Scale Your Small Business

Today on Scale your Small Business we are talking about all things real estate. Our host, Jillian Flodstrom, is interviewing real estate agent, Joannine Kramarsic is dedicated to helping her clients find the home of their dreams.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• How to stay in the forefront of people's minds with consistent communication
• How to keep it simple and be consistent by using your calendar
• The many different platforms, places to market yourself, and ways to connect with your clients

To access the full video, show notes and resources from this episode, please visit https://scaleyoursmallbusiness.org/blog/.

If you have any comments or questions about the podcast, please connect with us using one of the options below:

• Website Link - https://www.jillianflodstrom.com
• Facebook Link -https://www.facebook.com/jillianflodstrom/
• Instagram Link -https://www.instagram.com/jillianflodstrom/
• Twitter Link - https://twitter.com/jflodstrom
• YouTube Link -https://www.youtube.com/c/JillianFlodstrom
• LinkedIn Link -https://www.linkedin.com/in/jillianflodstrom/
• Pinterest Link -https://www.pinterest.com/jillianflodstrom/boards/
• Clubhouse Link - jflodstrom

Today's guest began his company with one simple goal, providing the best technology support to local small businesses and giving back to the community. For over six years, that simple formula has led to a great deal of success with his company, Tech Masters Computer Services.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• The importance of tracking your company's technology
• How to track the costs that come with tech
• How to find the right IT professional for your small business

To access the full video, show notes and resources from this episode, please visit https://scaleyoursmallbusiness.org/blog/.

If you have any comments or questions about the podcast, please connect with us using one of the options below:

• Website Link - https://www.jillianflodstrom.com
• Facebook Link -https://www.facebook.com/jillianflodstrom/
• Instagram Link -https://www.instagram.com/jillianflodstrom/
• Twitter Link - https://twitter.com/jflodstrom
• YouTube Link -https://www.youtube.com/c/JillianFlodstrom
• LinkedIn Link -https://www.linkedin.com/in/jillianflodstrom/
• Pinterest Link -https://www.pinterest.com/jillianflodstrom/boards/
• Clubhouse Link - jflodstrom

Welcome back to the Scale Your Small Business Podcast with your host, Jillian Flodstrom! Returning to the show today is James Gardiner, he's a high-performance Olympic rowing athlete, high-performance coach, and author of the powerful new book ALL IN WITH LOVE: my journey to the hero within. In his book, he chronicles how he turned bad choices into a recipe for personal growth.

The inception of James' book came from a creative spirit that needed to get out. Admittedly, he's lived a colorful, interesting life with plenty of successes and just as many pitfalls. During the writing of his book, he was sharing his process with his community via social media. In doing that, he found that his community was growing with him, and was getting many new clients from his posts. Because he had so much visibility, he decided to fund the book's publishing through crowdfunding on IndieGoGo, which allowed his audience to help support the work he was doing.

He was able to share his campaign through his regimented social media schedule–it wasn't the same content going out on every platform every day. The posts James was making were intentional. They were consistent. And they were full of energy.

The key was personally reaching out to each and every individual who supported the book through his crowdfunding campaign. No templated responses, either. It took a lot of work, but the proof is in the pudding.

In his crowdfunding campaign, he gave donors five different options so they could choose the level at which they wanted to support. It included a signed copy, hardcover, coaching sessions, and big-ticket items like speaking events.

For those who didn't find the book through the campaign, James' publisher helped get the book into different locations for folks to purchase: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kindle, etc. In addition, James utilized his marketing knowledge and simply rinse and repeated what he had already been doing: sharing stories.

Planning was an essential part of the process. He used spreadsheets outlining posts when they'd go out, where, and what they'd say. He had a two-week build-up to a six-week campaign. But the beauty of the planning was, that once he began to implement the process, he reached a flow-state where he always knew what was going out and when.

Key Takeaways

Crowdfunding a book is a creative way to build a community, gain clients, and fund your story.

Consider going the extra mile and personally reaching out to those who support you.

Planning is an essential part of the process. Once you have everything in place, you'll reach a flow-state where everything comes naturally.

LINKS

https://www.theherowithin.ca/

@JamesGardiner

[email protected]

Thanks for tuning into the Scale Your Small Business Podcast with your host, Jillian Flodstrom! Joining us today is Steph Tuss. Steph has always had a passion for education, and when her firstborn faced health problems, she overhauled their diets to find the root cause. After earning her Master's Degree in holistic nutrition, she opened a practice to help families facing similar challenges. Fast forward, Steph hired a business coach in David Neagle and his team at Life is Now Inc., where she now sits as CEO.

We're taught from a young age that mistakes are a horrible thing. But when you take a step back and look at every aspect of business, you begin to notice that mistakes are necessary. You don't grow without making mistakes. With many small business owners, there is a deep fear of making a mistake, as they're portrayed as an embarrassing, negative thing. You either win or you learn. Just because it's painful doesn't mean you aren't growing from it.

Those mistakes often manifest in sales. Steph reminds us that when someone says 'no' they're not saying it to you, they're saying it to themselves. Sales is a vulnerable practice—don't make it personal. The goal of the sales conversation is to create clarity—identifying a problem and presenting a solution. It's about coming from a place of service.

If you're talking more than your prospect is talking, Steph points out, that's not a good sales conversation. A sales conversation should be full of questions. The idea is that you're info gathering in a way that serves both of you. Take control of the conversation to put your potential client at ease. People are looking for confidence. Steph has seen people struggle when they try to use a script. Avoid dumping information on someone–listen, don't convince. Ask what the client needs, their goals, and their desired end results. Understand their fears and what happens if they can't solve their problem.

People don't buy the "thing," they buy the result the "thing" is going to provide. When making an offer, it's easy to get into the nuts and bolts of what you can give them, but in the end, that isn't what matters. It's about connecting what you can do to what result they are looking for, and building excitement around the desired end goal.

Listen to changes in tone and be mindful of emotional responses. While you're in a conversation, be aware of any shifts in the way they are speaking—getting quiet may mean you've hit something that's important to them, whereas shutting it down means they may not be interested at all in what you're saying.

Being an active listener is essential. Put the script down and give yourself permission to mess up. Take a few breaths after your potential client finished speaking and set a pace to make sure the client feels heard.

Not every conversation is going to be great—there will be moments where you've felt like you've totally bombed. That's okay. When this happens, Steph would journal about the conversation, listening back to a recording to find where the conversation went off the rails. This isn't self-flagellation, it's about understanding how to improve. Don't be afraid to call someone back and try again.

Finally, remember: sales is not doing something to someone, it's doing something for someone.

Key Takeaways

When you take a step back and look at every aspect of business, you begin to notice that mistakes are necessary.

Sales is a vulnerable practice—don't make it personal.

People don't buy the "thing," they buy the result the "thing" is going to provide.

Put the script down and give yourself permission to mess up.

Links

https://successfulmindpodcast.com/

@stephtuss

Thanks for tuning into the Scale Your Small Business Podcast with your host, Jillian Flodstrom! Joining us today is Steph Tuss. Steph has always had a passion for education, and when her firstborn faced health problems, she overhauled their diets to find the root cause. After earning her Master’s Degree in holistic nutrition, she opened a practice to help families facing similar challenges. Fast forward, Steph hired a business coach in David Neagle and his team at Life is Now Inc., where she now sits as CEO. 

We’re taught from a young age that mistakes are a horrible thing. But when you take a step back and look at every aspect of business, you begin to notice that mistakes are necessary. You don't grow without making mistakes. With many small business owners, there is a deep fear of making a mistake, as they’re portrayed as an embarrassing, negative thing. You either win or you learn. Just because it’s painful doesn’t mean you aren’t growing from it. 

Those mistakes often manifest in sales. Steph reminds us that when someone says ‘no’ they’re not saying it to you, they’re saying it to themselves. Sales is a vulnerable practice—don’t make it personal. The goal of the sales conversation is to create clarity—identifying a problem and presenting a solution. It’s about coming from a place of service. 

If you're talking more than your prospect is talking, Steph points out, that's not a good sales conversation. A sales conversation should be full of questions. The idea is that you’re info gathering in a way that serves both of you. Take control of the conversation to put your potential client at ease. People are looking for confidence. Steph has seen people struggle when they try to use a script. Avoid dumping information on someone–listen, don’t convince. Ask what the client needs, their goals, and their desired end results. Understand their fears and what happens if they can’t solve their problem. 

People don’t buy the “thing,” they buy the result the “thing” is going to provide. When making an offer, it’s easy to get into the nuts and bolts of what you can give them, but in the end, that isn’t what matters. It’s about connecting what you can do to what result they are looking for, and building excitement around the desired end goal. 

Listen to changes in tone and be mindful of emotional responses. While you’re in a conversation, be aware of any shifts in the way they are speaking—getting quiet may mean you’ve hit something that’s important to them, whereas shutting it down means they may not be interested at all in what you’re saying. 

Being an active listener is essential. Put the script down and give yourself permission to mess up. Take a few breaths after your potential client finished speaking and set a pace to make sure the client feels heard. 

Not every conversation is going to be great—there will be moments where you’ve felt like you’ve totally bombed. That’s okay. When this happens, Steph would journal about the conversation, listening back to a recording to find where the conversation went off the rails. This isn’t self-flagellation, it’s about understanding how to improve. Don’t be afraid to call someone back and try again. 

Finally, remember: sales is not doing something to someone, it's doing something for someone.

Key Takeaways

When you take a step back and look at every aspect of business, you begin to notice that mistakes are necessary. 

Sales is a vulnerable practice—don’t make it personal.

People don’t buy the “thing,” they buy the result the “thing” is going to provide.

Put the script down and give yourself permission to mess up.

Links

https://successfulmindpodcast.com/

@stephtuss

Thanks for joining us on the Scale Your Small Business Podcast with your host, Jillian Flodstrom! Today, we're with Jeremy Weber, founding member and Director of Strategist & Partner Relations at Brand Builders Group. Over his 15-year career, he has founded, sold, and helped to grow multiple companies but now focuses on building personal brands. His work has supported New York Times bestselling authors, celebrity influencers, a Shark Tank investor, and 7-figure entrepreneurs across many industries.

Jill and Jeremy discuss what a personal brand really is. It's simple, Jeremy says, it's 'you.' You are good at something–you solve a problem and bring value to those around you–it's probably how and why you started your business in the first place. Personal branding is taking that offline reputation and bringing it online so you're recognized broadly. It helps magnify the great work you do and drive growth for your small business.

Building your personal brand starts with differentiating yourself. You can still do conventional marketing, but it's important to include that key element that you have that others do not. From there, it's about intentionally elevating the awareness of what you do. Exploit your uniqueness in the service of other people. You can find that uniqueness through a Brand DNA Helix, used by Brand Builders Group, a six-question breakdown of what you do. And at the top of that list is discovering what problem you solve for the world. It helps get clear on who and how you're serving.

The biggest mistake growing businesses make is not listening to consumer trends. National studies show that consumers want their professional services provider to have an established personal brand. They want to know that who they're working with is good at what they do. They want to know the individuals. Beyond that, businesses don't go deep enough. Connecting with an audience in an authentic way takes intentional breakdowns of what it is you provide.

On the website front, Jeremy's advice is to really consider what it is your business does and is doing. In many cases, if the business is yours and you're a key player in the operation and service that the business provides, it's worth keeping a business website and making alterations to better highlight you and others that your clients may interface with. When you break up your website, you're diverting traffic, so if you're going to do so, make sure it makes sense for the kind of brand you're trying to build.

Driving awareness, bringing value, and sharing information is at the heart of a content strategy. Therefore, blogging serves as an incredibly valuable tool. As a personal brand, you need to give your audience a way to sample you to build trust and recognition, eventually funneling them to do business with you. Don't build your business on rented real estate. Algorithms change, platforms shift, and other variables come into play in many respects. Playing on those platforms is important, but so is building the foundation of your brand by pulling them from social media to your content. A blog acts as a hub of your content on your website, a place where you control the user experience. Video is worth baking into your strategy using your blog as the content or vice versa–video to a blog post.

Key Takeaways

Personal branding is taking that offline reputation and bringing it online so you're recognized broadly.

Building your personal brand starts with differentiating yourself.

Driving awareness, bringing value, and sharing information is at the heart of a content strategy. Therefore, blogging serves as an incredibly valuable tool.

Special offers

Book a free brand strategy call with Jeremy at https://freebrandcall.com/jw/

Welcome back to the Scale Your Small Business Podcast with Jillian Flodstrom as we celebrate the 3rd anniversary of the show! Thank you for being part of the past two years, and helping foster the community we're building together. We're excited to move into the 3rd year of the podcast and make some exciting changes.

The foremost goal of the show is to add value every time you tune in. Our first change to the show will be frequency. We're all busy people, and sometimes two episodes a week can be a lot. So, we're going to transition into one episode per week, every Thursday.

There will still be a combination of guests and solo episodes, so you'll be sure to get the same great tips and knowledge from every show.

We're going to shift the show's focus to what's most relevant to you as a small business owner. We'll hone in on marketing, sales, fulfillment, customer service, HR, operations, the all-important IT, administration, and finance. These topics were chosen to help drive growth for you and your business.

Next, we're excited to welcome more guests both locally, nationally, and internationally to the show. Jillian will sit down with the best thought-leaders in each of our topics and help get an inside view into how they approach business growth.

Don't forget to leave a review of the show. Your feedback is incredibly valuable and helps drive the direction of our episodes! Be sure to share with anyone you think would get value from the podcast and help continue to build our wonderful community.

Key Takeaways

One episode per week, each Thursday.

A combination of guests and solo episodes

New topics: marketing, sales, fulfillment, customer service, HR, operations, the all-important IT, administration, and finance.

More thought-leader guests both locally, nationally, and internationally to the show.

Today's guest is Brenda Markstein, a highly regarded woman in many global publications for her extensive knowledge in design along with being recognized as an Emmy Award-winning television and film producer. During the global shutdown, she made the decision to sell her home in Las Vegas, and follow the call of her heart making her way to her ranch in San Diego where she invites others to heal just as she (and the ranch itself) did.

Brenda feels as though she has lived four lifetimes, having climbed Kilimanjaro, bungee jumped in Thailand, had children, attended the Design Institute in San Francisco, became a designer and costume designer on stage, and traveled to dozens of countries, speaking to spiritual leaders. Through all of it, though, she realized that having the ranch and helping others heal was an accumulation of a life of experiences. There, people feel like they've arrived home. No judgment. Whatever you brought, you leave it at the gate, and then you come into your experience.

For Brenda, the pandemic presented an opportunity. Having just spent time traveling the world and meeting amazing people, she had a renewed perspective on the human condition. When she went through a split, the ranch offered itself as a place to heal. In a moment of clarity, she realized we are all in some sort of form of healing.

Brenda's support system was built naturally through beliefs. The people that came to work for her all came with a passion to create, heal, and help. She hired people based on their gifts, not anyone else's weaknesses.

Be comfortable with the uncomfortability. Because if you were doing that, that means you're growing out of the pattern that you've already done. It's okay to have that little bit of excitement as you take your first steps–they are the hardest. But once you take it and you establish your vision, you're in a powerful position of growth.

Key Takeaways

We are all in some sort of form of healing.

Don't hire to your weakness, hire to the gift.

Be comfortable with the uncomfortability. Because if you were doing that, that means you're growing out of the pattern that you've already done.

LINKS

https://rocasretreat.com/

Welcome back to the Scale Your Small Business Podcast with Jillian Flodstrom! Today, we're going to run through some tips regarding finances–a topic that can be intimidating to new business owners. Planning for the future of your business is one of the keys to setting yourself up for success. Let's break it down.

First things first, you've got to know where you're at–you've got to know your finances. It can be stressful and scary, but you've got to have a starting point to move forward. That can be as easy as printing out your bank statements, your credit card statements, and looking them over.

Make sure you know where your money is going. You might be losing money on something that you didn't even know was still being taken out of your account. Essentially, check your iPhone. There's a subscriptions tab inside the settings—you could be paying for things that you signed up for at one time, and have been charging you on a reoccurring basis without you realizing it. Look for other reoccurring transactions in your life. Do you really need all seven TV streaming services as well as cable?

Create a budget. Develop a spreadsheet with all your recurring transactions to hone in on your money's path. When you create this sheet, you'll be able to tell if the outgoing is higher than the incoming. Then, sit down and consider everything coming out of your accounts and see if you can cut back anywhere.

Allow yourself to dream. Have debt? Imagine your life without it. Want a second home? Imagine life with it. Whatever your goals, it's important to envision them. Set a plan, and find a financial advisor to help maximize what you have.

If you start today, you can change the future of yourself and your family. It's never too late.

Key Takeaways

It can be stressful and scary, but you've got to have a starting point to move forward.

Make sure you know where your money is going. You might be losing money on something that you didn't even know was still being taken out of your account.

Create a budget. Develop a spreadsheet with all your recurring transactions to hone in on your money's path.

On the show today, we have an intuitive, empowering, and creative women's business strategist, Danikah Rose. She works on mindset and rewiring limiting beliefs and has a huge passion for authentic marketing and staying true to core values in the public eye. She teaches courses on attitude, gratitude, self-awareness, self-care, and goal setting, along with authentic marketing. She wants all women to know that everything they desire is readily available when they're operating in their truth and their inner wisdom.

The best way people can boost their confidence right away, Danikah shares, starts with practice. It's not something that's automatic–it takes intentional cultivation from a place of truth to build it. Things like affirmations are crucial to changing the way you think about yourself. You can become your own hype-man. If that isn't your game, find a coach that can help you. You can build a hype-squad around you to keep that momentum going.

When you're building that squad around you or looking for a coach to work with, you want them to look like what you want your future self to be–someone you can admire. They've got to match your vibe. Be with someone who is already looking to work with you. Really read into it and take your time, it's worth being intentional. There's no rush in making decisions–talk to at least five people and find someone who is going to pour as much into your business as you do.

Comparing ourselves to others can hinder personal and professional progress. A key to breaking that habit (or any habit) is to replace it with something else. It's not about resistance, because that causes discomfort and isn't sustainable. Instead of pushing outside your comfort-zone, move your comfort-zone forward with you.

Having the right mindset is the foundation of a successful business. You can stay making decisions based on what's not going right, or you can make a choice to move forward and think ahead to how you can overcome your challenges. It's not about anyone else. Business is very individual. It's about you and what you're trying to cultivate.

If you know you need to make a change, Danikah recommends starting with getting support. Don't feel ashamed or worried because you haven't hit certain milestones yet. You're learning and may not yet have the tools you need. From there, it's about asking the right questions. What can I do about it? What is the solution? What can I talk about that will serve my customer? The trick with finding support is to flip those questions around. What challenges do you face? What's the solution? It's about implementing people who know more than you. Not everyone knows everything–everyone has their own zone of expertise. But it's important to have the support around what you're creating.

Don't be afraid to go back to basics. Backspace as much as you need to and reinvent what you do. Accept that something isn't going to be working the same way they were when you first started. People will believe in you, but you have to put in the work to get there.

Danikah's last piece of advice is to tune in because there is a lot of noise that can distract you from being your authentic self.

Visit Danikah's Instagram Bio links to check out her upcoming Mastermind!

Key Takeaways

Confidence is not something that it's just automatic

When you're building that squad around you or looking for a coach to work with, you want them to look like what you want your future self to be–someone you can admire.

Don't be afraid to go back to basics. Backspace as much as you need to and reinvent what you do.

LINKS

www.Instagram.com/danikahrosecreative