Steps For Starting An Online Business (Leaving Your 9 to 5)

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Back in 2016, in January to be specific, just one month after my son was born, I got this crazy idea that I wanted to leave my nine-to-five. 

Just eight months later I did that, and here I am in 2021 at the time of recording this video and writing this blog, and my entire life has changed. 

It all started with my road from nine-to-five to a six-figure entrepreneur in just one year. 

But, how did I leave my nine to five and build this scalable business? That’s the purpose of today’s blog.

QUITTING MY 9 TO 5 JOB

Let’s go back to 2016 when my son was just one month old, and I decided that I wanted to leave my nine-to-five. 

I didn't have experience being an entrepreneur, I didn't even know at the time what I wanted to focus on building my business around, but I had started to discover what was possible online through social media, and people I'd gone to college with suddenly posting about the businesses that they had created. 

So I went into it a little bit rosy-eyed, thinking that I was going to be an overnight success.

Eight months later, after doing all of the things, I hadn't made any money in my business. Although it sucked at the time, I’m incredibly thankful for those first eight months, because they taught me what I am about to share with you today. 

Once I implemented the pieces that I'm sharing with you today and continued to work on those and refine them and scale them I did hit six figures in one year, and have consistently had a six-figure business since then.

I ended up leaving my nine-to-five in September of 2016, and in the same month signed my first client. 

Now, I'm going to be 100% transparent with you, in no way was I an overnight success, I had to work really, really hard those eight months before leaving my nine-to-five to have a solid business foundation. 

But I did take a leap of faith, and for some of you reading this, you're going to be like, "Absolutely not, there is no way that I'm doing that," and that is absolutely fine. 

The strategies I'm going to share with you are also going to support you while you are building your business and working a nine-to-five, and putting money in savings, and having those clients and stuff coming in before you decide to leave. 

But some of you are also reading this and thinking, "This kind of sounds like fun. Maybe I could take a leap of faith?" 

And this information is for you as well.

I ultimately decided to leave my nine-to-five before having income in my business, and that definitely meant we had to take a lot of risks. 

We decided to just live off of my husband's income the best that we could for a few months, any money that came into the business did not go back into the business, I would put it into living expenses. 

We were using it to buy groceries and pay bills, and I'm not going to lie, those first three months were incredibly difficult.

But I'm thankful for them, and they got me home quicker to be with my son, and to go all-in on building this business. For me, that was the aligned decision we made so I could focus and expand as an entrepreneur.

Both ways work!

STEPS FOR STARTING AN ONLINE BUSINESS
#1 DETERMINATION

The number one thing that I think you need to go from nine to five to a six-figure entrepreneur is determination. Whether you decide to leave your nine-to-five with an entire savings account and six months of salary in the bank, or you decide to just go for it and hope it all works out, you need determination. 

You're going to hit roadblocks every single step of the way, and it's so incredibly important to remind yourself why you're doing this in the first place. 

And if I'm being honest with you, it has to be a lot deeper than "I just want to make money," it has to be driven by an emotional feeling and mission.

For me, it was to be home with my son. I originally didn't plan to be home with him after my maternity leave, but I had this feeling, this fire that I needed to be home with him, that I wanted to experience those first few years with him.

I also had always thought about working for myself, and it felt like no better time. 

So I was emotionally invested in this business, and as a result of that emotional investment and the determination, I optimized my time so that I could build these crucial pieces. 

I'm going to share those pieces with you, of course, but it doesn't matter if you have the pieces and you know what to do, if you aren't dedicating specific time to work on your business, especially while you're working a nine-to-five, you're going to have a really hard time growing.

So when I was building those first few months of my business, building my website, planning out my offers, doing my marketing, I was still working my nine-to-five and I was utilizing every little pocket of time that I could find. 

I'd wake up early in the morning and get some work done. 

I would listen to trainings and record emails and social media posts driving to and from work every day. 

I used my lunch time to watch webinars, to learn, to participate in a group program and attend calls. 

And I would use my evenings after my son went to bed, late into the evening, to also work on my business.

I'm thankful that I did that, because today I have a business that allows me to travel to Greece for three months, and live in different parts of the country, but at the time, that was what was required of me. 

So if you take one thing away from this video, I want you to know that it's 100% possible for you, but you've got to be determined and dedicated to putting in the time and the energy, and yes, sometimes money, into building your business.

STEPS FOR STARTING AN ONLINE BUSINESS
#2 RESILIENCE

Once you have become emotionally invested into the success of your business, you can see it, and you're dedicated to the highs and the lows, the ups and the downs, the failures and the wins, it is time to test your resilience and build your brand. 

Now, when I'm talking about building your brand, I'm not talking about your logo, I'm not talking about the aesthetics, I'm not even really talking about your website. 

That's what I thought branding was, that's why I wasted eight months not signing a client. 

Today, I know better, I do better, and I actually teach entrepreneurs how to do branding the right way. I have an entire class on building a better brand, which you can watch at betterbrandmethod.com.

This first stage is incredibly important, because it's going to build the foundation for your business moving forward. 

This is the stage when you identify your niche, this is when you start to decide who your ideal customer is, who you ultimately want to work with. 

This is when you start to fine-tune and practice your communication skills, creating brand messaging and figuring out how you're going to introduce yourself into the world and the topics that you want to talk about as an extension of your brand. 

It's also where you map out your offer.

Now, this is incredibly important, because if you're planning on leaving your nine-to-five and making money pretty quickly, you need to have something to sell, and you want to make sure that your marketing efforts, how you're showing up, are leading people directly to the sale. 

Another piece of advice that I have as it relates to your offer that I didn't learn until much, much later is to focus on one thing. 

You're going to have a much easier time focusing on selling one core service rather than a bunch of different ones that you have to figure out how to share in email and social media and all the different things. It's going to be really overwhelming and confusing. 

It's just easier to focus on one core offer and drive all of your energy and attention to that.

Those are some of the core pieces of building a brand. I go into way more detail inside of my free class where I teach the Build a Better Brand Method, but it's so important that you take the time to do this, because this is going to set the solid foundation for your business. 

I often say that you want to think of your business as a building, and you're going to add floors and stories to it, you're going to want to keep scaling up and go higher and higher and higher, and if you don't have that solid foundation, which is your brand, your building isn't going to scale, it's going to fall over. 

You're going to eventually realize that "Oh no, I have to go back to ground zero." 

Building your brand doesn't have to take a ton of time, there are very, very strategic ways to do it, but it is going to save you so much time, so many headaches, and a lot of pain, when you move into the marketing phase, which is where you ultimately bring in and attract your ideal customer.

STEPS FOR STARTING AN ONLINE BUSINESS
#3 MARKETING

At Brandmerry, we focus on two things, branding and marketing.

I recognized early on that once you have a solid brand, once you know who you are, who you want to work with, what you're ultimately going to offer, how you're going to make a difference in their lives by solving this problem, you have to let people know.

You have to market.
You have to put this information out in front of your ideal customer. 

So one of the things that I recommend as you're building your business is get very strategic and focused on how you're going to market your business.

What I mean by that is don't try and do everything.

There are a million options when it comes to marketing. You can show up on Facebook, you can show up on Instagram, you could use Pinterest, you could use blogging, you can do YouTube, you can be on TikTok, you can use Clubhouse, you can use LinkedIn, the list goes on and on. 

In the beginning, you have a small amount of time while you're working your nine-to-five and growing your business. If you've got kids, that's a whole 'nother level of time management that you have to deal with. 

The more focused you are, the more success you are going to experience. 

When you're starting out, think very strategically about where your ideal customer is and how you can get in front of them. Then use that to plan out a very strategic marketing plan.

Now, I talk about repurposing in this video right here, and repurposing is something that I accidentally did when I was building my business and working a nine-to-five because I recognized I didn't have a lot of time, and I really needed to use the time that I had efficiently. 

When it came to content creation, I needed to be very strategic with the amount of content that I was writing and how I was getting it out in front of my audience. 

So if you have a short amount of time, which many of you watching this probably do, repurposing is something you want to embrace really early on. So make sure you check out that video to learn how you can take a piece of content and push it out to various different platforms in front of your ideal customer without taking so much time and energy away from you.

You want to determine where you're going to be marketing your business. Specifically, how often you're going to be showing up, and that does take some education on what's best for that platform. This is something that we teach inside of my program, Roadmap to Freedom, where we teach you how to market your business, specifically off of social media. 

You also want to create a solid workflow, as I mentioned in this repurposing video, on how you're going to actually execute that every single week. Then it's about repetition and consistency, and over time you're going to see that you're getting faster and faster. 

Maybe you can add another platform, and your planning is going really, really well. 

Maybe you can go from planning 30 days of content to 60, to 90 days of content. 

There's power in that repetition and that consistency when it comes to marketing.

So again, we've got the focus, we've got the determination and the desire to do it, we've got the solid brand foundation, clarity, crystal clear clarity on who you are, your niche, the problem that you solve, who you solve it for, and how you solve that problem. 

That's your brand foundation, and then from there, you can start marketing.

Now, you might be sitting there like, "But Michelle, you didn't talk to me about my logo, and you didn't talk to me about my website, you didn't talk to me about X, Y, and Z." 

That's because those pieces, you can create as you're going through your marketing process, but it’s important that you don't wait to market.

This is something that I find so many entrepreneurs doing, and honestly I did it myself, which is probably why it took me eight months to sign my first client. 

The longer that you wait to put your brand out into the world, the longer it's going to take to sign a client. In episode 12 of The Brandmerry Podcast, I share more about getting the confidence to show up and market your brand. 

So as soon as you have that solid brand foundation, you feel like, "Okay, this is good, this is good for where it's at, I can always expand on it, I can always elevate it," start sharing it with the world.

STEPS FOR STARTING AN ONLINE BUSINESS
#4 BUILDING A COMMUNITY

You have nothing as an online business if you don't have someone to sell to. 

At the end of the day, you're going to need money to leave your nine-to-five. So as you are starting out in marketing your business, you want to start growing that email list and that community right away. 

Don't wait until you've been showing up on Instagram for 60 days, or writing blog posts for five months, to start building your email list. 

It doesn't take a lot when you're starting out. There are so many awesome platforms for building your email list, some of which you don't even need your website just yet. Two of our favorites are Flodesk and ConvertKit. I use ConvertKit over here at Brandmerry.

Both of those platforms have landing pages, which means you don't even need a website, you can just send people to a landing page where they can put their name and their email address in, in exchange for a free gift, which gets them onto your email list. 

This is a great practice to have in place, and it's going to allow you to not only attract your ideal customer with a quality lead magnet, but then also nurture those relationships and email them about your products and your services. 

Do it right away, like right away, it is so, so important. 

Then as you fine-tune your marketing, you'll add in different elements like blogging, maybe YouTube, maybe podcasting, maybe Pinterest, maybe advertising, where you can then scale up that list growth, quicker over time.

STEPS FOR STARTING AN ONLINE BUSINESS
#5 YOUR SOFTWARE

Another thing that I recommend is having the base systems in place. 

This means that you have that email marketing platform, as I mentioned already and you have some sort of scheduler for your business. I use Acuity as it's just a great way for people to schedule meetings with you, to schedule discovery calls with you or consultation calls, as well as if you're having a group program or some sort of coaching or something like that, you can give your clients the link so they can easily schedule with your availability. 

This is huge, because when I was working my nine-to-five, I wanted to make it so that if I had a discovery call, it was only available in the evening and I wasn't doing it when I was at work. So having a scheduler in place is really, really important.

And, of course, you do want to invest in your website. 

Now, I've mentioned a few times that I don't want you to spend all of your time and energy building your website, that your website should come in the marketing phase, once you have the brand foundation. 

Then we move into the marketing phase, that's when you start to build your website. 

You take the information that you know about your brand, and you start to write amazing copy and implement SEO strategies, all of which I teach inside of Roadmap to Freedom, to build a home base for your brand.

Early on, you want to decide where you are going to build that website, and maybe start chipping away at that process. At Brandmerry, we use Squarespace and recommend it to all of our clients.

Now, your website should not take you months. In fact, I recommend it should only take you 30 days. Set a limiter on it, get your website set up, bare minimum, strong copy, awesome photos of you, build that relationship, and know that you can always elevate it as you go.

The thing that I really, really, really want to stress with you here is that things don't have to be perfect before you start marketing. 

In fact, if you keep waiting and waiting and waiting to get started, you're just postponing the income coming into your bank account which is ultimately going to help you leave your nine-to-five. 

So don't spend all of your time building the most perfect website before you start showing up and sharing your brand with the world.

In terms of software, those three are our favorite: email marketing, scheduling software and website platform (many of which can link to Stripe or Paypal to process payments).

STEPS FOR STARTING AN ONLINE BUSINESS
#6 AUDIT YOUR PROGRESS

The last thing that I have for you is to audit your progress every 30 days. Now in my business, we're focused more on 90 days, because we have a lot of systems in place. 

It's been five years now since I left my nine-to-five, but that first year, almost two years, every 30 days I was looking at the data. 

I made it a top priority to evaluate the data:

• The data shows this lead magnet is working really, really well, but my emails aren't doing great. Let me fix my emails by improving either the open rate or body of the email to increase the click through rate.
  
  
  
  

• I'm talking about this offer in this way, and people seem to respond, so I'm going to keep going with that.
  
  
  
  

• Every time I offer a price increase people are responding. Okay, I’m going to do that," because I was slowly scaling my prices.
  
  
  
  

• Every time I would do a challenge, and I did a challenge every single month for the first year of my business, I would sign a client. The data shows this is a great way for me to sign clients so I continued to run with that.
  
  
  
  

• I had a website and the data showed me nobody was visiting it, so I started to explore blogging.

I only knew this information because I looked at the data. 

Every 30 days, I would audit what was happening in my business. 

What of my products and services were selling? 
How were they selling? 
What strategies was I using? 
Where were these people coming from? 
How could I just throw more fuel onto that fire to help it grow faster?

In that first year of business, I focused primarily on one-on-one work, meaning I would work one-on-one with my clients from anywhere from three months to six months, and that was awesome, because it didn't require a lot of overhead, it was just me getting on the phone, and I got to take a few clients at a time. 

That information and that income allowed me to then invest in advertising when I launched my very first program, Roadmap to Freedom, back in 2017. 

So much of your business is about auditing what is working and what is not working, making those small adjustments, and continuing to put in the work. Don't shy away from doing the work.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this video, it takes a determination to be an entrepreneur, to leave your nine-to-five.

That determination is going to take work, but it's about really strategic work, it's not about just being busy to be busy and doing things to do things. It's very, very strategic, and the only way that you're going to know to make those small adjustments is by really looking at what's working and what's not working and shifting those pieces in your business.

So much of your brand and your marketing strategy is going to evolve and elevate over time, that is the fun part of being an entrepreneur, but you only know what needs to shift and elevate if you actually look at the data. 

That's why some of those systems and those processes are so important. Like ConvertKit for your email or Squarespace for your website, because they will give you the data that you need to make those decisions.

CONCLUSION

Another thing that is incredibly helpful that I have done since the beginning of my business is invest in support. Even when I didn't really have the money, and I had to move things around and figure it out, I was investing in some sort of coach or consultant or program to help me scale my business. 

It's one of the reasons I created my program, Roadmap to Freedom, why I have Brandmerry Academy to support entrepreneurs in consistently marketing their business, because I understand how important that is.

So I also recommend that you have some sort of guidance, some sort of strategist, some sort of mentor or support, that is going to give you the motivation and love that you need to grow your business. 

Most of the people that you're around don't understand what you're doing. 

Your spouse might not even fully understand it, although hopefully they support you, my husband definitely did. 

You're going to need people that understand what you're going through, that understand what it's like to grow this business, and are there cheering you on and offering really strategic support along the way.

I really hope that this gave you a clear step-by-step on where you should be focusing your energy as you plan to leave your nine-to-five. I also hope that it gives you a little bit of motivation that you can absolutely do this, but you've got to dedicate the time and the energy to make it happen. 

I don't regret any of those decisions that I made in those first few years of running my business, and they really taught me how to strategically hustle. Yeah, I'm going to say that H-word, so that I didn't burn out or lose energy, but I knew that I was giving it my all.

If you are ready, like ready today, to start building your brand, I want to invite you to watch my training, The Better Brand Method. Go to betterbrandmethod.com to get signed up for that.

You can also explore how to join us in this upcoming program of Roadmap to Freedom, doors opening January 2023. Learn more and join the waitlist here.

P.S. Roadmap to Freedom doors are opening soon! This live group program will help you create an online business that allows you to create a life of abundant experiences and impact. This high-touch program helps you simplify the process so you can make more money on your terms. And, the 2023 cohort is going to be better than ever with updated content, lifetime access, new bonus content, and more! Join the waitlist and be the first to join in January 2023.

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MEET MICHELLE

Hey there, I'm Michelle Knight and I an online branding and marketing consultant for female entrepreneurs.

I believe in the power of storytelling and using that superpower to brand and market yourself online...oh and to set yourself free.

I'm obsessed with living a life of freedom, so much so, that my family and I now travel full-time while running my business from the road.

This blog serves as a home base for all things branding, marketing, content creation and more.

My Favorite Business Tools and Systems for a 6-Figure Business

My Favorite Business Tools and Systems for a 6-Figure Business

BY MICHELLE KNIGHT

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Choosing the right tools for your business can be an overwhelming process.

When I was starting out I always gravitated to people who embraced automation, used minimum software, and had clean workflows as a source of inspiration.

So, today I'm going to break down the different tools that I use and what we use them for and why I decided to choose that option. 

I'm going to share with you the tools that I use that have worked really well for me and the majority of my clients, but every business is different, everybody has a different learning style, and a different need for the tool. 

So, make the decision that works best for you!

So my suggestion is always if you're at a place where you're like, “I don't know what to use,” take the tools that I'm sharing with you, give them a trial for a little bit. 

If you don't like them, then find another tool.

Total disclaimer, if you decide to use some of these tools and you go through the links on our website, some of them, I am an affiliate for because I've been using them for years. Some of them, since I first started my business and I'm a big, big fan of them because they've made my life so easy.

ENTREPRENEUR WEBSITE PLATFORM
SQUARESPACE

Where is the Brandmerry.com website hosted? Squarespace, my friends. 

I've been using Squarespace since day one of my business. I tried to use a different platform and my husband was like, “Use Squarespace. I hear it's up and coming and easy to design.” He was right. And since he was the one who was helping me design it, I figured, well, let's just go with his suggestion. 

Since then, I have learned so much about Squarespace including customizing it and coding it. These are all the nitty-gritty details that we teach inside of Roadmap to Freedom. We actually have an entire tech vault inside of R2F, which is what we all lovingly call it, which tells you how to use all of these different platforms. 

And Squarespace is one of the ones that we have tutorial videos for every single thing. So that when you're going to set up your website and you choose Squarespace, you can just watch our videos and get to it.

We chose Squarespace really early on just because it was easy to use. Over the years, I have realized that that is true for so many different aspects of Squarespace.

I've continued to use Squarespace because it's easy to update. If I want to go in and switch out my entire homepage design, which I did just a few months ago in just three hours, I can. It's just so simple to add a text box, to move images around, and truly customize.

You don't need to be spending months and months building your website if you decide to do it on your own. There's nothing wrong with that as long as you have some guidance and you give yourself a good timeframe, as we talked about in the last episode. 

In Squarespace, it's really easy to design. 
It's really easy to update. 

I think this is something that entrepreneurs don't think about when they're choosing their website. If you don't know how to use it, you're going to constantly have to pay somebody to update it for you. That's going to get expensive.

So you want a platform that's easy to update, to log in, to find what you need. So I love that about Squarespace. 

I've also continued to use the platform because their optimization for SEO is stellar. Your site title, your site description, your page title, your page description, your alt text, all of those different things that play a role in SEO, which is something we teach over here at Brandmerry, they're easy to do on this platform.

Then I think my last favorite thing on the platform is analytics. 

They have a really awesome analytics section. You can integrate it with Google Analytics. You can use Google Analytics if you want, and I still use that in my business every 60 to 90 days, but because of the ease of it, I'm looking at Squarespace analytics every single month. 

It tells you how much traffic you've gotten, where your top referrers are, where your traffic is coming from, top search terms that are driving traffic. 

For Pinterest specifically, which is our number one driver of traffic to the website, it will show me which particular pins are doing really, really well, which blog is doing well.

It's just really nice to have it all in one spot. So the website platform that we use over here at Brandmerry, and that we recommend for our clients is Squarespace.

MEMBERSHIP AND COURSE PLATFORM
KAJABI

Moving into another website option, but something that we use primarily for courses and memberships is Kajabi. 

Kajabi can do everything. They are all-in-one. 

Sometimes when I'm talking to my clients, they ask me why I’m using Kajabi, Squarespace, and Convertkit, the email platform that we'll talk about in a minute? This is a valid question since Kajabi could technically do all of those things.

The thing about me is that I really like to use the best of the best in each of the categories. I will happily pay a little bit more, and I'm at a place in my business where I absolutely can do that, to have the best of the best.

Kajabi, in my opinion, is the best of the best when it comes to hosting courses, group programs, and membership communities because what it allows you to do from that aspect is build out product suites to have video, to have audio, to have workbooks, to have assessments, to build out a resource library, and a library where someone has all of their products in one spot. 

Which was something that I was very eager to have as I was launching more products and bonuses and stuff when I was starting my business. 

It also integrates all of the things really beautifully. So you can have your sales page on Kajabi, which then links to the checkout page where you accept payment, which then kicks out an email. 

So, we treat Kajabi as an all-in-one hub for our paying clients. 

Inside of Roadmap to Freedom, we send emails every single week to our members with reminders on what we’re focusing on this week, what the call schedule is, and a motivational post by me to support clients in their weekly assignments.

We're sending all of that through Kajabi to our paid clients. You absolutely could use it for email marketing, you absolutely could use it to create landing pages, you absolutely could use it to blog, and I have some clients who prefer to have it all in one spot and go this route.

At the time of this recording. I have found that there are alternative options that can do that a little bit better when it comes to email marketing and SEO. 

So, I tell my clients to choose the option that works best for them.

If you're in a place where you can afford Kajabi at the price point, because it is a little bit more expensive, for just your paying clients and your membership and stuff like that, then do it. 

If you're at a place where you really want to have a course and not offer private work then I would personally invest in Kajabi and then build a website, blog, and do your email marketing there until you're consistently making money, and then you can move your email marketing to another platform that maybe has better deliverability or something.

Now, platforms change all of the time. And that's the thing I do love about Kajabi, is they're always looking to improve. 

As of now, we are using Kajabi, particularly for paying clients, delivering the content, communication, accepting payments, and those different elements.

Using my link you can try Kajabi for 14 days for free. You’ll also receive a special bundle to help you launch your first membership pr course completely free. This is a bonus specifically for my audience and is available to you after your trial and once your membership is activated.

ENTREPRENEUR EMAIL MARKETING PLATFORM
CONVERTKIT

For email marketing, we love, use, and swear by, ConvertKit. 

ConvertKit is the platform that I switched to in my first year in business. I was using MailChimp previously and it was really frustrating to me. At the time, I was using the free version because that's when automation was free on that version. I had a goal that when I hit 100 subscribers, I was moving to a different platform. 

And I'm so glad that I did. 

The reason that I've continued to stay with ConvertKit through the years is that they've got everything that I need to grow my email list, the Brandmerry community, and to stay in contact with them through my weekly newsletter.

ConvertKit gives you the possibility to create your opt-in forms, your landing pages, your email sequences, and subscriber tags. 

So if somebody comes in and they click on this particular link in an email, we can tag them as being interested in that topic or that subject line. When we're launching, we tag people who have clicked through to whatever we're selling. So we can follow up with them a little bit more than our general email list, just to see if they have any questions and things of that nature.

That's the back-end system side. 

On the front-end side or the deliverability side, ConvertKit has excellent deliverability. Meaning, we know that our emails, the majority of the time, are landing in the primary folder or inbox of our subscribers because we have a high open-rate for the size of the list that we currently have. 

That's important because with a lot of the other platforms, your messages might go to promotions or they might go to spam, and then your audience isn't actually seeing what you're sending them, and that's important.

The reason that ConvertKit has great deliverability is they stripped down their emails. It can be really tempting to make beautiful emails, to have a banner, and a bunch of images, and change the color of your texts, and have a custom font in there, and all of that, but every time you're modifying that, you're adding more code. 

The more code that you have, when it goes through the email servers like Gmail, they red flag it because it might be spammy. 

So ConvertKit decided early on to really strip that down. You can add those pieces, but it's not like a drag and drop type of situation with fancy fonts and stuff. That has really helped with the deliverability, which is key when you are building your community and your email list. 

So the email platform that we use to collect leads and to stay in contact with the community is called ConvertKit.

Give ConvertKit a trial run for free.

ENTREPRENEUR BOOKKEEPING SOFTWARE
QUICKBOOKS

For bookkeeping, we use QuickBooks. That's pretty much the standard, I would say. There are a lot of different options out there. We use QuickBooks because I work with an accountant and bookkeeper and they prefer QuickBooks. 

We love having the reports every single month, love reviewing our expenses, love being able to see where profit and loss is at, love grouping things together and while you could use a spreadsheet to do this, I prefer the ease and automation of Quickbooks. 

It's really important to know your money as a business owner. 

It's really important to keep your money separate from your personal life as a business owner. 

My accountant actually does a training in Roadmap to Freedom all about your finances and your bookkeeping and your accounting. This is something that she has been saying, and I'm so thankful for that since I first started. Keep your money separate. 

So you want to get in the habit of treating your business as a business and knowing where that money is, knowing where it's going, knowing your projections.

Obviously, in the first year, you're just going with the motions and I was there too. But now that we're in a place where we're doing profit transfers, payroll, have a team, and those different things, that's incredibly helpful. 

So if you're looking for a platform to use, I personally use QuickBooks.

ENTREPRENEUR GRAPHIC DESIGN SOFTWARE
CANVA

I feel like we're all familiar with this next platform by now, but just in case you're not, can we all just give solid praise to Canva? Where did Canva come from? Why did it take so long? 

I mean, I feel like this platform saved entrepreneurs all across the world. 

Canva is the platform that we have used for years. My husband is great at design. He used Photoshop in the past. I've had graphic designers who work with us at Brandmerry, who are trained in Illustrator and things like that. I personally have training in InDesign, and we all still use Canva. It's still the most convenient. 

There are a few reasons for that.

They have so many customizations that if you are design savvy, and you're very specific with your design, I'm pretty specific with my design, you have the ability to do that inside of Canva. 

But if you are not, and you don't feel design savvy and you aren't 100% sure what you should be doing, they have incredible templates that you can just use and customize. 

In addition to that, you can access Canva anywhere. That's one of the reasons that I love it. As somebody who travels frequently, if I need to whip up a design really quick while we're driving through Arizona, I don't have to pull out my laptop, I can just do it from my phone. That's really convenient. 

They also have template sizes in there. So if you know you want to make an Insta Story, you just choose the Insta Story option, and then you don't have to resize it and all this other stuff.

So Canva is basically what we use for graphic design. And I have amazing women who have worked with us to do graphic design and they prefer Canva as well. 

So get yourself on Canva. There's a free option too, so there's really no excuse for not using the platform.

PINTEREST SCHEDULING PLATFORM
TAILWIND

Let's talk a little bit about scheduling and a little bit about social media. When it comes to one of the platforms that we use over here at Brandmerry, I've kind of already mentioned, it's our number one traffic driver to our website, it's one of the core pieces that I teach my clients inside of Brandmerry Academy, and that is Pinterest. 

Now, I'm not going to teach you how to use Pinterest on this post. We've got plenty of trainings inside of Roadmap to Freedom and inside of the Academy for that. But one of the things that I think a lot of people don't understand about Pinterest is there still has to be consistency with the platform. 

You don't just get to pin your blog posts once a week and hope that it reaches the masses. There's a strategy behind it, and one of those strategies is daily pinning.

Now, I know for some of you, you're like, “What? I have to pin every day?” Well, you're repurposing your content. So you're taking the same blog post and you're creating different pin variations or you're pinning other people's content. 

The platform that we use to manage all of that is called Tailwind. 

Tailwind is the platform that we use to schedule all of our pins and to create some of our pins as well. They have an amazing tool called Tailwind Create that lets you create bulk types of pins. 

Tailwind is an amazing resource if you are focused on Pinterest, which I recommend to every business. That is like our non-negotiable. Absolutely Tailwind all the way.

Use this link to try Tailwind in your business for free!

SOCIAL MEDIA SCHEDULING PLATFORMS

Later allows you to schedule Facebook and Instagram. They have a Pinterest option as well, but it's not the same as Tailwind and won’t help you with your overall Pinterest strategy.

We used Later for a really long time to schedule Instagram and Facebook static feed posts and Insta Stories. I’ve always loved that you can add notes in there and understand when to optimize your content for the best times to post. You can also store your photos in there which is awesome for bulk editing, etc.

Today, we’re still using Later to schedule Insta Story content, but we have recently switched to Creator Studio. 

Creator Studio is accessed through Facebook, a Facebook business page to be specific, which you link to your Instagram business page. And you can access Creator Studio and go in and you can do the scheduling for both platforms.

Now, here's why we switched. 

Number one, we are posting regular IGTV episodes, and I am not creating those IGTV episodes, our graphic designer is doing that. We're doing them ahead of time, so we wanted a way to schedule those. You can schedule IGTV videos through Creator Studio, but not through Later.

The second reason is that we love designing carousel images on Instagram. They're incredibly helpful, and they're so fun to create and share. 

When you're using a platform like Later, at the time of this recording, you can schedule it, but then it notifies you on your phone to manually post it. 

Well, when I'm traveling, my optimal time for engagement on Instagram might be 3:00 AM in the country that I'm in. I'm not going to wake up and post it. So we wanted a platform that was going to give us the ability to automatically publish it. Creator Studio allows you to do that. So, that's one of the reasons we've moved over.

They do not yet allow you to schedule Instagram stories, but I'm really hoping that that comes soon, because that would just allow us to automate the entire thing, which would be so good. 

Speaking of Instagram, I get asked a lot what I used to edit my photos. Honestly, I decided years ago, because it stresses me the F out that I wouldn't worry about over editing my photos. I went through a whole phase where I was just like, “I need the perfect photo. If it's not perfect, I won't make it on Instagram.” 

And thank goodness, Instagram doesn't even care about that anymore. In fact, Instagram just came out recently and said that they're no longer going to be a photo-sharing platform. Their focus is switching to video.

So you can still post photos there, but it used to be all about pristine, beautiful feeds, the grid. Nobody cares about that anymore. Stop caring about that. 

Post things that are on brand, give value, that's it. But if we're traveling and the light is kind of low and I want to just brighten up a photo or something like that, I personally just use a free app called Snapseed or a simple preset in Lightroom. 

There are tons of options out there. VSCO is another one or you can actually edit in the Instagram app as well, but I really love to kind of bulk edit a bunch of photos.

So if we're traveling and we've taken a bunch of photos that day, I'll just put them on a platform really quickly, edit them all, and then throw them in the lifestyle folder that I have in Google Drive, and then they're done. 

ENTREPRENEUR SCHEDULING PLATFORM
ACUITY

And then the last tool that I'll share with you when it comes to scheduling is not a social media or content scheduler, it's actually a client scheduler. The platform that I love to use for that is called Acuity. 

Acuity in my mind is like the best. And the reason that I love Acuity is that they send optimized reminder emails. 

Inside Acuity, you can create different offers. So I have a 60-minute coaching call for my one-on-one clients. I have a 90-minute coaching call for my intensive clients. I have very few calls now, but back in the day I had like a 15-minute Q&A, I had a discovery call, I had all these other things.

When I had all these different options I could create schedules for each of those based on your availability.

It links with your calendar. So my personal calendar will block off times. I love that I can very easily go in and block off if I'm going to take a whole week off, which I do every quarter. 

You can also accept payment. So if you offer a 90-minute strategy call, you could accept payment through there, which is great, especially if you're just starting out and you're doing mostly one-on-one.

And then the reminder email piece is my favorite piece. So you can send initial confirmation of the call, where they add it to their calendar. 

You can set up reminder emails 48 hours, 24 hours, one hour before, or whatever you want to do. 

For my private coaching clients, we always send an intake form that we want them to fill out before the session so that I can come prepared. 

One of my biggest pet peeves when I was first starting, was that I was working with mentors and I would just show up to the call and they'd be like, “What's going on?” I felt like we wasted 20 minutes just catching them up on what's happening rather than diving into what we were going to do moving forward. 

So that is a non-negotiable for me. 

That is one of the reasons that I love Acuity because of the follow-up reminder piece of it. I've been using them for years and I love them. 

CLIENT MANAGEMENT PLATFORM (CRM)
HONEYBOOK

HoneyBook is a platform that I use for my private clients. I offer VIP intensives every single month. I do not do discovery calls anymore. So my process is via an application. 

I created this application in HoneyBook and I have embedded it on my website. That application comes in, it automatically adds that person into HoneyBook as a prospect, and then we communicate.

My Gmail is linked, so we email back and forth. I answer questions, I make sure that they feel really good about moving forward. We send them the link, they pay. Delana sends them their folder, all their stuff, we get the whole process started. 

All of that is happening inside of HoneyBook. 

We also have automated workflows, so 48 hours before the scheduled session, they get a reminder to fill out their form. That form is important so I can prepare for our session.

Then, a week before the end of their 30 days, they're getting a link to schedule their wrap-up call, to provide a testimonial. So all of that stuff is automated and we use HoneyBook for that.

One thing that I offer with my private clients is the ability to apply and then ask a bunch of questions so that they feel good about their decision, and then we have email correspondence throughout our time together. So we get to keep it all in one spot, which is incredibly helpful for the team.

We can also keep track of where people are in their contracts. I have a few clients that I've been working with for years that have three or six-month contracts. We're able to keep track of all of that in HoneyBook. 

If you're a photographer or a graphic designer, HoneyBook is an amazing platform because you can keep track of your client’s work, you can share examples with them. 

So if you're making a logo, you can upload it into their client portal and have them give feedback on that. 

When you're working with high-level consulting, your coaching packages, you want to send an invoice and a contract. You can do all of that in HoneyBook. 

It's an incredibly amazing tool. So if you're in the service-based business, I would definitely recommend checking that out. It has helped streamline our workflow tremendously at Brandmerry. 

And when I was doing it by myself, it was amazing because I didn't have to keep track of everything. It was all in one spot, which is great.

When you use this link you’ll receive 50% off your subscription to Honeybook for an entire year!

ENTREPRENEUR FILE STORAGE
GOOGLE DRIVE

In addition to email correspondence, my clients also have access to a private client folder, and we host that inside of Google Drive. Google Drive is also the platform that we use to keep all of our documents. 

We create email templates in Google Drive, we've got SOPs (standard operating procedures) in Google drive, we've got launch strategies in Google Drive, we've got launch spreadsheets, landing page copy. It's all there.

There are a few reasons why I love using Google Drive. 

One is that I can do everything in the document. So if I'm working on a blog, I can leave comments for Delana, and then she can come in and edit it as well. There's no download and send and back and forth.

I also can access Google Drive from anywhere. 

This is a huge one. When I was in Saint Croix earlier this year, I had a workday scheduled but I didn't want to stay in our apartment and work. So we decided to go to the beach. So I just worked at the beach. I wasn't going to bring my laptop, so I just did it from my phone. 

I gave client feedback in Google Drive. I wrote an email for Delana in Google Drive. I just was able to do it all from my phone.

When we were in Hawaii, I went to get an acai bowl in the morning and the line was two hours long, but I had heard that they were really good so I waited. 

The whole time I was in line, I wrote a blog post from my phone in Google Drive.

That's why I love Google Drive. I could access it anywhere. And then I can also make the documents available offline. 

So if I'm flying and I don't have the internet, I can do it. When we were driving across the country and our internet and cell phone service would go out all the time, especially on our way driving to the West, I could do things as an offline document, and then as soon as I connected, it would just re-upload it to Google Drive. 

So, that's where we keep all of our documents, all of our workflows, everything is housed there.

VIDEO CONSULTING AND MEETING SOFTWARE
ZOOM

Client calls, live workshops, all of that, are held via Zoom. 

I don't think I need to go into what Zoom is because 2020 happened and we all know what it is now. 

I've been using Zoom since 2016 and Zoom is the platform that we use for client calls. 

VIDEO RECORDING SOFTWARE
LOOM

Very similar in name, Loom is a recording platform that I use to communicate with my clients.

Inside of the Academy, my members can submit for a website audit. 

This is also something that I do regularly inside of Roadmap to Freedom. Website audits, copy audits, all of that. I use Loom to record the screen and share my insights. It's way easier than me writing out the changes I recommend that they make. That would be exhausting. 

I use it to record videos for my trainings or just a face-to-camera video. 
You can do a screen share with a little bubble of your face in the corner. 

So Loom is a really, really great online platform to be able to do all of your recordings. I record webinars there as well for automated and on-demand trainings.

TEAM COMMUNICATION PLATFORM
SLACK

Then from a business system standpoint, we've got two platforms that we're using every freaking day at Brandmerry. 

Number one is Slack.
All team communication happens in Slack. 

There are no email exchanges about things that are happening in business. I am not going to live in my inbox every single day, and I don't want things to get lost. 

So we utilize Slack. Each member of the team has their own Slack channel, then we have group channels together. And then even the coaches that I have inside of Brandmerry Academy and inside of Roadmap to Freedom have Slack channels as well. That's where all the communication is going.

I find it to be incredibly helpful as well when I'm traveling, as we're still working on big projects behind the scenes. I don't want to be in my inbox, but I'll answer a Slack notification. 

I can have all my other notifications off except for Slack and it really helps organize my business.

PROJECT MANAGEMENT PLATFORM
CLICKUP

Now, if you've been around for a while, you've probably heard me talk about Trello and Asana, both awesome platforms, but ClickUp is the bee's knees. 

ClickUp, we just started using in 2021, and I’m obsessed with it. 

You can create things like you would in Airtable, boards like you would in Trello, and workflows you’d create in Asana, but all in one spot. My weekly tasks are in there, all of our weekly workflows are in there. 

Then we are able to assign each team member their individual tasks and it’s amazing and FREE!.

So I highly recommend that y'all check out ClickUp.

LANDING PAGE SOFTWARE:
LEADPAGES

The last one I want to share with you is Leadpages. 

One of the reasons I left this till the end is because it is an optional tool, as a landing page software. 

It's typically used by business owners to collect leads for your challenge, where someone gives their name and their email address, your freebie page, different things like that. 

You can also use it to build out single-page websites as well. That's not something that we've done a great deal of, but you absolutely could. 

You can also use it to create pop-ups and announcement bars on your blog and website.

So you might be like, “Whoa! Michelle, you have Kajabi, which you could technically create landing pages on. You don't use that. You have ConvertKit, which you can create landing pages on and you don't use that. Why do you use Leadpages?” 

I've been using Leadpages for years. Honestly, the reason that I haven't switched away from them is that they're the best of the best. And when you're investing in advertisements, when you're investing in Facebook ads, Pinterest ads, Google ads, all that stuff, you want to make sure the platform you’re using is optimized well. Leadpages offers that.

I've been using Leadpages since my first year in business.

I used to build out my landing pages on Squarespace. It took forever and they were never optimized. And finally, my coach was like, “You need to just invest in Leadpages.” And I did. And, oh my gosh, not only did it save me so much time, because it's drag and drop and super customizable, but my stuff converts better. 

CONCLUSION

You don't have to have all these when you start. This is a lot. I did share with you almost every single one that I have. You don't have to have all of this in the beginning.

You definitely want to have a website platform. 

You definitely need to have an email marketing platform. 

And I would recommend having a scheduler for your personal schedule and your client schedule, and then also have a way to schedule your social media content and Pinterest or whatever platforms you're using. 

Those are the main things that I would focus on. 

And if you get to a place where you're able to invest in the best of the best, or you're ready to add on something else, then you can do that. That's something that I've done.

And as I mentioned before, one of the elements inside of the program, Roadmap to Freedom, which doors open at the end of October, and only for a few days, is to give you the step-by-step of building and scaling your business. 

I know how overwhelming technology can be and the actual implementation of technology. 

That's why we not only have Delana, who is Operations Manager at Brandmerry, in the community to answer tech questions, but we also have an entire tech vault of videos that walk through almost all of these different platforms and tools and how we use them. 

So definitely check out Roadmap to Freedom to learn more and join the waitlist. 

Go to Brandmerry.com/freedom to learn more about that. 

Join the waitlist, so you're the first to know when doors open for 2021 and snag a private strategy session with me, a significant early-bird discount, and a chance to win $500.

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MEET MICHELLE

Hey there, I'm Michelle Knight and I an online branding and marketing consultant for female entrepreneurs.

I believe in the power of storytelling and using that superpower to brand and market yourself online...oh and to set yourself free.

I'm obsessed with living a life of freedom, so much so, that my family and I now travel full-time while running my business from the road.

This blog serves as a home base for all things branding, marketing, content creation and more.

4 Business Lessons Learned When Starting My Online Business

4 Business Lessons Learned When Starting My Online Business

BY MICHELLE KNIGHT

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I started my business in 2016 after the birth of my son.

At the time, I had no idea what I was doing. I spent eight months building a website and brand only to find out that a) no one cared and b) I had no clients to show for it.

I made a lot of mistakes in that first year of business, but ultimately those mistakes and lessons learned led me to 6-figures cash in one year from signing my first client.

It’s these lessons that I’ve found to be the most beneficial to my clients and recently I compiled them into a free ebook where I share 15 Lessons to Propel Your Business forward.

This is a limited-time gift available at brandmerry.com/lessons, but today I want to share with you four of my favorites.

BUSINESS LESSON #1
DON’T CREATE JUST TO CREATE

Don't create content just to post content. Always have a purpose. 

Now, a little backstory on this. When I first started my business and what I was ultimately exposed to in terms of programs and coaches within my first year, year and a half of my business, I was told to just show up. 

Now while showing up is relevant, the reality is there is an art to showing up and getting visible. 

But when I was starting my business, and I still see it happening today, is that entrepreneurs are just posting anything just so they have something to share. 

And that's how we start to get really burnt out with content creation. We start to wonder why is this not working? Why is no one responding? The reality is that there's no purpose behind what you're doing. You're just posting to post. You're just creating content to create content. 

It might not even have a direct connection to your brand or the product and services that you're selling. 

I see a lot of entrepreneurs who come to work with me that have been showing up consistently, that have been creating content, but no one is taking advantage of their offers because they’re not effectivaly reverse engineering their content to led to the sale.

You need money to begin to build a sustainable business. So when you're just starting out, one of the things I recommend is having a core offer, one thing that you're really focused on. If you're showing up and you're creating content and you're never creating content that ties to that core offer, it's going to be hard for your audience to make the connection. 

You also might start building an audience of the wrong ideal customer. If you're just talking about random things, then you're not bringing in the ideal customer that you want to attract for your program. 

This is something that I went through my first year in business when I loved talking about productivity. I loved talking about systems, all those different things. And that's a core staple of my business today but it wasn't back then.

So I would talk about productivity, and I would bring in people who weren't necessarily ready to start a business or I'd bring in people who weren't interested in branding. 

So my numbers were incredibly off.

It’s important to understand the end result so you can reverse engineer your content.

Do it for everything in your business. What's the end result? What do you want people to do? Buy X program. Reverse engineer, how do you get them to that spot? 

If you’re not yet at a place where you have your core offer mapped out, another thing you can do is create brand containers. This is something I shared in Episode 14 of the podcast.

BUSINESS LESSON #2
STOP WASTING TIME

It’s incredibly important that you get ahold of your time.

Honestly, this is why I created my annual program Roadmap to Freedom.  In my first year of business, I didn't know what I was supposed to be doing and in what order. And then when I figured it out and I started making consistent money, I was like, I'm just going to give people the roadmap I wish I would have had. 

That's how Roadmap to Freedom was born and it still serves the same purpose today. 

One of the best things that is going to serve you at the highest level as you continue to scale your business, is being very selective with your time and your energy. 

Where is your time going? 
How much time are you giving each particular project?

When I first started my business I spent almost a year branding myself. That is ridiculous. It is not necessary. And the reason that I took that much time is that I didn't have a clear understanding of branding or a plan of action for building my brand. I was just flailing around trying to piece it all together. 

Then the other piece of it is that I didn't give myself a deadline. I didn't say, "All right, I want to have my brand up and running in two months. I want to have my website at a place where I can put it out in the world in this amount of time." So what happened was I wasted my time.

When you can start practicing putting these boundaries in place with your time, it's going to support you as you grow your business.

One of my clients came to me the other day with a concern about her weekly workflow. She was doing the work but felt like it was taking so much time.

We sat down and started talking about it and I said, "Do you set a timer for your blog post? If not, I want you to do that. And I want you to focus your energy and your efforts on getting as much writing done in the time frame.

“Rather than writing a paragraph and editing it, then moving on to another paragraph and editing that set an alarm for an hour and a half and write. Then when you’re done, set it for another 30 and go clean it up. I bet you carve your time in half.”

And she did! In fact, with the strategies, we implemented she was able to plan two weeks of content in less time.

Sometimes it’s about thinking more strategically about how we’re doing things in your business. 

Your time is precious. The more time you can create with systems and workflows, and the more that you get in the habit of implementing them, especially early on, the better it's going to serve you as your tasks, requirements, client load, and customer load increase as you grow your business. 

As you grow your business you’ll have an opportunity to hire team members to help you with the load, but in building a sustainable business, one that just doesn’t do more to do more, why not get in the habit now of being selective and purposeful with the time that you have available?

Protect your time. 

When you're building a sustainable business, you don't want or need to be working every second of every day. You're going to burn out. 

It’s important to be selective with your time and smart about how you're utilizing that time. Focusing on the things that are going to move your business forward. 

If you don't know what those things are, invest in something that's going to give you the step-by-step. That's why I created Roadmap to Freedom. Whether that's the program for you or not, find what will work for you to lay out that process so that you can get to work and not just be flailing around the internet and keeping yourself busy. 

BUSINESS LESSON #3:
DON’T BUILD YOUR BUSINESS ALONE

When I was first starting my business free Facebook groups were the end all be all. Everyone had a free Facebook group. Some people had multiple free Facebook groups. You were in them every damn day. It was just exhausting. 

And honestly, I had my own and I loved showing up for my community but as someone who was growing their business, in other groups, I hated using them. I didn't even feel like I wanted to show up and ask questions. I never really felt like I wanted to show up and build a connection because it always kind of felt like a pitchfest.

When I was first looking at educational content and programs to purchase, I looked at the community aspect because in my mind I knew I needed a place where I could get education and mentorship, but I also needed a place where I could come and ask questions of my peers without feeling like I'm being pitched to regularly. 

For me paying for this element, in addition to the education insured that I was with the right group of peers. 

Now, I’m not suggesting that you have to go out and pay for a community, but if you’re investing in the education of your business (something I highly recommend) why not find a community to support you.

I looked for those opportunities inside of group programs and small masterminds. As my business got bigger and I needed less handholding, I would invest in more of a membership type of situation. 

The reality is your best friend from grade school probably doesn't understand what the hell you're setting out to do. Your partner probably doesn't fully understand what you're setting out to do, even if they support you. I am blessed with an amazing husband. He's always willing to listen, even though he had zero idea what I was talking about those first few years. 

This is why it's important to have that place, that community. 

And I'll be honest, sometimes you gotta pay for it. I prefer to pay for it, and that’s part of the lesson that I learned.

Most of those paid groups don't have a pitchfest opportunity where you're constantly feeling you're being pitched to by somebody who has no idea what you're doing. And for me, it's always been worth that investment because I know I've got a central place where I can go ask questions. 

I know I've got a central place where I can go and get some support.

I know I have a place where people will celebrate with me and know what the hell I'm talking about when I say, "My Facebook ads are converting at $1.25. Woo!" 

You're going to want people in your corner and you can't do this alone. I just don't know anyone that has. 

It's one of the reasons when I launched Roadmap to Freedom, back in 2016, I knew I wanted an interactive community, a place where you could go and ask questions and celebrate things. And it's been one of the perks of the program every single year since I launched it in 2017. 

When individuals share their feedback for the program, they always rate the community as one of the top elements. To be able to come together with other entrepreneurs at a very similar stage is priceless.

It's like a golden ticket. It's incredibly helpful so that you don't feel alone. Don't try to do this alone. Lean on support.

To piggyback off of that, and something I'm a huge advocate for is to have a mentor. Now, this could be a mentor that you don't have to pay. Amazing. But many of you will have to invest in a mentor. That is okay. We all do it. 

I’ve always viewed it as an investment in my time (see lesson number 2)! 

By having a mentor and a clear step-by-step plan, I can save myself time and energy and down the line, money, even though I have to invest upfront.

BUSINESS LESSON #4:
COMMUNITY IS EVERYTHING

While I was referring to your peer community before, in this case, I'm talking about your brand community. I'm not talking about your support system. I'm talking about the individuals that are attracted to your brand that become part of your community. 

When building your brand community, I want you to focus on your email list. That is the central community that you want to focus on because when it comes to social media, you don't own your followers. You don't have a way to get in touch with them if the platform goes down. If something happens to your account, you have no way of saying, "Hey, I've moved here." 

With an email list, you can download your email subscribers frequently so if something ever happens, you have that information. You can email them and let them know what's going on.

That is the central community that we focus on building over here at Brandmerry and stats show that email list building is essential. 

In fact, there is an estimated $42 return on every $1 spent for email marketing which results in a 4,200% ROI!

When you're thinking about the pieces of your business broken down into two key elements: branding and marketing, once you have your brand created your next step is building an audience to sell to.

This is where your marketing efforts and your community come into play. You've got to start building your community right away. Inside of Roadmap to Freedom, we focus on building the brand foundation in four weeks, and then we're immediately focused on building community. 

If you want to sell, if you want to make money, you have to have someone to sell to. Don't skip this step. 

Spending too much time building your foundational pieces is ultimately postponing your community growth. That's why in R2F, we focus on streamlining the branding process because it's taking you all way too long. You need to get started on building community immediately.

Community is everything as a business owner.

CONCLUSION

There you have it. Those are the four top lessons that I’ve discovered throughout my business journey. If you want to take advantage of this limited-time resource and learn the full 15 Lessons to Propel Your Online Business you can grab the resource at brandmerry.com/lessons.

In addition, the doors for Roadmap to Freedom are opening for 2021 on October 24! Right now you can join the waitlist and get all the details about pre-enrollment, a special bonus including 1:1 time with me, and a chance to win $500.

Now's the time to see if the program is the right fit for you. Head to brandmerry.com/freedom to learn more about the program and join the waitlist.

This is one of my favorite programs because it means so much for me to support entrepreneurs with the pieces I didn’t have five years ago. Inside of R2F, we cover the entire step-by-step roadmap for scaling your business.

In addition, you get your copy reviewed, you get your sales pages reviewed, you get your branding reviewed. Everything. It's a very strategic, step-by-step program that includes high-level information, implementation, feedback, and support.

Head to brandmerry.com/freedom to learn more about it!

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- FREE GIFTS YOU'LL LOVE -

DISCOVER YOUR BRAND STORY IN UNDER 5 MINUTES

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MEET MICHELLE

Hey there, I'm Michelle Knight and I an online branding and marketing consultant for female entrepreneurs.

I believe in the power of storytelling and using that superpower to brand and market yourself online...oh and to set yourself free.

I'm obsessed with living a life of freedom, so much so, that my family and I now travel full-time while running my business from the road.

This blog serves as a home base for all things branding, marketing, content creation and more.

10 Ways to Improve Work From Home Productivity

BY MICHELLE KNIGHT

This is for you if you have found yourself working from home. 

Maybe it was by choice. Maybe you decided to become an entrepreneur and set out on this great, big, beautiful adventure of working for yourself. 

Maybe it was not by choice. Maybe it just happened, in the year 2020, in which you found yourself suddenly working from home. 

Today, I want to talk about how to remain productive when you work from home, in the midst of the chaos. Especially if you have children and the distractions and all of the things.

I've been doing this for five years now, and I have a few things to say, specially 10 ways to improve your productivity while working from home.

MY WORK-FROM-HOME EXPERIENCE

A little backstory on my work-from-home-experience: I left my nine-to-five in 2016 to start my own business, which is this one here, Brandmerry. 

At the time, I was at home with my son. It was just him and me as I was growing my business every single day of every single week so that we could replace my income and get it to where it is today. 

So I know a thing or two about working from home with a baby, with a toddler, and now with a kiddo. 

Now, I will be 100% transparent with you. Our lives have changed a lot in the last five years. 

My husband is now home with us full-time as I was able to retire him from his job. So now my day-to-day looks very, very different. In fact, I am very rarely interrupted, which is kind of nice. 

But I remember what it was like back in the days.

I've also found that it's actually a little harder to be productive today, and that is because now I've got a full eight hours. 

Which I know, I'm sorry. If you don't have that, please don't be mad at me. 

I was once where you are now. 

But I have a full eight hours to work on my business every single day. When this first started, when we moved from living in our RV full-time, where I was juggling Wi-Fi and new locations, and moving around, to spending our time in our apartment, I struggled a lot. 

I found that I was actually struggling to get things done because I had too much time. That when I used to have to focus on two-hour increments in the morning, in between nap time and after dinner, that I was able to actually be more productive. 

That actually is a reference to Parkinson's Law, which says that we fill the space, so we will come up with a million things to do and a million different distractions if we've got the time to do it. 

So I want to share with you ten ways to increase productivity. 

Whether you've got a little-bitty pocket every single day to work on your business, or you're working from home for eight, maybe nine, if you're an entrepreneur, hours every single day, here are 10 ways to make sure that you are showing up as your most efficient self.

TEN WAYS TO INCREASE PRODUCTIVITY WHEN WORKING FROM HOME

Number One: Create a Big Picture Goal

I talk about big-picture planning in this video right here, where I map out how to plan six months at a time in your business. 

One of the things that I talk about in this video, as well as any of the yearly trainings that I host for my paying clients, is that you've got to start with the big picture. 

You really have to understand what you're working towards. That's going to help you determine all the small things that you need to do to get there. If you don't know what you're working towards, then you'll sit in the overwhelm of "What do I need to do? What task is next, what requires my focus,” over and over again.  

And you're going to find that you're actually not doing the things that are going to get you to the end result.

So I always recommend that you're super clear on the big-picture goal. 

Maybe for you as an entrepreneur, that is the amount of money that you want to make for the year, the revenue for your business. 

Maybe if you're working a nine-to-five, it's just your quarterly goals that you've set out with your supervisor. 

Or if you're working on a project, maybe that project over the next 30 days is the big goal. 

Regardless, you want to know that the actions that you're taking every day are ultimately leading to something. That's going to really help you in the little microplanning that is necessary for productivity.

Number Two: Have 3 Main Goals Every Week

The second thing that I recommend is a piggyback off of the first one, and that is to have three main goals every single week. Now, if the shit hits the fan, then you know that if you've done those three things, you've shown up as the best version of yourself. 

Productivity does not mean just pushing and pushing and doing and doing. It means being efficient and doing the most productive things that are going to move you closer to your goals. 

So when you're focused every week on three core elements, you'll feel good at the end of the week when things might not go as planned. 

I recommend planning out your three core pieces every single week before the week even starts, which leads me to tip number three: prep your week on Sunday. 

I absolutely swear by this.

Number Three: Prep Your Week on Sunday

Every single Sunday, I sit down with my Google Calendar, I look at my calendar on my wall, and I go into my task-management software, which you can use even if you're not an entrepreneur, and I look at what is happening that week. 

• When do I have calls? 

• When am I recording content? 

• When do I have meetings with my team? 

• What are some of the goals that I have for the week? 

• What big projects am I working on? 

• When am I going to work out? 

• When do I have an infrared sauna planned? 

• When do I have things on the schedule with my family? 

Everything. I want to know what is happening that week. What that allows me to do is really kind of head in with a great mind space and I can also move things around based on my schedule. 

For instance, if I thought that I was going to record a bunch of content one week, and then some of my clients were like, "Hey, we really need a session," I'm not going to have the capacity to record a bunch of content and show up and serve my clients at the highest level, so I want to rearrange my schedule to fit what's going on so that I can, once again, be my most productive and happy self.

So I spend every single Sunday looking at my calendar and planning out what's going to happen that week. 

If there are gaps and spaces, I might plan something fun for myself like a pool day, infrared sauna, plan my workouts, all those different things. 

You can even go as far as something I've been doing lately which is actually writing out Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and my main goals for each day, which is incredibly helpful.

Number Four: Use a Task Management Tool

Now, this is really popular with entrepreneurs and small-business owners because you're the one that is saying, "This is what we're doing every week, and this is how often I need to check in on my accounting and this is what I need to do this." 

A task-management software is really great at setting up recurring tasks and deadlines. But I’ve got to be honest, even if you're not an entrepreneur starting your own business, I recommend using this just in your day-to-day life. 

I started doing this when we were traveling in our RV, which we did from 2019 until 2020. 

I would plan out where we were going and the things that I needed to do for each of those locations. I use task management for when we need to pay bills, when we have recurring tasks on automate, dentists, all those different things. I set them up in my task-management planner so I don't forget about them.

So whether you are running your own business, which this is non-negotiable, you need a task-management planner or you're not and you just want to organize your day-to-day, I highly, highly recommend. You don't know what you don't know, and there's a lot floating around in your head, probably, that is really bogging you down and making you feel overwhelmed. 

So I'm a big fan of just getting all of that out into a task-management planner, maybe into an idea dump, and assigning it later so it's not just living in your head and popping up every once in a while, distracting you. You've got it scheduled. You've got a plan in place. 

The task management planner that I love to use is called ClickUp.

Number Five: Use Your Calendar

Use your calendar, please. 

Now, you might be like, "Michelle, you're using a task-management calendar and a regular calendar?" I absolutely am. 

My regular calendar is to make sure that those priorities, the calls that I have with my clients, the doctor's appointments, the infrared sauna, my workouts, happy hour with the girls, are all on my calendar. That is the priority. 

That's what I look at first for the week. 

Then I schedule all my individual tasks in between them. So I am a big fan of utilizing your Google Calendar, making sure that the things that you need to do are on there. And honestly, I find that my Google Calendar best serves me in making sure that I am taking care of myself, that I'm scheduling the things that are important for my well-being, which make me the most productive version of myself.

If you're running on empty, there's no way that you're going to be able to show up as the best version of yourself. 

There's no way that you're going to be able to show up and be productive in the work that you're doing. 

You've got to take care of yourself. It’s one of the most important parts of being productive with the work that you're doing. 

I will use my calendar to schedule my workouts every day. 
I use it to schedule individual things that I'm doing, chiropractor visits, family time. 

Yes, I put family time and date night on my calendar because if I don't, I'll schedule something else to go there, and then I'll be mad at myself. 

Use your calendar. Embrace it. You all have one. You've got it on your phone, got it on a tablet, got it on a computer, got it on your watch, maybe you like a physical planner. 

Just make sure that you're scheduling that time: that priority time, the time that you're taking care of yourself.

Number Six: Set Some Boundaries

Speaking of taking care of yourself, you need to set some boundaries, boo. 

Oh my gosh, I am not going to say this is the easiest thing. In fact, I'm not even going to promise you that I'm going to help you all set your boundaries here. 

I actually have an entire podcast about it, on the Beautiful Climb podcast. 

But if you want to get anything done, if you want to take time for yourself, want to get your work done at home, you need to set boundaries: most likely, specifically with your family. 

Let's just be honest, right? Whether you've got your spouse, your partner, your roommate, your parents, your kids, you need to set boundaries.

I remember in 2020, when we moved from our RV into my parents' house temporarily, before moving into this apartment, we were trying to juggle, "Do we go back out on the road? What is happening?" And I had to set some boundaries with my parents. 

I was like, "I'm working right now. Don't open that door." 

It doesn't matter if they're older than you or younger than you, you need to set clear boundaries. 

Now, this is going to come from experience. It's going to take time. I remember when I first started my business, my son was really young. I mean, he was like eight months old, so I couldn't really explain to him what boundaries were. 

But I started putting these boundaries in place with myself, reminding myself that it was important to have uninterrupted time, that he was totally okay playing on the floor with toys while I wrote an email, I didn't need to hold him every five seconds. Or sometimes, I'd even put them on my back during nap time, if he was fussy, and stand and write an email. But it was all about me really understanding that I needed the time to work on my business, to do the tasks at hand, and also take care of myself.

So even today, my husband is home full-time with us and I have very clear boundaries in place of, "I need uninterrupted time in the morning so I can work out." My son is old enough now to understand that you don't interrupt Mommy when she's on the Peloton. So, he lies on the floor next to me. Will read a book. Pretends to be an Avenger in the same room. 

And these boundaries only come from our next tip, which is communicating.

Number Seven: Communicate

You've got to communicate what you want. If you need the space to work on your business, if you need uninterrupted time if you need time to take care of yourself, first, schedule it. 

Make it a priority, and then have conversations with the people that you love, that you need that time, whether that's uninterrupted or minimized interruptions. 

As someone who's been working at home with their son for a very long time, I'm going to say accidents happen. But the majority of the time, we understand when I've got coaching calls or I'm recording a podcast, that we've got these clear boundaries in place. 

And you know what? This is helpful not just for the productivity of your work, but for relationships overall. 

So make sure that you're clear on the boundaries that you need to set and then communicate with the ones that you love. 

They don't know if you don't tell them. Don't assume that they know. 

And sit down and have these conversations. Say, "This is what we're working towards," circle back to the big picture. "This is the time that I need to do X, Y, and Z. Thank you so much, how can I return the favor?"

Number Eight: Get Ready Every Single Day

Please get ready, every single day. 

I have clothes on right now. They're not the fanciest clothes. They're not a button-down shirt and some trousers and some shoes. I don't wear shoes at home, but I'm not in my pajamas. I'm not in yoga pants. 

I love you, I do. I know that you are so comfy in your yoga pants, but you might be too comfy. 

You've got to get yourself dressed. This is one of the easiest productivity tips ever. 

I have a rule that I put on pants with a button or a dress. I very rarely wear dresses, so it's mostly pants with a button. Those can be really comfy shorts with a button, nice jeans with a button. 

But I'm putting myself into the mindset of "Get shit done."

If I'm in my loungewear, if I'm in my baggy sweater and I'm really, really comfy, I'm just going to be kind of there. Kind of focused, kind of not, super chill. 

We've got to elevate our energy a little bit, which is one of the reasons I love working out before I start my day, but I also love to get dressed. 

Again, I'm not saying to do your hair, do your makeup, do the whole thing. 

Really, all I'm saying is put on pants with a button 🤣

Number Nine: Minimize Distractions

Now, I know that you are going to have these boundaries in place. You're going to communicate with the ones that you love, and you're going to start to minimize some distractions. 

But you most likely distract yourself more than anyone ever will. 

You have tabs open, you are on Facebook. That Facebook tab is always open. You are scrolling Instagram every time you have a quick break. You're checking in on something because you have notifications on. You're checking your email every 10 minutes. 

You are distracting yourself. 

Set clear boundaries with yourself. This is going to help you laser in and focus on the task that you're doing. 

I run my entire business online. The only way that I get clients is through online marketing, yet I am only on social media once, twice max, every single day. I do not keep my Facebook tab open. I do not have Facebook notifications set on my phone. I do not have Instagram notifications set on my phone. They will distract me. That notification comes in, I'm going to stop what I'm doing and be like, "Oh, what's going on?"

I have zero notifications. I don't even have email notifications on my phone because I have very specific times throughout the day where I'm checking my email. 

If you're really stressed out about this, put an "away" message up that says, "I only check my email this time and this time. I will be getting back to you within 24 to 48 hours." 

It's amazing when you set these boundaries for yourself that you're going to notice that you're able to focus even more. 

A really great exercise is to write down, as you're going through your day-to-day over the next two or three days, every time you're distracted. And then figure out ways where you can minimize those distractions so you can really focus on what you need to do.

Number Ten: Change Your Scenery

You already have all the other things in place and you're still sitting there like, "Michelle, I have my button pants on. I've minimized distractions, but I'm not feeling the creative juices." 

Change your scenery. 

I learned about this one kind of on accident with my son when he was little. I noticed that if I was trying to work and he was fussy, we were just battling the entire time. 

And when I would change our scenery, when we went for a walk and I’d record an email that I wanted to write or we’d grab a snack and play outside in the grass so I could plan my schedule or we’d spend our day at the coffee shop so he could play and I’d sit and work.

Anytime that I shifted our scenery, I found that our energy shifted, which meant our productivity shifted. 

Don't keep pushing your head against the wall over and over again, trying to focus. Sometimes, just go outside. 

I really loved this when we started traveling full-time when we would go to a different place, and I loved it because I noticed that every time we went to a new location, the scenery would reignite me. 

It's one of the reasons I love traveling. Anytime I'm kind of in a slump, creatively, I'm like, "Let's book a trip." I know that that's not possible for everyone, just at the drop of a hat, so just consider going for a walk, going outside, going to the coffee shop. Go to a wine bar and work. Order a salad and a glass of wine and get some shit done.

CONCLUSION

I hope that this was incredibly helpful for you. I know it was a lot of information. There were 10 tips to increase productivity. 

I hope that most of them were new to you, things that you've never tried, and ones that you're eager to get started on today. 

And remember, I don't believe that productivity is just working yourself into the ground. It's being the most effective and the most efficient at what you're doing. 

And what you're doing is moving you towards your goals. 

Sometimes that looks like your priority and where you want to be your most productive is self-care, and sometimes that looks like it's what you're doing with your work.

If you are an online entrepreneur thinking of starting your own business, I'd love to invite you to check out my free marketing class, where I'm actually teaching you how to be more productive with your content creation and with your marketing without relying on social media because as I mentioned, it’s very distracting. 

Go to brandmerry.com/marketing to check that out and watch your free training.

P.S. Have you tuned in to The Brandmerry podcast? I release new episodes every Thursday on topics around branding and marketing! Check out past episodes and be sure to subscribe at brandmerry.com/podcast

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- FREE GIFTS YOU'LL LOVE -

DISCOVER YOUR BRAND STORY IN UNDER 5 MINUTES

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START HERE ↠

MAP OUT 30 DAYS OF CONTENT IN UNDER AN HOUR

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MEET MICHELLE

Hey there, I'm Michelle Knight and I an online branding and marketing consultant for female entrepreneurs.

I believe in the power of storytelling and using that superpower to brand and market yourself online...oh and to set yourself free.

I'm obsessed with living a life of freedom, so much so, that my family and I now travel full-time while running my business from the road.

This blog serves as a home base for all things branding, marketing, content creation and more.

Online Business Tip: Is There a Secret?

BY MICHELLE KNIGHT

LISTEN ON SPOTIFY

LISTEN ON APPLE PODCASTS

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The context and inspiration for this blog came to me on my morning Peloton ride.

I then found myself scrolling on social media, which doesn’t happen very often, and came across an ad, marketing, after marketing, after marketing, that was talking about quick results in business. 

Some of the language was 10K in 10 days. We're all familiar with that. And it got me really thinking about what I wanted to share with you on this topic. So that led us to the secret sauce in business.

Which, if you know me, you know there isn’t a very specific, copy and paste, universally used secret sauce that you might be looking for.

It doesn't exist. But, when I was riding on my Peloton yesterday, Cody Rigsby, my favorite instructor on the Peloton app kept saying, "Do the work, do the work, do the work." 

And I started thinking maybe that's the secret sauce. 
Maybe the secret sauce isn't some brand new strategy, or this template, or this platform, or this launch messaging. 

Maybe the secret sauce is doing the work.

When you look at the entrepreneurs, and the business owners, and the brands that see results maybe quickly, maybe in three months, six months, maybe in a year, you can see that the thing that connects them is that they're willing to do the work. 

They're willing to show up. They're consistently showing up and doing the work. They're committed to doing the work. They don't shy away from it.

So since this isn't a very, "Hey, apply this to your business and go make 10K in 10 days,” strategy, I wanted to break it down for you. 

What does doing the work look like? 
How do you do the work? 
And what are some things that you need to keep in mind? 

What is The Work?

What am I talking about when I say “the work?”  

There are four key pieces that I believe require you to show up and dedicate time and energy to as a business owner. 

Some of them, you do it once. You don't need to circle back to it very often. Maybe every year, every two years, depending on your business. 

Some of them are ongoing.

FOUR PILLARS OF A SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS

PILLAR ONE: Clarity on Your Business Goals

How do you know what work to do and how to measure the impact of the work that you're doing if you have nothing to measure it against? 

If you don't have goals, if you don't know why you're showing up every day and doing the workaround, what your end result is, then you're constantly going to feel like you're just busy. 

And when I say do the work, I don't mean busy work. I don't mean piddle over here and change this color over here, and change this font over here. And let me update this page that nobody visits anyways over here. 

I mean do the strategic work. 

To figure out what that is, you have to first start with your goals. The first thing you need to identify is what you are moving towards. And that will allow you to reverse engineer and set those goals.

Recently, I released a YouTube video on planning six months in your business. In that video I  break down how to look at the big picture and reverse engineer, to break it down into smaller more manageable steps; the same applies to all goals!

The first goal is to get clear and specific with your goals. And just like we learned in school, make them measurable. If they're not measurable, how are you going to know your progress? You're not going to know how things are working out for you and this measurable piece is going to play a role in the kind of work you ultimately do (more on that later).

PILLAR TWO: Brand Foundations

The second piece of doing the work is your brand foundations. 

If you want to grow scalable and sustainable, meaning you're not losing your mind in the process, online business, you have to have a solid foundation. Newsflash, you have to have a solid foundation for everything in life. Anything that you want to keep growing or scaling, there has to be a solid foundation. 

In an online business, that just happens to be your brand. 

When we're building the brand foundations, we're focused on your niche. We're focused on your ideal customer, focused on your messaging, and focused on your offer. I believe that your offer is part of the branding process because when you have this early on you can create your marketing plan to match. And then, of course, that emotional branding component, which plays into the aesthetics.

Now here's the beautiful thing about this work. This is not work that you do every day, every week, every month. You take the time and dedication to do the work around your brand foundations, build that solid foundation and then determine how often you want to revisit it. 

Is it once a year? 
Are you going to be rebranding? 
Do you need to go back to it and freshen it up? That's one of those things that's not constantly changing. And that's why it's important to dedicate the work to it right from the get-go.

I love to have my clients give themselves a deadline. In my course, You! Branded, we encourage clients to complete it in three weeks, so make that a frame for you to show up and do the work. Do the work, the worksheets. And then implement it in your own life. And then we get to move on, but it is essential.

If you want to learn more about You! Branded, head here.

PILLAR THREE: Set Up Systems

I keep hearing all these entrepreneurs talk about how incredibly stressful scaling is because they never had systems in place. 

If you know me, you know that I'm all about systems. And I credit that to the fact that I've been able to have a small team for so many years. That I was able to do most things by myself for a long time when I couldn't necessarily invest in team members and be a woman, and a mother, and show up for myself. 

It always came back to my systems, and these systems have continued to serve me as a business owner and continued to serve as we scale. 

When it comes to setting up your systems, here are some things to consider.

Think about your client onboarding and the process that you go through to bring on a new client. What does this look like for your business?
I have a blog and video available if you need inspiration.

When you think about this, can you automate any of it? 
Are you manually scheduling your clients? 
Are you manually sending out invoices and contracts? 
What does that look like? 

Take some time to look at your business and see where you can streamline and automate things to improve your overall systems.

What about your workflow? 

Do you know how you’re creating content every single week in your business? 

Is it a copy, repeat, copy, repeat, copy, repeat type of system? To the point where you have it set up in a task management software. And when you mark it as complete, it kicks it to the next week. 

What about your SOPs? 

How do you do things in your business? When it's just you and you're just getting started, document what you're doing. 
If someone's a new client, what's the process? 
What do you do? 
Do you send them an invoice first, a contract? 
Do you email them? 
Do they get tagged with anything? 

Just start documenting that in a Google Doc or a Word doc, so when you hire team members, you just get to hand them that information.

I think so many entrepreneurs skip over the systems piece of it and find themselves feeling overwhelmed with the process. Everything can be streamlined, even if it can’t be automated.

And this pillar is ongoing. I'll be honest with you. They're going to be updated. You're going to create new systems as you expand and as you do new things. 

But this is an area where you've got to sit down and do the work.

PILLAR FOUR: Marketing

And then we come to one of my favorite topics, the ongoing, happens every day in your business. Even if it's automated, it's still happening every single day, whether you are manually posting it or not. 

And that's marketing. 

That is getting people familiar, introducing them to your brand. Building trust with them. Telling them about your offers. Then continuing to show up and serve them even after they become a client, yes that is also part of the marketing strategy.

This area is ongoing, and this area requires your commitment, and your dedication, and your consistency. 

Don't look for an easy out when it comes to your marketing. If someone comes to me and says, "I'm just looking for a way where I don't have to do any marketing. I don't want to market." 

I'm like, "You're going to have an issue as a business owner. You're going to have a really hard time." 

The first step is to create a clear marketing strategy. 

How often are you creating content? 
What platforms are you showing up on? 
What is your weekly workflow? 
How are you repurposing your content? 
What are the core pillars and topics that you're talking about? 

You can set those up, and you can say I'm going to dedicate 30 to 60 or 90 days to this strategy. 

I recommend a minimum of 30. I try to push for 90 days now because I know sometimes, it just takes a little bit of momentum and testing. But give yourself a clear period of dedication and commitment.

The reason for this is the consistency will show you want needs to be improved upon. You need to do the work to know what to change. There is always work to be done with your marketing.

One of the biggest myths that I see entrepreneurs believing is that automation means they don’t have to do anything. I believed it for way too long. 

We think that if we are creating a course or creating a funnel, we're automating something in our business that we make, and we get to walk away from it. And we never need to worry about it again. And that is so far from the truth. 

Once your automation has been optimized, it will help with consistent revenue in your business, depending on what that automation is. But it doesn't mean that you don't have to check in on it. It doesn't mean that you don't have to look at the data. It doesn't mean that you don't have to make changes. You absolutely do.

It’s so important to choose a simplified marketing strategy, like the one we teach inside of Brandmerry Academy, and implement it for at least 30 days to know what should be improved upon.

HOW DO YOU DO THE WORK

So nothing is just done. It's always evolving. So how can you do the work more efficiently? 

Let's talk about that. I've got five key pieces that I want you to walk away with today. 

How do you actually do the work?
What are the things you need to keep in mind? 

NUMBER ONE: Make Time For It

Schedule a very specific time to make your business a priority so that your business becomes a priority. On the flip side of that, schedule a very specific time to make your business a priority so it doesn't interfere with your other priorities. 

I'm a big fan of scheduling every part of my business because it allows me freedom. 

An example of this is what I just wrapped up doing. I prepared 90 days of content. It's something like 16 videos and 18 podcasts.

The reason I'm putting in the time and the energy and I am committed to doing this is because I'm going to be in Greece for three months. I want to work 10 hours or less every single week and still hit my monthly minimum cash goal.

So I am making time to do the work. I am scheduling early mornings on Saturday because that's what I want to do so I have all this extra free time. I'm scheduling every little thing in my calendar. I'm scheduling my workouts. I'm doing all of that.

So make time to do the work. Schedule it or you won't do it. 

We'll keep pushing it off and saying, "I'll do it later. I'll do it later. I'll do it in two weeks, whatever." And then finally you're like, "Wow, okay. I haven't done any of that." So now I have to spend tons of time going back through that process.

NUMBER TWO: Set Clear Objectives

So this is kind of a piggyback of what I shared in the first part, which is all about clarity on your business goals. 

How do you know what work to do if you don't know where you're going? It's all reverse engineering. That is the best strategy for a business owner. 

Where are you headed? Now break it down step-by-step in how you're going to get there.

When you're talking about the step-by-step, set clear objectives for yourself. This will help you know how the work is playing out. So you might be doing something and you might be doing it consistently and you're like, "Man. I just don't know if this is working." 

Look at the data. 

Let the data drive your decisions. 

What does the data say? And then make adjustments. But you don't know how to shift things, or change things, or know if that particular thing isn't working anymore unless you have clear objectives.

NUMBER THREE: Be Open to Evolution

Be open to things changing. All automations, as I mentioned before, will need adjustments and changes to keep optimizing. We have to be open to looking for those small shifts.

We can't be stuck in our ways as marketers. We have to be open to change, and new opportunities and switching things up. 

Going back to the clear objectives, those will tell you when it's time to switch things up. It doesn't have to be a guessing game. Marketing is not a guessing game. 

It's based on data.

NUMBER FOUR: Test

The fourth piece of doing the work is giving yourself plenty of time to test things. Stop saying, "I'm going to work for 48 hours and see how it goes." Going back, we don't have enough data. We can't decide off of just 48 hours of work. 

So you have to give yourself time to test the work that you're doing.

Let’s say you want to test Reels. You know how fun and engaging they can be and you’re looking for more reach in your business.

Do one reel every day for 30 days. Now that's some testing. Especially for a platform that changes every five hours.

Let’s say you want to start blogging and see how it impacts your SEO ranking.

Make it a point to blog every single week, once a week for 60 days. 

You've got to be willing to test. That is part of doing the work.

NUMBER FIVE: Evaluate

Finally, and I think what brings all of this together, is evaluation. 

Put your marketing lens on, look at the data. Look at the time that you were testing, and evaluate what's happening with the work. Remember, this isn't about busywork. I'm not saying sit down and just work for eight hours.

We're talking about that commitment and that clarity on the work. 

What specifically are you working towards? 
How can you measure the progress that you're taking? 

And then be open to evaluating and making those changes as well. If you are not open to evaluating, I really think that's how people get burnt out. Because it's like you just continue to walk into a wall over, and over, and over, and over again when there's a door and another avenue like right next to you. 

We're just like, "I'm just doing the work. I'm just being busy. I'm just working today. I'm going to work every single day on my business." But we need to be intentional with the work that we're doing. 

The only way that we can be intentional is through this process of having clear objectives, of being open to things changing and modifying based on the data, to give yourself time to test. 

And of course evaluate, evaluate, evaluate. And see not only what's working based on the data, but also how does it feel?

DATA-DRIVEN DECISIONS IN MARKETING

We talked about measurable goals. Let those be an indicator for the work, and also what needs to be adjusted based on the work.

Let’s say your webinar is in one week and you want 100 people on the webinar. 

How can you show up and do the work? 
What haven't you tried? 
What haven't you done? 
Where could you give a little bit more? 

These are the types of evaluations that we have to be making.

So when you're first starting as a beginner, what can help determine where to focus your energy is where and how do you enjoy showing up online? 

What comes a little bit more naturally to you? 

I'm not saying it's easy. You have to be uncomfortable a little bit, you don’t just want to take the easy route, but what would you enjoy the most.

For myself, this was video. Even early on, it worked with my schedule. I didn't have to write a bunch of stuff. I could just show up, deliver content, repurpose it. This worked for my business because my audience loves video and I love making it.

Where is your audience? Where are they spending their time and their energy the most?

Where do you enjoy showing up? What medium?

If you need permission to focus on one area, here it is!

That's one of the reasons that we decided to drip the content inside of Brandmerry Academy every 30 days, because I didn't want someone jumping into the academy and saying, "I'm going to do SEO, Pinterest, and this all in 30 days." 

No. It's not going to work. It's going to be so hard. 

When I first started, everyone was on Instagram, but Instagram intimidated the crap out of me. I did not want to edit photos. I was stressed about choosing the right photos. 

What if the photo is not good enough? I was nervous about it all.

So I just went all-in on Facebook and Facebook groups. That's all that I did in the beginning. Not my favorite strategy and not what I recommend today. But five years ago, it definitely was. Video was just getting started on Facebook at the time and it made sense to focus on one area.

So that's all I did. And I would think about going on Instagram. And I would maybe dabble a little bit. And then I'd back off a little bit. 

Then, when I felt solid in my Facebook strategy I looked for ways to repurpose my content on Instagram. Then Pinterest was of interest to me and I hired someone to take that on because I didn’t want to add more to my plate.

Remember work does not mean busy work.

CONCLUSION

Speaking of doing the work, I’ve done a lot for you! 

I’ve compiled all my favorite lessons inside of this free eBook that I put together for you, where I am sharing the 15 lessons to propel your online business. It's really the ultimate guide of shit I wish someone would have told me. 

I talk about a lot of the elements that I see holding entrepreneurs back from reaching the income level and the impact that they desire. And as you can probably imagine, I made the same mistakes. 

So whether you're just thinking of starting your business or you're three or four years into it, I recommend that you head to brandmerry.com/lessons to download your free eBook. 

Because even if you get one little golden nugget from this eBook, I know it is going to support you in achieving your goals in 2021. Head to brandmerry.com/lessons to download your free eBook today.

This is only available for a limited time.

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MEET MICHELLE

Hey there, I'm Michelle Knight and I an online branding and marketing consultant for female entrepreneurs.

I believe in the power of storytelling and using that superpower to brand and market yourself online...oh and to set yourself free.

I'm obsessed with living a life of freedom, so much so, that my family and I now travel full-time while running my business from the road.

This blog serves as a home base for all things branding, marketing, content creation and more.