Working for yourself is a lonely venture. Working for yourself after moving to a new part of the country where you don\u2019t have very many (okay really not any) friends and also starting a new business in an industry where you\u2019re not familiar?<\/p>\n
You know where this is going.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s hard. Impossibly lonely. And worse yet, no one understands what you do.<\/p>\n
That lack of understanding is largely my fault. At first it was a lack of confidence. \u201cMarketing,\u201d I\u2019d mutter, if anyone ever asked what I\u2019m working on, hoping they\u2019d go away.<\/p>\n
If pressed, I\u2019d fumble through an explanation. \u201cI create marketing campaigns for digital entrepreneurs.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOh,\u201d they\u2019d say, and lose interest, letting me off the hook.<\/p>\n
Which was fine. It should not have been fine, because a new business does not grow from muttering and trying to get out of a conversation about what I do.<\/p>\n
But as I started helping more people get amazing results, my confidence grew.<\/p>\n
One client got 160 new signups for an annual membership based on the Black Friday campaign I created.<\/p>\n
One made $60,000 on a quiz I made (not including the people who bought more after the quiz just from being on their list!).<\/p>\n
Everyone saw a massive uptick in email subscribers after working with me, and not just email subscribers\u2026 email subscribers who were more likely to eventually buy something.<\/p>\n
And that\u2019s all in the last year!<\/p>\n
I almost never talk about my role on Stacking Benjamins, the podcast where I was a partner for three years. My offline friends don\u2019t know the podcast, and my online friends barely know I was on it, and if they do, they thought I must have been a virtual assistant or something because I wasn\u2019t on the air or involved (much) in production.<\/p>\n
But I wasn\u2019t a virtual assistant.<\/p>\n
I joined forces with my partners and turned the brand into a profitable one. I created systems to make producing three shows a week more seamless. We went from basically breaking even to earning more than six figures in a year based on what I did.<\/p>\n
So why don\u2019t I talk about it?<\/p>\n
It\u2019s funny, given that I chose to go and create a marketing company, but I sincerely LOATHE being seen as grandstanding or being too self promotional. I\u2019m sure the reasons are varied and complex and have roots in sexism or what-have-you, but the truth is, if you don\u2019t tell people what you\u2019re working on, how on earth can you expect them to work with you?<\/p>\n
I spent a large part of the last year trying to get away from the online personal finance community. All personal finance content can be summed up by \u201cspend less, earn more, invest the difference,\u201d and as I was realizing it was time for me to part ways with my old partners, I knew I didn\u2019t want to be a part of that content anymore.<\/p>\n
But going to Statement Event, a two-day conference geared toward women in money media reiterated what I already knew: the people who still do create content in that space are changing lives<\/strong>\u00a0and I want to help them.<\/p>\n Maybe it is feminine to stay quiet about what you do, but also the creators have spent years developing their expertise on how to be smart with your money, which means they haven\u2019t<\/em>\u00a0spent years figuring out how to get their message in front of more people. And they don\u2019t know the tech, so they stall.<\/p>\n They don\u2019t create the course that more than a dozen people have asked them to create.<\/p>\n Or they do, then they put a \u201cbuy button\u201d on their website and send one email (MAYBE) to their list, and when they don\u2019t sell many (or any), they think they have a content problem.<\/p>\n In this space, it\u2019s almost never a content problem.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a marketing problem.<\/p>\n And those are way easier to fix, because the fix for a subpar course or digital product is typically along the lines of \u201cburn it to the ground and build something out of the phoenix that rises from those ashes\u201d which no one wants to hear.<\/p>\nWhere am I going with this? And what does this have to do with Statement?<\/h2>\n