EPISODE 2 OF THE MARKETING SOLUTIONS PODCAST: PIVOTING IN BUSINESS WITH KAYLENE LANGFORD FROM STARTUP CREATIVE
Sonya:
Today I'm with Kaylene from Start Up Creative and I'm so excited to have her on board. I think we worked together maybe 18 months ago now Kaylene, back when I was feeling a little lost in my business and you've always been someone that I've looked up to in business. I'm so, so excited to have you on as a guest today.
Kaylene:
Thank you so much. It's lovely to have seen your business evolve and you just go from strength to strength so it's my pleasure. What an honour to be part of the new podcast.
Sonya:
I feel like if anyone hasn't heard of you they're living under a rock but I'm sure, you know, there are some people out there that might not have. Can you start by telling me a little bit about what you're doing with your business currently. What does your business model look like and what do you do?
Kaylene:
Yeah, great question. I run Start Up Creatives so it's a current publication online platform, podcast, social media channels where we aim to educate, inspire and grow creative entrepreneurs. Kind of came of a passion of meeting a lot of people who were very talented creatives or just experts really in certain fields and just didn't have access to or didn't feel confident enough or even inspired enough to seek business advice that could help them turn their skillset into a viable business. I think there's a real gap in the market, I don't know whether you experienced this starting yours but just like how do you get people to tell you how it is in business without all of the bullshit?
Sonya:
I feel like there's so much, like when I started and I was looking around there's so much fluff and a lot of people doing the inspirational kind of you can do this but there was no real solid, okay this is how you do this, this is how you write a press release, this is how you go after this, here's some stories from people that have actually done it that are telling the truth about business so I think that's why I was really drawn to what you're doing. I mean you released this incredible E-book. When was that? Was that the start of last year?
Kaylene:
It was a few years back now I think.
Sonya:
It was just amazing though because you, I think you didn't stand there and go I'm an expert in all these areas but I'm going to find people that really specialise and are amazing at all these different pieces and you bought it all together.
Kaylene:
Yeah, thank you. Was it you that emailed me? A couple of people actually DM'd me on Instagram and said I have just got a marketing degree and this E-book, I've learnt so much more from it.
Sonya:
I think because it's practical whereas when you're learning out of a textbook, it takes three years to write and release a textbook and get it approved in university. Exactly, everything changes so quickly but with what you're doing at the moment that's not really where you started in business though is it? Can you tell us a little bit more about I guess your initial journey into starting your own business and what that looked like.
Kaylene:
Well it's probably why the E-book is so practical and makes so much sense to people because again it's a big concept which is marketing and then how do you apply it to your, probably most of the time smaller to medium sized businesses or even start ups so my background is from when I was 17 was my career had been program development so I started out in, I was working in outdoor education camps actually. I always wanted to be, to go to America and work in the summer camps. So I started there and was learning, I was on the job doing apprenticeship of and a certificate for outdoor education and my role was to be like that camp leader like that camp person when everyone arrives at camp to be like oh, welcome to school camp. I would get, 200 young people would arrive at camp for a week and my job was to articulate the rules and keep them engaged for the 30 minute safety briefing and educate them about how the processes were going to work.
Then over time the longer I was at the job the more responsibility I got so I actually got to be part of the program design so when should we send them on high ropes versus going to the canoes and this group needs to have this challenge journey or whatever and then on top of that I would have smaller groups come so that a bunch of kids from the New South Wales foster care system, they reached out to me and said we'd really like a holiday program for kids in foster care. So I got to write that program and facilitate a week with them and so throughout their education so through some life messages through how you take them through a challenge and debrief it and then do talent quest with them and stuff.
So that was me at 17 and then it evolved into writing programs for school kids, for high school aged students in a school environment and then I eventually wrote this program, I was asked to write a program to engage volunteer to work with kids at risk. I won an award for setting that program up so yeah, I think my career has always been and it still is now taking some sort of information, whether it's a safety briefing or self image stuff or whatever into a and articulating it in a way especially that it started out with young people and then evolved into creatives and entrepreneurs who aren't necessarily business minded and articulating in a way that people could A, digest it and then B, implement it.
Sonya:
Yeah, that's amazing. In those early days when you did go out on your own and you were doing these programs and I think I remember you saying in your podcast that you were selling these one day workshops and things like that. How did you go about actually getting clients and selling those programs?
Kaylene:
Yes, the first thing I did, eventually my career escalated to working with the Queensland council of social services alongside the Queensland government and we were reforming youth services across the whole of Queensland so had to figure out the best way to deliver these services, the best way to fund them for the government and then the best way to choose which ones to fund and teach that on a state level. It was when I was doing that that I really started to understand the non-profit sector and the local government sector and realised that the government was investing, they had buckets of money where they would go to local government, like the local council and say you need to engage the young people around here in positive things that are going to keep them out of trouble in your towns and things and so they would allocate these budgets.
Because I knew the system so well and I knew exactly how the government was choosing who they'd fund and where that criteria was coming from I was able to develop a program that really and said hey, this is the first program I wrote, it was a six week course and it was how to turn your passion into a business. I was also lucky that I had a mentor. When I called him up and said I've written this course, I'm going to go out and sell it and pitch for the buckets of money that I know exist, what do you think I should charge. He said to me without a doubt he said $1500 per module that you teach and it was a six module course.
I was going to facilitate it for up to 30 people and so the numbers when I first came out, you're used to earning 30, 40 dollars an hour to earn $1500 for an hour and a half was like oh my God but yeah when you add it up for the outcomes that you can get and 30 people in the room, it's actually quite an affordable way to educate for the council. What I did is, I guess I took the documents that I knew from the websites, started with the Gold Coast city council. I figured out a contact that knew how to get into, I think I actually the website I just was like whose the youth development officer because I knew that that was the role.
And I got in front of the meeting, I think what enough people don't do when I'm coaching people is like get that meeting, figure out how you need to talk to whether it's Twitter or LinkedIn or calling in a friend or turning up on the doorstep, figure out who you need to be in front of and don't stop until you get in front of them and then have your pitch ready to go. I literally had a two page Word document with a dodgy logo on top and a $9,000 price check on it and I got yeses. I got about four councils saying yes, four different divisions.
Sonya:
That's amazing and I think you're making a really good point there. I think a lot of the time especially when people are starting out in business they think that I'll do these social media posts and things are try and reach a wide audience when in reality sometimes it is about building those relationships and making that one on one connection with people and finding out how do you actually go about doing that, like how can you get in front of them without sitting there behind your computer or your phone pushing posts out to Instagram hoping oh, maybe someone will see this and it will resonate and they might contact me. So I love that you're getting in there, you're getting your hands dirty. It sounds like you weren't waiting until everything was perfect for that document but you knew that they had a need and they had the funding so you were creating the product around a need that already existed.
Kaylene:
Yeah, exactly and I think that's a great point is that it wasn't about me saying hey, this is what I want to deliver, I went in and took all of like, the document is like the youth plan for the next five years or whatever. Every council or anyone who had some sort, most companies have a strategy sitting on their website somewhere that says this is what we're out to achieve, this is why we exist and the bigger the company the more detailed the plan is as to who's allocated to do that and how they're going to do it and how they're going to measure that it's been done. It's a cheat sheet, you get to download that document. It's the same with any other company whether you're a start up with 100 followers on Instagram and you want to work with another company go and figure out what their morals are, what their values are and what they're out to achieve and then pitch to that.
So many people go into pitching for work as this is what I want to offer rather than doing the research, figuring out what their needs are coming to them with a valuable solution.
Sonya:
Absolutely and I know I've worked with clients that are sort of in that start up phase and were trying to run Facebook ads or create funnels and do these things to promote a service or a product but there's not necessarily that proven need for it yet and that's a very hard situation to be in, it kind of feels like you're pushing something up a hill and someone might not necessarily want it so I think going back to that consumer focused initial period with that research is so, so important.
Kaylene:
That's it, hey. It's like start up one on one is figure out what you've got to offer so what's your skillset and then go and find out if anyone's going to buy it.
Sonya:
Yeah and then if they are going to buy it can you make any money on it, are you going to be able to make it profitable in some way as well.
Kaylene:
Yeah, get in the game and test it. For all I know running that six week course which eventually, it did happen after about a year because the lead process was so long. It was like find the contact, send the email, get the meeting, send the pitch document, do a follow up email, send the invoice, get a payment, set up a [inaudible 00:13:12]. It was just such a long lead in. So by the time you get your $10,000 pay check at the end it's $10,000 for three months worth of work so it doesn't sound as juicy as what it first did and I think that's what a lot of people don't realise is you've got to get in the game with what you've got and what you think is going to work. Don't be afraid, and exactly what I was saying to you before we started this podcast is don't be afraid to say okay, this business model as it is has run its course and it's time to change it up.
Sonya:
Yeah, pivoting. I guess that's really what happened to you because that business where you were doing that six week course like your business now is completely different, you're not even speaking to the same people any more essentially. I guess my biggest question for you today is how has the marketing changed for you from going and seeking out these councils to now you're reaching a much wider audience and it's not like you can, I don't know, make a list of people in Australia that are thinking of starting a business because you don't know the thoughts that they're having, how have you transitioned and gone about marketing yourself in a completely different way
Kaylene:
Yeah, I love that question it's given me so many memories. When I was pitching to councils it was very strategic, very corporate and that's the world I came from so it was a skillset that could easily transfer. The moment that changed for me I was sitting in a pizza bar on the Gold Coast and my friend owned it and it was absolutely pumping and I think he'd just opened and I sat there drinking wine on a Friday night and I was like he is so lucky that he can go direct to his target market and show them look, I've got great pizza and great wine come on in and a great vibe. It was direct to market and I honestly in a pizza bar was like oh my God, you need to go direct to your market.
I was sick of going to these people who were sitting behind desks at their nine to five and saying hey, if you only gave me a portion of that money that I know you've got sitting there or that you've been investing in the same person over and over again and not getting any results with then I let me show me what I can do. I would get so frustrated because the person I was trying to convince wasn't my target market, they were just guard of the bucket of money that meant that I could talk to my target market. I in that moment was like right, this is going to be a transition period but I'm going straight to my own target market. Beforehand Instagram wasn't a big deal for me. When I first started out I hated Instagram, I wanted nothing to do with it, I was really bad at it, my filters were horrible, my captions, I think I made my ex-girlfriend do them.
Sonya:
We were all bad at Instagram to begin with though, like I look back and just cringe.
Kaylene:
Sometimes I challenge people, I'm like scroll back to where I started. We all begin somewhere. I decided that I was going to hone my message from my target market and that's when everything shifted but it meant that I had to let go of the $10,000 pay checks. My first ever coaching session I charged $50 and it was 90 minutes and I probably did about four hour pre and post prep so-
Sonya: Oh my gosh, wow.
Kaylene:
So compared to today where I can charge anywhere in excess of $400 an hour and yeah, it's very easy for me to sit and concept with somebody and give them some really solid advice that they feel is really valuable. It meant that I went from a $10,000 pay check to a $50 pay check and I had to shift everything from the business model. I was like okay, well how do we capture lots of people so I started doing events. We would do networking events, I would do one day workshops and then I just leveraged as much as I could. There was a market on the Gold Coast called the Village Market and we teamed up with them and the whole crowd was creative entrepreneurs so we teamed up with them and had an event and had over 300 people turn up. It meant that we just started hitting the masses and being like, every single week I'd be like how do I get to my target market, how do I get to my market target so I couldn't rely on somebody else, I had to get to my market market.
I started sharing my voice of what it felt like to be in business for me so I started sharing my story and my milestones and my challenges and a day in the life of me. That got lots of traction. Yeah, I think if I ask the question of how did the marketing change I had to get inside the head of somebody who wanted to start a business who had an idea but didn't know how to start. That's also where the magazine came out of it which was a really big game changer for us.
Sonya:
Yeah and I think what I love about what you've just said as well is you haven't just focused on one channel, so you didn't just start an Instagram account and think I'll post every day and that'll help me reach my audience. Yes, that would have helped but you were doing offline activities as well, you were aligning yourself with a lot of brands and businesses that were already reaching your target market. I think that's something that you absolutely nail, that synergy and relationship that you have with so many well known brands. When you were just starting out and no-one knew who you were how did you start those relationships? I have a massive, massive crush on Smack Bang Designs as a lot of people do, they just do everything so beautifully, were you friends with Smack Bang Designs before you started or has that relationship evolved as your business has?
Kaylene:
We met on Instagram. Back when Instagram was great it was, when I first started out and I did this, I'd spend an hour a night on Instagram going to hashtags, down deep rabbit holes of hashtags and accounts I would be liking everyone who used the hashtag startup. I would be, this is before robots, this is before algorithms, this is before scam accounts, all the things. I don't know if you remember but it was so authentic back in the day.
Sonya:
It was amazing, it was what social media's meant to be about and there wasn't all this, people trying to gain the system and not build those authentic relationships.
Kaylene:
You could find a hashtag of Sydneystartups and go through and generally start finding what the start up scene was like and you would find accounts. That's how, I was on the Gold Coast, I felt pretty isolated and there wasn't really many people doing what I was doing and I found Collabosaurus, I found Smack Bang, I found New Beginnings there. I found Zoe who used to run, I think she still runs it, Dreamer who ran Owners collective. I had the magazine so I reached out to Tess to do copywriting for my magazine, oh no, for my website in exchange which she wrote an article for the magazine. Jess asked me to speak on an event she was running in Sydney and then ran an ad in the magazine for that. We just were all doing different things but we were all offering different things but all to the same target market. No-one saw each other as competition, we all saw each other as collaborator who were all in the game together. We had a similar belief, we were all women in business, we all had similar branding aesthetics.
I think Tess wrote an article for the magazine from Smack Bang and then New Beginnings, it was a [inaudible 00:21:52] start up that used to be in Sydney, they put on an event and Collabosaurus and I shared a stall and then Tess had a stall there and I went and said hi and we got along really well. Eventually I moved to Sydney and we just became really good friends. Then I had an opportunity to get an investor on board for the magazine and it fell through, ended pretty badly and I was like I still have these dreams where I want to take the mag and I need someone to help me do it and I reached out to Tess. It was a Sunday, I sent her an email and said I have an idea and she said what is it and I said do you want in on the magazine and she said absolutely, send me what you've got in mind and I'll call you on Monday and then we set up a partnership.
Sonya:
That's awesome, I love that and to think it was all coming from you squirrelling down the rabbit hole with hashtags on Instagram back in the day.
Kaylene:
Absolutely and that's exactly what you were saying before, when people just post and send, sit down, even if they're scheduling it or they're just posting for the sake of posting and you just send it out into the [inaudible 00:23:03] you can't expect to get quality relationships or quality leads back. If you're sending out something that's heartless then you're going to get something back that's you know, you're not going to get anything back because people aren't going to connect with that.
Sonya:
That's so true and you see people grab Stock photos and do like a three word caption and I just think why did you waste your time?
Kaylene:
Those of us who started years ago, it was five years ago I started my business, we used it for everything we could and we're lucky now that, I feel like there's a certain type of account that has, we got to crack a bit of the Instagram before it got too ugly to me and as a result we've collected and, not consistently like I think we still get messed over a little bit but I feel like I've got a pretty good engagement where I can still reach, Instagram still puts my content in the majority of my people's feed or enough to get high engagement and stuff. I don't think everyone starting a business now and on Instagram now is really, has that privilege.
Sonya:
Yeah, I think you've got to really be proactive about it and be looking for other options as well. Don't get me wrong, I love social media but if you're starting from scratch with an account like on Facebook, engagement rates across the board are like 0.016%, they're tiny so, so, so small for business pages so you do really have to be doing other things and looking at the opportunities to be promoting what you're doing on there. So the face to face events you do for example or the print magazine, all of that ties together and I think you've already built that relationship with people as well. Once they feel like they know you which you put in so much work in those early years with your Instagram account now people look for your posts and they look for your content and they look forward to that next post and they see your face and they recognise who you are so you've sort of cracked that barrier of going from being a stranger to people recognising you and your brand and feeling like they know you in a certain way.
I'm sure you get, I mean I do, I get people come up to me sometimes and they're like oh, I love you and your little sausage dog and I'm like, thank you, who are you, I follow you on Instagram, oh, okay, cool.
Kaylene:
It's true and I think, thank you, it's nice to hear when you're genuinely out to solve a problem I'm constantly looking at how can I better solve this problem, is my solution working, are people engaging with it. My genuine passion is you can turn your passion into a viable career that can help you to design the life of your dreams. That's super important for me so my brain works in overdrive in how do I deliver that message to the masses, A, deliver the message and then B, teach them how to do that and then C, be continually doing it for myself.
Sonya:
Yeah, that's an important point as well. You put so much into other people's businesses thinking about how are you going to be continually innovating and then sharing what you're learning with people that also need to hear it as well. I think you see inside a lot of businesses, if someone was coming to you now with a product based business versus a service based business what would your initial advice be to them?
Kaylene:
With product based business you have to be prepared for the cashbook. You have to probably have [inaudible 00:27:12] with cash and you have to be prepared to roll with the rollercoaster of product base and be able to probably back yourself financially with it because I've seen businesses, they can turn over $30,000 a month in sales but then their expenses would be $28,000 so whilst it looks like they're turning over a shit load and they have a big following or whatever they might have to keep reinvesting that money. The story of Nike if anyone wants to read the book Shoe Dog, the number of times that before Nike went public they nearly went bankrupt.
Their overheads were like a million plus and so they somehow over their journey, something along these lines, I read the book a while ago but where the bank had given them, they had all of these different ways of loans of credit lines so they would loan that at the start of the month and then they would sell everything, they'd buy other product and stuff but then right at the end of the month they had to chase their invoices to get their money in to pay the loan on time so they could get the loan again the next month, their credit line. Yeah, product based businesses you have to be prepared for that but in the same way the digital marketing world means that it can be very, it can be very easy to crack a formula and say if you've got influencers even Instagram has the ability to click straight through to the shop now, there's lots of great innovations happening that make it easy to sell a product based business without too much convincing.
I think that's also about online buying behaviour as humans evolving to that is the impulse to buy whereas a service based business is very much about trust. I just came from a client actually and I was like you need to go back. She'd developed some strategies and kind of this brand value and I kind of, she asked me to so I was pretty savage in pulling it to pieces and being like why is this person going to buy this and blah, blah and we ended up taking about three steps backs and reworking the target market and the brand values and the why all together and the problem that she was solving. She felt a bit disheartened but I was like no, if we can take these steps back now then what you have to offer will be so clear and if we can really nail who is going to buy this then it will do a lot of the selling for you.
So service based businesses are very much based on trust and expert opinions and how willing and able you are to showcase that you're the right person to give the advice or offer that service really. Again that would be, that's my business so I feel like I've mastered that and I continue.
I have a whole two pages in my diary pretty much consistently and at the top it's just like brand reputation so what do I need to do, where do I need to be to keep elevating my brand and at the moment it's like yeah, maybe I'm going to send in an article to Vogue magazine or get on this podcast or whatever so I'm constantly thinking of ways to elevate my expert status because the more I can do that and I do work with the universities and things like that and it's like right, this is all an opportunity for me to elevate my brand which means over time I get to, as a service based business there's only so much time in the day so the only way that I can keep making great money is to put up my prices which means I have to showcase that my time is worth so much based on my experience and then I have digital products which I highly recommend every business whether you're product or service based.
Yeah, passive income like E-courses and E-books and memberships, things like that means that you can grow your business globally without your time but you make it once and then you sit it on the website and you can make money in your sleep.
Sonya:
Yeah, amazing and that's what I'm currently working on because we have hit complete capacity with my agency and digital products, digital courses are absolutely where it's at. I've just got a quick question that's just come to mind. Sorry, I am going to go off script here for a second. Do you struggle at any point with, I mean you are your business essentially, like you are the face of it, I mean you've got a business partner and things like that but did you ever struggle between being Kaylene Langford versus Start Up Creative? Is that a point of tension at all for you
Kaylene:
Yeah, it's ongoing and I think the conversation we were having about me shifting the business model, I mean one on one coaching I will probably always do in some capacity whether it's very rare, a few sessions a month or something because it connects me to why I started and what people need. There's nothing more valuable than sitting in front of your target market and hearing their needs because then I get to make that into blog posts or podcast episodes or downloads or courses. They're reflecting back to me what the realities are, what the stage that they're at but it's not scalable and it's not sustainable as one person to hold the energy of so many people who really need help. It can be really draining and I've definitely had plenty of times and a if you scroll through my Instagram you'll see monologues of times where I've just opened up completely about hard it can be to be a face and a brand.
I'm a really big believer in energetics so I think it can be really hold to be the face of a brand or an online community between the podcast, the Facebook, Instagram, mailing list, the blog, all the different ways that we talk to people. Probably over 100,000 people looking at some point in a year to Start Up Creative to inspire them or to educate them or to make them feel better and imagine standing on a stage in front of 100,000 people looking at you being like, help. It's quite [inaudible 00:34:14]. I think we forget that that's also an energetic that's playing out and that I am only human and I don't have to be everyone's inspirer or saviour all the time. Yeah, it can be draining on ways that you feel like you shouldn't be whinging or upset about it because there's so many privileges that come with it but it definitely takes its toll. There's been plenty of times where I've been like oh, I fucked this up really bad in that I'm like damn it I wish I didn't build a business because then I could sell it.
Samantha Wills, the jewellery designer is selling her business. Actually no, she's shutting it down because she couldn't sell her name so yeah, there has been moments where I've been like if I wasn't such the face maybe I should fade myself out so I could sell this one day but I've kept it as a I'm the face of the brand because it still feels aligned to my purpose right now and how I want to help people so I've just got to get better at boundaries.
Sonya:
I feel like that's my buzzword for the week, boundaries. It's so funny, you get clients or people that you work with or there's things you want to do as a business owner to help others even if it's not a paying opportunity and sometimes it feels really, really draining when you feel like someone is overstepping your boundaries but you didn't realise until you were feeling that drain feeling as to why it was happening. I think that's such a skill to be able to recognise that before it happens because it's very hard then to put those boundaries in place once you've already let them happen over and over again but as a business owner you do need to protect your energy because the first thing to go is that creativity and that innovation on your side which essentially is your business. You're stepping forward and teaching people these amazing things but if you're feeling completely drained then you're not going to be looking for those opportunities and then you sort of stop growing and progressing and then you hit this, I don't know, flat line where it's quite stagnant and uninspiring.
Kaylene:
Yeah, and I think that's the, it's a hard line to draw but I think it's all up to personal boundaries and I think the downfall of social media is that people can get at you all the time and I've definitely been challenged with right, I'm going to run this social media account because I know that I need to keep my presence alive and my algorithm and that people engage with this content and the more content they see the more likely they are to remember to buy something from me whether it's a coaching session or an E-book or a workshop or whatever or the magazine. I think people think oh, if they're posting on social media then they must be okay or they must be on their emails and it's a business outlet for me, it's a business tool for me and as much as it's sometimes very personal but there's days where I'm doing this because I need to do it.
And if someone hasn't heard back from you in 24 hours in an email then they start chasing you on socials and then text messaging or WhatsApp or whatever and I'm like who's picking up the phone call these days and saying hey, just checking in you're okay or who's you know, there's just no gap to not be accessible. I actually had a conversation with my GP the other day and I was feeling really stressed and was in her office and she was like imagine if GP's were giving out their email addresses or that people could reply to their Instagram stories, they would be hounded. I'm like, oh my God that's [inaudible 00:38:22].
Sonya:
Absolutely. Do you ever take some time where you're just like I am not answering emails, I don't have my phone, I'm not on my computer? For me that's something I really, really struggle with even I say okay, I'm just going to focus on this one thing today and ignore the rest. Because we are so connected all the time it's something that I physically really, really struggle doing that. I recently went up to the Tiwi Islands and I've got some friends up there teaching in a remote community and they actually cut the phone lines so I had no phone reception and I was like I just don't want the Wi-Fi code either. I had three days where I was actually not contactable and it was the most bizarre feeling because I was like this is the first time in three years that no-one's been able to contact me.
I went to Egypt last year for two weeks, I was in the middle of nowhere at one point and I was still on my emails. It's just like this compulsion and it's something I'm working on but how do you manage that with technology, do you take time out or-
Kaylene:
Yeah, I sleep with my phone on airplane mode and I get up and I meditate in the morning before, as much as possible and before turning my phone off airplane mode so I have an uninterrupted sleep which when I first started out it wasn't that, I definitely have been guilty of checking emails in the middle of the night and having notifications. I can't believe it now but I used to have notifications on my phone of every email that came in and it took me a lot to turn those off. I don't know if I'm crazy or not but it took me a lot because I would never want to miss an opportunity. I remember reading Four Hour Work Week and Tim Ferris being like you teach people how you communicate and if you want to answer emails only on Mondays then have an automatic reply set up Tuesday to Sunday saying hey, thanks for your email I reply on Mondays, I'll get back to you then.
I haven't gone to that extreme as yet, I think I've had moments of it. Yeah, and then I'll sit down and try, mostly try to start my day with a coffee and try to be quite present with it and not too on the phone or emails and then I think what I've learnt over the years is it's never going to end, the to do lists, the dreams, the goals, the people who need you, the people who want to get to you, the people who want to hear from you, it's never ending, it's not going anywhere so the sooner that I just surrender to that rather than try to finish all the tasks and just go right, what can I do today, what needs to be done today and then be okay with stuff sitting there has been important.
Sonya:
Oh yeah, that's, yeah. I feel like I need more of that in my life. It's so easy to sit down as a business owner like I've always got a running Google doc and at the moment there's 50 things on there. It's not physically possible for me to get through them all but being okay with that I think is a struggle for a lot of business owners.
Kaylene:
Yeah. Reflecting on your question of being un-contactable I don't remember the last time, probably on a long haul flight like I just recently flew to Europe and having those 20 hours in the air probably the closest thing I've come to being uncontactable. It's probably a health issue really, I feel quite nervous about the thought of not being contactable. I know that Tess Robinson from Smack Bang she was really good at like I think today actually she's given her whole staff a day off just because, things like that, she's not afraid to put an automatic reply on and let people know she's going to take her time getting back to them and stuff. I think back to boundaries.
Sonya:
Yeah.
Kaylene:
I can clock off at five. I might check my emails and I might be accessible all day but I could be laying on the beach on a Monday so I'm pretty good at doing that work/life balance thing because early on when I started Start Up Creative there was a lot of, I went really hard and it was my ex at the time who was like hang on a second because we were both building businesses and he was like this is not why we did this, this is not why you left the corporate world and then we got into lots of personal development and realised that you don't have to be hustling 24/7 to earn the money you want to earn or get the clients you want to get, it's like you're better off actually focusing your energy to some really solid work hours and then get a return on that quality time spent working rather than working all the time at half mast pace or focus or energy.
Sonya:
I think that's a really good point and I think there's such this hustle mentality and I'm definitely guilty of being caught up in it but I think for me if you're actually sitting down and paying attention to your focus with work, I reckon I've got six hours of brainpower a day. That's not for things like emails and responding to messages and stuff like that, it's like actual focus time. If I get six hour of focus time in like my brain is fried by the end of it. We can't operate on that 100% focus all the time. I know there's some countries that are experimenting, companies experimenting with doing 30 hour work weeks and they're finding that people are getting a lot more done, the work is of a lot higher quality and things like happiness and their health are improving a lot so it's something I think I'd definitely like to get to the point where I am actually doing the 30 hours a week.
That's a dream, one day but I think it takes discipline as well to make that happen and not be sitting at your desk thinking well my to do list is so, so long I just need to sit here and try and get through it even if you have hit that wall.
I am going to throw a few quick fire, rapid fire, whatever you want to call it, questions at you now to wrap things up. Are you an advocate for paid marketing? Do you spend any money on digital ad spend at the moment?
Kaylene:
I used to when I first started out. I think that it's smart because sometimes we can't get the reach that we authentically used to get but I wouldn't advocate for from me, I would probably advocate for more of a lead funnel so put paid marketing behind getting people on your mailing list.
Sonya:
Excellent and then nurturing them from there, amazing. What do you think business owner waste a lot of time, money and energy on when it comes to marketing and where should they be directing it instead?
Kaylene:
Time on probably looking what other people are doing and just trying to replicate that and money probably on just like a quick fix like buy from me, buy from me, buy from me and the should be focusing their energy on understanding to the deepest level their target market and how they're going to solve their problems and then B would be figuring out how they're going to build their trust with them. That could be which is where I took my business model was you're better off investing and putting on an epic event that you make no money from and giving everyone a great time. They Instagram the hell out of the night, they leave on a high and then they inquire for business coaching and that's where you make your money.
Sonya:
Yeah, completely agree. I think it goes back to building relationships and trust first which is what something like an event does. Finally, if someone was thinking about changing up and getting serious about their marketing where do you recommend they start?
Kaylene:
Well I think that you want to start with your customer experience so where is understanding your customers journey with you, where do they enter your business so where are they hearing about you, what type points are out there and then what's the journey that they take through your business or where are they exiting before maybe they spend money with you or they take you seriously. Then once you've understood that you can actually start, then you can look at and go okay, where's my customer before they have heard about me and they know that they need me and then go and be there. Does that make sense?
Sonya:
Yeah it does. I used to work for a guy who was a coach in the real estate industry actually and his favourite saying was where do your customers hang out before they need you and he was literally talking about kids football games, they're in the coffee shop down the street, where are they and how can you get there and I guess just appear and reach them on that level so love that advice.
Kaylene:
Yeah, they don't always know that they need you or that they want you so yeah, going to your customer I think is a very powerful tool that will get you ahead of the game.
Sonya:
Fantastic. Well Kaylene, thank you so much for taking the time to come on today. I certainly have learnt a lot so thank you.
Kaylene:
Thanks for having me.