Episode 29 | My Personal Business UPDATE

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Welcome to the Boss It Podcast. My name is Sophia Noreen and I took an Etsy startup, and launched it in big box retailers within 12 months. As a creative with an entrepreneurial drive, I left my full time career in healthcare to find better harmony between career, family and self care. We believe you can have it all. Yes, you can launch and run a successful scalable business while maintaining harmony in all aspects of your life. We believe we can learn from each other and draw on many experiences to create the best life possible. During each episode, we will share proven life hacks that will keep you on top and striving every day. There should be no hesitation. Make a plan. Take action. We are here for you. This episode of the Boss It Podcast is brought to you by Commerce Chefs, a brand new e-commerce podcast that's perfect for seasoned commerce leaders or even an up-and-coming maverick. Hosted by the commerce experts, Tom and Kyle, this series takes a quirky and informative approach to commerce education. In each episode, you'll hear from the top commerce experts find thought provoking questions, surprise segments, hilarious banter, but most importantly, I promise you'll learn something new. If you want to learn the secret ingredients to become a better commerce leader and brand, tune into Commerce Chefs with Tom and Kyle. Check out the series on your favorite listening platform, or just go and click that link in our show notes. It's time to get cooking.

Okay guys, before we get started, I wanted to share another five-star review. And this one is from lash123, and this is what she had to say: "Much needed the information. You are such an inspiration for all women out there who are ambitious to share their gifts and talents with the world. And this podcast is a great initiative to give more insight into what goes into building a business and balancing work, family, life." Thank you so much, lash123. I really do appreciate that five-star review on Apple iTunes. Remember guys, if you do write a review, take a screenshot and share it on social media and tag us on Instagram @bossitclub, then we can see the review and we will then send you our 50 Best Tips. And trust me, you will love these tips. If you don't tag us, then we don't know where to send the 50 Best Tips to. And if you still want the 50 Best Tips but you're not on Instagram, that's completely cool. You can still take a screenshot on Apple of your review and just email it to us at [email protected]. And that way we can then also send you the 50 Best Tips for Starting a Business. Okay. Let's get on with the show. Hello everyone. Welcome to another fantastic episode of the Boss It Podcast. My name is Sophia Noreen, and I am going to be your host for today. And this episode is going to be a little bit more casual. I decided that I'm going to give you guys a business update on where we are with both of our brands, Also Sophia and the Boss It Club. I wanted to have this really casual chat and update with you because I know a lot of you are also in entrepreneurial space, or you're thinking about going into entrepreneurship or you are a busy mom and you have side hustle, or you're a busy student and you have a side hustle. So I wanted to give you a little update because I know many of you have been following our journey as we have been expanding and growing. So I wanted to give you an update with Also Sophia and then also give you an update with the Boss It Club. So where should I start? I'll start with Also Sophia. For anyone who is new, Also Sophia is a product- based business and we are specializing in ethnic diversity and underrepresented cultures in the retail space. We started off with our Eid and Ramadan product line that serves our Muslim community. And since we started, we have been able to fulfill orders for Walmart, for Indigo and we also have a product direct to consumer through our website. We also are able to sell on Amazon. you haven't heard the story yet, I started Also Sophia primarily because I was really frustrated with the lack of Eid and Ramadan products that were available in big box retailers since that time, which started about three years ago, we've seen a great expansion and variety that have been placed on the shelves here in North America. And I'm sure we have similar pattern occurring across Europe and other areas of the globe, which is fantastic. But that was one of our missions, was basically to bring this underrepresented celebration to a large retailer because we knew that our population wanted it. It's unfortunate because we were paying top dollar for not the best products on other marketplaces, and so because of this lack of variety and the lack of opportunity for our community to just purchase the products as we would purchase something for Christmas or for Halloween, I thought, why not try to bring this wonderful celebration also to the big retailers? So we were successful and we were able to land our product on Walmart shelves back in 2020, or right in the middle pandemic. So that's a quick snapshot for anybody who is new to listening to the Boss It Podcast, that is what Also Sophia is all about. We have also expanded into eco-friendly Conscious Kitchen and Home, which is a subsidiary brand of Also Sophia which we planned to expand. Again, the reason why we launched that product line was because we noticed there was a significant gap in the market for products that provided an alternative for the use of single use plastics. And here in Canada, we are going to be getting rid of all single use plastics by 2025, by the end of 2021 we will no longer have single use plastic straws, bags and other single use items. That is what that subsidiary brand of Also Sophia's all about, Conscious Kitchen and Home, so that is one of our other big initiatives for Also Sophia. Also in 2021, we're going to be expanding a few more lines for unrepresented cultures and ethnicities on big box retailer shelves. I'm not going to reveal those right now, you're going to have to just keep checking out Also Sophia and Boss It Club to see what's coming up next. But that is a snapshot for anybody who's new, and what we've been up to in the last few months is we have expanded our Eid and Ramadan collection. We were able to introduce a few more products this year, which was extremely exciting. For anybody who doesn't know me that well, you'll know that I'm the creative individual behind the brand, and sometimes my creativity can get away with me and I tend to go all over the place. So what I've also done is we've hired a great business manager, as I would refer to her as, she is our campaign manager and now she's moving into a new role in helping us stay put together and helping us not go everywhere. And when I say us, I mean me. Although some individuals may think I'm very organized, I am organized, but it's a very interesting organization system that I have. Sometimes from the outside it's like: Wow, she's really organized. But when you're in the system, you're like: Wow, this is a mess. So for all our creative brains out there, I'm sure you can understand. We have so many ideas that sometimes we just throw them at the walls and the people inside the system or inside of the business, or inside of the system, as I like to refer to it as, are like: Wow, there's a lot of stuff going on in here. And so I needed an individual to be more on the left side of the brain, they would say, the one who's a bit more straight lined and able to keep everything together. I know some people refer to these two types of brains as the expansive and the contractive, so if you understand that language, I'm very expansive. I will see an opportunity and I'll want to do it immediately and I'll go run for it. So if you are like that, you'll have some sympathy for me on how many things can come at me at once, and then I'll just expand. Compared to somebody who's contractive, they'll be like: No, we can't handle that right now, so we're going to just park it rather than trying to take on the world. So I needed somebody who's going to come in and say: You know what, we need to prioritize this, this and this, and somebody who is also very organized. So I'm very, very happy to let you guys know that we've hired somebody to help us out in that respect. We also still have our warehouse going, so that's fantastic. We love our logistics partners because that really helps us keep everything together, helps us fulfill orders quicker and also helps us with any of the merchandise that needs to be sent over from overseas. So that's still humming along, which was fantastic. Those are the big updates for Also Sophia. So we've hired a business manager to help us and we've also continued to work with our warehouse for the upcoming season of Ramadan and Eid 2021, which is just around the corner. We've started our pre-sales which have been going quite successfully. We have also increased our affiliate programs. For anyone who has an e-commerce platform and they're interested in having an affiliate program attach their e-commerce, I highly suggest it because social selling is all the rage. Last year, we did an influencer marketing campaign and that was what set our business apart compared to anybody else in the market, because we were able to leverage social media. And especially during the pandemic, when people were not able to go out and shop, we were able to really leverage individual spending habits on e-commerce. We were able to really capture them and say: Yes, this is the product you need. And through that avenue, they went to the website. Otherwise we would be spending a ton of money in Facebook ads and Google advertising. Rather what we did is we had a two tier approach where we would have an influencer who would have an affiliate code. It would send the individual to the website, and then because the website was learning which type of visitors were coming in visiting, we had a Facebook pixel that was then connected to any Facebook ads which we ran later, and that really helped bring our ad spend down significantly. So anybody who is just starting out, my biggest piece of advice is do not underestimate the value of social selling, and I have spoken about this in past episodes. So because it works so well for us in the past, we were doing it again, and we have a pretty, gracious influencer marketing campaign. But we did, rather than spending all of our ad spending dollars and promotion dollars on influencers, we are going to instead have our affiliate program built up in the backend. And so any customer who shops with us this year is able to then become our brand ambassador and an affiliate. And we thought, why not? Because we know that people are going and passing on our website. So why not offer them a little bit of incentive plus give them a thanks. So it might not be a lot of money, but at the end of the day, especially in times like this, every dollar counts. So I'm sure our customers turn to brand affiliates and brand ambassadors would really appreciate that little coin in the bank. So that's really how we're doing it this year for Also Sophia. We're continuing with our warehouse. I noticed my own limitations and for you as a business owner, should also just consider what your own limitations are. I knew that I was the type of individual that expanded, and I knew that I needed somebody to bring me back in and stay organized within the business so I took that as a personal responsibility that if I am not able to do this and then somebody else needs to fill in those gaps. And I'm telling you, like within the first week, I can tell this was the right idea and this was the right plan. So let's pray that we can continue working with our business manager. I also knew that we needed to continue using the warehouse. At the end of the day, when you start doing a business, you have to decide even though you may think it's not a good idea, if you feel it's a great idea and you have to try it out. You just can't say no to it. And I know a lot of individuals are scared, they think that: No. How can we go ahead and hire somebody if we don't have all the revenue coming in? Or how can we go and scale the warehouse, if for example, it's going to cost X amount of dollars to fulfill, and we could just do it ourselves. You have to really understand that you only can do so much. So you need to see in your business where you'd like to go and see where you could fill in the blanks. And yes, it's a risk but it's a calculated risk. You always have to think beyond where you are today if you want to grow your business. So that's in a nutshell what we're doing, and then the last thing that we did of course, was the social selling. We knew that worked, so that's the reason why we're continuing that this year as well. Okay, so that is Also Sophia. We also started another initiative called the Boss It Club, and the Boss It Club grew from the fact that everyone was asking how we were growing Also Sophia. I thought that's great, I love to share that information but I can't talk to every single individual about this and expect them to actually take action because free advice usually doesn't go very far from any individuals. They'll just take it. There's no accountability, and so at the end of the day, they don't do anything with that advice. So I don't mind offering advice for free, but I know that for many individuals, free advice doesn't result in action. That's why the Boss It Podcast was born because I know many people who look actively for this information and listen to podcasts are different. They're the type of individuals that will go and seek advice. They're the type of individuals that are motivated. They're the type of individuals that are really go getters. I just feel like the podcast listener or individuals who go and seek this advice on YouTube or on Rukus Avenue Radio, these individuals who are listening to this type of dialogue or this type of information are actually seeking this type of information. So that's why the podcast came about from the Boss It Club and subsequently we released a course on social selling through influencer marketing called Influencer Marketing Made Easy. And again, that came out because we decided that rather than me telling individuals separately how to design an influencer marketing campaign. I'll put it, packaged it up into a nice little course. This Influencer Marketing Made Easy is great because it's the type of course that you can apply over and over again, depending on where you are in your business. And so I thought, why not share this information because I really do feel that our business was able to grow because of influencer marketing and social selling. So right now with Boss It Club, we were able to launch Influencer Marketing Made Easy in a beta version to our founding members. We also launch it again for our inner circle members and individuals who are expressing interest but didn't join the first time. And our plan in the next few months is to launch it again into an evergreen model. Now, if you're not familiar with the term evergreen, in the online world evergreen" means that the course will be available at any time and they'll be actively sold. So essentially it will be an open door. You can enter it at any time and take advantage of the details of the course. So that's the plan for the Influencer Marketing Made Easy course. I will hopefully continue to do a live Q and A sessions in that course every week, regardless of it being evergreen or a live launch, as you referred to it in the online space. But the goal is to allow business owners that flexibility to take the course when they feel they're ready for it in their business, and that is where we are with Boss It Club. The last initiative for Boss It Club which I almost forgot about, it was unstoppable, which is our membership which was opened again only to our founding members and inner circle members, and that has been going quite well. I'm going to give you guys more information on that in the future, but the goal really is that individuals who need that initial hand holding during the first zero to five years of their business can get that level of mentorship accountability essentially because let's face it, many businesses during the zero to five-year mark actually fail, and usually they fail because of the leader or the founder of the business and their inability to either take action or strategize, effectively. So that's the reason why unstoppable is coming up, because I want to ensure that just because you've taken a course or just because you're listening to the podcast doesn't mean that we're not here in other ways to support you. If I'm able to continue doing what I'm doing, I know you can as well, you just need to have the right resources and the right strategies and of course, we need to help you with any of your limiting beliefs so that way you can continue moving forward on whatever the goal is that you're trying to accomplish. So that is in a nutshell of what we're up to, we are going forward with Also Sophia. We are moving into a very busy selling season. We are also knocking on doors at bigger retailers, Walmart is again on the roster for Also Sophia this year, for 2021, for Eid and Ramadan season. And who knows what's next with the big retailers? We do have a few ideas coming up to help support them in including diversity in their programming on their shelves, and also helping them become more eco-friendly in what they offer to their customers. So that's how we are leveraging Also Sophia and keeping ourselves available to the big box retailers, because let's face it, e-commerce is growing exponentially especially after COVID has really revolutionized the way people shop and interact with each other. We know we could probably continue just going e-commerce, but we want to ensure that the big retailers do not get left behind as well. And the reason why we say that is because there's a consumer base that's still not online, and we want to make sure that everyone has the ability to access our products because they do really reflect our mission, which is to break down barriers. And in this case, it's to break down the barriers when it comes to the eco-friendly availability of products and also to increase inclusion and diversity for other communities who may be underrepresented right now on big box retailer shelves. So that's where we are when it comes to both businesses. I think that when I reflect on where we were about two years ago, I'm shocked to say the least. I didn't expect that I would have started a podcast, that's for sure. That was never really on the bucket list and I never actually expected that we would potentially be on a YouTube channel, or we would be on a radio so that's also great news. In regards to Also Sophia, I would have never thought Also Sophia would have hit the big box retailers as fast as they did, so we are extremely grateful for all of the opportunities presented. And the reason I wanted to do this high level overview with you guys today is because I wanted you to know that if you have a goal or if you have something that you really, really want to try out and do, just go and do it. You really have no idea how fast you can grow. You really have no idea where you'll actually be in a few years from now. You just have to be consistent and you have to develop the systems around yourself to keep you moving in the right direction. I've talked about this in the past, but the simple systems such as the warehouse, it's expensive, yes, but it was something that we had to do. If you can't start with the warehouse and you have a product- based business, set up a system in your house. Make sure that you have everything lined up in your home so it's easy and effective for you to quickly pick and pack all of your deliveries. One of the strategies that I really like to do is called chunking. Just make sure you do it once a week or twice a week, depending on your demand. That way you're not everywhere at once. And we'll go more into systemizing your business at the beginning, in another episode. But I just wanted to make sure that you understand that just because you think it's such a big goal and it's hard to get there, doesn't mean it's not possible. You just have to think really strategically and you have to understand who you are as a person, and fill in those gaps because not everybody is good at everything. I'm not very good at a few things. I'm not very good at numbers, so I need to have somebody walk through the numbers with me regularly. I'm not very good at organizing my thoughts and processes within the business, although some people think otherwise. I know that about myself, so I've called in for help. And yes, it costs money, but it's an investment in you and any of your business because what will end up happening is if you are not investing in yourself and in your business, you'll end up fizzling out and burning out, and then your business will stall. And again, not everybody wants a big, big business, not everybody wants to scale to that level, but if you do then you have to ask yourself: How can I get there with being as effective as possible? How can I get there without burning out? And how can I get there while I enjoy the process? Because it is a process. And if you're not the type that wants to grow your business, that's great, acknowledge that but make sure that you still have a system in place. You're actually enjoying the process of having a hobby business or a passion project or a side hustle, and that's completely fine. There's no shame and not wanting to grow your business. There's no shame and not wanting to strive for the million dollar gross revenue. There's no shame in that, but I want you to understand that you have to look at yourself, look at your shortcomings, make sure you are filling in those blanks like I had to, and make sure that if you really want to do something, start doing it and start doing it consistently. Doing it consistently means building a system, even this podcast is systemized. I record, it goes into a folder. Somebody else edits it and then the edit version is checked by myself or somebody else on the team. The graphic goes up. There's a few, few steps here. There's a couple of steps that have to happen in the background to get this wonderful podcast up and running. And then if it goes on YouTube, it's a different process. If this podcast is now on Dash radio or on Rukus Avenue Radio, there's a different process and there's a different team handling it. But the point is that everything has a system and I really want you to understand that. This year we really systemized and I really needed to hire a few additional people to help me fill in those blanks because I'm not good at everything. Okay guys, this was a casual talk, I guess I could call it a talk, with me giving you an update with everything in between. I know that many of you have been following along on the Also Sophia journey and the Boss It Club journey. If you have not been and you want to learn more, you can head over to alsosophia.com and check out the products, and see what we're all about. You can also check us out on Instagram, also_sophia and we'll hyperlink everything in the show notes. And I have been mentioning Dash Radio and Rukus Avenue Radio. And the reason I've been mentioning them over and over again is because we will be hosting a radio show on the Dash Radio once a week. Anybody who wants to catch us on Rukus Avenue Radio on Dash Radio, you can check it out on Thursday mornings at 7:00 AM PST or 10:00 AM EST, so Eastern standard time for everyone in the Toronto area. And of course it is an international digital radio station, so if you're around the world, you can definitely just align your time zones and you can catch us on that radio station weekly on Thursday mornings or Thursday evenings, if you are in India or if you are in any other part of the world. So that is pretty much it guys. I am so happy that you listened to my little rant about how you can do everything and how you can do anything as long as you strategize, get help and look for the gaps in your business, because either it's not your go-to skillset or if there's just a gap in the process, that is really the take home message today. I would not have been able to scale like I have, unless I had looked to those different strategies. So again, take a deep dive, understand who you are, understand what are your strengths, and remember you can make a plan and take action, and yes, you can have it all.

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