Rocky Mountain Marketing- Digital Marketing for Entrepreneurs

Our guest this week is Michaela Smith. She is the owner of two great businesses the Karma Koaches and Meditation Nut. She started building her business at a very young age. She was lucky to have an A-team family that it became relatively easy for her to scale up. Of course, there are a lot of challenges along the way but her family has always been there to give her business advice.It was such a colorful ride growing her business but she came to a point that she reached her "maximum". She felt like she should be doing some more. In September 2018 she posted her business for sale. She tried finding herself and her true passion. She wasn't into life coaching and business coaching even though most of the people she knew tells her she can be one. She found herself doing meditation coaching. She got certified and started her two new businesses from there. Tune in to this week's episode and find out how she sold her business, and find her way into launching, not just one, but two businesses.Like the show? Keep Katie running and show her your support!https://www.buymeacoffee.com/katiebrinkleyEPISODE LINKSVisit Michaela's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaela-smith-ba907714/Learn more about Katie and Next Step Social Communications: Clubhouse: joinclubhouse.com/@katiebrinkleyhttps://www.nextstepsocialcommunications.comlinkedin.com/in/katiebrinkleyhttps://www.instagram.com/iamkatiebrinkley/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In today's episode, we are joined by Alexa Cowley. Alexa is the president and CEO of Forever Friday Consulting. She is also the host of The Friday Society Podcast. She enjoys working with small health and wellness brands to find the system that best works for them. She spent 4.5 years with Lululemon, first as a sales educator working with local businesses. She loved this and found joy in connecting with small businesses. She then became a community manager for the Flatiron Flagship Store managing fitness studios across New York.Her next corporate role was as a marketing director for SoulCycle. She was responsible for looking after 26 studios and 5 direct reports. It was a big undertaking but felt strongly passionate about helping small businesses without huge resources to thrive. After 1.5 years in SoulCycle, she decided to start Forever Friday Consulting. Her heart is in keeping as many people as possible healthy and strong. When asked about branding, she said that the most important step would be to create your mission statement. Your mission statement has to be very specific as to what you do, why you do it, and what should people expect from you. Once you have your WHY clear enough, it will be easier to find your ideal clients. You can now start marketing. Usually, small businesses don't have a huge budget for this but they can sure find the time to make it happen. Spending time connecting with local businesses is a proven-and-tested great start.If you're in the health and wellness realm, this is the episode for you!! If not, you can still get lots of strategies that you can customize for your business, as well as, mindset tips and tricks to get you ahead of the game. Like the show? Keep Katie running and show her your support!https://www.buymeacoffee.com/katiebrinkleyEPISODE LINKSVisit Alexa's website: https://foreverfriday.co/Instagram: @foreverfriday.coPodcast: https://thefridaysocietypodcast.com/Learn more about Katie and Next Step Social Communications: Clubhouse: joinclubhouse.com/@katiebrinkleyhttps://www.nextstepsocialcommunications.comlinkedin.com/in/katiebrinkleyhttps://www.instagram.com/iamkatiebrinkley/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mental health is not so common a topic inside the workplace. However, recent events hit all of us too hard that the call for a more mindful work environment is more than necessary. In this week's episode, we are joined by Donovan Dreyer. Donovan is a coach and speaker in Get Ready Coaching. He was initially aspiring to be a pilot but realized that it isn't what he is passionate about. The tragedy of the Columbine shooting showed him his purpose. He wanted to deep dive and understand why teens think the way they do. Studies show that a lot of teens are suicidal and that many parents need professional help in dealing with them. The ages 17 to 18 years old is a very crucial stage in their lives. Teens at this stage need help in figuring out their dreams, what they really want to be. Therefore, a strong support system is needed to help them get clarity on what they really want. Failing to provide such a support system can cause a midlife crisis wherein adults find it hard to pivot and make changes. They end up in the wrong spot, making them stuck in a situation that they do not want.Donovan was able to formulate the Spotlight analogy when he was triggered by a number of teen suicides that happen in a school that he previously worked with. He believes that when there is a universal language for mental health, we can easily understand what the children's condition is and how to deal with them. He used the colors green, yellow and red to note different mental health statuses and needs.Tune in to today's episode and understand how important it is to understand your spotlight, not only for your business but more importantly for your own mental health.Like the show? Keep Katie running and show her your support!https://www.buymeacoffee.com/katiebrinkleyEPISODE LINKSVisit Donovan's website: https://www.getreadycoaching.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/donovandreyer/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/donovan.dreyer/Email: donovan@getreadycoaching.comLearn more about Katie and Next Step Social Communications: Clubhouse: joinclubhouse.com/@katiebrinkleyhttps://www.nextstepsocialcommunications.comlinkedin.com/in/katiebrinkleyhttps://www.instagram.com/iamkatiebrinkley/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Our guest this week is the one and only THE Instagram Expert, business coach, Sue B Zimmerman. Sue is a natural-born entrepreneur who started selling hand-painted barrettes at a very young age. She believes that if you're doing what you love, it is easier for you to make money from it. These same lines sounded true until she grew up. Her love for things allowed her to grow her business far and wide because she knew exactly how to stand out among her competitors. She used Instagram to grow her business. From scrapbooking and putting embellishments on photos, she had gone digital and go really strategic with her profile. She discussed the importance of understanding SEO and applying that firstly, in your bio. Make yourself searchable. Use appropriate keywords related to your niche so that when people visit your account, they'll know instantly what you do. Also, another important thing she pointed out is how easier it is for your audience to relate to it, and trust you when you do your videos.A lot more strategies and Instagram hacks to learn when you tune in to today's episode.Like the show? Keep Katie running and show her your support!https://www.buymeacoffee.com/katiebrinkley EPISODE LINKSVisit Sue's website: https://suebzimmerman.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theinstagramexpert/Learn more about Katie and Next Step Social Communications: Clubhouse: joinclubhouse.com/@katiebrinkleyhttps://www.nextstepsocialcommunications.comlinkedin.com/in/katiebrinkleyhttps://www.instagram.com/iamkatiebrinkley/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

"Teamwork begins by building trust. And the only way to do that is to overcome our need for invulnerability." – Patrick Lencioni In this week's episode, we are joined by Miruna Dragomir. Miruna is the Chief Marketing Officer of Planable. She helped Planable to grow 35x in revenue for the past three years. As a social media collaborative platform, Planable traces back its beginnings from a 5-man team, and that already includes one marketing person - HER. She experimented with strategies and ways to make the system better. One of the things she said had the biggest impact was their love for collaboration. Miruna said that they continuously look at what they're doing. She believes that nothing starts off as perfect and that they should all be happy to give out feedback and receive feedback. After all, their ultimate goal is to get better, and so they created an environment that encourages all minds to work together to get the most outcome. With collaboration, each team member pushes the others and brings out the best they have. They are also able to identify issues in their processes and provide effective solutions to them. One of these solutions is automation and/or delegation. They found ways to automate or delegate tasks that took so much of their time. Planable is based on these things and has been extremely helpful to other businesses, as well.When you listen to this podcast, you will not only get tried-and-tested strategies to scale your business but also a whopping 30% off in your first 3 months in Planable. Use the code ROCKY30 to avail.Like the show? Keep Katie running and show her your support!https://www.buymeacoffee.com/katiebrinkleyEPISODE LINKSVisit Planable's website: https://planable.io/LinkedIn: https://ro.linkedin.com/in/mirunadragomirLearn more about Katie and Next Step Social Communications: Clubhouse: joinclubhouse.com/@katiebrinkleyhttps://www.nextstepsocialcommunications.comlinkedin.com/in/katiebrinkleyhttps://www.instagram.com/iamkatiebrinkley/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's a long time coming and finally, we have Jennie Wright. Jennie is an online marketing strategist, a list builder, and a lead generation expert. She is the creator of List Build 2.0, her own lead generation system based on attraction and permission marketing. She is a natural-born salesperson. Her first gig was a fundraiser for their Grade 6 yearbook. She grew up with her hardworking parents. Her father was a mechanic and they own the gas station next to it. She was so into the family business working on cars, cleaning tools, understanding the exhaust system, etc. Every summer, she worked in the station painting the curbside, cutting grass, and pulling weeds, among others. When she was to go to the university, her parents decided to close the station. She applied to a big box retailer down the street and started her 14.5-year career there. This helped her get through to the university and gave her most of her working experience. She was paid top dollar and was given a lot of incentives. She was promoted as a supervisor before hitting a wall and decided to leave the company. She decided to join a gold mining company and only after 4 weeks from her big box resignation. She started as Investor Relations and Communications Officer. She felt like she is now working THE job. She used her bilingual skills. She had her own office. She dressed up to work. Absolutely a huge leap from her jeans and t-shirt kind of job.However, she happened to join a start-up and that didn't work out for her. She was about to start a new job but required to move to New York for training. It was a dealbreaker for her. She told one of her girlfriends about it and offered her to work as a virtual assistant for her and all the other real estate agents in the office. She continued doing these gigs using Fiverr and there met her client who needed help with her summits. Being new to this, she tried to learn as much as she can. The next thing she knew she was already working her own system of lead generation and doing nearly 250 online summits. But how is she able to do all these? She said she has a strict list of non-negotiables. This made her prioritize her business and what needs to happen. Through her journey, she learned that the email list is the business's greatest asset. She believes that however huge your following or friends list in your social media platforms is, that's nothing when those social media platforms decided to stop. You don't own it! Your email list, that's yours to make use of.Learn more about list injections, as well as her take on the right mindset to set your business off the ground. Like the show? Keep Katie running and show her your support!https://www.buymeacoffee.com/katiebrinkleyEPISODE LINKSVisit Jennie's website: https://jenniewright.com/Email: jennie@jenniewright.comSystem to Thrive: https://systemtothrive.com/Facebook Group: Grow and Profit OnlineLearn more about Katie and Next Step Social Communications: Clubhouse: joinclubhouse.com/@katiebrinkleyhttps://www.nextstepsocialcommunications.comlinkedin.com/in/katiebrinkleyhttps://www.instagram.com/iamkatiebrinkley/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week we are joined by Alison Proffit. Alison is the founder of Proffit Coach. They help small businesses and entrepreneurs build processes that are heart-centered and soul-aligned. Her goal is to make their businesses grow focusing on the sales aspect to avoid having the stress that sales often brings. Her background in the HR industry made her an expert in finding the best sales process for you, and business strategies that contribute to sustainable success. In 2017, she got her certificate from the Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching (iPEC). This opened doors for her in the corporate coaching and leadership development consultancy. However, she also had unexpected personal life struggles after this certificate program. She lost her job, got divorced, and moved houses 9 times. It was tough, but she proved that she was tougher. She got her second career change in the company called Sales Contact. She held a sales position for one year and did really good at it. Her communication skills and being able to affect their mindset helped a lot in closing sales. According to Alison, sales is all about connecting and having those meaningful conversations. When you know how to structure your sales conversation, you'll be able to close those sales with flying colors. Like the show? Keep Katie running and show her your support!https://www.buymeacoffee.com/katiebrinkleyEPISODE LINKSVisit Alison's website: https://www.proffitcoach.com/Email: alison@proffitcoach.comLearn more about Katie and Next Step Social Communications: Clubhouse: joinclubhouse.com/@katiebrinkleyhttps://www.nextstepsocialcommunications.comlinkedin.com/in/katiebrinkleyhttps://www.instagram.com/iamkatiebrinkley/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Our guest this week is Jana Osofsky. Jana is a marketing and Pinterest expert for online course creators, coaches, and service providers. She creates strategies to generate a continuous flow of leads for a more profitable business. She started her career as a virtual assistant last 2016. She was creating content for a client and in time find herself at the back end of her client's marketing. She discovered Pinterest and since then fell in love with it. Over the years, she saw how Pinterest evolve and how it became more and more useful for businesses and service providers to attract potential clients. As she describes it, Pinterest is more like Google than Facebook and Instagram. Her winning strategy starts with finding the right keywords. What do your target audience usually search for? For local businesses, you can try adding your geographic location or something that your area is popular for and then use it in your pin description, profile, etc. In this way, the algorithm will see you as relevant when someone search for that keyword. The good thing about Pinterest is that once you find the right keywords, the leads will just follow through. When people search here that means they are already interested in that particular service or product. The goal is not to attract but more of be on top of the searches. Another excellent benefit of Pinterest is that the contents are evergreen. Your pins are good for a month or even longer. It doesn't expire or stop showing in others feed for a limited time.Find out more about Pinterest and the magic it can give your business. Like the show? Keep Katie running and show her your support!https://www.buymeacoffee.com/katiebrinkleyEPISODE LINKSVisit Jana's website: https://janaomedia.com/Pinterest with Purpose: https://janaomedia.com/pinterestcourse/Learn more about Katie and Next Step Social Communications: Clubhouse: joinclubhouse.com/@katiebrinkleyhttps://www.nextstepsocialcommunications.comlinkedin.com/in/katiebrinkleyhttps://www.instagram.com/iamkatiebrinkley/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, we are joined by Christine Daspro. Christine is the founder of Threads of Leadership and Curating Connections. She spent 30 years in the corporate jungle of Wallstreet before deciding to take a break and live in Colorado. However, this puts her into level zero. It was a clean slate, her big and great network was in the corporate world, and now she's starting over again. After some research, she joined the Women's Vision Foundation. This allowed her to find her passion in helping leaders by educating them on how to build meaningful and impactful connections.It was something she enjoyed. She mentored. She coached new entrepreneurs. She worked with the board. She's absolutely making an impact and decided to level up her playing field. At this point, she become a great advocate of overcoming impostor syndrome. It was her life story. Her 30 years in the corporate world is nothing but living as the person who is always being told. Her success was that of others. She felt empty and sad. She realized she's not being her authentic self. Tune in as Christine shares her story on how she overcome impostor syndrome, and then eventually, help others get out from it too. Like the show? Keep Katie running and show her your support!https://www.buymeacoffee.com/katiebrinkleyEPISODE LINKSVisit Christine's website: https://curatingconnections.com/2021-threads-of-leadership//Email: christine@threadsofleadership.comLearn more about Katie and Next Step Social Communications: Clubhouse: joinclubhouse.com/@katiebrinkleyhttps://www.nextstepsocialcommunications.comlinkedin.com/in/katiebrinkleyhttps://www.instagram.com/iamkatiebrinkley/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Our guest this week is Vince Warnock. He is an award-winning business marketing strategist, author, coach, and a Star Wars fan. He was included in 2018's Fearless 50 where emerging bold and fearless leaders were recognized. He established his first "company" at the age of 11, unknowingly, when he played on faulty computers and fixed them to sell. This allowed him to discover his interest in computers and technology.A true born Kiwi, Vince accepted the challenge to be independent and figure out things on his own. In college, he continue to pursue his interest and took up software engineering. He was involved in several startups and found success in selling them to larger companies. In 2015, he joined CIGNA as Digital Marketing Manager. It was a crazy journey but absolutely a happy one. It was all good stuff, according to him, he love the company and the people he worked with, however as time went on, he realized that he was not satisfied. He felt as if he wasn't himself anymore. In 2019, he took the courage to say goodbye to the corporate world, and start working on his 2nd book about impostor syndrome. While he's on it, the pandemic hit and found businesses that needed his help. He helped them pivot to digital marketing and it made him feel fulfilled like never before. He started being a marketing coach to businesses.As he talk to business owners, it reminded him of his book about impostor syndrome. He mentioned that the best way to deal with this is to fully embrace it. He believes that there's no point in battling or defeating impostor syndrome as it is natural to most of us. We have to learn how to embrace it and cope with it. When we discover and make friends with those small voices in our heads, then we take courage and move forward. This is the very core of any business in any industry. Once you've dealt with impostor syndrome, you are now able to see clear and scale up your business. It's in clarity, knowing the simplest framework, that you can be successful. Just the same as creating landing pages. When we overcomplicate the landing page, make it too long, we lose our potential clients. We lose that chance to convert. Tune in and learn more about Vince in this week's episode. Like the show? Keep Katie running and show her your support!https://www.buymeacoffee.com/katiebrinkleyEPISODE LINKSVisit Vince's website: https://chasingtheinsights.com/Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/nz/podcast/chasing-the-insights/id1528241477Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/66p2n7EMUmtbSFx2ua68zZLearn more about Katie and Next Step Social Communications: Clubhouse: joinclubhouse.com/@katiebrinkleyhttps://www.nextstepsocialcommunications.comlinkedin.com/in/katiebrinkleyhttps://www.instagram.com/iamkatiebrinkley/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.