Conquer the Chaos

Monica Kline, who is the founder of IDentity Brand, joins Small Biz Buzz in the continuation of our Big Grit docuseries to talk about how she used technology to grow her business after numerous setbacks and challenges.

Monica experienced great losses throughout her journey to entrepreneurship, but she continued to bet on herself and her dream. She is the true definition of Big Grit.

We've got Jennifer Hudye of Conscious Copy & Co on the show this week and it was a stellar show for marketers, copywriters or anyone looking to boost their e-commerce game.

Conscious Copy & Co helps entrepreneurs and business owners communicate their message through the power of copy in a way that gets people to take action.

"I started it about five years ago and really stumbled upon just this whole skill set of copywriting. I never grew up as a writer or considering myself a writer. Back in 2013, I was introduced to the online marketing world and my eyes were wide open just being like, 'Oh my gosh. Okay. There's this whole world where I can start a business online from anywhere and get to serve so many more people'".

By building her copy chops Jennifer not only turned her college side-hustle into multiple six-figure revenue streams but she had outside companies clamoring for her expertise.

"Some pretty big names started to reach out to me. People like Joe Polish and Dean Graziosi and Brendan Bouchard and Bulletproof Coffee, and it was just this new business, Conscious Copy, took off back in 2015."

Along the way Jennifer learned there's much more to good copywriting than flowery language.

"My dear friend, Lisa Sasevich has a quote, "Sell the destination, not the airplane." And I was selling that airplane. I was like, 'In this program, you're going to get 85 PDFs and 46 videos that are an hour long.'"

Plus Jennifer lets us in on her five C's for writing copy that connects and converts.

The first one is…Capture attention.

You'll have to listen in for the other four.

On small biz buzz this week we've got the founder of article curation site thebrowser.com and author of Thinking Statistically, Uri Bram.

"Every day we read hundreds of articles and select our favourite five for you to enjoy, so you'll always have interesting things to ponder and fascinating ideas to discuss at dinner." - The Browser

We'll be discussing realistic timelines for "overnight success", how happy subscribers are the most cost effective marketing agency, and how to tell when you're using busy work to hide from your real responsibilities.

"I always took pride that I answered every email, and I went over subscriber rater...

It never ends. you clear your inbox and then you wake up in the morning and there's another. I think we're all traumatized.

A lot of the things I was doing, I enjoyed them because I had gotten good at them. But actually, it didn't need to be me doing them. It didn't really take expertise even. They were the simpler tasks. And I was procrastinating from the harder tasks by the simpler tasks. And what I really needed to do is hand off the simpler tasks." - Uri Bram

Jake Johnson (Keap Creative director) joins us to discuss the soul of branding, pandemic pivots, and finding the folks who'll pay big for premium offerings

"There were people like, "I can't believe you'd spend $30 to watch Mulan And those are people who just don't get it.".

We'll also tackle one of the most overlooked growth killers, "promo fatigue". What does that mean?. Listen close, because too much attention to your audience may be driving away your current customer base.

"There's only so many messages that consumers can get hit with before it becomes white noise."

Learn exactly why "getting folks in the door" could be your most dangerous move and when to spot the right and wrong time to commoditize your offerings.

Grady Kerr talks with the team about his years as an entrepreneur leading up to his joining Keap and becoming one of the most well known faces in the company with his popular Automation Hours webinars.

"When you're stuck putting out fires. Your day is managing you."

We'll discuss the global concept of follow up as a critical growth action and how your brand needs to be an extension of yourself if you want to ensure quality control. You'll also get an earful as we discuss one of the most common barriers to starting a small business...

"When I get this done, then I'll start. When I get this done, then I'll start. Or I could say, "I'm just going to run with it, and I will build the train tracks as the train goes." "

Meet Mwale and Chantel Henry, THE WINNERS OF 2020's IKON AWARDS!!!!

Not to mention owners and founders of https://thebestsellersacademy.com/ where they help speakers and aspiring authors gain visibility and brand credibility by turning their story into a bestselling book.

Keap has a special place in its business tech heart for these two. Listen in and learn from Mwale and Chantel about their business, the four P's of possibility, and their journey to find one another.

This show is an absolute delight, we'll discuss how these two used their disparate upbringings (Chantel, growing up in the streets of Baltimore and Mwale a world away in Trinidad) to inform how they approach business, customer interaction, and mission focus.

Hear Chantel as she lays out The Four P's of Possibility:

1. Process
2. Partnership
3. Profitability
4. Purpose

"Great leaders talk about it. When you cast a vision, you have to visit it often. You can't just cast it in a board meeting, you can't cast it sitting at the dining table talking to yourself. There are days it's not working. And that's when you have to visit that vision often.

Not only did we change our process in terms of being able to document the experience in our business, because what's not documented can't be managed. Everyone's talking about pivot. But we've learned, when we went through the process of doing an audit in our business and removing the dysfunction, things that can't be tracked, shout out to Keap for helping us to be able to track what's happening in your business, be able to document, be able to build the right type of campaigns, and we identify those gaps, we realized we didn't need to pivot, we needed to persevere, because, yes, it's good to talk about pivoting, but sometimes as entrepreneurs, it's tempting to use that as a sexy way to say; 'I'm giving up. I am giving up. It's too hard, I'm giving up'." - Mwale Henry

Listen in as we talk with Keap Creative Manager, Stephanie Haworth. In addition to being the guiding hand behind Keap's copywriting, design, and UX; Stephanie has agency design chops and was willing to share the inside insights she's gleaned from years in the industry.

"It's very important not to be insular as an agency owner and not see everyone as your competition. "

Learn how to every agency is differentiated by their teams and what it says about how well they suit different clients. We'll discuss what it means when an agency is hesitant to workshop over the phone and how important it is to set expectations early.

Digital marketing expert Toccara Karizma joins us to discuss where you should and shouldn't be spending your marketing budget.

Facebook ads are an ever-changing animal, Toccara has made it a point to track the ebs and flows of digital marketing as well as the red flags to watch for when hiring outside agencies.

Listen in to get insights on CPMs, UTFs, and how they can be the difference between dynamic marketing partners and flat out scam artists.

This week, we've got info on automation from a serial entrepreneur who also has the inside scoop on exactly how powerful Keap can be. Ernest Saco (Sr. Product Manager at Keap) joins us to discuss developing a brand, building a successful business from an idea and making the most of your sales and marketing automation.

Want to take your online sales to the next-level? This is the show for you.

Alex Edlund, Keap's head of demand generation, joins Small Biz Buzz to talk about generating demand for your product and business and creating brand awareness.

His team is responsible for acquiring new customers via marketing, and a lot of the marketing that Alex does is performance-marketing related. It's about getting more leads, more opportunities and sales so the business can grow.

"In demand gen, when we look across my team, it is practically every channel that aids in driving new traffic to the website," Alex said. "So, paid search, SEO, affiliate marketing, paid social marketing, email, all these channels that can really drum up demand for Keap really encapsulates demand gen."

When it comes to demand gen, Alex said you have to have a sense for who you are targeting. Who's your target audience? What kind of research have you done to figure that out? If you're a small business that has been in business for quite some time, you have loads of information around that, you have your existing customer base, so look at that customer base to figure out what it is about them that makes them unique, or makes them work so well for your business.

"When you have a good audience strategy, then it becomes a little easier for you to pick out which channels to invest in, what areas to have a presence in, because you really want to be where your audience is at," said Alex. "If you know your audience, it becomes a lot easier to determine where you're going to invest your time."

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