Navigating the Challenges and Rewards of Entrepreneurship: A Real Talk on Planning, Marketing, and Data Analysis

Entrepreneurship is not for the faint of heart, but it can be rewarding.

This episode is some real talk as we discuss all things planning, marketing, data analysis, servicing clients, and most importantly, continuing to serve our businesses.

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Podcast transcript:

Kiva Slade: [00:00:01]

Hello, and welcome to Collab With Kiva. I'm your host, Kiva Slade. From the marbled halls of the US Congress to my racing-themed office chair, I've learned that there is no perfect path to the life of your dreams. My journey over the past 20 years has included being a legislative director for a member of Congress, policy director for a nonprofit, stay-at-home mom, homeschooling mom, jewelry business owner, and now the owner of a service-based business. Whether your journey has been a straight line or full of zigs and zags, join me and my guest as we share insights, hope, and lessons learned from our female entrepreneurship journeys. May the collaborative sharing of our stories be the tide that lifts your boat. Let's dive in.

[00:00:54]

Hello-hello-hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Collab With Kiva. We are officially in June. What does that mean? It's the last month of quarter two? How are things going? How are they not going well? What do you need to do to reach your goals? Those are definite questions that we all need to take some time to answer before we get too far into the month of June. That takes us too far into the end of Q2. So, if you're one of those people who may be sitting there saying, Kiva, I don't have any goals, don't worry, it's okay. It's never too late to make goals. And it's important when you have a business that you actually set goals and do strategic planning. It's one of my strong suits. I love working with business owners around where they are in their business and where they want to go. Because it's important.

[00:02:05]

If you don't know where you are, you won't know where you are going and therefore you won't even know when you have arrived there. So, it's really important to set some goals, sit down and do some planning to figure out what are those next steps, what's going well in your business, what needs to be tweaked in your business, and what you might need to stop doing in your business. So, I want to encourage you to set some goals if you don't have them. If you do, make sure that you're going back and you're looking at those things. Because part of it is that if you have this planning, you have to have the data to support it. So, what data points are you collecting in your business? Do you have a revenue goal? Is it broken down monthly? Is it broken down quarterly so that you know where you are at all times in terms of completion of that goal?

[00:03:07]

Maybe you have an email list. Are you tracking your open rates? Are you tracking your click rates? And there are a ton of other things that you could track as well through that to find out what is taking place with your email list. Is your email list primed to buy? Have they been nurtured enough that they are open to purchase when you are ready to sell them something? And as a service provider, how many discovery calls do you need to have monthly to gain a new client in order to meet your revenue goals? We can take that a step back. How many new leads do you need to add to your mailing list every month to have those discovery calls?

[00:04:02]

These are things that seem like, oh, I need to have five new clients by the end of the year. Okay. How do we get those five clients? How do they come into your ecosystem in order to make their way through that journey to become a client? Maybe you're a product-based business. How are your conversions coming? How are your ads performing? And let's be honest, it keeps going and going and going. It's an ongoing process that each and every one of us is going through as it relates to building our businesses. And because of that, being an entrepreneur is not for the faint of heart. It truly isn't. I've seen several social posts lately where people are tired. They're tired. They're tired. You might be one of those people who are tired.

[00:05:06]

Algorithms that keep changing. You're tired maybe of making rules, or you're tired of some other aspects of the business. It's okay to be tired. Be honest with yourself. What are the things that aggravate you as it relates to running your own business and what are the things that actually bring you joy? You may not be in a position where you can farm out those things that aggravate you, but you are in a position to determine those things that you actually need to keep doing. Because just like we talked about a few episodes ago, bras are like a business, they need to fit. Are you doing things that do not fit you? So, there are truly levels to this entrepreneurship game.

[00:06:00]

Don't let anyone's Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube, Twitter, or whatever else I've forgotten, fool you. There are levels to this. And if you don't have an audience, you can't expect certain things to just magically happen in your business. People listen to podcasts by someone who has a 100,000-person audience, and it makes it seem so easy. Guess what? They spend a lot of time building that 100,000-person audience. They spend a lot of time nurturing that 100,000-person audience. They spend a lot of time giving that audience what they want, what they need, so that when that offer is made or when that person wants to remain top of mind, tip of tongue, it's all of that other work that you're not seeing.

[00:07:10]

And let's be truly honest, depending on who you listen to, there's a pending recession. Food and gas prices are soaring. The times of thinking you can speak about something once or twice and people will buy it, oh, those times are so going, going, gone. It's important that you have a marketing plan that will continually get you in front of new audiences while also simultaneously nurturing your current audience. And all the time, people are wondering what are those steps when building a business. If it has anything to do with online space, you need to build your audience. What does that mean? What does that look like for you? Are you going live? Do you have a Facebook community? Do you have an email list? What are you doing? Do you have a lead magnet on your website?

[00:08:15]

This is something that's been on my to-do list because as I've made a shift in some of my service offerings, I took down my lead magnet. And the reality is I need to get another one up there because I need to bring in new people into my audience. And that is one way in which to do that. And in order, though, to do that, I have to be ruthless with my calendar, straight up, ruthless. It means I need for me to create whitespace in my calendar so I can think and create. I cannot be in meetings all day, every day, and do client work and do my internal business work. I just can't. It's just not possible. And it just doesn't work that way, quite honestly.

[00:09:10]

So, I literally have to be ruthless and intentional with open space on my calendar, especially during my work day. I'm very specific on the days that I have calls. I'm very specific on the days that I do guest interviews for my podcast. I'm very specific on the days that I do client meetings. I have to do those things in order to create the whitespace that I need physically as well as mentally in my business. As a service provider, if you are giving 97% to your clients and 3% to your business, what do you do when those clients step away? What do you do if those clients pivot and change something in their business, their life?

[00:10:08]

You will find yourself at ground zero, trying to then build your audience that knows about you and what you do. And you will be at ground zero trying to keep yourself top of mind to tip of tongue. That's not a good place to be. It's not a place I advocate for anyone to find themselves. It's enough that this life feels like a hamster wheel, if we're honest, especially being entrepreneurs. But you don't have to be on the wheel if you do certain things. And one of those, again, is making sure that you have a marketing plan. And for some people, hey, there are all about they've built an organic following. Kudos, claps, confetti, falls, all the things for you.

[00:11:07]

The reality is for some people, you're going to need to spend some money on ads, straight just awareness ads to get additional eyeballs to see you beyond SEO, beyond what you're doing on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Beyond that, you need to get in front of new eyeballs. And when you get in front of those eyeballs, they may be led to listen to your podcast, to go to your website. You need to have a way to capture that information and nurture them. It's just the way things are nowadays. And again, it doesn't have to be expensive. It could be $5 a day that you're spending on ads. You might run them for a week. Turn them off for a week or run some more for a week.

[00:12:07]

You start to build up people who now are seeing you who would not have seen you before. Because, again, as I've shared on numerous occasions, if you build it, they will come, is so not true. You have to build it. You have to tell them how to get there. You have to have those wavy, dancey little balloon people out front. You have to advertise it. You need to probably have a plane flying over and a host of other things in order for them to come. And guess what? They still might not show up. So, it's important that you find that balance that allows you to serve your clients as well as serve yourself.

[00:12:56]

When I have that whitespace on my calendar, I am able to create. My brain is free to think of things. I still am singing the praises of my building a second brain course that I took because I've developed a system that continuously helps me help myself. Let's be honest, that's half the battle right there. It's not perfect. I'm making progress, though, and progress is better than stagnation. And I am able to find the time or make the time to read the things that I want to read to better myself. That also sometimes leads to content. I'm able to think through things a lot deeper. And it's working for me and that's important for me. And just to talk about marketing, marketing takes time. It takes time for you to gain traction. Don't think that you put something out there again and you set it once and you assume everybody has seen it. They haven't. They really, really, really haven't.

[00:14:10]

Because you've talked about something once, they didn't hear you. They really didn't. You have to keep at it. And you sound like a broken record, but so what? Keep going. Because marketing takes time for you to gain traction. For example, I've spent the last year speaking about systems and processes and all things operation. Don't get me wrong, I still love all of those things, but honestly, being in the day-to-day of other people's businesses has a capacity ceiling. You will max yourself out. And with more of my work now focusing on analytics and measurement and how those things impact day-to-day business operations. It's a struggle because all of my previous marketing is gaining traction.

[00:15:04]

And I'm not necessarily talking, though, about some of those things right now. I'm talking about other things. And it's like those are the things that people are now hearing about, though. They're hearing about systems and processes and they're like, Oh, that's just the first time I knew that you did that. Or they're saying something else along the lines of, "I've been waiting to work with you. I knew my business needed to grow some more." And you're like, Wow! So, people have been in the wings. They've been there waiting for that time to go and want to do something with you. And you may be at a point where you're like, "Yeah, I'm trying to do something a tad bit different." How do you deal with that? What do you do? Those are definitely just things that you have to keep in mind as you are running your business.

[00:16:03]

Knowing that marketing takes time to gain traction, you have to have a plan in place to start talking about something new if you have something new. Otherwise, people are going to associate you with what you previously were talking about. So, if you have something new that's coming out or you have something new that you want to talk about or that you're looking to do, you need to start talking about it over and over and over again ad nauseam. Because you need to get on everyone's nerves in order to replace what they're currently having you associated with in their brain. So, I say all of those things to say this isn't a podcast of answers today. This is a week of commiseration. I am hearing a lot. I've been seeing a lot, reading a lot. And I just want people to know you are not alone in this journey. You are on the right path. Trust yourself and your gut. Keep it up. I'm cheering for you.

[00:17:11]

So, you've made it this far. Keep going. Don't give up. Just know that there are pieces to this puzzle. There are levels to this game. And you need to be ready to have all your pieces together and to know when it's time to level up your game. Until next time, I'm Kiva, signing off from Collab With Kiva, and I look forward to speaking with you again. Bye.

[00:17:43]

Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Collab With Kiva. Each of us has a different path. And I hope that this episode gave you some takeaway that has left you inspired and motivated to keep pressing forward on your unique path. Make sure you subscribe so you don't miss out on any future episodes. And of course, your reviews on Apple are greatly appreciated. If you're a small business owner ready to start making data-driven decisions in your business, and you know that without the data, you're really just guessing, make sure to visit my website, the516collaborative.com, and let's schedule a time to talk to make sure that you can harness the power of data in your business. I'll see you next time. Bye.

Meet Kiva Slade - the Founder and CEO of The 516 Collaborative. With a unique background in high-power politics on Capitol Hill and sixteen years as a homeschooling mama, Kiva found her calling in the online business world as a trusted guide for entrepreneurs looking to build the business of their dreams.

Kiva's work began behind the scenes, orchestrating the back end of businesses and managing teams. But her inner data diva couldn't help but notice that small businesses needed help harnessing the power of data for growth. So she and her team set out to uncover and tidy up the data required to enable clients to grow their businesses confidently and easily.