Latest / Do Small Business Like a Big Boss Podcast / Building Six-Figures Organically: Social Media, Government Contracts & Community

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Building Six-Figures Organically: Social Media, Government Contracts & Community · Do Small Business Like a Big Boss Podcast

• Aisha Massengill: If I make a plan, I'm going to see it through. Like there's no other choice for me but to get it done. Welcome to Do Small Business Like a Big Boss, where we explore the real stories, hard-earned lessons, and game-changing strategies of entrepreneurs who've moved beyond the side hustle and build businesses that scale with confidence. This show is proudly sponsored by Project Icon. I'm Host Aisha Jorge Massingil, your small business legal guide. Let's dive in. Hey bosses. Welcome to the latest edition of Do Small Business Like a Big Boss. I am your host, Aisha Jorge Massingil, your small business legal guide. And today we are chopping it up with Myone Holmes, owner and senior strategist of Socially Polished. Socially Polished is a boutique digital marketing agency in Washington, D.C., specializing in social media strategy. Personal branding, B2B, and B2B social selling and brand management. Welcome, my own. Hi, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here today. Awesome. Now, the first thing I had to ask because I thought I was busy, but then I saw you have four boys. I have three boys. So how did you navigate that? I saw, you know, you started this thing still while working your nine to five. How did you navigate? raising three boys, working a nine to five, and starting a new business. prayer. No. No, my husband was a very big help. He is I am blessed that he's super supportive of me and the vision that God blessed upon my life. And so the other piece with that was that we both early on realized that the trade off was worth it. So me being able to build my own business and what that could bring to me in regards to ⁓ so I initially started to build my own business because I feel like they need that little backstory. I initially built my own business because at the time one of our sons was in the midst of being diagnosed with autism. And as we were going through the testing and everything, all I kept hearing was he needs more one on one, he needs more one on one, he needs more one on one. And so in my mind, I said no one's gonna give me him as much one to one as I will. And so I told my husband, I'm about to start working for myself. And he was like, okay. And he knows that anything I say I'm gonna do, I'm gonna do it. And so it was me giving up some hours of sleep so that I could build the business during the hours that would be considered sleep time. I'd work on client work then. My lunch break was not really my lunch break. I would take my lunch breaks to like take client calls at that time, or when I got off work, I'd have client calls in the evening. And so that's how I went about building it. So what was the day job? That you transitioned to and how did you decide that this was the thing you were gonna do? So my day job was in marketing. I often tell people I just cut out the middleman. ⁓ so my day job was working in marketing, but I work for a healthcare company in marketing. And so some of the marketing I had to do was like boots on the ground marketing as well. So like going to visit physician offices, hospitals, et cetera, and having meetings. And so that in between time, I take a little extra, like time and like okay thank thank god for cell phones and so I had have my email I've always had my email on my cell phone so I could check my email from my business to see like did anybody text me or message me I could make my quick post because I've built my business straight off of Facebook platform initially so I built six figures just using Facebook no paid ads just all organic on Facebook okay And we're I wanna get to that because I did see that you were doing some videos about guerrilla marketing, but also then talking about the need for paid ads. So I wanna dig in in there a little bit. But before we get there, a lot of people have a business idea and they're trying to wait for the perfect time, right? You just talked about this really being born out of necessity. What did your first 90 days actually look like given all the things you had going on? Restless nights. ⁓ So the the real of it was because again, keep in mind I had four boys. And not only did I have four boys, but one of them was no, actually two of my sons were special needs. One had something called apraxia and then one was on the spectrum. So I was dropping my kids off to three different schools. So I would get up in the morning and my husband at the time worked in Washington DC. So he would get up early morning to catch the train to go to DC, which was an hour away. So he would leave the house at 7 a.m. So when he's leaving, I am getting breakfast ready and getting the kids up so that come eight o'clock we can start our rounds of dropping everybody off. So then I'd go to work, I'd have my lunch breaks that again I would use for the business. And then after work, when I got off, I'd pick the kids up. My son had occupational therapy and speech therapy on certain two days a week. So on the one day I would take him and on the Fridays my husband would take him. ⁓ excuse me, on the Saturdays, my husband would take him. But on the one day week that I had to take him, I would be napping in the car because I was just so exhausted. Then my son would be in the therapy. I'd go to McDonald's. Thank goodness for McDonald's. I'd go to McDonald's, grab the kids something to eat, happy meal so they get their little toy. And we had the van with the TV screen inside. And I pop a movie in and I lay that chair back in the parking lot and be sleep, set my alarm to wake up for when the the session was over, go in there, talk to the specialist, and then bring them back out and then come home and start prepping dinner. Now my husband was great because as soon as he came home, he was in the mix. So he would come home, take his little 15 to himself, and then he would finish dinner. I would come upstairs and go slam the sleep. And then he would finish dinner with the kids, get the kitchen cleaned, get them bathed and in bed, story time and all that. So where I did the morning routine, he did the night routine. And then I'd wake up at about midnight and I would work from like maybe midnight to two in the morning or three in the morning, go to sleep till six, wake up and do it all over again. Whew. I'm tired just hearing that. ⁓ shout out to the per person who invented the ⁓ D V D player and the headrest. ⁓ my goodness. Because I you know, I had three boys all little at the same time and ⁓ my gosh, the just the fights that were prevented, the peace that was granted by virtue of that you know, confessing to not being a perfect parent in an ideal world, you wouldn't have your kids in front of the screens. But listen, sometimes it's a McDonald's and screen kind of night. Okay. It it definitely got us through those little Because I was like, mommy don't have it in or I can't go another moment. I can't answer another question. Yeah. Yeah. As as my kids got older, those poor guys, they're my kids are in their early twenties now. But when they were younger, ⁓ in the teen years, they would just finally go, So are we on our own for tonight? And I'm like, Yep, there's stuff in there. Go have a bowl of cereal, go make yourself a sandwich. Like you're not gonna starve. This there's stuff to be in. But I'm curious, what did you tap into? That's a tough schedule. To have to sustain. How long did you have to sustain that? And at what point did you say, you know, and I I gotta make some changes here? And what did that look like? My goal was always, I can't leave until my what I'm making on the side, like with this building business, is matching my salary. That was always the plan because I'm r I'm responsible to these other people. I'm not just responsible to myself. And even though if I had said it to my husband, he would be like, okay, and we'll make a way, because again, he's super supportive, but that would be unfair. And so I just I've always been a go-getter and always been one like if I make a plan, I'm going to see it through. Like there's no other choice for me but to get it done. And so because that's always been in me, and that comes from I saw my mom do that. So there's never been something that Like I always say either it's gonna shake or it's gonna shake. Like there's no question about getting it done. And so I had that mentality coming into it. And it was also the point that me building this business is going to give me the freedom to be home with my kids so that I could give our son more one on one time so that when he becomes older, he can be an adult that lives in this world without us. Cause that was my main that was really my main goal. It was him. And now here we are, and he's a teenager who's on the honor roll, who's we're talking about college, getting ready for him to graduate next year. And so I know that that hard work now, years later, I can see that the hard work that we put in was really worth it. Well, congratulations on that. Well done. Well done. So at what point did you in in your business's trajectory did you get to the point where you could fire your job? How long did that take? It was about six between six and seven months. And that was enough time because let me I was exhausted. Like it was starting to take a toll on my body, as you can imagine. And that's just like the regular day. That's not even adding in. I I look back and like, what was I on? Because we have a older son who our older son is six years apart from the the last three. And so he was on a traveling basketball team. ⁓ my goodness. So that means practices on top of being on the school team. So that means practices that I have to take him to and going to games because mom's not missing a game. So I'm lugging everybody to the game. Like, come on guys, let's go to the game. And then that's the other piece. Like on certain days, like when I would building the business, I'm telling him I can't go to the game. So my husband would just I'd be like, Don't even come home. He would go straight to the game. instead of coming home, he would go straight to the game. I'll be like, I can feed them and put ⁓ up again to do something. I'll put ⁓ right here in the middle of the floor to play crayons while I doze off. But yeah, I can't I can't make it to the game. I'm not gonna I can't go another minute. And so he would just get off work and then come straight. I really think having a really great support system and my husband and then I had a aunt that would watch my kids sometimes. And then my dad and my extra love mom, which is not my actual mom, but my dad's wife, they all like were a part of helping to raise my children and watching them so that I could do the things to build my business. So at one point, my dad in one summer, my dad had my kids for two the youngest two for like a month. And that gave me like less pressure than I could put. Okay, I'll put the other two. in something or program from nine to three. And so then I won't have to worry nine to three. I have my time. This is once I left my job, nine to three, I can then go ahead and work on building my business in the summertime from nine to three. And I don't have I know I don't have any ⁓ I have undivided time. And so I really feel like it's important, no matter who it is, having a support system really helped me to get to Though I didn't have the financial support system like, you know, some other people who come into it and, you know, people who look different from me come into it with a different, but I had support in the emotional standpoint and the support with ⁓ our children. So you talked about the importance of support and arriving at that six month mark and being able to fire the day job. What then are the next steps for you in building your business from that point on? ⁓ for me it was the first thing was my structure and making sure I was structurally sound. So making sure that I'm registered, making sure that and we always think about, okay, you need a LLC, you need an EIN. That's like the bare minimum. Okay, that's bare minimum basics. But making sure that I had ⁓ the business account, making sure that I'm keeping my finances separate. Making sure that I'm taking out taxes because I never want to owe Uncle Sam. ⁓ I don't want that kind of beef. just saying, making sure, you know, getting the website done and making sure that I'm set up professionally, then making sure that I am registered to be able to do federal contracts, right? Because now it's different types of money and different clients that I can have. So expanding. my ⁓ client portfolio from just small business owners to working for, you know, the government or corporations, but making sure that my business is sound and concrete enough to be able to handle that influx of clients as well. Well, first of all, thank you for doing the commercial for my law firm. It's a conversation I have every single day. It's one thing to file papers, but if you really want to run your business, like it's more than just getting the LLC. It is all the things that you just ticked off. So thank you for that. ⁓ absolutely. But one of the things, for forgive my naivete, because we, you know, we're in the the backyard of all the government contracting. It wouldn't naturally follow for me that a marketing firm would be one to go after government contracts. So What brought you to the doorstep of that and tell me about that process? So the other pieces I invested in myself. I always throughout my entire journey, I would invest a little something. And then when I made a certain amount in my business, then I would say, okay, the next thing I'm gonna invest in is X. So whether that be a coach, mastermind, mentor, etc., I continue to pour into my business and into myself. And so Me being online, me being in a coaching program, and then I'm hearing all these people talking about government contracts, government contracts. I'm like, what? So then I go down the rabbit hole and I start researching. This is before Chad GPT and all that do the research for you. And I'm like, okay, they have all of these contracts out there for me and the work that I'm doing over a year span, I could literally do the same thing in a three month span for someone and get paid the same. Like, okay, ⁓ I need to work smarter. And so and then realizing that federal government contracting is different from our local and state entities. So then realizing, okay, I need to be registered in all places so that I could go after any of the contracts. And not only that, I joined a contracting program. And that's where then I met folks from other like states and locations to say, okay, here are some folks where we can go in on a contract together. So I don't necessarily have to be what's called the prime, which is like the main point of contact for a contract. I can go in on a contract with someone from Texas in Houston and they're the prime and I just do X portion of the work. So I do the marketing portion. They may do the full on strategy. And then someone else like you may be the lawyer who reads over the contracts. And then once all of that is done and they need to market said new program or offer, then I come in and do the marketing piece. Fantastic. Was that a key in kind of stabilizing your company financially? Or what were some of the other levers that you pulled to do that? No, that was actually a way to diversify my revenue. Okay. Stabilizing was getting clear, like something that I talk about all the time is being very clear on my avatar and getting clear on my messaging and who I'm targeting. That's that was my way of stabilizing and being consistent. I couldn't just show up one month. I always say, show me someone with no lead calls or sales. I'll show you someone who hasn't been marketing in the last 30 to 45 days. Because the marketing, you marketing this week doesn't mean the the leads or the calls are going to be booked on Friday. That's not what that means. It means that it takes time. It's just like a garden. So your business and marketing is just like a garden. You have to plant the seed, you have to water it, nurture it, feed it. And then right, your garden will start to sprout up and grow. The leads will begin to come. And so it's the same thing. And so realizing these pieces, again, taking what I knew in my nine to five and transferring it into my own business and being adamant about always, always be marketing. No matter if it's a slow season, I'm tired, I'm stressed, I'm I have to continue marketing. Because the other piece was I was the face of my business. So because I'm the face, I always have to continue to show up. And so in doing that and then being again that foundation piece, knowing my numbers, right? It's not just about because the revenue that comes in is not all yours. Right. There are operation expenses. Then I started to grow. So now I have a team. And so I now I have salaries that I have to pay. Now I have these taxes that I'm gonna have to pay. Now I have other like again, I'm investing. So trainings, et cetera, that I'm paying, I'm going to events. So now I have travel that I have to pay for. So you have to take into accountability all of those pieces. And so once I realized, okay, knowing when I have peak season in my business versus when I have a low season, knowing my churn rate of clients churn rate, meaning How often are clients coming in and going out? And then knowing what my retention rate is. And so really knowing my numbers. The the one I will say, hiring a CPA, though it like hurt my heart to pay for it. Hiring a CPA and investing in a CPA really, really helped me because my CPA told me when I was able to hire another person. Cause me, I'm looking, I'm like, ⁓ I can hire so-and-so. And it's like, wait a minute, boo. Mm-hmm. Because let's look at your churn rate. Let's look at what you're charging. Let's look at and so sitting down with my CPA, right, on a quarterly basis, reviewing my numbers. And then when the end of the year comes, then he's telling me, like, hey, here's what you have in position, here's what you made, here's a without, here's how much we're paying in taxes. But hey, here's what you can do next year. And here's some ways that we can like make your money work for you. So then again, it's like having your dream team because then working with your CPA. And then bringing in your lawyer because then okay, now I was an LLC. Now I need to be LLC S Corp, right? So I'm trying to keep as much money as I can. And so realizing that you might start off as a please don't do this. And I know you can speak to this. Please don't sign off and register your business as solopreneur. That's the biggest thing I can give you. Right. But being a solo LLC is different. And so, and then being an LLC that's an S Corp is different. And so then my CPA telling me when it was time for me to change over, then going to because I have been a firm believer now to work in my wheelhouse. That's my that's what it is. My wheelhouse is not to do what a trademark officer can do is not to do what a registrations, titles, and trust lawyer can do. That's not my business. So to hire what I don't know so that I can make sure it's done efficiently and effectively. And so doing those things help to create a sound and stable business for me. Let the church say amen. there's so much to so much to unpack there. Just first of all, for the listeners, definitely get your own CPA. When you are taxed as a solopreneur, number one, you don't have the live liability protection that you get from having the LLC, but you're also not advantaged from a tax perspective. And then LLC gives you the protection, but doesn't necessarily give you the tax advantage. And you have to be making a little bit of money before you can take that designation as an S-corp. So the S-corp is not the structure. X the S-Corp is a tax designation that tells the IRS to be nicer when they tax your organization. So I am not a CPA. I know enough to be dangerous. So please make sure you Check ⁓ check with your CPA on these kinds of issues. But I think you started to pivot into some of the things about consistency and sowing seeds. And I always say like having the patience, even in my own business, sometimes you have this sensation of shouting into the void because like you're doing all of this effort and you're like, is anyone out there? And then slowly but surely you'd have people coming, I see you everywhere. And I'm like, I'm really, I'm not everywhere, but I'm I'm there enough that you know that I'm there. Great. You just start to see little kernels and little things start to bloom, but it is a long game, the consistency. And ⁓ I but I wanted to know when you have a brand new entrepreneur that doesn't have much social media presence or other mechanisms for marketing their organization, where do you actually tell them to start? You talked about Facebook, but walk me through how you get to that ICA and how you tell them where to start. So where you start is based on where your client avatar is. So I don't off the brick say start on Facebook, start on LinkedIn, start on no. We look at where's your client, the per the purchaser, where are they hanging? So that potential client or that potential customer, where would they be? And where would they be most attracted to your content and reviewing your content? And then I always say the power of one. And so for me, that means one funnel, one platform, one offer. Because so many times we have 500 offers. We're trying to be on all the platforms initially. And then we are making all this noise and we're not, you're not able to hone in on your messaging. You're not able to hone in on what's working and what isn't because you're trying to be everywhere. And then most of the time you're not tracking any data. So if we stick with the power of one, one offer, one funnel, one platform, meaning one social platform that you're on, then you can really take the 90 days, dial it in, tune it up. and then be really effective. Then from there, once you either hire a marketing team or you've done well on the first platform, then you can expand. And then that's where it becomes being omnipresent, repurposing your content so you can be on multiple platforms. So how do you talk to, you know, an early early stage entrepreneur to resist that temptation to try to be omnipresent because just generally I think ⁓ even in my personal life, there's just so many apps and I I've like told my friends like I am not joining another thing. You're gonna You're gonna talk to me through these couple places. I am not going to another platform. So how do you get people to focus and dial in ⁓ on those, you know, like that one or two platforms when they're starting until they perfect it. I give it to them and the example of it's the difference between going outside and me going to a neighbor's house and ringing the doorbell and speaking to a neighbor versus me going outside to a stadium with a what's that little the little thing that's like this where it's like record like you yell into it like old school cheer later, old school yeah, bullhorn. trying to get the attention of the folks. That's the difference. And so if you can and the other piece I say to people is like because ⁓ mainly everyone works or either has worked a nine to five. So you gave your nine to five five years or five days or twenty days. You mean to tell me you can't give this plat this one platform ninety days of full effective attention? That doesn't make sense to me. But you gave your job five years to do whatever, whenever, however to you and the outcome still became the same and yet a little bit of increase of two point five percent increase it, right? As opposed to if we're saying we're gonna be consistent and we're going to hone in so that we can increase our marketing and increase our leads and in turn increase the number of sales we have, why not? You you really have nothing to lose. Yeah. Rather than trying to be everywhere and nowhere at the same time. I like that. The bullhorn. You stuh shouting. So you I've I've seen you talk about kind of I would I say getting gully with it. And doing more like guerrilla marketing, just really being out there and it and it being more organic versus putting the money in to buy ads. For someone who's an early stage entrepreneur or business owner, how do you recommend they attack gaining that visibility? And at what point do they consider overlay of ads? I mean, let's be honest. A lot of times when we're starting off, especially when you're teaching yourself business. You don't know first, you don't know to use other people's money. That's the first thing. You're trying to build your business using your own money, which again, that's the other thing you should not be doing. But if in case fact you are starting off with no money, which many small new entrepreneurs are, then you're starting off organic. And then being starting off organic, I just tell you to be aggressive in that organic marketing. So if we're on the what one platform. Sending DMs, making sure you're being consistent with your posting, sharing stories, replying to comments. The other piece is the you have to pull the people off of the platform because that's not your platform. And so we've seen where Facebook and Instagram have gone down. And so you have to pull the people and start to build your own email list so that you can continue to connect and nurture them and push them to the yes for a sale. Right. So That's the first piece. Then once you have the money to invest in ads, the first piece you can start doing with investing in, and I'm talking about meta ads, not I'm not necessarily talking about Google ads because those are separate or TikTok ads. ⁓ but if we're talking about meta ads, the first thing you can start to do is use meta ads to incr heighten your brand awareness. And so you can take a $10 ad spin and if you you should be posting reels, looking at the reels that you've posted for the week. Whichever reel had the highest engagement, and then running your $10 ad spend to that, and then having the people either DM you or follow your page. So you can grow your following. If they DM you, then once they direct message you, you can follow up with messages again to nurture them to what? The sale. Then from there, as your revenue starts to grow, then you need to start investing in advertising. The piece that folks wait for. thinking that they have to have five or ten thousand dollars initially to run ads. And that is not the the truth. The other piece is once you do start running ads, you want to make sure that when you're making money that you're pouring it right back into your advertising ad spend. So that your ad, what should be happening is that once you're running ads regularly, your ads should pay for themselves. So you talked about this a little bit earlier, but I just want to make sure that we amplify for the audience because you mentioned that you started on meta. And you mentioned like being where the people are at. Can you just like put a finer point on how do you go about choosing which platform is going to be your primary platform that you're just gonna kill for that first 90 days? If you're looking at your target audience, and you can do this with you can Google it or you can use chatty or Claude or whatever, but ask it, tell it who your avatar is. So if it's women 25 to 55, married. What's their income range? So you want to ask it the psychographics and the demographics of your avatar. You want to make sure you have those things. Then it will spit out to you on average which platform your avatar's on. So on average, we're looking at if we just said the avatar that I was just talking about, women, if we're talking about 35 to 55 or 65 who have an income range of 75 to 250,000 household income range, married or in a relationship. have one to three children, that would be Facebook. That would be Facebook. And then we're moving over to that maybe Pinterest. But it depends on what you're selling as well. Selling products, I would definitely say Pinterest. If you're selling professional services, then yes, it would be Facebook. And using your Facebook, not just your business page, because those are real dormant, but using your profile and using the Facebook communities, which is what I did. I was omnipresent in those communities. And then not only that, When you are on these platforms, you have to network with other business owners. So I'm in marketing, Aisha's in, she's a lawyer. And then if we get a CPA, and then I don't know who else we let's just say we the three, right? Maybe another person is a business strategist. And then we say, okay, here are the communities I'm in. Then you tell me the communities you're in. Then when I'm in whatever Facebook communities that I focus on, if I see someone looking for a lawyer, I tag you. If you see someone look for a marketer, you tag me. So now I don't even have to be as present in certain communities because I know that you're in there looking for me and for you. And I know that you and the other folks in our little, let's call it our squad, are only gonna tag each other for those particular things. So what happened was from the coaching program I was in, I met someone I did organic social media marketing. There was someone who focused on meta ads. There was another person who focused on websites. And there was another person who only focused on, what did she do? I think it was like brand storytelling. So between all of us, we said, all right, when we're in communities, we're and then there was a project manager person. We're gonna tag each other. And that's what helped us because then we're tagging each other. If I make a post, they're commenting. If they make a post, I'm commenting on the post. So now we're increasing each other's reach. We're co-signing for each other. And the thing was, it's not some people might be like, well, you don't really know how they work. No, because what we did was we bartered with each other. So if I barter with you, hey, I'm gonna write you X amount of post or hey, I'm gonna take over your social for two weeks. So and so, hey, I'm gonna set up an ad for you. I'll run it for one week, then you have to run it the rest yourself. So we bartered with each other to see what it was like to work with each other. So then we could talk to the process of working with each other. And then now we have folks who now I can get a testimonial, right? Cause if you're a new business owner, maybe you don't have testimonials. So now I can get a testimonial. Now if we're a group of five total, that's four testimonials I have. That is four people who are now tagging me. That is four people who are now commenting on my posts. So now I like to say you should have a raving fan of one hundred. I at least have four. So now I only need ninety six more. Right. But if they're helping me to do that, again, we're all doing it organically. That's what helped me to like grow and get substantial. Then you start getting clients. And then if you're good at what you do, then your clients are raving about you. And then your clients will tag you. So then that's what happens. And then that becomes kind of like the referral system because now my clients are tagging me. Okay. Now my client, okay, if my clients brought in more than two people, now I'll say, Hey, I I really love that you are sharing, you know, my work with other folks. Let's talk about a joint venture or joint partnership or an affiliate partnership. And that's where I can give that client a discount or say, hey, you bring X amount of people, you get a month free or whatever that may look like for you. So now again, you're adding to the amount of people who are raving about the work that you do. Yeah, I think that's so phenomenal because I'm about to ask you a couple of AI related questions, but the The importance of community and in real life connection, I think, can't be overstated, not only from a business perspective, but your own mental health and survival to be connected to other humans in this very unique experience. So I hope that folks really rewind that section back, really think about and listen to it because that power of community to grow your business, to augment the places where maybe you have opportunities for fortification is like. Really, really critical. And it's wonderful that you all had different marketing people. Cause I think one of the other things is this sense of competition. Like, you know, well, I don't want to be a community because I'm really competing. It's like, no, there's different lanes. Even as a lawyer, there are different lanes that can be occupied. I, you know, I do business and employment, but I also do investigation. So if you're a law firm and like for law firms, for example, the money is w in the litigation. So they don't want to do the investigation because that conflicts them out. I'm like, I'll do the investigation and you get to get the big money, right? So there's different lanes that you can occupy when you think about your business and collaboration with other owners, at least for me, especially in the B to B space. It yeah Different in the consumer, direct to consumer space, but in my space, like that's really important. Identifying like where can I fortify someone else? Is there like a unique lane that I can occupy in their space when I can where I can augment what they do and they can augment what I do? But we are in the, you know, we're here in the AI age. And I know that you've spoken at different AI summits and written about AI-driven reputation management. So for the small business owners out there who maybe feel intimidated by AI. What's like a simple and practical way for them to get started? The simple, the most effective thing that you need to do is first in learning about prompting, training your AI system. So training it in your voice, in knowing your clientele, knowing your business. So feeding it as much information about you or your business as you can. So that would mean again, that avatar, you should have a brand guidebook. feeding it the brand guidebook, ⁓ if you have a just a one pager or feeding it your website so that it can learn as much about you. If you have blog posts or social posts that you've written, if you have videos that you've done, transcribing them and feeding all of that to your AI. So now it understands your voice, your tone, the brand and the essence of your company. So that then when you ask it to do particular things, that it will feel as if you did it. That's the best thing that you can do for yourself and in using AI. The other piece is that I want you to realize that AI is not going to replace you. It's meant to enhance you. And so if we think about AI in that, in that formation, then it won't feel as much like an enemy and ⁓ I don't want to feed it things because then it's gonna take over my. No, it's going to enhance and help you. So if you think of it like a helper, then I think it'll help you go alonger. It'll get you further with using it in your business. Yeah, I think of it for me, I think of it as like having a junior associate as opposed to like it's gonna do what I can do. Cause I you know, I've said it many times on this show, I say it in real life that AI contains information, but it doesn't contain expertise. You are the secret sauce. You are, you know, you are what brings the fire. So there's a place for AI to make you more efficient. For me, I love to write, but I take a long time. And so sometimes it just helps me. And one of the favorite things I do is I say like, I do put a bunch of stuff in there and I'll say, based on everything you know about me, this following task, right? After I've given it all of that stuff to be like, don't just give me some generic thing you saw from other people. Because if you play around in the large language models enough, you'll see they start spitting out the same stuff. So I'm like, no, they still because they're just pulling it from the internet, right? Yeah. So you have to give them your secret sauce, your flavor to to make it more ⁓ unique to you. So just pausing on that for a minute, I wanna know what was the hardest thing for you about building socially polish that nobody warned you about. Like, I mean, because you're dealing with the kids, you're dealing, you know, with the Transportation, offloading from nine to five, bringing on team members. As you look back on your journey, what was like the hardest thing that you just had no idea was coming? ⁓ I guess it would be two things. One is I'm thinking I'm gonna have just this massive amount of time. goodness. Freed up and having my own business. I'm like I work for myself, I can make my own no. So I wish someone had told me that. And the other piece was, like I said, mentioned before, the ebb and flow of business, the high peak and low peak season. And understanding that and knowing that would have really helped me and preparing me for that so that I can be ready and like preparing me ahead of time for when it's low peak season and we don't have as many client referrals coming in or clients. ⁓ requesting work. ⁓ so understanding that and one of the pieces that could have helped me sooner was knowing that I could use other people's money. Building up my business credit, learning business credit like when I first started my business would have taken me a long way. Yeah. Yeah. I want to talk about something else amazing that you're doing. ⁓ you also founded the Prism Effect. Yes. For prime minority female owned businesses. And I see how you light up even when I say that. Tell listeners about that organization and what inspired you to build it. I say that's my calling. So maybe three, three or so years ago, I think it's three. What I was finding was a lot of the ⁓ so a lot of my clients were in fact minority women ⁓ business owners. And what I was finding was that there was a running line, self included. that was beat that was the same for us. We were exhausted. We were overextended. I hate to use the word burned out, but yeah, for you know, burned out. We didn't have all the tools that some of our believe some of our counterparts, which would be like, you know, white women and white men that they had. And because I had, I felt like I had a, to some degree, a leg up because I had invested in these programs. I had invested in being in some of these circles and learning these other things that I'm coming into contact with these women and realizing they don't know anything about. And so I was just, I'm very big on like for me, my foundation is prayer and going to God and seeking him for any and everything that I do. And so this was just a aching in me. And I said, something that kept coming to my mind is if we're not well, how can our business be well? And so I was like, I just need I need a community. So I started a community online on Facebook. Then it grew and I'm like, okay, this is something. We need something more. And so then they started asking me, like, when are you gonna do da da da da da? The other thing that I realized was that I was tired of seeing these events and I don't see people that look like me keynoting unless it's a conference specifically for it. But I'm not seeing women Women of color keynoting. I'm not seeing women a lot of women. It'll be like a sprinkle it and it's almost feeling like the conference is checking the box. And so I said, I have a gift. My gift is marketing. So let me use that and let me use my platform to like raise these voices. So then I started doing virtual summits. And we would have five hundred, four hundred to five hundred ⁓ women of color who are in business or entrepreneurs registering. And then I would Like reach out to the women that I know, like, hey, do you want to be on the summit? Hey, do you want to speak? Hey, I think you have something to say that the women could really use in their business. ⁓ but I focus on three main pieces, and that's mindset, wellness, and your business. Because we have to change our mindset because many of us grew up in a different mindset space in regards to the way we were raised and dealing with money and dealing with business and dealing with. ⁓ collaboration, et cetera, just all these different pieces and negotiating and selling and not wanting to be salesy and then even women who are like women, even women of faith, thinking like, ⁓ I don't want to sell such and such. And if I make too much, then it so just trying to cut out those stereotypes for us, giving us the tools and the trainings to actually use, but then also connecting us. So one of the gifts that folks always always tell it's like you know everybody you know everybody I'm like I don't know everybody no you know everyone and so using that so then I did I started doing networking dinners and so using that as a way to okay let's bring so and so and so and so together so that you can meet someone not only someone that can help you but also on the other side that you can meet someone that you can help. Yeah. And so that's what was birthed from the Prism effect. And so it really it gives me I love the work that I do with my marketing. I love to help women get to their next or reach their goals. But I know that the Prism Effect is my purpose. It is why God put me here. That's beautiful. It ⁓ just really quickly, ⁓ back in twenty eleven I had lost my mom. And one of the things that like we put on her headstone that really spoke to me was May the work I've done speak for me. And so that's what I feel when I work with women, when I'm doing the work in the prism effect. I really feel like if I were to leave this earth today, that the work I have done is would speak for me through the work that I've done with them. So that's beautiful. That's absolutely beautiful. one of my favorite quotes is by Bruce Lee of all people. He says, The key to immortality is to first live a life worth remembering. ⁓ yeah. That's what you just said. You know, you have to make your mark in a way that people will want to recall and and you, my aunt will say, be of value, right? Yes. It's not just about what you can get, but it's a you what you give and it comes back to you is when you take the expectations off. But that's my little side. But the other thing I will say is one of my mentors talks about the financial trauma that some of us in certain communities are having to overcome. And I Well, now when you people talk like you've got to attach the mind you gotta attack the mindset. The mindset's important. I would be like, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, but man, gotta address your mindset. ⁓ it is it is so important. And you you have to be of tough stock on this particular journey because you will get banged around. ⁓ like it's you know, if you didn't have a family member that could donate a million dollars to start the business. In either event, I'm gonna get you out of these last couple of questions. One of the things I ask all my guests is when you hear the phrase do small business like a big boss, what does it mean to you? Do small business like a big boss. Diversifying. That's what it means to me. Not just because we do that. It means two things. And one of them I learned I saw Magic Johnson at a conference I went to. And Magic said, Don't get so like we start these businesses and they become our babies. And he said, No. You can't do that. You can't get so attached to your business because then when it's the right time to sell, you won't be able to sell because you'll be so attached. So he said you have to detach from your business and think of it exactly what it is and like it is a business so that when the iron is hot that you can strike and be able to get the best value out of the work that you've done in your business. And so that is one. And then two, diversifying because we always come in and we start the one business. And then we do it the one way. But again, just like me doing business with government contracting, then having like products to sell, having evergreen products to sell, because diversifying is important for we never think about if we get sick, if someone in our family gets sick, if you have to take this influx of time off, we're not prepared. And I didn't want to be that person because I had got sick before. And I was really sick. And I don't ever want to be in the hospital in my hospital bed and telling my family to bring me my computer again. Hmm. So well, that is a good point for us to start my stop, my own. Where can the people find you when they need to find you? ⁓ you can always, of course, find me on Facebook, ⁓ at my own. My own homes, or you can find me on Instagram, I'm my own now. I'm on Threads as well. I'm my own now. I spend a lot of time in Threads. and on LinkedIn at my own homes as well. Again, I've heard that Threads is like the kinder, gentler, awesome place to be. But I'm like, I just can't do another platform right now. I'll be I have an account. I have an account. And so if my son sends me something that goes over there, I will go. But I'm like, I'm just not doing another one. ⁓ all right. All right, bosses, that's what we got for you today. if you got value out of this episode, ⁓ please don't forget to like it, follow, and subscribe. It helps get some more ears and eyeballs on the pod. And just remember, build that dream messy, build that dream scared, just don't build it small. We'll see you next time. ⁓