Building a Business While Growing a Family with Rustic Wedding Chic founder Maggie Lord
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The Nitty Gritty:
- Why seeking solace in work and home life when your office is your home is really important
- How she built a business that was truly a family affair
- How her company grew due to her diligence to preserve her uninterrupted time for the highest priority tasks
This week on the Profit. Power. Pursuit. podcast, I talk to Maggie Lord, founder of Rustic Wedding Chic, author and sought-after wedding expert, about the juggling involved with being a business owner and a parent. Maggie shared how she’s managed to build her business to what she dreamed it could be while at the same time following her passion to be the best mom she can.
Seek solace
It’s really important for moms to seek solace when they are on their mom duty and also within the business world as well.
– Maggie Lord
Maggie talked about how seeking solace is one of her secrets for balancing motherhood and entrepreneurship, one she also shared in an article featured in Forbes magazine. Since she works out of her home, her work and home life are constantly intermingling. When she sits down to work, it’s not just about carving out physical space, but also carving out space mentally to be focused on her business. Even something as simple as taking a shower and getting dressed for the day as if she was leaving the house to go to the office helped her create distinction when it was time for work. She also found that her breaks throughout the day when her mom responsibilities took precedence, allowed her to be a better entrepreneur.
Family affair
When Maggie and her husband started their family, business was booming. Instead of picking one over the other, she just created a plan that would work for her. Her young son became a part of the business, joining in on meetings and traveling to book signings. She’d pick locations for business travel where she had family or friends who could help her out.
People understand that you don’t have to give up one thing in order to be driven about something else. For moms and dads who think they have to choose one or another Maggie has this advice:
“It’s really your own game plan. You are the quarterback. You drop a play that works for you and your company. You will find the opportunities that work for you.”
– Maggie Lord
When she takes conference calls, she’s very upfront to explain that it’s possible a kiddo might wake up from a nap or need something from her during the call.
Maggie’s mom was an entrepreneur as well, so she had a good role model to know that you could make things work the way you want them to and it is possible to be a business owner and a good parent.
There is no way to have true separation when you have a family and own your own business, so you might as well find a way to mix the two together.
– Maggie Lord
Growing business and growing family
Maggie coined the term naptime entrepreneur to describe the way she used her precious uninterrupted time to propel her business growth. She upped her productivity level when her kids napped or were at preschool and focused on the most important—business building activities—to get done.
She decided to expand her website to include the Rustic Wedding Guide, a resource for couples planning their rustic wedding, because of the hundreds of emails she’d receive each month from couples who were desperately searching for rustic wedding venues and vendors. In the podcast, she explains her process of breaking a larger project into smaller, achievable pieces so you’re able to keep up with all your responsibilities and still grow your business.
Anybody who is trying to launch another project or a big project, break it up into pieces. It’s going to make you feel so much better and you can celebrate those little wins along the way.
– Maggie Lord
I hope you listen to the full episode to learn more about how Maggie juggles her demanding business with her growing family, how she’s built her team and what’s on the horizon for Rustic Wedding Chic.
Tune in to the Profit. Power. Pursuit. podcast each week to join me as I speak and learn something new from enterprising entrepreneurs who are building the businesses and lives of their dream. Just subscribe on iTunes.
Putting The P In Profit: Money Lessons From The New Economy
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Welcome to Profit. Power. Pursuit., I’m your host, Tara Gentile.
Most weeks, I take you behind the scenes with a New Economy business owner and expose the nitty-gritty of what it really takes to successfully run and grow a digital small business today.
This week, I’m going to take some extra time with one of our 3 P’s: Profit.
When my friends at CreativeLive and I started this podcast over a year and a half ago, we were determined to get real about the money stuff that comes from growing a company you love.
When you set out to build a company you love, it’s easy to put all the emphasis on doing the work, loving your customers or clients, and spreading your mission to the masses. But without getting clear about how the money works in your business, any progress you make in those 3 areas is sure to be short-lived.
I’ve dealt with my fair share of money issues over the years.
And it all started with my very first post-college job at the now defunct Borders Books & Music…
I worked my way up from a summer time, minimum wage job, to cafe supervisor and then on to sales manager for our $5m per year location. I was in charge of visual merchandising, events, bookseller training, even scheduling & HR.
For these responsibilities and the 50-60 hours per week I was expected to be at work, I was compensated $28,000. Now I had a lot of mixed feelings about this amount of money:
First, it was the most money I had ever earned week after week.
But second, it evaporated very quickly and made it hard to start my journey to financial independence.
Still, it seemed like what I deserved: I had a BA in Religion. I’d quit grad school before it started. I’d never worked on employable skills… I should be lucky to even have a full-time job!
It was that story that would plague me for years: I was earning what I deserved.
You see, about 5 years after starting at Borders, I gave birth to my daughter Lola and decided to figure out how to make working from home work. I figured that if there were other women out there working from home, I could do it too.
That’s when I discovered the New Economy and digital small business.
I saw coaches, consultants, social media experts, makers, designers, and writers earning a good living, doing work they loved, and staying home—either with the kids or on their own.
I was ready to claim my piece of that pie.
So I started my business with a local arts & crafts blog and hung up my shingle.
I earned some initial traction and that gave me the encouragement I needed to plow ahead. I bought a second website 6 months later and, thanks to getting creative with selling advertising, I started making more than I earned at Borders.
It was a huge victory.
But it wasn’t the revelation I ultimately needed to experience.
You see, between earning “what I deserved” at Borders and telling myself a story about how much I could ever hope to earn in my life as someone who had chosen work I loved over work that paid well, I had created a personal earning ceiling for myself.
When I started to “think ambitiously” about my goals, they topped out at about $40-50,000 per year.
All of the decisions I made about my business were based on those numbers: how much I could afford to spend on web hosting, how much I should charge for my time, how much I should invest in my own training…
Luckily, I got exposed to some amazing money mentors like Amanda Steinberg and Danielle LaPorte—more on them in a bit.
Through both their personal and internet guidance, I could start to envision earning more.
When I set a much, much bigger target on my business—$100,000—I learned my first big New Economy Money Lesson:
Setting Bigger Money Targets Exposes Bigger Problems
Maybe that doesn’t sound helpful to you—but I can assure you it is!
You see, when you set a much bigger money target, not only do you start to make new decisions about how much you charge, who you hire, or how you invest in new tools, but you start to see the structural and systemic challenges lying dormant in your business.
You realize you’ve run out of advertising inventory (my problem), or that your sales pipeline is nearly empty, or that, if you hit your target, you couldn’t handle the customer service demands.
You realize that your lack of earning ambition has limited your capacity as a business—and that means that you’ve limited your ability to make an impact, do the work you love, and love up on your customers!
If this story sounds familiar and you recognize that your limited goals have limited your business, I’d recommend going back to my interview with Corey Whitaker & Parker Stevenson from Evolved Finance.
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In that interview, they talked about the importance of having a budget that you’re working toward. In other words, it’s not enough to have a sales goal—you also need to know how you’ll spend that money.
By considering how you’ll spend that money, you’ll uncover the structural and systemic issues in your own business. You’ll see where you have opportunities to invest and sure up existing systems.
Most of all, you’ll start to see how the revenue you earn in your business can be used to grow your business… which leads us to our second lesson:
Separating Your Finances Isn’t About Saving Yourself From The IRS
I learned this lesson later than I should have which is probably why it feels so profound.
We all know—I hope—that we’re supposed to be managing our business money separate from our personal money. You have a separate bank account, separate credit card, and separate check book for each.
This makes your accounting easier and it offers some personal protection should anything go wrong.
But here’s what else it does: it reminds you that your business is separate from you.
When your finances are separate, you start to see how the money your business earns can be put to good use. Every expense, team member, or training opportunity isn’t less money in your pocket, it’s a chance to earn more down the line.
Now, that doesn’t mean I recommend investing everything back into your business! But it does help you become more objective about what’s yours and what’s the business’s and that will help you grow a more sustainable, stable, and wealth-building business in the long-run.
Now let’s shift gears a bit for our third lesson:
Negotiate
I am no master negotiator. I would much rather rely on simple price tags or tables to tell me how much something costs. I would also rather reply on a simple sales page and buy now button to tell you how much something I’m selling costs.
But I’ve learned to embrace negotiation—and if not the art of the deal, at least asking for what I want.
The first person who got me excited about negotiation was Kari Chapin. In fact, I interviewed her on exactly that subject early on for Profit. Power. Pursuit.
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The secret to negotiation, from in this novice’s perspective, is simply realizing that every day you are presented with an opportunity to ask for what you want: whether that’s brussel sprouts instead of fries, blue instead of orange, or 15% instead of 10%.
Stop feeling disappointed about the way things are. Recognize the opportunity. And ask for what you want instead.
Be polite, respectful, and detached from the ultimate outcome of your ask.
Also, know when it’s a deal breaker and when it’s not.
There are sometimes when it’s nice to get a few extra percentage points and there are times when it’s the difference between saying yes and saying no.
The more you practice, the better you’ll get—and the faster you’ll be able to spot opportunities and make decisions.
Also, check out friend of the pod Vanessa Van Edwards CreativeLive course: The Power of Negotiation!
That brings us to the fourth money lesson:
Cultivate An Investment Mindset
If, like me, you grew up in a household where money was tight, it’s likely that you didn’t see “investment” modeled as a way of getting ahead, building wealth, or tackling your mission.
My mom—now my COO—taught me that you could always find what you needed for the things that mattered most. But we just didn’t have the opportunity to plant seeds for future financial growth.
So I operated my business in the same way for a long time. Instead of looking at high-ticket expenses as planting seeds, they just looked scary and hard to overcome.
When I met Megan Auman, back in 2009, things really started to change. Megan grew up in an entrepreneurial family and she had seen what an investment could turn into.
So when the opportunity to spend thousands of dollars on a tradeshow booth presented itself, Megan didn’t bat an eye. She’s used savings, credit, and sales windfalls to finance big leaps forward in her business and it’s paid off handsomely.
Instead of evaluating every expense through the lens of “can I afford it?” what if you first asked yourself what the results of investing in it would be? Could you earn more? Save more time? Propel your business forward?
Not every investment pays off. And not every opportunity to spend money on your business is a good investment. But it pays to cultivate an investment mindset.
The fifth money lesson is:
Money Can Be Creative
Invite money into every aspect of your business. Don’t silo it away from the part of your business that’s authentic, connected, spiritual, or mission-driven.
Money is a reflection of or a stand-in for value. If you can’t connect to money or make it an authentic part of how you show up, you’ll have a hard time connecting to the value your company creates.
Embrace money and all your ambition around it so your whole business becomes more integrated.
I mentioned that learning from Danielle LaPorte has been a huge part of this lesson from me. As you can hear in my Profit. Power. Pursuit. interview with her, Danielle never shies away from speaking about currency and connection in the same breath.
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Her ambition is self-expressive and so is the way she plays with money.
And that leads me to our sixth and final money lesson for today:
Don’t Let Anyone (Including Yourself) Put Limits On Your Potential
And with this lesson, we come full circle. Whether it’s an old boss, a well-meaning but unhelpful parent, a partner, or your own anxious psyche, don’t let anyone put limits on the amount you can earn and the ways you can show up.
I talked about the dangerous ways limitations can affect our actions with Amanda Steinberg in my second PPP interview with her. And I talked about the more personal limitations that affect the ways we reach for our goals with Nilofer Merchant. Both interviews are must-listens as far as I’m concerned. They’ll help expose the limitations that are all around you so that you can consciously and intentionally bust through them.
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Bottom line: constantly evaluate what you think is impossible, not for you, or “too much.”
These have been just 6 of the money lessons I’ve learned over the years, through trial & error, through mentorship, and through the insider conversations I have right here on Profit. Power. Pursuit.
Learning about money, how we each engage with it, and what stories we tell ourselves about it is a continual and continually important step on our path to creating a real impact in the communities we operate in.
If you fail to get a handle on money or you fail to revisit your assumptions about money, your business will never have the impact it otherwise could.
That’s why I’ve set aside June 1, 2017 to examine how we talk and think about money as business owners.
We’re hosting a virtual conference, The New Economy & Your Money, over at CoCommercial, the business association for digital small businesses.
If you’re using the internet, social media, or any other facet of the New Economy to grow your small business, this conference is for you! The best part? You can participate absolutely free.
All you need to do is start your FREE 30-day all-access trial of CoCommercial today by clicking here.
Then, on June 1 you can join in the conversation with Amanda Steinberg, founder of DailyWorth & WorthFM, Mark Butler, founder of Budget Nerd, Jaime Masters, host of Eventual Millionaire, Jacquette Timmons, author of Financial Intimacy, and, of course, me!
We’ll be talking about:
- How to create a business budget that helps you grow
- How to make your money choices truly personal
- How to have tricky money conversations with people you love
- How to avoid overspending as you grow your business
- And much more!
Again, you can participate free of charge in this all-day virtual conference just by starting your trial of CoCommercial.
Go to CoCommercial.co/money — that’s CoCommercial.co/money
Growing a Hands-On, High-Touch Business with Perfect Planning Events founder Tara Melvin
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The Nitty Gritty:
- How duplicable systems keep things running smoothly
- Why strong vendor relationships help Perfect Planning Events deliver
- How to control the client mix so that you’re getting the business you want
I learned a lot about what it takes to run a hands-on, high-touch business this week when I talked to Tara Melvin, founder of Perfect Planning Events, on the Profit. Power. Pursuit. podcast. As a wedding and events planner for more than a decade, Tara has developed deep relationships with vendors and created systems that help her deliver the high level of service her clients expect.
Systems and strong relationships
Build your vendor partners and treat them how you want to be treated.
– Tara Melvin
On average, Perfect Planning Events handles 15 to 18 events per year depending on the mix of full-service clients and the less time-consuming coordination-service clients. Tara is highly involved with the customer for 9 to 12 months. All vendor communication from the venue to the DJ funnels through Tara, so the bride, groom and their families only need to worry about the phone calls and emails coming from one source—Tara.
I’ve been in business for 13 years now and I have good, solid vendor relationships that when I call on them to get the support I need, I know they’re going to bring their A game whenever it’s time to produce events for my clients.
– Tara Melvin
To be a successful planner, you need to be highly organized, and so Tara has developed a systems-based approach that’s mostly electronic to keep herself, her team and her clients updated and on the right track. Tara uses Evernote to keep the flow of notes and ideas going even when she’s on the go, Outlook to schedule all her appointments and follow-ups, and gives each of her couples a client workbook with checklists, budget sheets and information that she developed over the years to make wedding planning simple and less stressful for them.
With her full-service clients, Tara has nine face-to-face meetings (this doesn’t include site visits) that last two hours each. They discuss any changes to the “hopes and dreams” for the event, payments that are due and progress with the planning.
Pricing strategy and client mix
Tara recently verified her pricing strategy: She wanted to be sure she was providing a fair price for her clients, but also wanted to ensure that she was being fair to herself. So, she tracked every email, phone call and hour she used from start to finish for a full-service client. It was a real eye-opener for how much time she spent with each client. From there, she calculated what she wanted to make annually and came up with a per-hour price for her services.
Tara always aims to get that full-service client. She won’t sign a client for just coordination services until its 6 months out from their wedding date. This allows her to preserve her time for her most desired service offering, but then she can fill in any of her open time and make additional income by offering just coordination services.
Listen to the full episode to learn the secret to dealing with client drama with poise and professionalism, how Tara introduces her team to each project so that they can step in for her if necessary, how networking helped her make connections that built her business and what’s next for Perfect Planning Events.
Never miss an episode by subscribing to the Profit. Power. Pursuit podcast on iTunes where every week I talk to today’s entrepreneurs about how they are building their business and teams to create the lives of their dreams.
What do you think of when you imagine someone with money, power, and influence?
If the answer doesn’t look, sound, or have a similar background to you, then we have a problem.
Of course, it’s natural that the people you think of or the image you conjure when you think of money, power, and influence wouldn’t appear like you.
They’re moguls. They’re born into it. They’re aggressive. They’re all buttoned up. They’re wheeling and dealing. They’re ego-centric.
And while we all know that all people with money and influence aren’t bad guys, it remains the pervasive image. It’s hard to aspire to become something when the image of our goal is so negative.
That’s why we, as small business owner and future leaders, need to work hard to find images of economic power and influence that we can aspire to.
Because we are the New Economy.
I firmly believe that the people our children will think of when they think of money, power, and influence will look, think, and sound a lot like us.
And I believe that as people with money, power, and influence, you and I can create much-needed change for our culture, communities, and government.
But we won’t do that without attaining some combination of money, power, and influence.
The good news is that it the path to money, power, and influence is more accessible than ever before. It’s so accessible that you’re already on it! You’re building your business, your company, your empire and impacting the way the global economy is evolving.
Here’s the thing, though:
Money, power, and influence aren’t things that are bestowed on us from some outside force.
We have to claim them.
That’s what we do at CoCommercial: we help today’s small business owners claim the money, power, and influence that will make them tomorrow’s economic powerhouses.
We provide a safe space to show up, practice using your power and influence in a supportive community, and discover the truth of what’s really working to grow businesses today.
On Thursday, June 1, we’re devoting a full day to claiming the money piece.
Our community is examining how building wealth in the 21st century is changing and how we can approach our businesses with a New Economy money mindset.
One of the people speaking at this virtual event is my own money mentor, Amanda Steinberg, founder of DailyWorth and WorthFM.
She agrees that the way we earn, spend, and save as the power to create change–and turn you into a leader. In her book, Worth It, she writes:
“More money means more choices.”
That can be the choice to donate to your cause, your candidate, or your community.
That can be the choice to take time off to organize a rally, a fundraiser, or a townhall.
That can be the choice to stretch your comfort zone and meet with other community leaders to discuss ideas for improving quality of life.
New Economy leaders make more money so these choices are available to them. And, in making these choices, they claim the power and influence to impact the world the way they want to.
If you’re ready to step into leadership, to claim more power and influence for yourself as business owner, and you are ready to manage your money and money-making to make that happen, you should join me for our first-ever virtual conference: The New Economy & Your Money.
CoCommercial members get in free–and it’s the only way to attend!
So claim your free 30-day all-access pass today and mark your calendar for June 1!
But even if you can’t join us: remember that the face of money, power, and influence is yours.
See you there!
Tara
Are you making these critical #NewEconomy money mistakes?
There’s nothing like running a business to bring up all your “money stuff.”
In the process of avoiding dealing with our own money stories, strengthening our relationships to the almighty dollar, and–goodness forbid–looking at spreadsheets, we make some pretty damaging mistakes when it comes to money.
In the New Economy, it’s never been more important to get the money stuff right. After all, we’re counting on you to become one of the economic powerhouses shaping our future!
Here are 5 of the money mistakes I see entrepreneurs making in this new age of commerce:
Mistake #1: Confusing Income, Revenue, and Profit
Probably the biggest mistake I see freelancers and small business owners making is confusing their personal income with their business revenue and therefore not truly taking profit into account.
The main reason this is a big problem is that it makes planning damn well impossible!
If you plan to earn $80,000 in revenue, but you need $75,000 to live on, there’s a really good chance you won’t come up with that $75,000. What’s more, you won’t have any money to invest back into the business.
So let’s clear these things up:
Income is your personal paycheck. It’s the money in the business you send back to yourself in exchange for the work you do. The sooner you start thinking of your income as an expense of the business and not just what’s leftover (or worse, the same as what you’re bringing in), the better.
Revenue is the sum total of what your business generates in earnings. It’s the total amount of money you have to play with. Revenue is not your personal income.
Profit is both the money you have to invest into the business on something unproven or new (i.e. not in the original expense budget) and the money you can pay yourself as the owner of the business. Profit is not your personal income–even though some of it comes back to you.
By keeping track of each of these 3 figures separately, you have a much better idea of what is really going on with both your business and your personal finances.
Speaking of separation…
Mistake #2: Commingling personal and business finances
You should know by now that your business and personal finances should be in separate accounts. Even if you don’t have a business bank account and a business credit card, business money should be in its own places.
But a lot of people start down the path of commingling their personal and business finances because they don’t realize they’re “starting a business” when they’re just starting out. By the time they realize they have a business and things should be separate, it seems impossible to divide them.
I know because I was in this situation only a few years ago. I had kept good records as my business grew… but the massive task of separating accounts had me paralyzed.
What’s worse: having commingled my accounts meant that I had the wrong outlook on my money. Not only were my finances not separate, the way I thought about my money wasn’t separate.
Even though I knew the difference between income, revenue, and profit and could distinguish between those things on paper, in my brain, every dollar I was spending on the business was also “mine.”
This, it shouldn’t need to be said, is not how you grow a business or run a company.
Separating business from personal finances creates an immediate money mindset shift and opens your eyes to new opportunities.
Mistake #3: Setting goals based on previous income
There are a number of reasons setting goals based on your previous income at a job just doesn’t work.
The first is that being self-employed dramatically changes your financial situation–especially if you live in the USA. You might need to buy healthcare on the open market instead of through your employer’s plan (yes, world, welcome to America). You’ll almost definitely be paying self-employment tax instead of payroll tax (and, oh yes, you’re responsible for all of it).
On the positive side, you might not need to pay as much for your work wardrobe, gas, or lunches. But… you might realize that you need someone to do the laundry or mow the grass because it’s just harder to find the time to do chores when the option is grow your business or take care of the house.
I would set a revenue goal of at least double your previous salary (if you were happy with it) so that you build a business with the capacity to actually take care of you. You can adjust your personal income from there.
But the biggest reason to not use a previous salary as the baseline for your revenue goals is that by defining your business by “earning enough,” you set yourself up for failure. Fall even a bit short and you need to pinch pennies or suffer through unnecessary anxiety.
Worse, you’ll end up creating a business with limited capacity–just enough to give you 50 hours of work per week and a meager paycheck. Goody.
Mistake #4: Using Your J-O-B Money Mindset to Manage Your Business
Almost every entrepreneur was an employee first. You likely learned all sorts of things in that job that have benefited you in your business.
But there’s one thing you learned that isn’t helping: how to manage your paycheck.
The J-O-B Money Mindset is the internalized practice of managing a finite sum of money in a zero sum game.
In other words, over time, your brain figures out exactly what it takes to stretch that paycheck across as many needs and desires as it can until it runs out. Then you get a new paycheck and the process starts again. It might not be “living paycheck to paycheck” but the zero sum mindset still exists.
But that’s not how your business works. There is no finite amount on that check nor is it a zero sum game. You can make as much money as you decide to make and you always know how to generate more.
While that might sound pie-in-the-sky, if you don’t believe it, it’s probably because you’re still living with a J-O-B Money Mindset.
This mindset prevents you from doing things like hiring, investing in better software, taking risks, and looking for unique opportunities. The J-O-B Money Mindset is about protecting what you have, the Business Money Mindset is about expanding on what you have.
Mistake #5: Not Negotiating
I’ll keep this one brief: always ask.
Ask for more, ask for less. Just ask.
If you’re negotiating with someone who’s paying you, negotiate for more. Start with your best-case-scenario number. You’ll be surprised how many times you get it.
If you’re negotiating with someone you’re paying, always negotiate down. You might be surprised with how often this works! You may know that your cable company or credit card company will lower your rates, you might not know that many of your business service providers (think apps and technology) will do this too.
Don’t take a “failed” negotiation as a failure. Sometimes the price is the price or the pay is the pay. But if you don’t ask, you’ll never know.
Getting Right With Money Is Crucial To Breaking Through
Now look, if you’re making one or more of these money mistakes, it can feel overwhelming when you think about fixing them.
Don’t try to tackle everything at once. But do tackle it.
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Tara
Why Physical Goods are the New Services with inkWELL Press founder Tonya Dalton
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The Nitty Gritty:
- How a physical product helps service providers create a more sustainable model
- How Tonya tackles product development from idea to launch
- How using your mission to guide decision-making keeps your focus
This week, on the Profit. Power. Pursuit. podcast I chat with Tonya Dalton, founder of inkWELL Press who has made it her mission to “help women find peace through productivity.” As a former teacher, Tonya knew right from the beginning that education was going to be a big part of what she was going to offer in her business. She said the biggest compliment inkWELL Press can receive is when people tell them that they’re actually a service-based company that just happens to sell a fabulous product—journals and planners of all kinds.
Products Extend your Reach
Products are physical manifestations of services.
—Tonya Dalton
As Tonya shared organization and productivity strategies with those she coached, she wanted those people to have the right tools available so they could implement the strategies she taught. A physical planner had helped her stay organized and productive, so she set out to design her very own for her clients. The products themselves have become brand ambassadors of sorts, since a lot of their business is from referrals. Not only are people talking about inkWELL Press’s planners, they also talk to their colleagues and families about the systems and how they are being more productive.
“Having a product helps you reach people without you being in front of them. I’m still able to generate revenue, put forth my mission without me having to do every single bit of it,” said Tonya.
Products help service-oriented and digital businesses reach corners of the marketing world that they may have not been able to reach otherwise.
Product Development Process: Idea to Launch
When you’re creating your timeline, you need to account for things that you don’t really know.
—Tonya Dalton
The first product Tonya brought to market was the weekly planner; what she considers to be their cornerstone product. She starts off with a brainstorm and thinks about all the elements that should be included. Then, she goes into a thorough questioning process, asking friends, family and even strangers to see if the new concept resonates with them. This is an important part of the process, and one that’s sometimes skipped by those who are too excited by their own amazing idea, they fail to check to make sure others also believe it is amazing. From there, it goes into design, finding the right materials and vendors to help make her vision a reality. And lots of back and forth with samples and tweaking before going into full production mode. Equally important is to simultaneously build the buzz around your product. It’s not enough to just have a beautiful product. If you don’t have a marketing strategy in place, your beautiful product won’t get in the hands of your ideal customers.
We put a lot of time and energy not into just creating the product itself but actually creating the buzz and excitement around it.
—Tonya Dalton
Use Your Mission to Guide Your Decision Making
Although the way she achieves her mission may have altered slightly—she focuses first on productivity and then organization naturally follows—at its heart, her business has really stayed true to the mission she set forth initially. Her mission is the ultimate litmus test to determine her focus, what products she develops next and how her business strategies shift.
Get all the detail of our conversation including how Tonya and her husband skimped and saved to launch their business, asked lots of questions and invested in training for the things they didn’t know how to do, how her podcast, The Productivity Podcast is a natural extension of her teaching and what’s on the horizon for the business by checking out the full episode.
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