[Alice] – Absolutely, school pick up. Literally would not get any engagement or response from anything around school pick up time. Sunday nights when the families are finally relaxing at home at the end of a busy weekends is when we’ll get like the most jobs posted for the following week, they’re thinking about planning ahead for the following week. That’s when we’ll get the highest email open rates, et cetera.

Just as you were saying, knowing your customers, looking at the data and looking at the response from each of your different messages and analysing that to continue to refine it and improve it.

But then I think also, just as Kaylene was saying, talk with your community and care about what they have to say. Our customer service goals are so incredible. Turning around a negative experience that a paying customer has had for years is such an incredibly powerful thing. Just having those people there to care, listen and really understand what the customer wants is so important. I think the marketing can be great, but unless the customer experience is great, it’s not going to get you very far. Really focusing on the product market fit and the customer experience first, and then going in hard with your marketing is important. I wouldn’t be spending lots of money on marketing until you’ve really got that part of it nailed.

[Kaylene] – Then when you do that, it sells itself. All you have to do is put it in their way and say, “hey, we understand you, we know you’ve got this problem. Here’s the solution.” You don’t come across salesy because you’re genuinely just going, “hey, this is going to help,” and now they’re looking to you. This is exactly what I’ve been needing.

[Yasmin] – We say it’s not selling, it’s storytelling. People think because we’re this well recognised brand that we’ve spent a tonne of money on marketing. We haven’t spent that much. We’ve never done a Facebook ad; we’ve never done an uplift. We’ve never done an Instagram ad, and only because we’re in the middle of launching a brand-new website. We will start to invest in those marketing things when we need to and want to, but all of our business so far has come from word of mouth, or just authentic storytelling that cuts through organically online. I don’t know how many likes we have, I don’t care. I care about if a customer has commented, are we responding within five minutes? Are we authentic? Are our messages the same? Are we all using the same words, culture, feels?

If a customer complains, we get excited about it because it’s an opportunity to deliver. Raving fans and customer service are what have made our business thrive. The one thing that will irk me is if a customer’s inquiry message sits idle for five minutes.

Even if I got a message right now and the rest of my team went out on the floor, I would sneakily respond to that customer because I’m not going to let them sit idle. No one is above it. I don’t care what your position is in the company and I don’t care if it’s midnight.

If you’re online and you see that ping, you answer it right then and there because that is how you grow a business. People tell stories about you. They become your advocates, and you don’t actually need to spend a tonne of money on marketing.

[Kaylene] – That’s absolutely nailed it, because I think that’s where understanding the problem and being able learn for yourself requires you to become the observer when you’re a consumer. What do you like? What don’t you like? What is it you want? What do you expect? We’re consumers all day, every day. I love doing this as an exercise, and just as a quick example I had been eating on the run lots lately. But I went to a burger place the other day.

A burger joint is fast food, you’re not just sitting down. It’s a kind of service, you don’t just sit out on the grass. It took half an hour for them to make my burger, and they were coming to closing time. There were four staff members working, just fluffing about doing nothing. They were doing some cleaning and putting tables away. There was one guy slogging it out in the kitchen and I looked at that experience. I thought, “what’s the most important need?” Customers come here to get a burger on the run and go, right?

When I looked at that situation I saw the owner, and I just wanted to shake him and say, “even if you’re not a cook, or chef, and you don’t know how to run that kitchen, get in there and toast the buns or something. Don’t worry about piling stuff up over there, because my biggest need and why I walked into your shop is to get food.” Get in there and do whatever it takes. I asked to refund my burger and I said to him, “it’s taken half an hour.” He said “Oh, sorry.” For me, really understanding why I am coming to you and focusing on solving that to your absolute best ability is important.

[Yasmin] – We had to adopt Facebook Marketplace and Gumtree while we couldn’t run events to sell stuff, because that’s what we do. We get products into our precinct, and now we can’t invite 10,000 people in. Instead, we had to make a release. It’s not a pivot, but our entire team are responsible for ensuring that customers know what we have so that when they buy from us, we can make money and then hire more people. I said to my team, “Gumtree inquiries come through, and we’re all logged into the one account.” If I’m going to purchase something, let’s say I need to buy this new water bottle, I can see it on Gumtree and make an inquiry. I can say, “Hey, is that still available?” Then, I don’t even hear from that person for hours. I’m already on to something else. I’ve already asked five other people if their water bottles are available, and I’ve bought it from someone else.

That is the example that we use for our team. Even just hustling and being responsive and proactive, right? Be proactive, not reactive. If you sit and wait for your customers to come, you’re going to be sitting and waiting a long time.

But if you actually are going out there and thinking, “who would want this water bottle, which Facebook group would they be in, and where would they be?” [It’s really] how do I put it out there? If I answer them really quickly, they’re going to say yes, and then they’re going to come in. That’s what’s grown our business for the last six months, is that attitude of hunger to survive and thrive because we made a commitment to not fire anybody or stand anybody down when COVID hit, and how do you do that when most of the revenues are generated from an event where 10,000 people walk through the door, and you can’t run it anymore?

You have to hustle hard, and you all have to be proactive, not reactive. I just get the team to think about how would they feel if they wanted that product really badly and no one replied because it was after five o’clock? Right now, we have to be responsive when customers are responding to us. It’s not necessarily the business model moving forward for us. But the ethos of the experience and intimacy with the customer is what we are. That’s the messaging that we like to send to empower our team.

As women, we’re traditionally very good at undervaluing our worth. I certainly have been in the past. You seem to have this inner confidence, [and my question is] have you always had it? Or is it something that you’ve found along the way? Because I think that would be really helpful for our audience, if you could share.

[Yasmin] – I think it’s probably a little bit of both. I think I’ve always felt it on the inside, but I’ve not always acted on it. Look, my one of my favourite books is The Little Engine That Could, and the little engine happens to be a female. She’s this little engine and she wants to get up the mountain and everyone tells her she can’t do it. The big burly engines say, “Well, I’m a big engine and I can get over the mountain, how are you going to get over the mountain?” She says, “Well, I think I can. I think I can. I think I can.” I’m really old fashioned, and I think it goes back to if you say you can, you will. If you say you can’t, you won’t. All these really simple philosophies that don’t require a degree and don’t require decades of commitment to educating yourself [can come from things like] The Little Engine That Could. Take on her philosophies.

If you think you can, you will, and if you think you can’t, you won’t. I’ve always felt really different out there, and sometimes I’ve not thrown my own light out in the past, because it shines so bright in people’s eyes that it freaks them out.

It’s not that I’m better, it’s just that I either energise or exhaust people, that’s just my personality. It’s just who I am, and that’s okay. It’s okay for people to not like who I am. It’s okay for people to dislike me, because we don’t all need to be the same, and if we embrace our differences, and find our natural genius, then I actually feel like it’s those differences that really connect us.

For me, I probably have been shackled a lot from caring about what people think. My mum got breast cancer at 44. I am 44 now, and my mum passed away two years ago this month. When I realised that she had breast cancer, and my mum’s sisters had breast cancer 16 years ago, the first thing I said to my husband is, “oh my god, once we have kids, I’m totally taking my boobs off. There is no way I am going to be getting breast cancer.”

This was all before Angelina Jolie did her thing. But you know what, I’m really ashamed of it, even when I said it back when my mum was 44 and made that announcement. I still remember when I was at Mount Coot-tha, where mum told us all she had breast cancer, I said it then. I wasn’t brave enough to actually go through with it until Angelina Jolie did it? Then the whole world accepted it as a thing. Because someone famous went and removed her breasts to prevent getting breast cancer, she gave me permission to do the same thing.

That’s disgusting, right? Why did it take her to trigger me to go do it? I did it in 2014, I have no nipples now and I’m really comfortable telling people. I took a proactive approach. I have a 1% chance of getting breast cancer. It’s freaking awesome, right? But it’s not even about that story. It’s about the act that it took someone else to judge me, for me to then accept the quirkiness and authenticity of who I am. I’m a proactive person. I’m going to prevent things I can prevent and control it to improve my life.

I guess what I’m saying to everybody out there is if there is something inside of you that you want to do, and it sounds so crazy that you think you’re going to lose people in your orbit, then those people don’t deserve to be in your orbit. Please don’t wait for someone famous to do it. Go and be that first mover and the market maker and just go do it. There are people out there like me that are going to cheer you on and support you. If you feel crazy, just connect with another crazy person and go on and do it!

That is so insightful, what a story.

Alice, bringing it back a little bit before because you are a professional in the marketing space. I and a lot of the people that I know that are in small micro business are happy staying there. Marketing is not something we know at all. At what point do you think that people like us need to look for external support? I know we’ve talked about telling your authentic story, but sometimes that’s even hard. I guess I ask when do we go and seek out PR, and what does that mean to small businesses?

[Alice] – That’s a really good question. It’s funny when you’ve been doing something for so long, it becomes unnatural to think [it’s a skill that I have].

You realise that it isn’t like that for a lot of people, there’s strengths that they have, and it’s more foreign to them. I think you should definitely go out and get external support. I would suggest getting your brand’s tone of voice and your brand image right.

I think that’s important too, to make sure that it reflects your purpose, your values and your culture, so that this is a consistent image that you’re putting out there to the world. I think it actually really helps you define your brand values and what your business is about and what you care about.

It helps you become more creative with your content and with your storytelling, because it defines what you want to talk about with your audience. We really care as I said about gender parity and gender equity in the childcare space, taking responsibility for the children because it’s important for us to empower women to follow their dreams, and to continue their careers and start businesses, et cetera. That’s a brand value of ours, and this wealth of content that we can talk about. I think it’s really important to do that early on, and you can talk to a friend who works in marketing. Talk to me on LinkedIn or whoever if you don’t have any money at all. People in the start-up world are great, and I cannot believe how lucky I am for the support I’ve had along the way. I always just want to give back.

Our business is all about community and supporting each other with kids. But my co-founders and I we just love community on the building a business side as well. People are happy to help and provide advice and tips, and so generous with their time. I would say just ask someone that you think will be a good fit for you to have a chat with, to get that confidence up to start a brand book, just to get it down on paper. It’ll iterate, it’ll change, it’ll evolve, but it’s a start. If you do have a bit of a budget, by all means, go to a small boutique agency, and pay a little bit of money to get it done really well.

In terms of ad spending, I think that should be probably the last thing you should do. Once you’ve got a product market fit, a two-way communication with your customers, you’re utilising all your free channels, PR, and other business partnerships, then you’re ready to actually spend some money on marketing.

It’s probably important to talk to an SEO expert, and a Facebook or a digital marketing expert, just to get you set up with the basics. But it probably isn’t something that you need on going in the long term unless you have significant revenues and budget.

Certainly, in those areas, there’s quite a lot involved and they’re changing constantly. As Kaylene was saying, the algorithms are changing. You kind of need to be in it to make sure you’re not missing a trick there. I’d also say that it’s really important to get in there on your Facebook ads and your analytics and understand that even if you are getting external help because you want to be able to take that back ideally and run it yourselves in house.

That’s super practical advice. Did you want to add to that?

[Kaylene] – I was just going to say, it is really good advice that Alice said in her first answer at the beginning which is to play to your strengths. If you’re watching people kill it in their Instagram lives, and you couldn’t think of anything worse, then don’t go and try and compete in that space. Maybe you’re really good at photography, or maybe you’re really good at writing emails, or blogs and things like that. If you try to do everything and do what everyone else is doing, then you’re going to get caught up and you’ll lose track. It’s better to do one thing, do it really well, track it, and see how it works. If that works, do more of it. Then, when you feel like you’ve exhausted that, bring in a new marketing strategy.

Really effective and cheap [marketing strategies] for start-ups out there are free ones through collaboration, exactly like we’ve been talking about today. When you do something from an authentic place, you tell your story and you can actually find likeminded brands who can leverage each other, whether it’s a giveaway or events like this. Finding ways to collaborate and use a guide, that was one of my biggest growth strategies. I think when podcasts and magazines are telling you other people’s stories, that’s a collaboration. As a result, they’re sharing and getting in front of your target market. Then, I would highly recommend building an email database. From day one, even if you haven’t started yet, start collecting emails because I think the downfall is that people say, “you liked me on Instagram or Facebook, the first thing I’m going to do is tell you to buy and give me your credit card details.”

You’ve got to think of it like a dating app, which have scenarios where you say, “look, we matched on this app over here. Great. Now, do you want to get married?” That’s pretty much what you’re doing if you go, “You like me, why aren’t you buying from me?”

What the business and marketing world will teach you is a sales funnel, where you create warm leads. It’s all technical jargon, but it really just means that you’re creating a funnel where you’re constantly throwing the net and telling people you exist. Eventually, you’ll get better and better at that and will be able to do it really quickly.

Again, this includes going to Gumtree, which is a huge net that allows you to target your market. Then you want to move them down the funnel. The first step you might do is free content on social media, then ask people to join your mailing list. Then maybe you give out a free download and now allow them to spend $20 with you, and then $50, or $100! But to assume that you are going from completely free anonymous content or engagement with your brand, to credit card details [and I’ve studied this with my book], consumers are actually getting less and less trusting of brands, because there is so much click-bait and people who aren’t providing what they saying they are.

Your job is to build a relationship, a rapport, and understand the needs of your target market, and slowly move them down. Some people will just come in and go. I get clients who say, “I’ve just listened to every coaching podcast that you have signed me up for, how long can I work with you?” Others will say, “I’ve been following for two years, and I’ve done that online course and I’ve come to that event. Now I’m ready for coaching.” It’s a slow burn, and it’s relationship building. That will cut through, and everything we have talked about today is a part of that.

If you get one paying customer, serve them to your absolute best ability and then they will go and tell 10 more people. Track, ask, engage and take them on the journey with you. What do you need? How else can I be of service? How was that experience? What else can we do?

[Yas] – I love what you said about being conscious of giving people takeaways. We always talk about relational value not transactional. We want to hear the feedback on our page, not just requests for you to buy from us. You can’t just run a marathon in three seconds. It takes hours. It is about giving continuously, and then you might get something back. But don’t give with the expectation to get back because that’s inauthentic. I’ll give you a little example of what works for us. We’ll get an alert about who’s followed after today; we use HubSpot, so we track all of our customer data. If I talk to a customer, I write down what they said or what I promised, and I tag my team so they know everything that I might have committed as a promise. But even when someone reaches out to me on LinkedIn, my brain just says, “Oh, I wonder what triggered them to connect?”

I will go and ask, “Hi, Alice. It’s Yas here. Thanks for connecting with me on LinkedIn. I see we share a number of mutual connections. We both know, Carlie and Mumma Got Skills. What brought you by today? Is there anything I can help with? Was there something in particular that you were interested in?” Ask the question and be human, because Alice might say, “Oh, my God, I’m so sorry. I was meant to send a note, I did hear you speak on this podcast.”

All of a sudden you start a relationship that’s not transactional. It’s meaningful. I want to know why people connect with me because I would never just connect with someone without telling them why, because I want to create meaningful experiences in life that go far beyond the transaction.

Anyone can make money, making money is easy. It’s the boring part of business. Making a difference is the thing in your life that is going to make you rich. Be different and ask crazy questions. If someone follows you on Twitter, go ask them why and create a relationship with them. That’s my takeaway. Don’t just hook up with someone on LinkedIn and expect them to connect with you without telling them why you care.

Kay, you already started to answer it, but [Debbie, a webinar guest asked] if you accept your quirks and are happy to showcase your authenticity, do you have any tips on how to start peeking out? What is the most relevant information to then market with?

[Kaylene] – I think understanding your target market and asking them what qualities they like similar to yours. If somebody says, “Oh, looks like you’re doing really well. You’re killing it,” I will then ask, “what is your perception? What are you saying? Why do you think that?” If they say, “I love your podcast,” I can respond with, “great, which one are you listening to? Asking them if you can get those running surveys, is a really good tip. In terms of accepting your quirks, I do think a lesson that I’ve learned is through really bad times in business where I’ve been overgrown and wanting to shut the whole thing down. It was exhausting being on social media all the time with family stuff going on in the background.

I tried to make sure that I processed that first, and I moved through it. Then if it’s relevant, I’ll share it from a grounded centred therapy place which my therapist helped me to work through. I think also what Alice talked about is what maybe isn’t being done in this space. For us, it was straight up business advice, presented in a beautiful, creative looking way. If you outline your quirks, make sure that you’re finding ones that your audience is actually going to want to connect with or want to be a part of the business model.

You still have to be a professional and understand what their needs are. Is it even more relevant to use your usual quirk in that way, to meet their needs? What Alice was saying around points of difference, that’s what it is. Then making sure again that quirk is for you. Most of my podcasts had a little ‘e’ next to them because they’re considered to have expletives because I’ll drop an ‘F bomb’. For me, it is a quirk of mine and my mum who watches my Instagram lives will send me a message and say, “Stop swearing.” But that’s straight up business advice from me, just thinking, “I’m just going to say this how it is,” sorry, I’m just going to make you a podcast how I want too.

Great! Alice, do you have a closing comment?

[Alice] – I just wanted to say thank you to all you amazing women. It’s been really inspiring for me to have this chat. I think we’re celebrating our differences and being authentic. Another way we try and stand out is through our teachers. You don’t get this cookie cutter babysitter who just ticks all those boxes and has had X number of years’ experience. We have Spanish, yoga, and even art teachers, and they’re all fabulous, incredible, different people. I just wanted to say I really have appreciated this conversation. I think it’s been really beautiful and lovely to connect with you all.