Dolly DeLong: Hey, welcome back to another episode of the systems and workflow magic podcast. I am your systems workflow and launching BFF and guide Dolly DeLong. And today I think I have a three Pete. 3PETE is a, correct me if I’m wrong, 3PETE guest on the podcast today. I have Taylor Cusick Holman on the podcast now.
I’m not going to do her, introduction. I’ve done it several times, so I’m going to let her do her amazing introduction. But, Taylor, I just want to say welcome and thank you for coming back on a third time.
Tayler Cusick-Hollman: I’m so excited. the three peat is the Lakers, right? The Lakers were a three peat on the
Dolly DeLong: That sounds about right
Tayler Cusick-Hollman: I don’t watch the basketballs, but I’m pretty sure that that’s where that phrase, uh, originated. So I am very thankful to be a 3P guest on the podcast. But like Dolly said, my name is Taylor Kusakolman and I am the founder of NG.
that’s how Dolly and I got connected like almost two years ago. I think we’re closing in on two years of being Fast and furious internet friends, which is the best. And my background is in marketing consulting. And so I used to work with small business owners all of the time to help them figure out, okay, well, what am I going to do to market my business?
Cause it’s just the big thing that we all need to make work for ourselves, but it kind of is this big. complicated puzzle to figure out sometimes. So I love making it as simple as possible so that you can actually do it. And my husband and I had this crazy idea to turn myself into software. And so that’s what NG is.
So now we spend our days thinking of, okay, well, how do we, take this, what used to be a very human process and turn it into a piece of software that can help you do it on your own. So that is what I spend my, admittedly long days at the computer doing now is just dreaming up those tools so that marketing is not so terrible and difficult for small business owners anymore.
Dolly DeLong: Well, I do want to say listeners, if you are brand new to the podcast, thank you for listening in first of all. And then also I will make sure to link to the past two episodes that Taylor has been in, cause she is my marketing go to expert. she has really good systems and workflow talks on marketing.
I am a huge believer, as you all know, It’s no surprise here in creating a system and workflow for the back end of your business. And marketing is a huge component of how you promote your business, how you campaign for different launches, how, how you just sell yourself to your clients. Cause you can’t just post it and then that’s it.
You get the clients. it doesn’t happen like that. It happens through very strategic marketing and sales. Seasonal marketing and intentional marketing. And these are things that we, as business owners, especially those of us, myself included, I did not go to business school. I did not go get my marketing degree.
I have a master’s in mental health counseling. So I have no idea. Sometimes I feel like I’ve been learning so much in the past five to six years of being an online business owner. And so, having Taylor, just like now as a biz friend, I’ve learned so much about creating better systems and marketing because it has influenced and impacted the way I teach about launching education now.
So anyways, I hope your mind is exploding because you are amazing. Okay. So we were kind of hinting earlier that, There is a struggle for small business owners on not knowing where to start with marketing. I know like we say, we say terms like, Oh, we should create a system for our marketing and marketing needs to be strategic and you need to be constantly promoting yourself.
Yes, those are all true statements, but for the business owner who feels overwhelmed with Okay, where do I start? Where do I actually start? Because marketing in my mind is not a one size fits all road map. There are different ways to start marketing. You need a market based off of your client. You need a market based off of your, your type of business.
And so we were going to start with the very basic question, like where to start for your small business.
Tayler Cusick-Hollman: Yep. I mean, it’s just the problem that everybody has at some point, right? Maybe everyone has a different moment in time where they realize that they’re questioning where they should start with their marketing, but it is one of those universal experiences that comes along with, deciding that you want to be an entrepreneur.
And so, you know, what I’m going to talk about in the summit is what comes after, you know, where to start, right. And I’m super excited for that presentation and to get into, you know, all of the nuts and bolts about, you know, what is a marketing system and how do you keep up with that system? Because that’s one of the, constant struggles that people have is okay, well, yes, I understand now that I need to do this and I know where to start, but then how do I keep up with it over time?
And so, like I said, that’s, that’s what you’re going to get as a part of the summit. And so that’s a separate conversation that we’ll have. And today is really about giving you what you need to then reach that point in time and be ready to hit the ground running.
Dolly DeLong: I love it. So Taylor, Where should business owners start with, knowing how to market for their unique small business?
Tayler Cusick-Hollman: Yeah, you know, I feel like everybody says this, but it’s totally true. You need to start by knowing what your goals are because that is the destination on your journey, right? that’s where you’re, you are driving your business bus is to your goals. And so if you don’t understand what it is you’re trying to achieve or accomplish or end up with.
then you have all of the, the possibilities, right? Because you just, you know, you kind of look at a, an imaginary map and instead of knowing, okay, well this is where I’m ending up and what are the, the few roads that I need to get there? It’s like, okay, I’m just looking at a big old map and I could go anywhere and I could pick one of the hundred thousand ways to get anywhere, right?
And so it’s kind of a silly analogy, but it’s, it’s totally true. Like we have to know what we are trying to do. And so that’s why I think everybody who talks about, you know, any part of business kind of says that’s square one. So, you know, When you’re trying to figure out what your goals are, you know, it is really dependent on your life, like how your business fits into your life.
Because for some people, your business is in addition to full time work. Or full time parenthood or whatever. So, I really encourage people to take that into account when you’re thinking of Hey, what’s realistic for me to accomplish? but like a few examples of things that you can think about are, you know, are you trying to book more clients?
Are you trying to get better quality leads? Right? are you trying to become an authority in your space? And so it’s really about what is it again, that you want to accomplish. And I, I really encourage folks to only set like a maximum of three goals. Because. If you’ve ever felt like running a business feels like herding cats that are all scrambling in different directions, it’s probably because you are trying to split your time and your thought and your like all the things between too many just like goals, too many marketing things, too many you know, service packages, too many client type, right?
Like it just becomes cats. So, so three is for someone who is a like a solopreneur running their photography business on their own. You’re a human, you have a capacity, And in my experience, having three goals is, what you can realistically keep your attention on.
Dolly DeLong: Taylor, first of all, I love that analogy of the roadmap and you giving, I don’t know, more context to how a small business owner should view like aiming towards their goals and not only having three or less goals, but just knowing where they’re going, because it’s going to look different for everyone.
And kind of like taking I don’t know if this is like a step in the right direction of like being in the same wavelength, but I was thinking if two different business owners have the same goal, like they’re both aiming for a certain, let’s say like better quality leads. So they’re going to the same destination, but one business owner has more of a.
let’s say marketing budget and another business owner has a, let’s say less marketing budget. They’re like DIYing everything. There’s nothing wrong with that. Everybody starts somewhere. But let’s say in terms of a roadmap, that business owner A is going to have a little bit more resources to like stop and eat and Do a sightseeing and do make it more like bougie.
Stay at bougier hotels on the way versus the business owner. Who’s okay, I have A hundred bucks to my name. I can only stop and eat one time and I need to like, do more, make this as cheap as possible to get to my destination. I know I can get there. It’s just going to look different. Does that make sense?
Does that help? I was just thinking it like, okay, this is yes, this totally makes sense. Yes.
Tayler Cusick-Hollman: because there are always more, there’s always more than one way to get somewhere. Right? And depending on, you know, what your, like you said, what your budget is, what, how much time you have to get there, right? what do you want to maybe do along the way?
You are going to end up picking a different journey to get there. And so, I know a lot of people compare their businesses, their process, their choices to other businesses. And it’s like, you, you both can be trying to, you know, get to Nashville, Tennessee, but I’m going to take a different route from San Diego to get to Nashville than you are from Orlando, Florida.
Right. But we’re still both going to end up there. So it is I’m glad that you pointed that out, that our experience of working toward our goals, like it is absolutely OK for the choices you make. to look and feel and be different than what, you know, you see other people around you doing. So like, our journey is our own.
That’s, that’s the thing to sort of like temporarily tattoo across your forehead. my goals are my goals and my journey to get there is my journey to get there.
Dolly DeLong: Yeah, I love that. And it’s, I wrote I know, depending upon when you’re listening to this listener, you might be listening to this when it comes out live or later on in the year. but right now when we’re recording it, it’s like the brand new year, like fresh start. And so for a lot of business owners now, like they have this, Okay.
A renewed sense of, okay, let’s move forward. Let’s merge ahead. and I have recently, I did my, yeah, I like to do a yearly little, I don’t even know what to call it. I go to a hotel for two days and camp out and I just hash out my dreams for the year or the next quarter. And so I have a renewed focus as to what my why is behind my business.
So. like kind of going back, knowing your goals. I know what my goals are and it’s going to be very different from another business owner’s goal. So listeners, please know your goals before you forge ahead.
Tayler Cusick-Hollman: Yep.
Dolly DeLong: Okay. I know, can we talk about understanding your ideal clients and what that looks like?
Tayler Cusick-Hollman: Absolutely. We can talk about understanding your ideal clients. Cause that is, one of, it’s actually kind of one of the mistakes that people make when it comes to their marketing is, okay, yes, you have your goals now. And then all of the decisions you make are just based around what you want to do, right?
they’re kind of self centered in their decision making process. But the other, please temporarily tattoo this across your forehead message from today is, We don’t do our marketing for ourselves. We do our marketing for you. for our potential clients and customers. So that is why, again, a lot of people that I know, you know, small business owners sort of collect educators and gurus and, you know, all the, all these people to learn from.
It’s why everybody’s gonna, you’re just continually hearing you need to not just know your ideal clients, but you need to have, you know, ideal client personas and you need to do customer research and you know a best practice is to send surveys or get feedback from your clients and customers so that you can continually get to know these people like deeper and deeper because your marketing trying to help them transform something about their lives.
And if you don’t want to be stuck in a space where you feel like you’re screaming into the void, right? A, you’re already hurting cats. And then you’re like, and I’m also screaming into a void. this is not, this is why people hate marketing. And so if you don’t want to find yourself in in that space and what you want is to feel like you are speaking to your ideal client and you are differentiating yourself from other people that they might be considering, then you have to know them at a very deep level.
And the, you know, the cliche is very true. If you try to speak to everyone, you’re speaking to no one. And, you know, to share a, a, a personal experience with this. this is one of the things that I, I am consistently challenged with, with Engie because we built a platform that technically is for any small business owner who is doing their own marketing.
So that’s 29 million people in the United States. It’s a lot of people that we could be talking to. We can, we absolutely are talking to family photographers, but I could also be talking to Joe Plummer. Technically. But your experience as a family photographer is very different and like all the things that make you tick, very different from what Joe Plummer is experiencing and what he worries about and you know, this, that, and the other.
And so the thing that we, It’s kind of like Taylor getting into her own head. I’m going to admit this for sure is I know that it’s hard to pick one customer persona or two customer personas to go after. Because folks, I feel this every day. I feel it in my bones. I’m like, oh.
’cause some, sometimes people will say, oh, well you should just focus on like website designers, or you should just focus on marketing consultants, or you should just focus on wedding professionals. And I’m like, oh. But that feels so committing to do that. Like I don’t wanna say NG is just for fill in the blank.
so I feel, I feel the weight of needing to make this kind of decision. And again, like that decision is going to be different for everyone who’s listening, and you’re allowed to change your mind about who your ideal customer is. But when you make a decision about who you are trying to attract, commit to trying to narrow the lane as much as you can so that you are speaking to their core.
Like you make them feel seen because you’re saying things to them that other people are not saying, like the folks who are not putting in the effort to really get to know them. Right.
Dolly DeLong: I will, I want to go back to you sharing, okay, understanding your clients. How do you do that? Doing customer surveys, and listeners like customer surveys, I will admit, I do not like them at all, sending them out because like, you just never know if anybody is going to respond to it. Sometimes there’s crickets and sometimes like you’re, I don’t know.
Your, your people in your, in your audience who are your ride or dies, they’ll fill it out, but then you’re like, but I need more meat to this. So a very concrete example that I’ve been doing, especially in the last two years, is seeking out people who I know I’ve enjoyed serving. I know that they’re, like, They fit the genre of my ideal client.
And so I will reach out to them personally and say, Hey, do you have time in the next two weeks? I will pay for, I usually pay for, we don’t meet in person. Cause it’s depends on where they live or because we might like, I’ll use family photography for example. I, we might be moms and so we have very conflicting schedules because of our kids schedules.
So I will meet them on a zoom call. I’ll record and I’ll ask them questions that pertain to the services that I’ve offered to them or that they want. And then I give them like, I asked them, do you want 15 gift card to Starbucks or Amazon or whatever. And then I take the All those interview questions, and I transcribe it.
And then I take that transcription and I put it in ChatGPT and I ask ChatGPT to analyze it and I ask it questions, like, okay, what are they saying about me? What are they saying about what they’re looking for? Cause I might miss it. And so that is something that I’ve been incorporating more and more, and that has helped me out with my copy that it’s helped me be like, okay, this is what I need to be doing the type of content like for content creation.
Um, but this is the type of content I need to be creating. Okay. This is how I need a market. And it just makes it more tangible for me to know how to market for the next, let’s say quarter. so if you are looking for a concrete example, okay, what do you mean by understanding your ideal clients? You’re going to have to put in the work to, to like really understand them.
like the, the best example I can think of is you can’t be like, well, I really want to like, get to know someone. Like when, when you got married, I’m sure Taylor, I’ll use this as an example. Like when you and your husband were dating, getting to know each other, you guys just didn’t go straight to your first day, you’re like, Oh, we’re going to get married, like you just decided, like you had to get to know each other.
Find each other’s quirks and like what your values are, what your core beliefs are, like all of those things in order to decide Hey, I really like this person, I’m going to marry them. Like, I mean, maybe that’s like a strong analogy. You’re not marrying each of your clients, but you are getting to know them.
You’re getting to know their core values because it impacts the way you show up in marketing.
Tayler Cusick-Hollman: 100 percent and you know what you’re doing with your transcriptions is awesome and if people want to take that one step further, for service based businesses, there are two basically data sets that you are sitting on and not doing something with. Um, what could it be? Uh, so the first data set that you’re sitting on and you probably haven’t done anything with is your client reviews, right?
You know, you get a client review, you’re like, yay, pat on the back. I did a great job. Look at this glowing review I got. And it lives on Google or your website. Or, you know, if, if you are someone who’s got a listing on some sort of, you or business marketplace, maybe it lives there as well. And the most you probably do with it.
is share it in some social media content, right? And that’s, that’s its finger quote purpose. But what you can do with those is copy and paste a bunch of them, aggregate them into one document, and then run it through chat GPT and ask it to pull out the commonalities. Right? Because there’s, getting to know what individuals are saying, that is absolutely step one.
Like, what are the, what is this client saying about me? But then the next step is understanding the patterns because then, like you said, you take those patterns of the words and phrases that people are using to describe how they work with you and you turn that into marketing messaging, With like, this is the, the happy side of the transformation, but the other side of the transformation.
Do you like. Life is lifing, or I just have this problem that I need to be solved, or I just want this thing to be easier, right? There’s always some sort of agitation that people are experiencing that drives them to look for a solution, right? And so the other data set that you’re sitting on are your inquiry emails. And not every inquiry email necessarily says this is what’s wrong, right? But again, if you, if you aggregate them and you run them through chat JPT to do the analyzing, you’re probably going to learn some common thing that keeps popping up in terms of what challenge or annoyance or want your inquiries have that is on that front side of the customer client transformation that you’re trying to deliver to them.
So once you know those two things, then you have the best place to start with figuring out what am I, what is my website copy going to say? What kind of content, like you said, Dolly, am I going to create around this? How potentially then could I even work these reviews strategically into blog content and, you know, this, that, and the other?
So This is why people say, like, get to know your clients, because you, if you’re start, if you’re just starting out your business, yes, absolutely, you should be making assumptions and educated guesses. who your clients are because that’s where we all start. But once you start to have people who have booked you or bought from you, basically, if someone has given you money, great.
If someone has given you money and you start to have these things, then I really, really encourage you to do surveys like Dolly does work that into your workflow, knowing that the majority of people won’t say yes. to doing a survey and that’s fine because people are busy. but then once you have, some sort of critical mass around inquiry emails and reviews, then you can regularly do this quick exercise using AI and then you’re just getting to know your people deeper and deeper like we talked about.
Dolly DeLong: and I will argue that you should not you, Taylor, we all as business centers should be creating some sort of system in this at least once a year in aggregating that client data and understanding your clients because as your business matures. Your, your clients who you’re serving are going to change too.
And you’re going to be serving like, you might decide, well, I really, if you’re a family photographer, you might be like, I want to serve all the family, like, like newborns, maternity, milestones. But then later on in two years, what if you’re like, I only want to do maternity sessions like fine art, studio, maternity.
You’re going to be talking to a very specific audience, but you probably won’t know that until you start really digging into understanding your clients and understanding what your goals are. So this is why we’re having like this kind of like deeper, meatier discussion on where to start before you create a system for your marketing.
And Taylor, I’m just going to like. Give a verbal, cause I know people can’t see me since this is a podcast, but I kind of want to walk people through like where I start. So once I know step, like we just went over two steps, step one, like understanding your goals, step two, understanding your ideal clients.
once you’ve aggregated some sort of, chart for yourself that works for you, I want everybody to know like what my system is. So I hope. I hope and pray you all have Google Analytics set up on your, on the back end.
Tayler Cusick-Hollman: that. I second that. Please and thank you. Please do this
Dolly DeLong: Yes. Like, and if not, like now is the time it’s, it’s really easy. It’s free to put on the back end of your website and depending upon your web host, you can just literally Google like how to set up Google Analytics for on my Wix website, on my show website. It’s easy. And I’m like, suck it up. If you’re making excuses,
Tayler Cusick-Hollman: No excuses. Yes
Dolly DeLong: But how I know where to start marketing. Once I have this data, I will go into Google analytics. I will go to the left. It says there’s tabs that say home reports, explore advertising. I go to reports and then I go to, traffic acquisition,
Tayler Cusick-Hollman: I was gonna guess I was like acquisition.
Dolly DeLong: acquisition, like acquired, like where is your traffic acquiring from, and then I’ll set like.
It to the last let’s say if we want to do the last 90 days, I want to know in the last 90 days Where has my traffic been acquiring from? and you you can set it and so it’s going to tell you like Originally the first primary group, organic, paid search, organic, referral, organic. And you’re like, what the heck does this all mean?
So what I do is then I, after I set the last 90 days, I go to this tab at the very top. it’s called session primary channel group and there’s a plus sign beside it. So I hit the plus and I scroll down to traffic source and then I go to the I’m hoping I’m saying this right. Session source medium.
Because it’s telling me exactly like nitty gritty where my clients have come from in the last 90 days or traffic.
Tayler Cusick-Hollman: your website traffic
Dolly DeLong: My website traffic. So now I see okay, organic organic search is high. It’s like number Number two, direct is number one, organic through Google. So what that tells me is that my SEO is working for me, which means my long form content has been SEO optimized is working in my favor.
So that’s telling me one thing. my second most trafficked, I don’t know what to call it. Source is. Through Google ads, because I do have, I’ve set up Google ads. So it’s called paid search, but then I want to know more organic. And so instead of throwing spaghetti at the wall and being like, okay, I’m going to be on Facebook and then Pinterest and then Tik TOK and then, Tick tock today and then no tick tock tomorrow because I don’t know about tick tock, but let’s say you’re like, I’m going to try tick tock and then Facebook and then Pinterest and Instagram instead of doing that, just go into traffic acquisition.
Yes. Organic search is working for me. But then I see my Instagram is like my top social media platform. and so now that tells me, okay, I need to have a marketing plan for Instagram. And then it has nothing, absolutely, well I’m not on TikTok, but let’s say I was on, it has nothing about. Where am I? Where do I post?
Uh, Pinterest. It doesn’t have that much for Pinterest. Just a little bit. But my biggest, social media platforms are Instagram and Facebook. Surprisingly, Facebook, because I have a lot of moms who follow me on Facebook, and they want to Have family sessions. And so those are my top social media platforms.
And so that’s where I like concentrate all my marketing efforts on. And I just analyze it every 90 days.
Tayler Cusick-Hollman: Mm hmm. Yeah, because, and that, that definitely leads into, like, how do I know, okay, I know my goals, I understand who my people are, but then, what do I do?
Dolly DeLong: Mm hmm.
Tayler Cusick-Hollman: right? And that’s also, that is, I think, the spot where most people get stuck is making decisions around what type of marketing they’re going to do and where they’re going to do their marketing.
And so I love all of that. Like, absolutely A. Everyone needs to have Google Analytics set up for your website, please and thank you. Um, so please do that. And then doing, following a similar workflow of what Dolly does on a quarterly basis. Because it reinforces, well, it educates you about where your marketing efforts are actually paying off. So that you can do more of that because that’s the whole goal here. And also what that helps you see is where can you like, let things go, like bless and release it. Right? So exactly.
Dolly DeLong: I can still do it, but I shouldn’t pressure myself to be like, I need to depend on a Pinterest strategy. Like it’s not bringing clients in for me right
Tayler Cusick-Hollman: Exactly. And so this is where we get into a mix of, When you’re trying to figure out what you’re going to do on the marketing side, there are two buckets that I really encourage people to focus in on. One is short term visibility, right? Like, As a business owner, we just need to constantly be tippy tapping on people’s shoulders to make sure that they know that we are here and you can give me money.
I will give you a service for your money, but like I exist, right? And that’s how I like to describe what marketing is. It’s just the things you do to make sure that people know your business exists. Right? So that’s the visibility stuff. And the visibility stuff is typically, quick, consumable and consistent pieces of content, right?
So posting on Instagram for some people, Pinterest is a great visibility channel for them. so like what are these things that you can just lather, rinse, repeat on, lather, rinse, repeat. Then there’s the longterm play that we all need to be playing in some way, shape or form. and that is typically all around SEO, right?
We want to make sure that our website becomes a more and more trusted source of information so that Google becomes more and more likely to put our website in front of people who are searching for answers.
Dolly DeLong: for key terms that your business answers.
Tayler Cusick-Hollman: And so when you’re, when it comes down to it, you need to have Something that fits into both camps because over time you want your marketing to become an easier, less effortful thing that you need to do, right?
Like, we all want this to just become a well oiled machine that runs on its own. So that’s the long term stuff that you need to do, but also it is your responsibility as a business owner to make sure that people know you exist. So you, you need to pick something in both of those camps to make sure that you have a really well rounded marketing strategy.
And This is why I’m a broken record about you can’t have all of your marketing eggs in one basket because you can’t, most people like can’t just wait, can’t just do the long term thing because most people like need to start making money sooner than the long term play. Right. But then on the other side, if you’re only doing the short term thing, then you’re not working toward that well oiled machine in the future.
And you’ll be stuck in the hamster wheel of always. needing to create these quick pieces of content. So, um,
so
Dolly DeLong: Preach it.
Tayler Cusick-Hollman: yeah, that is my soapbox, speech.
Dolly DeLong: And I’m sticking to it. I know. I love it. And I also want to speak to any listeners who are like visibility. Oh, does that mean I have to like be visible every single day and be available? It does not mean that you can totally create a strategy where. I am big on batching out my content.
So I will, make a day, like honestly, my day for my family photography business. is Wednesdays, and on Wednesdays, I have a couple hours, just like where, where I am in life, my boys are like either with their sitter or they might be at school, so I have a couple, four hours, let’s say four hours to nail down my long term content for the week.
Which is blogging, my email marketing, to my family photography list, and then I decide, okay, how am I going to create this long form content and break it up into, well, I already know people are finding me on Instagram, so Instagram captions, carousel posts, um, static posts, stories, and reels. And so I make my marketing plan on Instagram.
On Wednesdays and I batch it out and then on Thursday and Friday on the other working days, I’m not worried about being visible because it’s all batched out.
Tayler Cusick-Hollman: You did your future self a favor.
Dolly DeLong: Exactly. So you are, are worried like, well, Dolly and Taylor are telling me I have to show up every single day. Like, no,
Tayler Cusick-Hollman: we’re not saying that.
Dolly DeLong: a plan, you have to be really like, you have to be honest with your time. Like, if you know you only have one hour, then use that one hour wisely and batch something out for the week or for the next two or three days, but be very intentional about it.
Tayler Cusick-Hollman: Absolutely. And that’s where, You know, if you’re listening to this podcast, I hope that you’re like, that has been so helpful. I feel so confident in where, what I need to do in order to figure out like how to get started with marketing. Then what I’m talking about in the family photographer summit is the next step for you because we get into how to create a marketing system for yourself, which is, I mean, I would not be able to keep up with my marketing if I did not have a marketing system.
Dolly she is the systems. Goddess.
Dolly DeLong: Bow to me.
I’m just kidding. That was a joke, everyone. I’m being sarcastic.
Tayler Cusick-Hollman: Yes. That’s sarcasm is one of the qualities that Dolly and I share. So please take all of the jokes with a grain of salt, but like Dolly has a marketing system set up for herself and that allows her to not be in a hamster wheel. of this part of her business. And so I’m going to dive really deep into what is a marketing system and how you can set one up for yourself, but then also how can you set up a repeatable process for yourself?
Because I, hi, my name is Taylor. I am also a fan of batching. And so there’s a very simple transformation. I don’t even want to call it a transformation. It is a mindset shift that you can make that is very simple, that has a big impact on how you do your marketing and increases your ability to keep up with it over time, which is the thing that exhausts us, right?
Like mark, we will, as long as we own businesses, we will have to do marketing. So how on earth do I keep up with this thing if it never goes away? Right. And it’s by having a system and repeatable process for you. So, you know, as we get into this, before you get to the summit, what, you know, your action items are today is define those goals, go and do all of that customer research so that you really understand who you’re doing your marketing for.
And then think about what are the marketing channels that you’re going to do your marketing on, right? Like the, the short term visibility ones versus the long term. And then Once you have that picture in your brain, actually, write it down. I don’t want you to just keep it in your brain. That’s like the opposite of what I want you to do.
I want you to document it. Write it down, and once you’ve written it down, then you’re gonna be in a really good spot to then figure out, okay, well, what’s, yes, take the next step in creating a system for yourself and a repeatable process. And then, I promise you, Marketing will, you will take the biggest exhale you’ve ever had about marketing and you’ll be like, I can totally do this.
And it’s not this thing that like, I wake up every day and feel like, uh, I have to do this thing again. Right? that is my goal in all of the work that I do is to take you from that space. and get you into a spot where you’re like, I actually kind of like doing my marketing now. Call me crazy.
Um, but that’s, that is my goal for every one of you.
Dolly DeLong: love that. And so just to remind everyone again, this, episode, we are, talking a little bit about the family photography advanced summit. So this summit I created, you all know, I love talking about systems, workflows, and SOPs to impact the backend of your business. And so I was brainstorming, okay, what can I do in 2025 that will business owners with that goal.
And so I was encouraged to really lean into helping family photographers out. cause that is one of my sweet spots besides like launch education and launching, I love, I love running my own family photography business because. Of systems and workflows. And so if you are a family photographer, you’ve nailed in your art, you’ve nailed in your posing, you’ve nailed in your editing, but you still need help like bridging that gap of understanding systems, workflows, SOPs, and actually running the back end of your business without burning out.
Than this. Advanced summit is for you and it’s absolutely free to attend. And the, the only thing you need to do is sign up for it to grab your virtual ticket. And this is coming up at the end of March of 2025. And so I, I strongly encourage you to check it out. I have a great lineup of speakers. You can check it out in the show notes and, of course, Taylor’s going to be there and I am just so thrilled to Bring Jess more systems and workflow education to advanced family photographers.
Tayler Cusick-Hollman: Yeah. It’s going to be great guys. Cause we’re all, this is not like a basic education course. Like we, I know all of the speakers we are digging in so that you can take yourself to that next step, that next level, that next version of your business that you maybe have been spinning your wheels about how to get there.
And that’s what each and every one of us are helping you do with the summit.
Dolly DeLong: Awesome. Well, thank you so much again, Taylor, for coming. Do you mind sharing with listeners how they can find you and follow you and work with you? And can you share a little bit more about Engie, like how they can get signed up?
Tayler Cusick-Hollman: Absolutely. So, uh, geriatric millennial . So I, I have a TikTok account, but please don’t try to have a conversation with me on TikTok . So Instagram is my jam, and so NG’s Instagram account is ENJ, ICO CO, and you’ll find lots of just like silly shenanigans and marketing education there. our website is definitely, I know, linked in the show notes.
So you can click on Dolly’s referral link because I always want to know who to thank for helping people discover Engie. But the shortcut to that is just enji. co, dot com is very expensive so we won’t have that. Like 300, 000 expensive. Like, I am not, I’m not kidding. I’m, yeah, we won’t ever have com.
Uh, so ng. co is where you can go to learn more about what we are, but The quick and dirty explanation is Engie’s marketing software for small business owners who have to do their own marketing. And so you can come and create a marketing strategy, you have lots of tools to help you actually put that strategy into motion.
And like I said at the, at the start of this, you know, we turned me as a marketing consultant into the software and so there are lots of tips throughout the tools to make sure that you know what steps you need to take and you’re guided along the way. And so, you know, if you’re looking for something to help you figure out what are you going to do, when are you going to do it, and then track your results over time, then I would love for you to click on Dolly’s link and and give it a go.
Dolly DeLong: Awesome. Well, thank you so much. And listeners again, everything that was mentioned will be in the show notes and until then have a streamlined and magical week. You amazing muggle you. And I will talk to you all next week. Bye.
