NK Podcast: Leading H.E.R. Way

Ep 43: Burnout Series w/ Tayler Cusick Hollman - Mastering the Marketing Game without Playing with Fire

February 20, 2024 • Nikisha King | Certified Life & Business Coach • Season 2 • Episode 43

Share episode

Step into the eye-opening world of Tayler's journey, where the high stakes of entrepreneurial ambition meet the raw reality of burnout. This episode is not just a story of struggle; it's a beacon of hope and a masterclass in balancing the pursuit of success with the imperative of health. Join us as Tayler unveils the true cost of relentless ambition and shares the wisdom gained from her journey to guide both new and established ventures through the tempest of business and marketing.

In This Episode, You'll Learn:

  • How the relentless drive for perfection can take a toll on personal health and well-being.
  • The importance of clear, impactful communication in establishing a presence for emerging ventures.
  • Practical advice on navigating social media metrics to enhance your business's online presence.
  • Insights into Enji, a platform designed to tailor marketing efforts to the specific needs of diverse businesses.

Don't let burnout dim your entrepreneurial spirit. Join us in this enlightening conversation with Tayler and Nikisha to learn how to balance ambition with well-being and sharpen your marketing acumen along the way.

Follow Taylor and Enji's journey on Instagram for a regular dose of inspiration and the latest in marketing innovation. Remember, taking care of your health is the first step towards sustainable success.

How to Connect with Tayler Cusick Hollman:

Gift from Enji Co - Enjoy a FREE trial of Enji by using 


How to Work with Nikisha (Your Certified Business & Life Coach):

Six months from now, would you like your business to be unrecognizable?
Schedule a FREE consult to learn about THE SOLOPRENEUR INITIATIVE! A 1:1 private coaching six-month program for solopreneurs who want to:

  • Managing Work-Life Stress
  • Finding Your Direction with a Clear Plan
  • Developing Confidence in Your Numbers
  • Finding Fulfilment in Your Brand


Check out our content on Instagram > NK Focus Formula

Nikisha:

Hey, Tayler, thank you so much for joining us and it's a pleasure to have you To get started. My question to you is have you ever experienced burnout? And if you did, what did that look like?

Tayler:

Oh man, yes, the answer is yes, in all caps and bold and italicized letters. It was something that it took me a long time to realize how burned out I was and how hard I was still asking myself to run, even though I was totally depleted. When you're burned out, there is no gas in the tank, there's not even fumes in there for you to be trying to operate off of. For me and, I think, for a lot of people who are service-based providers and, to take a half step back from that, anyone who owns and operates their own business there's this space where grit and resilience and drive is something that you need in order to succeed in the long term. We have to push through these really hard moments where we feel like, oh my gosh, I don't even know. Is this going to work? Do I need to shut down my business? All these crazy thoughts go swirling through our head and we know that we have to just shut those off and keep moving forward. Where it gets gray is you can stop listening to signals that are more like blaring alarms that you've gone way past that point. That was what I experienced. I'm just going to keep on keeping on, because I have one speed that I operate at and that's go really hard all of the time.

Tayler:

When I started, my brain was telling me certain things, but it was what my body told me. That was the clearest signal that I was really not in a good place. I lost hair. I now have stress-related alopecia. It's part of the reason why over time, if people look at the hairstyles that I have, they shift because I will have an actual bald spot. I've got one right here right now. My body. I had never experienced that before. All of a sudden, I had four pretty sizable bald spots on my head. Now it's just an animal that's been let out of the cage. Sometimes I'm like I don't even stress. Why do I have a bald spot? That's how my body reacts to certain things. Now my heart was telling me things. My heart would skip beats when I was really stressed. There were all these really intense physical symptoms that I was experiencing, where I had to look around and say, okay, I'm not okay.

Tayler:

That's the hard thing to admit.

Nikisha:

That's one that's true. It's hard to admit. I feel like that's why the body has to show you. You know how we, as humans, care about our physical being. Our physical is everything, because it's how we appear to the world. It's like inside, if things are happening, your heart is skipping a beat. I'm still alive, I'm still breathing, I'm still kicking, but that bald spot is like what's happening. Something got my attention the fact that your body can even do that, because some people go a little bit further, they can collapse. They don't get the physical message. Everyone responds differently. Before you got to the physical showing, before you understood, something was happening. What was it? I know you said going fast, were you building something? Were you doing? What was it that you were building prior that led to that.

Tayler:

It was work. I mean, it wasn't the work that I'm doing now, but I was a part of another startup. The startup life is a very special version of this small business grind that we are all in. I mean, a lot of times it's just because so many people have put it's not just one person when we all started. I have a consulting business that I started on my own, but that experience is very different from when there are business partners, there are people who have invested money in the company, there are employees that are getting paid and everything hinges on these incremental wins and successes.

Tayler:

In the startup world, everyone is chasing this hockey stick growth curve. The amount of pressure that gets put on any one person is tremendous. It is the experience of being a hat wearer, which we all are for our businesses. It is that on steroids. I was the marketing director at this startup. When you think about marketing and what it does for any business, it is the tippy top. It is the widest part of anyone's sales funnel. So much hinges on. Hey, are we getting enough people into the funnels that we even have a chance of hitting the numbers that we need to hit?

Tayler:

It was a mix of a lot of pressure I was putting on myself to just go hard all of the time, but the thing that was different, that I had never experienced, was the amount of external pressure that I was also going to be put under. I think a lot of people we think that no one is going to push ourselves harder than we are. Thanks, then we meet the person who actually does and it pushes us past the edge. That was what happened with me, is I got pushed beyond my capacity, which is a freakishly high capacity. If anybody is listening who has ever worked with me, you know it's like I'm an overproducer by definition, and so for me to get pushed past my breaking point was really, really intense, and so it was very much work related, and you know it's spilled into how I was able to take care of myself.

Nikisha:

I love how you shared that you got pushed past your capacity to push yourself, because I don't know if I've ever heard someone verbalize that, because we know people push themselves to their capacity and they go out. But for you to say that it was something that happened to you, like outside, it was so interesting because that is possible, but I just didn't realize it was. You know what I mean. And I guess when you are a high producer, is it okay to assume that, being a high producer, you are some form of a perfectionist? Do you have that habit or no? Because if you do, it kind of explains because you have to prove and show how good you are. So I'm going to do it, I'll do anything at any cost to get that message across and I'm a perfectionist. So I realize that because I'm always serving, I'll serve so much more before I look at self in my past. So I hope, as our audience listening, they realize that is possible Because if you're a perfectionist, you have that type A personality. You are an over-deliverer and you can actually get to this state where you can burn out and you'll see it manifest in the ways it does with your physical being.

Nikisha:

Now marketing, oh my God, business owners, let's just get to the meaty part. We are all challenged with this and recently, marketing for me. I've been in business for 15 years, so in the first 10 years, no, I didn't know what marketing was. I just knew that you're supposed to go on social media and you're supposed to just post three times a day, five or seven days a week, and no clue why. What am I doing? And, oh, I'm going to experiment and see what works and what doesn't work.

Nikisha:

But there's no strategy. Because we don't go to people like you, who did it before as a consultant, get a strategy, a marketing strategy. And if we did like you have shared, you would give a 25 PDF page and it would just live on their computer. They would never implement it. But for me, receiving that, I couldn't because I didn't know what it was. I was like what am I doing? How do I even put it in play? So you being a marketing genius, let's start there. And you, having this background, can you explain? Why do we market? Why do we have such an open funnel? What's the intention behind it?

Tayler:

Yeah, we market because, in the grand scheme of things and I'm very much living this phase of business right now, with NG being a true sternum At the time of recording this we are seven months post-launch, so we are like a baby business. But I share that because, in the grand scheme of things, no one knows you exist when you launch a business. There are seven billion people on this planet. I don't even want to know how many businesses there are, even just in the United States. I'm pretty sure the number is like 350 million small businesses in this country alone. So it is expansive, right, but nobody knows that we exist.

Tayler:

And that's at the core. That is what marketing is and why we do it Because we want people to understand that we exist. And so marketing is the act of sharing your message, that people understand who you are, what you do and who you do it for at the most basic level. And so I already mentioned this that marketing sits at the tippy top of your sales funnel, whether it's a formal funnel or not. But if people don't know that you exist and they don't understand that your product or service is something that can help them, is for them, then you have no opportunity to sell to them and turn them into buyers.

Tayler:

And so it is just this absolute core piece of what it is and what it takes to operate any sort of business that is going to. You know we all want to get paid, so right, it's just, it's like peas and carrots marketing and sales. Those things go together, and that's why it's so important to really own this hat that you have to wear, even though it's one of many, and why it's also important to stretch yourself a little bit outside of your comfort zone and learn the fundamentals of how you can get your you know corner of the world to understand who you are, what you do and who you do it for.

Nikisha:

Exactly. That's such a good point and a good way to look at it, and I love how you made it so simple, because it is that you're a new business. You need to tell people what you're doing, what you're offering, so they can opt in and purchase it right. And so many small business owners struggle with that because they don't have a history. When you work for a nine to five or you have that background, you didn't have to do marketing. You wouldn't know about it. No one educated you that. When you're in school, no one educated you about marketing.

Nikisha:

If you're a popular kid, you know what marketing is because you're a popular kid. Right, you've been doing it right. Let's keep it simple. It's a bit of a great level here, everyone, and I love that because that's what it is. If you're the shy kid, no one knows what you can do or what you're capable of, so they don't see you, you know. Now let's chat about. For me, the place I market at is Instagram, so I like Instagram. We know there's a slew of different social media channels to market from. Which one is your favorite one?

Tayler:

I am a geriatric millennial. I'm going to ride the Instagram train till I die. So you and I are.

Nikisha:

Yeah, I think I'm Gen X and I don't know which one. I am between one of those two, but you and I like Instagram and that's what we're going to talk about. So you Instagramers out there a lot of people I work with and know our Instagramers as well. What I kind of want to do, I want to use some of your knowledge. In Instagram, when we look at analytics, say, I made a post and I made two posts, let's do that. I did well. But the way I measure well is how many likes I got and how many likes I didn't get, or how many views if it's a real. So I might have five views on one real and like 50 on another. Right, there's other, an analytics behind it, the reach. I would like you to tell me more and, if you can, in fifth grade level layman term, what does that even mean? The reach? Is it more than what they saw? It just once? I want to know. I'm so inquisitive. Go ahead, I know.

Tayler:

Over the course of even just the past few years. When you look at what all of the influencers and consultants on the internet are telling you to focus on, the metrics are constantly shifting. It's like what's most important today, and they change because that thing we all hate, the Instagram algorithm is constantly shifting, but when we're talking about reach, the simple way to think about that is how many accounts saw that piece of content, and you can think of accounts as people, just to make it even more relatable. So how many people got that piece of content put in front of them? Now, the metric that complements reach that a lot of people will also look at is impressions, and so I want you to think about impressions is as how many times did that one person see that piece of content?

Tayler:

Because we have eyes, we are fully capable of looking at something more than once. So how many accounts saw it is your reach? How many times did that piece of content get put in front of accounts? And so sometimes one account can see things multiple times, and so that's why those numbers, the reach, is typically a lot smaller than your impressions, but that's a good way of understanding. How many folks am I actually getting in front of Right A?

Nikisha:

piece of content, but the impression doesn't sell you if they saw it more than once. So the impression number was like a thousand. Your reach was 800. 800 accounts saw it, but I'm assuming 200 might have seen it double or something. Is that a good assumption to make? You know what I mean. So we have impression. How many times it got in front of someone reaches the actual accounts Straight up, nothing else to that, but how many accounts it landed on. Yeah, I like that. I can get behind that. My brain can manage that. And then there's another one. Engagement might be it, I'm not sure, right. And engagement is they actually did something.

Tayler:

Yep, yep. And that one unfortunately requires some math, because it's like how many accounts did this piece of content get put in front of? And then how many, you know, divided by how many times someone did something.

Tayler:

And so it's not complicated math, but it is a little bit of extra effort that people need to put in in order to understand that. And you know your engagement rate is a good indicator of whether or not your content is high quality. That's one of the other things, and for anyone listening, I just used finger quotes. You know we hear all of the time that the secret sauce to you know having a real go viral, or the secret sauce to your marketing doing what you needed to do is to produce high quality content, and everyone is just a broken real or a broken record with that phrase. But it's like what is high quality content? Right? That's such a. It is such a broad term, and so it is important for you to understand what high quality content is in your corner of the internet. What do? What does your audience think is really great from you?

Tayler:

And you know a fun little example I posted something on the NG account yesterday. It was a carousel post, so there were, like floor, if I'm remembering correctly, four slides to this post and it was just. It was a very simple concept. It was screenshots of a calendar with you know like tasks on it and how much time people spend on tasks, but the I created it kind of under from the point of view of someone who overthinks things in their business, which is all of us. We all overthink something with our business, and so one of the one of the slides was the task was to post a reel, but then the next and that was like a quick task, and then the next block of time, which was like an hour and a half, was basically them looking at all these other reels, trying to find content that you know was going to inspire them, and find a trending audio that's like not too trending and not, not, not, and then in the end they posted a story, right?

Tayler:

So it's just this reel like just the reality of what we do as people, and whenever I post content that is very explicitly about our true realities as business owners, that is the type of content that is high quality for the NG account, because it's the. That's the type of content that gets the most engagement, and so that's how I judge success, but that's different for every single one of us, but that's how you can use those three metrics to understand, like you know, like start to clear a path for yourself. So you understand, hey, what, what kind of direction. Do I need to take things in Right?

Nikisha:

And let me pull out the gold nugget in that whole explanation. You have set the metric, you set the parameter of what content usually in your corner, in your world, in your business, that works well for your market. But in order for you to know that, you have to know who is your market. You have to know that they are realistic, like you are, and that overthinking situation is such their language. And I'm going to be honest, there's a lot of small business owners who don't do that work. They just go out and try experiment, but they don't know what they're doing until they hit something. But then that hit is a small how can you call it like situation? It doesn't last. Yeah, they can't repeat it, they can't recreate it, but you can't because you didn't realize your market is asking for that. And if you kind of tone into that, then you can get that continuous success of how your marketing, how people are engaging.

Nikisha:

And even as I speak to you, it's something I'm learning and that's why, like for me, I know I need to build a strategy. It doesn't have to be a 25 page one. We can start with a one page strategy. Everyone, I've learned that from Julie Novak, my mentor. Yeah, I kind of gave her that title, which I love. But that one page strategy can help you kind of zone into who is your market and then create content and that's how you experiment.

Nikisha:

Now you actually experiment with the actual how we call it. I wouldn't call it control, but a variable that's possibly workable for you. So I love how you said that for your corner, for the piece of the world, not 20 million, not the 3 billion, 5 billion in the world, your corner, and put that content out Now, knowing that people overthink, because that is so possible, right, you start with the real thing. Then you start looking everywhere at all your competitors and everyone's doing and then you put out a story because you're like this is just too much NG. Let's talk about the creation of NG. How did it come up for you? Why did you create that?

Tayler:

Yeah, you know I have. I have been a marketing consultant working with small business owners, really in the wedding space, for I'm coming up on nine years and when push comes to shove, there is a very consistent through point in what people are turning to me and hiring me for. And there was this. There was this phrase that I didn't. I didn't really realize the impact of the phrase until I took a step back and looked kind of at my proverbial existence through a slightly different lens, and that was people were literally saying to me over and over again Tayler, just tell me what to do. That was the thing that I heard over and over and over again on consultation calls Tayler, just tell me what to do. If you give me a plan, I can do the plan, but just tell me what to do. And so NG is basically a COVID project gone like super wild and rogue in the best way possible.

Tayler:

But you know, I once I realized that I was like, you know, when I look at my services and this is true for everyone we all have, for every service based business. You know, our services are meant to help people who have, like this, this problem, and there are themes within our business of the problems we're trying to solve. Right, that's how we decide, for, you know, service a this is what you're going to get is deliverables, versus service B. But for a lot of people, the thought of, or having the opportunity to turn yourself into software is not technically for everyone. Right, we've already we've talked a little bit about the startup life. I don't wish the startup life on most folks, so you have to be you have to be a special type of masochist to take this on.

Tayler:

But but I did realize was like I have. I have an opportunity to turn myself as a marketing consultant into software, so that small business owners can finally like wrap their arms around their own marketing, the way that I would have done it if they had hired me, because as a consultant and a service provider doing one to one services, I'm not scalable. But there's all this expertise and experience in my brain and I was like I can do this. Right, it really was born out of that phrase Tayler, tell me what to do. And so I was like, okay, y'all buckle up, because I'm going to figure this out and I'm going to create all the tools that you need in order to do your own marketing in a really focused and strategic way. That is, at its core, not overwhelming, because I'm a I'm a hardcore realist and that is, those unrealistic expectations that we all put on ourselves is a huge part of the reason why marketing is this own special little thing that can cause business owners to burn out.

Nikisha:

Hmm, so true, so so true, and I and I really think it's just the burnout comes from all of the overthinking and the trying to make it like, trying to figure it out right and you don't really know what you're trying to figure out. That's the burnout. Is I doubling the work constantly, constantly, and there's so many business owners because now we have Marketing. Before social media was going to a company and paying a lot of money.

Tayler:

Yep.

Nikisha:

And a lot of people didn't have that. So they go to newspapers, right. They go to magazines. They buy article space and that's marketing prior to social media. Now it's at our fingertips, anyone can do it and it's for free. Until you pay for ads, it's for free. So they're all trying to get it, but they're not doing the work behind it to get it. Now, with NG, tell us a little bit more how it works. So like, if I have an NG account and you guys will have access to this so you can have a trial, because tail is giving that to us, which we're so grateful for it. But once I log in, like is it helping you write captions? Is it helping me Plan? Does it give me ideas on topics? Get a little bit more detail in regards to, if I wanted to create a post, how can NG help me create that post and in how much time can it help me?

Tayler:

Mm-hmm. So I mean this start. I'm gonna start at the beginning of the story, because the one of the other realities for small business owners but most business owners is is we wake up every morning and we don't know if we're gonna market our business today and if the answer is yes, what we might even do.

Nikisha:

Yes, I'm raising my hand. Yes, you're right, it's me. The problem is me.

Tayler:

I might have botched that line, but I know what the, I know what the sense of it is, and so that is the. That is the first problem that I set out to solve. That's very much tied to the tailor Tell me what to do. And that problem is Getting people a marketing strategy right, a one-page marketing strategy that make. That is easy to understand.

Tayler:

You know, I used to deliver 25-page PDFs that were gorgeous Hmm, they were chock full of all the things, but After reading it once, no one was ever gonna look at it again, right? And so all you have to do is play a game of 20 questions with NG and it's, it's all. Making Selections right, like, maybe the only open-ended questions are how much time do you have to spend on marketing every week? So, like, you're entering a number but the rest of the question, the questionnaires, just make selections and then, after you hit, after you finish it, you hit, create my strategy and within like two seconds, there is a marketing strategy that's customized to all of your answers to the questionnaire right, let's pause on that, because this is so good.

Nikisha:

One is prescripted to the person. Yeah, it's not a I'm telling you or I'm telling everyone to do it this way. Right, it's not a should be this way. Situation, it's a. Let me ask you some questions. You tell me about you and now I'll give you a strategy based on what you've informed me about. Yep, amazing. Next, go ahead.

Tayler:

So so you get that strategy and that then helps you understand, hey, what's the direction that I'm going to market my business in. Because that's a lot, right, we all need a lane, we all need guardrails, we all need directionality, and so that's At its core, that's what a marketing strategy is supposed to provide you, right? Like, hey, this is, this is what I'm doing, and why? Because a list of tasks is not a strategy. That's, that's one of my like, I will die on this hill, stand on this soapbox as much as I can. A list of tasks is not a strategy. So I'm sensing that I'm speaking part of your love language here, I guess. And so so you get this strategy. And then, from the strategy, then you, you get all of these recommended tasks of what are the things you need to do to do this strategy, right, and so those populate on a marketing calendar, but they also show within your strategy Related to your goals and objectives. So you understand why am I doing these things, right? Like it's not just Tayler telling me I should do, or Engie telling me do this. I want you to understand the reason why you are taking this time and energy and potentially money To complete these marketing tasks, right. So so we clearly tell you what it is we think you should be doing based on your business. And that is a huge burden lifted off of most people's shoulders because, again, we wake up every day and we're like I don't know what's going on, I'll just continue building the plane as I fly it and just like cross my fingers and hope that it's gonna work out. And that, again, is why marketing is the thing that everyone tells me they hate, because you haven't done yourself the favor of giving yourself a plan, right. So so that's a. That's the starting at the beginning of the story.

Tayler:

But then we get into this space where, you know, we talk about the daily shirt it's not always daily but the struggle of doing your marketing. And so we have a social media scheduler that we're finishing up. The beta is released, but within the next week we're pushing the full birdie out of the nest so you can plan out your social media and you can schedule it to post there. We have an AI copywriter to help you do that quickly to facilitate the first draft, because the other very true thing about most people is none of y'all like writing. That's the other thing you hate. You hate marketing and you hate writing. It's like great, because those are the two big things that you need to do. So we've got those kinds of tools to support you.

Tayler:

But then for wedding business owners, we have all these marketing campaign templates, and the one that wedding pros are getting really excited about is there is a booking season marketing campaign template in there for you.

Tayler:

So here are all the tasks that you should think about doing to prepare your business for booking and engagement season, and then there's a place for you to track your metrics so you can understand what's working. Where should you be doubling down and where can you just say you know what? I've tried this as a part of an experiment and it didn't really serve me, so I don't have to stress about it moving forward. So you know, ng can. One of my big goals for NG that people have been telling me that they've been experiencing is the fact that their marketing is super focused. Now they don't feel like they need to be in all the places all the time, every single day of their existence, right, because that is not sustainable, and so that is, I think, the biggest gift that we can give to folks, because it makes marketing something that can become a healthy habit for their business, versus something that pushes people to the edge.

Nikisha:

That's so good. Now, if you had more than one company, can you use that account to build maybe two strategies for each company? Or do you need another account? Like, how would that work?

Tayler:

So I'm a serial entrepreneur, so I have. This was definitely one of the things that I was like, ooh, how is this all gonna work? Cause I have three businesses and I need them all, and so we do have more than a couple of folks who are already using the tools that are serial entrepreneurs as well, and there's kind of two ways to go about it, because, at its core, ng is built around that marketing strategy, and so if your marketing strategy is very different between your two businesses, then the best practice would be to have two accounts, but you can easily toggle between them without having to log in and out, right, cause I hate having to or have multiple tabs of something open. Yes, but there are some people that I've talked to like let's just take a who do we wanna pick on right now? Like a wedding planner, let's just say we'll talk about one of our wedding planner clients. She has her wedding planning services but then let's just say there's something that's related.

Nikisha:

Like rental or something.

Tayler:

Yeah, where she's still selling to the same people, she's still trying to attract the same type of potential client, and so it is possible to manage more than one business in one account. There are just a few spots where there are some workarounds, gotcha, but I mean, the reality is it's flexible, but also, at the same time, it puts up some guardrails, because I do want people to understand what you know best practices are Exactly.

Nikisha:

It's very nice Not to mix it up. They should have separate accounts. Yeah, it's not should. Yeah, cause then when you mix it up, you mark up the messaging and your positioning.

Tayler:

Very clear and very understandable. Yeah.

Nikisha:

Now I'm gonna ask you. I know, like me and so many people listening, when we are doing something new, it is overwhelming cause it's new, never done it. We're excited, but it's new. So even when I answer my 20 questions and I get this beautiful strategy, once again it could be a one pager. But how do I know where to start? Do I just copy and paste? Like, do I schedule it? Like give them one simple step that they can do when they log into NG? They do their 20 questions, cause that seems easy. Yeah, I think that's really easy. Yeah, but now they get the actual substance. Yeah, how do they take that and not overthink, like the real, and then post the story, like, how do they make it simple?

Tayler:

Yep, and so you know, my goal is that people are never working within NG and feeling like they don't know what to do next, and so throughout the tools, there are lots of places like, basically in every task that NG recommends you do. I have left my thoughts and notes. As a human consultant, this is how I would think about it. Right, and very often there are links to blog articles or help articles that you know are going to take things deeper outside of, just like you know, a couple sentences to get people oriented. It's very clear. Here are the tasks that you should complete as you're trying to finish setting up your account. And you know I've sat down and I mean I know that I'm like the ultimate NG power user and so I move through things really quickly. But the reality is is if you spend about an hour in NG, you can have done a really good job with setting up the foundation of your account, right? You're going to have a marketing strategy in minutes. Then you can spend some time reviewing it and then looking at the tasks that got recommended for you.

Tayler:

Then I always advise people to go through that calendar and delete the tasks that you're like.

Tayler:

I get it, it's a good idea, but I don't want to Clean up the tasks, reassign due dates, and then there's a couple other things that are customizing the colors in your account, because I have personally unsubscribed from software I thought was too ugly, so you can brand everything in Engie to your brand colors, so it becomes your happy place.

Tayler:

So there's just there's medium and small things that you can do and you can do a lot of it in an hour and get it to a point where like, okay, cool, this is, this is my base. And then the reality is is over time, what we're trying to help people build is that marketing routine and habit and building routines and habits does take a little bit of time, right? Yeah, I mean, I wish it happened like that and that Engie had this like magical power to just make you do all of the things really, really fast. But there is, there will always be, a human element to marketing, and so you know to really, I think, feel super comfortable in the new routine that you've established for yourself. It probably takes a couple months, because that's just what it takes for us to you know, do something repeatedly and have it become something we don't have to think about very often.

Nikisha:

That's such a true point, but I like that you do. It is everything I do.

Nikisha:

I know takes time yeah and sometimes other people don't realize that, but it is true, we're going to tell you, me and Tayler it takes time, but I love that you said in an hour you can get things set up and then you can actually go and in speaking in one of my prior episode with Megan, we spoke about marketing and how your brain if it just, for example, if I choose Tuesday to be my marketing day, I can just log into Engie and stay on Engie, engie for maybe two hours and do work and set up my, my scheduling and do it, and then I'm done yeah, right so it's about habit, but it's also about creating that day on your calendar just to work there, rather than having all those tasks on your list with no strategy behind it and getting nothing done because you're just doing the, the hamster wheel yeah yeah, so I think this is such a great idea.

Nikisha:

I love that you've created this for small businesses. One last question is it just for wedding or can anyone use it? A coach, yeah, yeah wellness. Anyone can use it.

Tayler:

Anyone can use it, and so one of the things that we, from the, from the start, built into Engie is, as you're creating your trial account, we're going to ask you what type of business you are, and then we customize the questionnaire, the potential recommended tasks that you would get, based on your business type. Okay and so, wedding industry professionals, we're going to get a version where we refer to clients and couples, versus if you're a retail business, we're going to talk about customers, right, right, and the, the marketing channels, that and tasks that you would most likely get recommended in the wedding space, obviously super different from what you would get if you run a retail or an Etsy shop. Right and so it's. That is the one thing that I sorely underestimated how much time it's going to take me to do this, because I, you know there's, there's basically this massive logic tree in the background, right, so, like, if someone answers this question this way, possibly give them these things, and right, so there's all this conditioning that's going on, and the technology is thinking through everyone's answers, and when I created the, what we refer to as the generic version of the questionnaire that, like, a plumber and a wedding pro could both find value out of right that was so hard to think of what right, because it's like it had to work for everyone right and

Tayler:

again, I sorely under it. I was all cute and thought that I would have it done in a week, and then, three months later, I was like I think I'm done, but it's. It's very much in line with this, this cliche, but it is a truth that when you try to speak to everyone, you speak to no one right, and so trying to trying to do the most generic version of something is extremely difficult, and so it was one of those personal experiences where I was very much reminded to like go deep all of the time when it comes to trying to support and attract a specific type of of customer, and so that's, that is a lesson that holds true for for everyone, and I hope that everyone does take the time to really go deep on who you're wanting to serve, because that is the secret sauce, like the rest of it is just how you implement that knowledge right, exactly, exactly, exactly.

Nikisha:

Once you discover who your ideal client is, that is like the gold, and then it's. It's the thing in the center, it's your core, and then you can mark it and you can answer questions and you can do all the work. You get the colors, you get where are they, you can talk to them personally and that's something I remember in my beginnings. It was so hard to create because my imagination couldn't go far. I couldn't. I felt like I was making someone up, but you don't realize all the knowledge you have when you make someone up. It's still true, because the knowledge you have of people is what you're using to create that ideal client and if you're in business for two or three years, you understand it because you've seen them. They might not be your ideal meaning, they might not be spending what you want, but that also gives you what you do want and you can create the client avatar. Right, those are things I love. I've I've come to the love of creating avatars and it's so easy for me that I do workshops on it, and it's like developing a character in a movie. People don't need that way, but that's what it is getting you.

Nikisha:

People make movies based on their imagination. That's all it is. They never sit down. Go well, this can't be true. This is a lie. Yeah right, action movie. I love all of them, you know. So I totally get that, and I think what you have is amazing. I truly do, and I know I'm going to use it. So I'm I'm giving everyone the trial code and everything is going to be in the show notes. And before you leave, Tayler, can you tell people how can they find you, and is there anything else you would like to offer?

Tayler:

I mean, I am, I am all over the internet. For those of you listening, there was a giant eye roll just cut through as I said that, because, as a serial entrepreneur, I am trying to show up in more than one place, but the the corner of the internet that I am most excited about right now is NG's corner of the internet, because that is where I am focusing the overwhelming majority of my time and also my creative effort and energy. And so, again, geriatric millennial here loves Instagram, hates tiktok. So you can find us on instagram and our handle is ng underscore co, which is enji underscore co. But you know, I think the last thing that I I just want to share with folks is that I'm, this is, and everything I'm doing with enji is for you.

Tayler:

It's, you know to, to be slightly crass like I had my stuff together when it came to marketing right, like it was spread out a bunch across a bunch of places.

Tayler:

But I had, I had hacked together a marketing system for myself and it was functional. But that's not that can't be the expectation for everyone else to like have to hack something together and make so many mistakes and hit so many roadblocks because we're so young. This is a really exciting time on the product side of things, that when you're trying enji out, I hope, I hope, I hope that everyone is super excited about it and loves it. But also, if there's anything you wish enji would do that it doesn't currently do, please tell me because I will build it. That's, that is where we're at. I am building this for you. I want it to be all. You know we can't fit possibly be all the things to all of the people, but I can do a damn dist to get enji to a place where it is covering most of the bases for folks and making this piece of you know, your small business life a little less chaotic thank you for sharing that and thank you for that.

Nikisha:

I think that's amazing and it's at that stage where you can take information in, process it, if it works really well, experiment and keep growing, because that's that's how every startup grow. They don't just come out and be what they are today. They had to go through this process. I've seen them. I mean, I've been in some of them, like I started with them and.

Nikisha:

I've been with them for a long time, which I love, so I think this is something amazing. So thank you so much for sharing all of this good information with us. Thank you for helping us realize what burnout looks like, what's the possibilities, especially in marketing, and how we can get over that.

Tayler:

So thank you so much for your time, Tayler thank you for inviting me to share some, some tips, but, more importantly, share the realities of what a lot of these things are like, because it's we don't operate within our own bubbles. This takes a village and I'm you know it's always an honor to support anyone else who's on this crazy train exactly have a good one and we'll see you guys next Tuesday.

Nikisha:

Thanks for spending time with me today and if you received an aha moment in today's episode, hit the follow button and share a review. But, more importantly, if you have a friend who will truly benefit from today's episode, click the three dots and share this link via text. You never know how this small action can help someone tremendously. See you next Tuesday and have an amazing day.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Nikisha King-Hidalgo

Host

Podcasts we love

Check out these other fine podcasts recommended by us, not an algorithm.