An important part of being an entrepreneur is learning from your peers. “Unstoppable Entrepreneur” profiles entrepreneurs who have taken the leap to follow their passion and create their own work & lifestyle. They share their expertise: tips for success, tools they use and valuable insights they have learned along the way.
This week I had the pleasure of speaking to entrepreneur Nicole Longstreath, a Wardrobe Strategist and founder of The Wardrobe Code. She shared how she got started as a wardrobe strategist, found her business sweet-spot and took her business global.
Watch/Listen to the video below and share your feedback in the comments!
Key Takeaways:
Really get clear on your service offerings and what makes you different
Get clear on who your potential customer is- what keeps them up at night?
Beta-testing your product is critical especially if you are creating something unique
Listen to your customers- they will help guide your product creation process and provide insights for new products
Enter the draw!
Nicole is giving away 3 spots in her ‘Closet Social Club’. Enter here.
As a wardrobe strategist, Nicole helps her clients uncover their unique style and build wardrobes they love at a sensible cost. She believes that having a strong personal brand is within reach for anyone who wants it. It doesn’t require starting over or spending a fortune – just a commitment to yourself. Find her online at The Wardrobe Code, on Twitter and Facebook.
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Back when I first started my freelancing business, I remember all I could think of was landing my first customers and I was always on the lookout for how I could offer my services.
I’ve liked to think I’ve since improved my techniques but did learn some valuable lessons:
Three things to keep in mind when looking for potential customers
1. Patience needs to be your new BFF
Not everyone operates on your schedule. Do you find yourself constantly checking your email? Or second-guessing yourself and whether they will pick you? I know the feeling. Trust me, that was me. But you have to just let it go once you’ve put it out there and realize that not everyone will respond to their email 5 minutes after you sent it. Chill out.
2. LISTEN with BIG EARS.
Identify problems and then talk about solutions. Don’t just offer your services. Often people don’t speak the same ‘technical’ language as you do. You might be talking about social media and they may not realize that blogging is one aspect of it. Start listening and see how what you offer can help solve a problem.
3. Hang out in different watering holes.
And put yourself out there. Are you constantly talking to the people who already know about what you do and offer a similar type of service? You’re getting caught in the echo chamber! And that ain’t going to put food on the table. It makes you feel good about what you do but people in your existing industry are probably not the people you are going after as customers.
Put yourself out there and think of areas that could use your type of service. For example, talking to other social media enthusiasts about social media is most likely not going to get you any work. But maybe heading over to a yoga forum or another industry where they are just dying for your expertise, you will get noticed. Try different things. In my case, I experimented with giving some of my time away for free on a network for entrepreneurial women and not necessarily a place where I was competing with hundreds of other people offering services like mine.
What have you tried? What worked or could use improvement? Let me know in the comments below!
Do you feel like you are always creating new content to spread the word about your work?
And once you finish something it’s time to start the process all over and it feels like a never-ending hamster wheel of content creation?
Madness, right?
This came up in one of my entrepreneur groups recently and a lively discussion was had about all the various ways we can do more with our existing content and not have to start from scratch each time. Hat tip to Colleen from ClericalPlusVA for summarizing it with:
“Repurpose, Baby!”
Sometimes we think we have to start from scratch each time and let’s face it, most of us are not in the business of content creation but use it as a method to share our ideas, spread the word about the awesomeness that we do and connect with more awesome people. Right?
So before you jump back on to the content creation hamster wheel take a brief step off and see how you can easily turn your existing content into different formats. This also gives you an opportunity to explore other platforms that you normally may not spend time on.
So I bring you:
13 Ways To Create Spin-Off Content From Existing Content
Webinars/Powerpoints
Do you do webinars or give in person talks?
Why not take that webinar and create the resulting “spin-off” content:
6. Video Specific Pinterest board: Create a specific board on Pinterest to share your video interviews
7. Create Image Quotes
Create image quotes from key points in your interview which you could then share on Facebook and Pinterest! Not to worry if you aren’t a graphic designer. Watch this short video where I show you how to easily create image quotes for Pinterest and Facebook.
and create a board on Pinterest to share these quotes:
9. Create Tweetables: from Blog Posts, Interviews
Click to Tweet: Opportunities for relationship building are all around us: http://bit.ly/12YC6bt @womengamechange via @SandySidhu
10. Create a specific category on your blog for a series of posts making it easy to find. Take it a step further and create an image that you can showcase in a sidebar widget. Hat tip to Nicole Longstreath of The Wardrobe Code for this gem!
In this short video we look at how to use If This Then That (IFTTT) and put the power of the internet to work for you. Using IFTTT you can automate tasks that you do often such as having your Instagram photos tagged with a specific keyword posted to your Facebook page. In this example, I look at how you can create a recipe to have your videos uploaded to Youtube automatically shared to your Facebook page with a specific URL and description. What a time-saver and great way to be more productive!
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In this short video we look at how to bulk schedule tweets in Hootsuite using the bulk uploader. This is especially useful if you are planning a product launch and want to schedule out a whole bunch of posts. It takes some time to setup the file but sure beats having to do it manually!
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As a wardrobe strategist, Nicole helps her clients uncover their unique style and build wardrobes they love at a sensible cost. She believes that having a strong personal brand is within reach for anyone who wants it. It doesn’t require starting over or spending a fortune – just a commitment to yourself. Find her online at The Wardrobe Code, on Twitter and Facebook.
