All right, welcome to another episode of No Fluff, Small Business aside. So what I want to talk about in today's episode is making the transition from day job, employee to self employed CEO, small business owner, right, and this is a transition that a lot of people struggle with for a few different reasons and they, the underlying thing on below all of that the thing under the thing of that is, you're in charge, there's no one else to blame.

Welcome we are back for another episode of No Fluff Small Business Simplified. And in this episode, we're going to be talking all about niching and your ideal customer. Niching is a super trendy term that you probably have heard before, if you've been in the online business space, if you've been spending time researching your how to build or start a business, you've probably heard of niching.

Okay, let's talk about what to do when business is slow. And for a lot of businesses, a lot of business owners, a lot of industries, you might have peaks and valleys right you might have busy seasons and slow seasons. And so I wanted to share some things that you can do during those slower seasons that are really going to set you up for success.

Okay, let's talk about what to do when business is slow. And for a lot of businesses, a lot of business owners, a lot of industries, you might have peaks and valleys right you might have busy seasons and slow seasons. And so I wanted to share some things that you can do during those slower seasons that are really going to set you up for success.

Let's talk about some social media tips and best practices and I wanted to hit on this because I know social media is so important for a lot of small businesses, but for a lot of them and a lot of business owners, you kind of don't know where to start, because there's so many different social media platforms you can be on, and then even within those social media platforms. There's so many things, you are supposed to be doing, and it's really hard to keep up, right.

So today, I want to talk about some of the top mindset refrains that I find are the most powerful and the most impactful for a lot of small business owners, and we're gonna go over five or six today. But these are really really impactful mindset reframes if you are you struggling with your mindset or maybe you don't even know but you're struggling with these things.

Okay, today let’s talk about SEO for your business. SEO stands for search engine optimization and this is something that can be really scary for a lot of business owners, because it feels like what the hell is it? How do I do it?

It's super complicated or it's very hard to know what is right to do what is wrong to do what should I be doing. So I wanted to do a little introduction into SEO for small businesses at Sam DiNicola Digital Marketing Agency, we work with a lot of small and medium sized businesses on their SEO.

Today, I want to talk about systems and processes automations and outsourcing in your business. And I think this is so important and something that a lot of entrepreneurs and business owners struggle with, as they really start to scale and grow their business.

Especially if you're a service based business owner, you now have enough clients where you're bringing in that revenue, but you are spending all your time servicing those clients. So how do you continue to grow without duplicating yourself, right, like, I can't kill myself. So that means I need to be able to get more done in less time. So what gives, and a lot of business owners jumped to outsourcing right there, and they'll just go straight for the VA. But there's a lot of lower hanging fruit that you can make yourself have more time available through systems and processes and automation, that will actually be cheaper than outsourcing.

I know that so many business owners are not doing market research, then they're creating products and services that tank that do not sell, and they wonder why you have to do market research.

I don't care that you think your product or service is a great idea. I don't care that you think it's going to be so helpful and people are going to love it. I don't care. You have to be doing market research because literally just taking a little bit of time to do market research, when you're building a new business, when you're creating a new product, service or package is going to pay dividends in the future.

This can be something that's really scary for new business owners or business owners who are trying to price new products or services.

The bad news is that you're always going to have people telling you you're too expensive — No matter what your price point is you will always hear that. So you really can't let that feedback affect how you think about your prices. The key to pricing appropriately is really market research and mindset.

A lot of business owners aren't super clear on how people are discovering their business or how people are interacting with their business, up until the point of purchase and even after that point. In this episode of No Fluff Podcast, I discuss how to develop your customer purchasing journey. It's going to allow you to start to formulate and build a proper sales funnel, that's going to bring people down the purchase journey, and it's going to grow the know like and trust factor for people who are coming into your orbit, getting to know you and your business, and eventually purchasing from you.

In this episode of No Fluff Podcast, I discuss when you should hire, what to do before hiring, and how to hire.

When you’ve identified what you need to outsource, you will know about how many hours per week or month that you need to outsource that project for, because you’ve already tracked that time. And you have documented the system around that project, so that you can make it easier.

I know that hiring can be super scary and overwhelming for a lot of people, especially if you're already an extremely busy business owner. But this is the way you get support. This is the way that you build a business that allows you to build the life that you really want to be living outside of your business.

This has been something that has been top of mind for a lot of business owners and entrepreneurs in the last year or so, because a lot of people's businesses have changed due to the pandemic. Maybe you are an in-person business that's now really gone mostly online, and you're really looking to try to add other streams of revenue within your business. If you're really looking to grow and bring in additional revenue with different products and different services, listen in to this episode of No Fluff Podcast.

So many of you are really leaving money on the table when it comes to revenue that you could potentially be bringing into your business, because you just haven't thought about it or you haven't made those things available to your customers to purchase. Here are some tips that you could implement to add more streams to your business.

A lot of this has to do with perfectionism and imposter syndrome. Those two things are usually what keep people from starting a business. They are what keep people stuck saying, “I'm not ready. I'm not ready. Oh, I'm just going to go and do this research over here first.” A lot of times, new entrepreneurs get stuck in this place of research or planning or preparing, and they never actually just pull the trigger and start promoting their business.

But, what's kind of amazing is you start to realize that you can start a business, and you can provide whatever it is you're going to provide for your customers so much sooner than you think that you can.

There's not a formula for ads. There's a lot of questions that go into this, and that's totally okay. But the key thing that I really really stress to anyone who ever asked me about ads is you cannot advertise your way out of a shitty strategy.

I think this is something that some people are surprised to hear me say, because we offer ad management in the agency. But the truth is, if you are running ads and you're putting budget behind ads, and everything else about your strategy, everything else about your purchase funnel is crap — those ads are not going to be as successful as they should be. They're not going to perform as they should for you.

Ads are fantastic for people with group programs, memberships, courses, or digital products. We really look at how big is your existing audience and whether we can leverage your existing audience on social media or your existing customer base or your existing email list for our ads. Can we do that by retargeting those people or creating lookalike audiences based on those people?

Getting super clear on your goals for ads and your budget for ads is really important because if you don't have a super established audience, that doesn't mean you can't run ads, that doesn't mean they're not going to work for you, but it's going to take a little bit longer.

Let’s talk about creating financial projections in your business.

I know this can be a really scary topic to talk about which is why a lot of newer entrepreneurs might avoid it altogether! It’s common to feel overwhelmed to look at your finances because you don't have a lot of experience in this or you don't have a bookkeeper or an accountant to help you. However, when you’re starting to scale is — it's so important to get familiar with your numbers and to just play with your numbers when you're making goals!

If you are a service provider and you're starting to scale and you're wondering when is the right time to outsource or whether you should be raising your prices — you're mostly concerned about how can you pay yourself. That's the biggest concern for a lot of newer business owners and really just sitting down and playing with your numbers (not making them right, not making them wrong) is going to make you feel a lot more confident that you can make your business successful.

Today I want to talk about building a business as a multi-passionate entrepreneur — or as a multi-passionate person.

This is something that a lot of people struggle with when they're first starting out, especially if you really enjoy doing a lot of different things, you love learning, you're really interested in a bunch of different things, and you can do a bunch of different things. But what do you offer to sell in your business?

People feel that it's wrong to want to build multiple businesses or have multiple offerings within their business. And I think we’re going to swing back towards the middle, and this is something that you really start to discover when you have built a more established business. If you are thinking of going out and starting another business or increasing your passive income from this business — I think that's where we kind of come full circle and we come back around to “is it okay for me to be multi-passionate for me to have these different things?” And the answer is yes.

In this episode of the No Fluff - Small Business Simplified podcast we are talking about how to overcome fear as a business owner. This is something that comes up so often. Fear likes to rear its ugly head when we least expect it.

Fear might show up in a few different ways. Maybe it’s that you are avoiding doing something in your business because you're scared of the outcome, or you're scared how somebody's going to react. Or it might be, fear of taking the jump and doing something you haven't done before. Fear really is something that will crop up for you time and time and again. As a business owner, and no matter what income level you're at, no matter how long you've been in business, you're always going to have fear around doing certain things.

Luckily, there are a few strategies you can employ to really put fear in its place, and not let it keep you from doing what you need and want to do in your business.

In this episode of the No Fluff - Small Business Simplified podcast we are talking about how to make a sale.

A lot of content online is talking about where to find potential clients and how to connect with them, but not a lot of people talk about the next step in the process, which is actually getting them to a yes, which is actually getting them to buy from you.

Knowing how to get a client to say yes is what really sets people apart from those people that are bringing on new clients consistently and those people who are just really floundering, really struggling to get new clients to actually execute, pay that invoice, sign that contract and get started.siness. What's going to make your business feel easy, is making decisions that go back to that big picture why.

In this episode of the No Fluff - Small Business Simplified podcast we're talking about Letting Business Feel Easy.

This is something that I think a lot of people struggle with. It manifests itself in different ways and it's really hard sometimes for us to get perspective on our own business. What's going to make your business feel easy, is making decisions that go back to that big picture why.