Social media master
I first met Jen in October 2019. The agency I was working for put the word out for freelance strategists, and Jen’s CV floated to the top of the pile like cream.
We met over coffee, where I realized I’d been following her agency on Instagram for a few years, admiring (envying) her confidence to show up online.
I didn’t know it then, but Jen was at her lowest ebb when we first met, extricating herself from a septic business partnership and considering her future.
Despite that turmoil, she exuded capable energy. I knew here was someone you could hand a knotty strategy challenge to and be sure of a considered, creative response.
Fast forward a few months.
Both Jen and I both struck out on our own, establishing our own marketing practices, Jen helping businesses become confident social media masters.
I was following her journey on LinkedIn, so in November 2020, when she posted to mark her businesses first birthday, summarizing highlights from her first year that included:
Training over 100 businesses through online social media workshops.
Working on her mindset and gratitude every day.
Investing thousands into her own learning and business.
Helping women build businesses of their dreams.
Hitting six figures in 10 months.
I thought, here’s a consultant I need to interview. She’s got moves worth sharing.
We met over flights of sparkling wine at the Cellar Door, where a woman fizzing with possibility unpacked her first year of business at The Small Wins Company.
Congrats. You’re a year into owning your own business. How did that come about?
I left a terrible situation last October. On November 1, 2019, I started the Small Wins Company with three clients and proved to myself that I can build my own business, one small win at a time.
In my last job, I built a creative media company from the ground up. I worked my ass off and learned how to build a business, what worked, and what didn’t. I also built a good network of connections. The whole experience gave me a two-and-a-half-year head start when I started my own business.
When I decided to go out on my own, I was contacted by a few businesses who asked me to do some work for them. These were lifesaving jobs because they paid the bills and then some.
I didn’t have to worry about where my first two months of business was going to come from. It felt like life’s gift to me for deciding to remove myself from a bad situation.
In my last job, I was routinely working 80-100 hours a week and I had a difficult relationship with my business partner who was funding the business. I should have gone to therapy because I had so many emotions to deal with, and I was trying to build my new business immediately.
I still have nightmares about the situation.
As a result, I’m such an advocate for women to build their own business. Don’t let others dictate to you what you’re capable of. You don’t need permission to take control of your own lives.
So, tell us more about your first year in business.
I wasn’t attached to anything this year. I wanted to try everything to see what worked and what didn’t.
When Covid hit I made three digital courses in a week. There’s one on building your own social media strategy, one on social content planning and management, and one on how to use Canva to create graphics. They all have video modules with workbooks, cheat sheets and resources. I sold 20 courses in those first few weeks of Covid and made $5,000. It was the perfect cash injection and paid my bills for a couple of months.
Then Covid turned into the busiest months I’d ever experienced, because people needed to be online and they didn’t know how. March, when we went into lockdown, was my biggest month ever and then April was even bigger.
Quite a lot of guilt came with that because everybody was shutting down, losing their jobs, and losing money. And here I was hitting $15,000 a month only seven months into my business.
So, I really had to work on my mindset to overcome that guilt. I had to tell myself: “You can still succeed and build your business regardless of what’s going on around you. Right now, your goal is to help small businesses get online. You’re grateful for the opportunities you’ve been given, but you’re getting those opportunities because you have valuable skills that small businesses need.”
Absolutely. And building a robust social presence is the quickest shortcut to building an online presence. You don’t have to have a website to start building your brand.
Right. You just need to start talking directly to your customers.
I find that New Zealand small businesses make it too difficult for themselves. They think they need fancy digital tools, but you can just jump on Instagram stories, talk about what’s going on with your business …. tell your customers about your new website where they can get takeaway and you’ll drop it off at their doorstep.
But there’s still massive push back to social media here because it’s new, and the push back from NZ business owners on showing up for their business online is particularly fascinating to me, because I’ve built my whole business off social media.
But I get business owners all the time saying no, I’m not going to show my face, or I’m scared, or nobody wants to see me. And I say, you’re running a small business, and people connect to people. Why would you think people wouldn’t want to hear from you?
But there’s always this push back, and as a result, New Zealand business owners are missing so many opportunities to maximise their social presence.
Why is there push back?
I think it’s ego. They’re scared. Showing up on social feels exposing and dangerous.
But anything feels uncomfortable when you start.
I ask them: “Were you scared when you started your business?” They say yes. I ask: “Did you know what you were doing?” And they say no. Social media is the same. Nobody knows exactly what they’re doing when they start something new. But you’ve got to try it, so you can get better at it.
So, when clients finally pluck up courage to show up on social, they show me their stats and say: ‘So many more people watched this story! So many more people commented on that post because it’s me talking!”
And I say: “Well of course. People connect to people.”
I try to give people quick wins to show them social media really works. Then they just have to keep it up, and be consistent.
Instagram is a powerhouse of a tool. I attribute so much of my business to Instagram referrals. People watch my stories and message me.
But it’s cumulative. It’s not like they watch one story and book me. They stick around, get a better feel for who I am and the things I can do to help them, and then maybe in three - six months they message me to say, I’ve been following you and I’m ready to work with you.
I need to use Instagram more. I’ve been so focused on LinkedIn, but I have this small but very engaged community on Instagram.
And that’s all you need. This fixation on having thousands of followers is so weird to me because I don’t even have a thousand followers and I’ve built a pretty robust business for myself.
It’s just knowing who you’re talking to.
In my group coaching program right now, I’m working with six business owners. Some of them have had established businesses for years and still can’t tell me who their target audience is.
People are missing real basics.
When they start out, some business owners get lucky. People buy their product or services, so they never take time to understand who their ideal client is
But when times get tough, they struggle, because they don’t know who their customers are, where to find them, or how to talk to them, and they stop converting.
New Zealand business owners got into this mindset of thinking that they had enough clients. And then Covid hit and they panicked saying: “I’ve got to reach new people”. But they didn’t know how.
But all you have to do is find your people, tell them what you’re doing and how you can help them. And then continue to talk to them and invite them elsewhere by asking them to join your email list, or your private Facebook group.
It’s really simple hey. But it’s about doing it consistently.
It’s so simple. And people really make it so much more difficult that it needs to be.
When I start working with a business, I ask them to think of social media as customer service.
If you have a shop and someone comes into that shop and asks you a question, you’re going to answer them right away. If someone messages you on social media, you should answer it because they’re a potential customer. It’s just another arm of customer service.
It baffles me when businesses and business owners don’t respond to comments and questions online. Those are your people. They are saying, I’m interested in what you’re doing, I want more information. And then they’re ignored. That is so mind boggling to me.
I was training a client and she said to me: “I absolutely hate social media. I hate everything about it. I just don’t like it. I don’t get it.”
So, I said: “Ok, so what if I told you social media is a sales channel and a customer service channel instead? What would you think?”
And she said: “Well it’s still liking and commenting”.
I said: “Yeah, it is because you’re engaging with your customer direct, there’s no middleman. People don’t call or visit to ask questions anymore. They text you and email you and DM you on social media. So, if you’re not thinking of social media as a magnet for potential customers then we’ve got to figure out a way to make that happen because social media is a business tool.”
Social media is a direct link to your people. How great is that?
You can answer somebody’s question in 10 seconds with a comment, a DM, or even a voice message or a video if you want more personalization.
Tell us a little bit more about the clients that you serve.
I have two groups of clients.
The first are small businesses or self-employed individuals. Some of them have established businesses that have been going for five - ten years. But they’ve never used social media, they don’t understand it and they’re overwhelmed by the thought of even starting. Or they’ve been using it and it isn’t working for them because they don’t know what they’re doing.
They are very aware of their pain points. But they’re not aware of what they need. So, they don’t know that they need a social media strategy, because they don’t know what it is.
And they can push back a lot. It’s like teaching an old dog new tricks. They say, “Oh do I have to? Do we have to do all that? Do I have to show my face? Do I have to talk about myself?”
And I’m very blunt. I say to them: “Do you want to build your business or not? Do you want to be still around and relevant next year?”
The second group I work with are women starting their own business. They’re very motivated, and want to learn it all, but struggle with structure, organization, time management and how to use storytelling in their social media. They post facts and dry information.
They can also struggle with self-confidence, charging what they’re worth, knowing who their target audience are, and finding them, and knowing the why for their business. They’ve come to the realization that there’s so much to be done and they’re overwhelmed. But they know that social media works. It’s not a hard sell to them, like it can be for more established businesses.
I also support people with putting the right business systems in place to grow their business online. Everybody wants to make sales online, but they have no business systems in place on the backend to support that. They’ve got a website, but everything is manual, with no automations, nothing streamlined. They’re doing everything themselves. Kiwis love to DIY, and I tell them, you are the reason why you can’t grow your business, because you want to do it all yourself and you can’t.
I also want to teach small businesses owners how to use social media, so that they know what to look for when they get to the point of scaling and hiring somebody to do social for them. Because there are a whole bunch of people out there who think they’re social media managers because they’ve got 5,000 followers. But they don’t know what they’re doing. And a lot of the established businesses I work with are very apprehensive because they have been burnt by amateurs.
I also know that there are some business owners I can’t help. People who play the blame game, who don’t take responsibility for their own business success, and who never put the work into practice, and that’s not something that I need to take as a burden on myself.
So, you offer three services, your online course, your group coaching, and your social media strategies, and you also do some social media management for a lucky group of people?
I don’t do social media management anymore. I’m only training and educating people.
In 2021, my social media strategy service will also come with training. This year, I offered people a walk-through of their new strategy, but I realized they got stuck on implementing because they don’t know how to do it efficiently. So, the four trainings that will go with their new social media strategy will be systems, content planning and management, content creation, and reporting.
Then I’m going to do a lot more group coaching. That’s where I’ll grow my business most. And after the group coaching, people will have to opportunity to enter a mastermind that offers more one-on-one time with me.
I’m also going to revamp my three digital courses into one signature course.
And I’ll no longer be doing one-hour consultations or trainings. I’ll only offer 90-minute intensive consults, or three or six-month coaching packages.
I did so many one off consults this year, and they were great, but you can only get so much done in an hour. People get excited and I want to continue working with them. My client retention rate is great because I have a menu of secret services that I promote only once you’ve started working with me. I worked with people on average at least three times this year, because I built such a good rapport and they had such a good experience with me, that it was easy for them to come back.
So, you did over six figures in your first year. If you were to break that revenue down by service, how would that percentage breakdown look?
50% was strategy and training.
Social media management was an ongoing revenue stream for the whole 12 months, so that was 30% of my revenue. But I’ve now stopped offering that service.
Group coaching was about 20%.
I was conflicted about talking about the fact that I made $100,000 in my first 10 months. But I want other small business owners to know that they can do this as well and how I did it. I always follow up with a lesson or an action plan. I’m not bragging, I’m teaching.
I’m a massive advocate for talking about money. It helps other small businesses understand what’s possible. If more businesses talked about revenue, we’d all have better benchmarks to aspire to.
I agree. And that applies to salaries too. Corporations have played a trick on their employees by making them feel like their salary equates their worth. As a result, people are often too embarrassed to disclose their pay. And the only people that silence serves is big business, who then continue to get away with paying unequal salaries and over-rewarding senior executives. I’ve just tipped over $70,000 in my first year, which I feel pretty happy about, having never built a business before.
You should feel good about that. That’s amazing.
I always thought $100,000 was so far away and so difficult to make. And then it wasn’t. My goal for 2021 is to make $200,000, working 30 hours a week max by diversifying my digital products.
But a massive part of the reason I hit six figures is because I invested $20,000 of my money in learning, coaching, and masterminds this year.
That’s a phenomenal investment. Have you always invested that much?
No. I’d buy the odd course, and I’m always learning for free on YouTube university, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But this year, I found two women that I absolutely love in the online world and I learned as much as I could from them.
Shannon Lutz in the States has a business called the Social Bungalow. I think she hit $1.3million this year. She’s a marketing master. She made me realise how much it pays to be transparent about everything. She teaches you everything about her business. She does income reports every month, showing you where she made her money and that’s just unheard of here.
And then Stevie Dillon in Australia, who goes by Stevie Says Social. She’s transitioned from social media to online business coaching and I bought few of her courses, including her podcast course. That enabled me to build my podcast in three weeks. I just cut through all the bullshit. That’s what investing in learning and coaching does. It enables you to short cut the trial-and-error process.
I also bought Dean Graziosi’s and Tony Robbins’ Knowledge Brokers Blueprint. It’s massive, the biggest course I’ve ever bought. At first, I was a little hesitant, because of Tony Robbins …. But it’s so good. Plus, it’s one of those things that every year they make it better and you have it.
And did you buy that to learn how to put your courses together?
Yes. The Blueprint is about how to build a mastermind, but I used it to put my courses together in a week. I bought it right before Covid hit, and it was the perfect motivation to get through lockdown. When everyone else was having a moment, I was doing the work so I could be there for other people, providing them with affordable resources, and the Blueprint helped me do that.
Also, I learned a lot from how Tony and Dean presented their online course and resources. I buy a course for two reasons. I’m there to learn, but also to learn how they did it and how I can improve it. And it made me realise that in New Zealand we’re not there yet when it comes to understanding online learning.
That means there’s a huge opportunity for people like us who are getting in there. Well, I should say people like you, because I’ve only dipped my toes in the water.
I have so much work to do in that space. I built those courses, then I left them because I got busy.
But now I’m expanding my digital products. So, I’m going to consolidate those three courses and make an evergreen course with an email automation sequence and have that selling all the time. That’s a huge goal of mine for 2021. Because as much as I get energy from meeting people in person and training, I really want my time back next year.
And my prices are going up next year. My strategy and training package will be $5,000.
Why do you think your clients choose you? What is it about you?
I’m very blunt. There is zero fluff when it comes to me, but I’m also patient and I listen.
It’s not just a one-way street working with me. I do whatever I can to help my clients, whether it’s buying their products or services, or championing them on my own channels
I don’t make them feel like they’re dumb. I’m a business owner just like them. It’s just that I know a bit more about social media. And we always have a laugh, whether it’s a sad laugh or a crack up, and that’s a huge part of just being a decent human.
You have to do the work to get the results. So, I’m tough with my clients. I’m always saying: “What’s your action plan? What are you going to do after this?” I give them homework.
But ultimately, it comes down to my principle of giving people small wins. I break things down into small achievable steps and I make people feel good about their progress. A lot of people come to me battered and their confidence in themselves is low. And I force them to confront their little demons and to celebrate their small wins. I help them build confidence.
Yes. Let’s talk about that. Your mindset is so important as a business owner.
You must work on your mindset more than anything.
When you work for yourself, it’s easy to be thrown by a difficult client or a challenging situation and feel down on yourself. You can start to question everything. Should I be charging for this service if this client didn’t understand it? Am I worth what I’m charging? You can go really dark.
And it’s learning to snap out of that slump and knowing that having bad days is absolutely normal that makes a resilient mindset.
Because the reality is that business strategy is incredibly simple. It’s maybe not easy, because you have to execute it … but it’s simple. So, it’s your mindset that makes the difference.
Strategy is so simple. What do you want to achieve? Who are you talking to? Where are you going to talk to them? And how are you going to talk to them? What’s the conversation? That’s it.
But if you don’t have a mindset that is set for success, and what I mean by that is you believe in yourself, have faith in your abilities, and know that you’re doing your best for your clients, then you will always fail. You will let doubt, imposter’s syndrome, and comparison get in your way.
I worked on my mindset the most this year out of anything. Because I’d came from such a difficult situation, I didn’t want my mindset to trick me into thinking that I did not deserve success. And sure enough, the moment I hit six figures I had a moment of feeling I don’t deserve this, and next year I’m not going make this. But because of my mindset work I was able to snap out of it.
Tony Robbin’s course helped tremendously, because the first module is entirely about mindset. It comes from his years of being in business and understanding not everyone is going to like you. You’re going to lose money. You’re going to try stuff and it’s not going to work. Now I know how to get myself out of situations where my mind is going to try and fuck everything up. My mindset is going to pull me out of my slump because it’s a muscle. That part of the Blueprint has helped me stay motivated and laser focused on what I do for people.
And that’s another thing with mindset. If you don’t know who you’re talking to and what you do for them, your mindset is always going to be unstable.
There are a lot of people who are just getting by in business. Established business owners who are overwhelmed, stressed, and stuck in scarcity mindsets, because they’ve never planted that foundation of who they want to work with. When you do know who you’re here to help, it’s like the sea parts. It feels good and you know the direction you need to go in to find your perfect people.
Is there anything else that you recommend to build a healthy mindset?
I did two things this year that changed my life, and this sounds so hippy dippy, but it’s not.
First, I wrote out my goals on this massive piece of paper and I put on the wall behind my desk, so I see it every single day, multiple times.
Second, I recite ten gratitude points morning and evening out loud. I touch my fingers while I do it, so it’s a tactile experience.
There are core things that I say every time. Like I’m grateful that money flows freely easily and abundantly into my bank account. I’m grateful that I have a healthy body and a healthy mind. But some of them I like to do rapid fire because it’s interesting to see what I’m grateful for.
My gratitude practice has become a meditative state that I enjoy. And I get excited because I’m naming all these great things in my life. What better way to start the day than knowing all the things that help you be who you are and do what you do? Not every day is perfect, but every time I get overwhelmed, I bring myself back to my gratitude points. It has become this anchor for me now.
If you find an anchor, whether it’s breathing, meditating, gratitude points, or writing, you can accomplish so much. Because I’ve found this anchor, my moments of overwhelm and doubt are done in five seconds. I don’t dwell on them anymore. When tough moments come, I know it’s fleeting, and I anchor myself and do some gratitude points. And every single time it has helped.
And be realistic and understand that there are going to be an insane amount of fails in your first year, and that doesn’t define you or your business.
There should be fails. I feel like there haven’t been enough fails in my first year because I’ve played it too safe, and so next year I’m going to try harder and try and fail some more. I know a business coach who says you should see the first three years of your business as just training.
I feel like I had enough fails in my last job that I skipped over the failure years in this business.
Well like you say, you bought yourself a two-and-a-half-year head start.
Yeah. two-and-a-half-years of fails. I learned a lot.
My fails this year were more around lacking boundaries. Putting them in place but not sticking to them. Allowing my clients to think I’m available to them all the time. That’s a big one.
Also allowing men to mansplain and talk down to me and not stick up for myself. As a strong woman who advocates for other women, I see it as a fail that I didn’t stick up for myself in those situations. I know I need to get over it, but I’m still upset with myself for not doing something.
Then I wasted time on people who weren’t the right fit.
And I did not take enough time off. That’s why I’m taking four weeks off now.
So, I have one more kind of obvious question for you. Marketing? What do you do and what works?
Well social media marketing. Instagram is massive for me. 60-70% of my clients come through Instagram. This year was unusual because of the Covid funding. But even some of my Covid funding clients were recommended through people I’ve met on Instagram.
People follow me for my free tips, and they tell other people about me, and I also make friends on Instagram and then through meeting them in person I find clients.
So, Instagram and then word of mouth, because I do have a nice network now.
Those are the two main things.
So, what’s your content strategy for Instagram?
I talk about social media strategy, content creation and how to talk to your people. Then I also talk about business systems, and how to effectively manage your time. And I talk about mindset a lot now.
I create content on those topics because it feeds into the three sections of my group coaching program: strategy, systems, and content. And my other group coaching programme helps people launch a new service, product, website, or business. So, mindset and strategy link to that.
On my Instagram feed I do one educational post, then one business inspiration post. One gives actual steps to implement, and the other is more of a personal story. I talk about topics businesses need help with, overcoming struggle and transformations. Or I share things that have changed in my own life because of owning a business. These personal posts start the most conversations.
I try to email my list every Sunday with free tips. I usually write the email on the day, and I like writing about teachable moments in my life. Last week I did an email on how furniture shopping taught me about strategy. All I wanted to buy was pillows and art when I needed a bed and a couch and a table. The structural pieces that make a home functional. But I wanted the fun stuff. It’s the same with strategy. You need to build a strategy before you do Instagram reels.
I post a bit on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is interesting because I’m finding that people are viewing my posts, not liking, or commenting, and then messaging me.
This week I was walking from my office back to my house and a man stopped me and said: “I follow you on LinkedIn, I just loved watching your journey this year”. Then the woman he was with said: “I follow you on Instagram”. Both followed me on different networks, and neither of them had engaged. It made me realise I’ve got silent watchers and just because people aren’t engaging or commenting, doesn’t mean that they’re not seeing and valuing what I do.
Absolutely. Most of my clients who have come through LinkedIn have been silent watchers. And then they’ll just pop up in my inbox with a project.
It’s a testament to what you’re talking about and what you’re doing.
We’ve got to continue putting ourselves out there regardless of the vanity metrics, because it comes down to your own faith and belief in what you do and your capabilities.
If you link your self-worth to the attention you get online and nobody’s liking or commenting, you’re in trouble. Push through. You’re still amazing. You’re still brilliant. You still know what you’re doing. Just keep doing it. That’s what hard work is.
Create content for the love of learning and sharing.
I love learning. I love telling people who I meet on the internet what I learned.
And if you don’t like what you’re learning through your business, then why are you doing it?
Work with Jen
Jen helps business owners become confident social media masters with strategy and coaching. Check out more of Jen’s work at thesmallwinscompany.com.
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