  She envisioned working for a small business but not necessarily her own business.
• She went to school in architecture.  She went into the business world. Her husband got a new job, and they had to move.  She decided she would move and be a freelance writer.
• Her first thought was to be a DIY Blogger.  She wanted to refinish and upgrade furniture.  When she moved she realized that she did not have the space for this niche.  
• She took the skills she had and turned it into a graphic and marketing design business.
• The company that she left asked her to do some freelance when she left.  They had her do a lot of the marketing and graphic design. In doing so, she learned about the online world.  
• Samantha started by offering everything from logos to PDFs to full web design.
• She was watching her competition and they were either packaging services or specializing in something.  She decided to start packaging branding and website services separately. She realized she enjoyed just the website design. Samantha then added the fact that she can also train and coach people how to make their website effective.
• Since doing this, she has achieved a lot of new really enjoyable clients.  She focused heavily on how she can properly progress the process with timelines and the expectations that the clients can follow too.
• Samantha values surveying the clients.  
• She started with a lot of research.  She actually questioned people that she would want to work with as clients.  This helped her figure out what the clients she would work with would actually want.  Samantha learned that the clients actually want less touches and feedback than she thought.  
• Now that she has a process in place, she feels like she is getting more clients launched.  She has more websites that are actually live.
• When thinking about the DIY blog the name Lemon in the Sea came to her head.  She could not get it out of her head. She kept thinking about it, so she created a logo and ran with it.
• Her advice to herself would have been to go with the process and not try to copy what other people are doing.  You do not have to follow. Be yourself. You just have to be patient and go through it.
• She stopped following other bloggers and things because she wants her own ideas.

As messaging strategists, Jessi Honard + Marie Parks spend each day helping entrepreneurs find their voice and step into their thought leadership role to create success. In this episode, they're giving us a peek at the process to doing that for yourself.

• Their very first opt in was a huge struggle.  They eventually figured this out and are now able to help other people do this.  You do not have to listen to your old corporate ways of doing things; you can use your own heart and brain.
• Many people write emails and business posts, very different than they actually speak.  This turns people off.
• Your message is super important and your job is to build a bridge between your message and your audience.  The way you articulate the message and the way they articulate their needs are different. You need to bring these together.
• Ways to find your voice:  Strip back to what feels right for you.  Look at your values. You can record yourself talking.  Go back and listen to yourself. What phases do you use that are uniquely yours?
• Listen to your audience.  Have a document that saves all the things people say about your business.  
• Find the conversations that are already happening, see how they talk, listen to how you talk, and bridge the gap.
• Tell people they are heard and acknowledged.  
• You need to build your message around "what do I want to be known for?"  What are the two or three things that are the most important pillars of your business?  Figure these things out because this is what you are going to talk about.
• Limit yourself to 2-3 pillars.  Each pillar means a new topic, new content, and new offers.
• Putting out this content is going to look different for each person.  Drop the should! Do not worry about what everyone else is doing, but worry about what feels good for you.  
• Start small and add as you go.  Get really good at one thing. Then you repurpose those things in multiple areas.
• Put dates on your calendar to check in with yourself, quarterly or semi-annual.  Revisit the message, the content pillars, and what feels good.
• Allow yourself the time to test and to get out there.  
• If you are feeling bored, find different ways to say the same thing.  Share your story, share a client testimony, share a photo, etc. There are a lot of options to differentiate the same idea.    

The CEO Shift is among the hardest in your business as a solopreneur, but it's also one of the most rewarding. Jessi + Marie share with us the way they balance two visions in their business and how they finally found the way to stay in their zone of genius more often.

• For Marie, the longer she talks about thought leadership the more she sees it intertwined with the CEO role.  To be an effective CEO it requires thought leadership, taking expertise, influence, and innovation to put them together to inspire people.  
• Jessi adds that it is not being in every single detail.  Stepping into CEO means holding onto the vision and keeping it in line with the company's value.  It is more than management; it is holding the vision.
• This requires trust in the people on your team and in your own goals.  
• They both shifted to CEO when hiring a team.  The first VA they hired was great for the business.  
• Marie and Jessi knew they needed to stay in there zone of genius.  Just because you can do it, does not mean that you have to. It may be more beneficial to outsource.
• They created a system to revisit the business plan multiple times a year.  They run vision exercises for their clients and they complete these tests as well.  It is not just based around the numbers but gets down to the mission and values.
• Marie and Jessi look at their visions separately and then look at it together.  
• When they are not on the exact same page, sometimes one person takes the lead, one tries to convince the other, or they table the ideas.  
• On the surface the two of them have a lot in common, but over time they have realized that they are different people.  They have different strengths and weaknesses which have help divide the workload. Jessi is the strategy and Marie is the feels.  On each project, one woman is the lead and one woman is the editor. It has helped them share the workload and keep their brain on their side of strength.  
• Now they are ready to test the next generation of ideas they want to implement.  
• At one point, there were 22 ways to work with them, and now they have 2 or 3.  It has streamlined everything to give them clarity for the future.
• They have clients coming to them due to their consistency of being in business for so long.  They feel closer to the vision than ever.
• Jessi stepped into CEO in the process of building a peer network.  Seeing examples of leaders in this really helped motivate her to do so.
• Marie agrees and the peer network connected her with people who asked her hard questions.  It allowed her to motivate herself to ask tough questions, uncover the stuff she was hiding from, and listening to others.  
• Your own team needs to buy into the vision.  You have to listen to them to make sure they are on the same page.  

When you're an entrepreneur, your personal life and your business life tend to blur. That's what happened with North Star Messaging's Jessi + Marie. They found themselves stepping away from connecting and watching their business stumble because of it. They walk us through this moment of failure and how they shifted to find more success on the other side.

• They just realized that one of their failures was because they were not showing up.  Personal life got in the way of the business.
• To get back to this, it meant getting honest and vulnerable, and putting in the effort they needed to.  
• They were afraid to step into a new place with the high achieving business owners.
• There were things in the business that needed systematized.  Them they started relying on the systems and it became a detriment to human interaction.  Examples: not commenting on other people's post, writing something in someone else's group and running, not having the deep conversations.
• If the client was not in a face to face session, they really did not get the human connection and authenticity that others felt.  They needed to show up in the online marketplace to achieve this.
• When you don't show who you are, you get the wrong people.
• They went transparent and public with their new commitment. Now their audience is their accountability.
• Marie and Jessi set dates to implement new ideas.  This holds them accountable and gives them time to plan.  
• The self-care is a huge part to making sure that they stays present.  Jessi is still trying to figure out what that self-care looks likes. The first step is recognizing that she is getting tired and needs some sort of break.
• Take the time to get to know yourself.  
• Marie has limited the hours that she works to keep from getting burnt out.  
• They are ok with going public, letting their audience know it's a trial, and then feeling comfortable to be able to change things.  You are the only one really paying attention to the "set promises." People generally like the change and are forgiving.
• You are allowed to change things.  Just give it some time. It's ok to communicate during a pivot.  You do not want your audience to feel left out or lost.
• When switching up your message or who you want to work with, it is never too early to be transparent.  You can use it for market research. The more you say it the more you will believe it yourself. It will become real and less scary.  The humanity driven approach helps people feel like they are a part of things. They like to see the behind the scenes.
• If you are questioning a shift, ask yourself why are you at this decision.  If it is because it is not working, have you given it enough time. If it is just not in line with your values, figure out why and how to align it in those goals.  You need to feel confident.

In the online space, business partnership is rarely seen and even more rarely front and center when it exists. Jessi Honard + Marie Parks are one duo that have been business partners for several years and they share with us a peek inside their journey to becoming partners and what it takes to stay that way every day.

• They are the CEOs of Northstar Messaging.
• They knew each other about six month after meeting online, lived in the same city, and decided to start a writing business together.  
• They took on any writing projects from curriculum, grant writing, resume writing, etc.
• For the first 3-4 years they were both doing this and working full time jobs.
• Marie always had an idea of owning a bookstore but never really knew what she wanted to do.  She just loved stories and books but did not think about being an entrepreneur.
• Jessi was always entrepreneur focused.  In middle school she would burn CD's off napster for kids.  She got an English degree, became a teacher, and got a little lost.  She realized she is really good at doing her own thing and not what people told her to do.
• The two of them would go camping and hiking together.  This was how they got to know each other so fast.
• They had met in an online forum celebrating stories and creativity.  They wrote together and knew they had very similar styles.
• The idea of the business was Marie's.  Jessi felt so much better having a partner to do it all with.  They could split the fear and worry.
• They took it from side hustle to the dream due to circumstances.  Marie's job was changing to something she was not very interested in.  She took this opportunity to make the jump fulltime into their business.
• Jessi stayed working fulltime for another year.  She was going through a divorce, friends had moved away, and Houston was just not home anymore.  Jessi moved to California with a friend and started full time in the business.
• They were both careful people and are grateful that the circumstances pushed them to go full time.
• Marie was able to jump into grant writing after her job was no longer a conflict of interest.  At the time, the bulk of the income in the business was this type of writing.
• Jessi's forte was education.  In trying to come to a middle ground, they decided to help purpose driven businesses build an eloquent business.  They decided to hone in on this and started letting go of the other stuff.
• They did realize they were in very different places.  They went on a trip to confirm they should do this, they wrote a business plan from the ground up, and this was truly the beginning of the business.  
• Every day you have to choose to stay in business and stay partners.  
• Last year they did a lot of copywriting and then mastermind and online programs.  They realized they really like this part of teaching others.
• They want to work with thought leaders that make an impact.  
• To figure this out it was trial and error and thought checking.
• Going back, the advice they would give is to hang on tight and trust the process because it will work out.  This entrepreneurial process is about becoming a better version of yourself and not about the money.