This year I celebrate 20 Years of running my own business. I want other small, gutsy, businesses to succeed so I’ll spend the next 20 weeks sharing tips, lessons learned, and loads more.
20 Years, 20 Lessons.
Lesson 1. You will kiss frogs.
I kissed a LOT of client frogs in my early years – in other words, I did a lot of work for clients that weren’t great.
I remember one of my first clients was a small business that ‘wanted a leaflet’.
All the red flags were there. They didn’t understand marketing. They didn’t want to. They took forever to drive to (50 minutes one way). They didn’t want to give me helpful info. They didn’t listen to my feedback about how one leaflet won’t work and how their website had loads of barriers to purchase; how they needed to be clearer in their messaging.
But, I needed the money.
I researched, wrote, laid out their leaflet.
A week after I sent it to them, I phoned them up to see how it was going.
They told me, ‘Your marketing is crap. Your leaflet didn’t work.’
I calculated I would have earned DOUBLE the amount per hour working on the tills at my local supermarket.
I vowed there and then to never kiss a frog like that one again.
I have kissed other client frogs but I have always used it to refine and hone exactly who I want – and don’t want – as clients.
Lesson Learnt
Kiss your frogs, but use them to focus in on your real clients.
Why I Love What I Do
I’m Kara Stanford, a Strategic Advisor to Business Owners, CEO & Founder of The Marketing Spaces, a NED, and Marketing Strategist Consultant.
This year, I’m celebrating 20 years of running my own business.
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