In this episode...

Note: We use AI transcription so there may be some inaccuracies 

Laura Hargrave: Welcome everyone here at Boss It. We would love to hear from you. Join us in our Boss It community by heading over to our website, bossitclub.com, and join our mailing list. As we grow, we will be launching our community of fellow Boss It BFFs, and we want you to be a part of it.

Okay, Sophia Noreen, let's dig into this. I can't wait to tell them all about how we got here.

Sophia Noreen: 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!

Sophia Noreen: What's up everyone. Welcome to another fantastic episode of the boss at podcast. My name is Sophia nare. If we have not met before, and I am the host of this channel and this podcast, and today we are gonna be chatting all about three things that I think are essential for a business to. 

The first is money. The second is mindset, and of course the third is marketing. And without these three ingredients in your business, if you're not focusing on these three things, it's gonna be very hard to grow and scale. So let's chat about why are these three things, a big focus for us in our business and why they should be a big focus for you as well. 

Let's start with money why are we chatting about money? Well, it's kind of obvious if you are in business, you are likely in business to make money. Unless it's a hobby business and you are doing it as a hobby. It is not a business unless you're making money. So you really do need to focus on sales and you do need to focus on top-line and bottom-line sales, top-line being the sales that come in before you deduct your expenses and bottom line, our net sales being the profit that you take off the table when you've paid everybody, including yourself. 

And that is the profit for the business. Now, I would say that many business owners at the very beginning stages of business, find this very daunting because sales and money can be a very touchy topic. And it depends again on how you're raised to think about money. It could be the fact that you may have. 

A mindset that thinks of money as not being a good thing. And therefore you will sabotage, or you will prevent yourself from going out there and selling and sales is not. That's why many people make a profession out of being a salesperson. If you are good at sales and you're good at marketing, then generally the money flows. 

And that's why I like to talk about money and marketing at the same time. I do say if you don't have enough eyeballs on your product when you are marketing, then you will not have the. Now today, I don't wanna get into the specifics about how marketing can lead to sales, which can then lead to money. 

But I want you to think about why you need to focus on money and why you need to focus on sales and how are you going to achieve both. And it's generally through marketing, the more people who know, you know, your product, know your service, the more likely they will purchase from. Now marketing, we've spoken about many times on this podcast. 

And of course, soon to be on this YouTube channel, we'll have many different episodes on marketing. So if you are interested in this topic and please hit subscribe in the bell, and if you are listening to us on the podcast, make sure you subscribe and follow. So you don't miss any episodes, but we are running a product-based business, also Sophia, and that is our product-based business. 
 
Then we also have boss club, which is the service. And I have to say that creation of the product on both the product and service side is not as difficult as marketing you have to spend. Probably, I would say double to triple the amount of effort on marketing and sales as compared to making the product. 
 
And many people forget this. They don't realize how much effort it takes to sell a product. That's why we have people in professional careers as sales, and that's what they do. They are selling. And they're good at sales. And so if you're starting a business, if you're a solopreneur or you are starting your business with a colleague of yours, who you decide to do a side hustle and you wanna make it, we wanna take to the next level, leave your nine to five. 
 
I heavily heavily encourage you to make sure you have a secure and solid marketing plan and strategy. And don't be afraid to put marketing money into it. You do have to invest. And we do have an entire lesson on how we grew also Sophia product-based business, because we marketed so well in the initial stages. 
 
And I bootstrapped it. So if I can bootstrap it, you can bootstrap it too. If we were able to do it, you can do it too. And we did it through influencer marketing. We do have a free training available if you want to watch that on how we started that process. Social media has allowed us a whole new avenue of how to market our products and we can do it of course, at a reasonable rate, not paying the big box retailer price points anymore. 
 
Small businesses can get in front of a large audience. Jim shark is a great example of how they did that in the early days of Instagram. And if you don't know who they are, just Google them quickly and read their story and you'll understand how they use influencer marketing to really push their sales to a new level. 
 
And I'm pretty sure they're at the billion-dollar mark. So just an example of where you can go, if you know how to influence your sales, no pun intended with influencer marketing. That is a great way of starting. So, again, marketing and money, you do need to focus on them at the early stage of your business. 
 
You do need to put energy and time into that as well. There's no way it will grow unless you tell people about it. Okay. Another way you could market your business without influencer marketing. Is collaborations and giveaways with other business owners. We did that quite a bit as well with also Sophia with the service side of the business. 
 
You can always collaborate with other teachers or other people in your industry. So you're in real estate. You can always collaborate and do joint ventures, and that's a great way of networking. Now networking is a highly undervalued tool, which I think post pandemic we really need to get back into in-person networking. 
 
I love speaking to people online. It's great. It's convenient. And especially as a podcast host, we get to meet tons of people around the world. It's fantastic, but nothing beats an in-person event. So make a point of trying to join a few in-person events for the industry that you are going to be serving. 
 
And if it's product-based. You can still do networking. You are networking every time you go to an event. And I do talk about that in a few episodes on the podcast when it comes to why you should be still going to in-person events. I will put that link in the show notes below. So make sure you catch that and the value that you gain as a vendor at an in-person event at a farmer's market, their goal. 
 
So do make a point of networking. So again, marketing. You cannot beat marketing guys. Make sure you do make that part of your plan. That you're going to have dollars set aside. The more you market, there is a calculation around it. We are not gonna get into it today, but the more you market, you should have the percentage of people who see your product. 
 
That will actually buy your product. So the idea is the more people who see your product, the more sales you'll get. And so if nobody knows about you, you can have the best product in the world, but it won't matter because they don't know who you are. So make sure you do make a point of that. Last thing that I believe is one of the biggest topics that a business owner needs to keep on top of is their mindset, their psychology. 
 
You are the person who is going to be pushing your product, your service, your business forward. And if you do not have the mindset that this is gonna win, and you don't know where you're going, forget it, nothing else is going to. So even leading with your mindset, you need to understand that your mindset will be the limiting factor for anything that follows. 
 
I'll give you an example with the also Sophia brand. I had said pretty confidently, pretty confidently considering. I said that our product wouldn't go into Walmart. And I said this at a very early stage. And the reason why I felt so confident about it was there were a few things. One, I knew that the products were needed by our customers. 
 
I knew that Walmart was really looking for these products. They couldn't find them. They knew their customers wanted them. They were being requested. They knew that the industry needed to move in the direction of equity and diversity inclusion, but they couldn't find the products from any of their vendors. 
 
So of course I was a frustrated customer and I went ahead and I created the products. When I created the products, I created it such that it was ideal for a customer that would shop at Walmart in Canada. Of course. And I was also cognizant of the price point that it needed to be at, to attract not only a Walmart merchant or buyer but also to attract a Walmart customer. 
 
And so, because I had created the product to fit on the shelves, then it was an easy sell. They found it themselves. I never went out to them. They came to us and they said, we want the products to cause we need them. Our customers want them. So, what I'm trying to say is if you are a business owner and you really want to move your business into a specific retailer, or you wanna hit a specific benchmark when it comes to sales or you want to speak at a specific event, or you wanna sell a specific number of units this year, then you yourself have to decide that it's going to happen. 
 
And so, because I had decided that this was gonna happen and I actually said it out loud to people. One of my first mentors, I said, I want the products to be in Walmart. The products are gonna be in Walmart. And I said, it was such confidence. And he was like, really, okay, fine. He's like, are you, how are you gonna do it? 
 
I'm like, well, it'll happen. It'll happen eventually. And I'm not saying that you just wish it. You do have to do things intentionally to make it happen, but you do need to have that audacity to say it. And if your psychology allows you to go for that goal and gold without any hesitation and you know, the steps that it takes to get there, then there will be no problem. 

So I do say you do need to have the mindset that it's going to happen. Otherwise, everything else is a lost cause. And I would even say lead with the mindset, have that mindset. Go into it with that mindset, then you won't have any hesitation to get in front of the camera and mark it. You won't have any hesitation to go pitch the sale to the person who needs your services or your product.
 
You will do it without any inhibitions because you know, that's the right thing that you need to do. So again, the three things I really feel that every business owner needs to focus on is money marketing and mindset. The three S. No doubt. And because of those three things that I feel so passionately about, we will likely focus a bit more on all three on this channel and in this podcast, because we wanna make sure that the listeners really are embracing the fact that they are very important.
 
It's not fluff. We're not talking about how we made a million dollars this year. We're not gonna talk about it, we have this many people visiting the website. We're gonna talk about strategies rather than saying, how did we do this? How did we do. We wanna talk about how these strategies can help you. And we did mention a few very casually in this episode.
 
I am gonna link a few more episodes that I think can help you. If you wanna get a head, start on these topics, episode number 33 for marketing, we talk about the metrics that we look for in our posts and on our website that can really help you. So you know what you're measuring, cuz if you don't measure it, then you're not gonna be able to change it.
 
That's one of our motto. And then second episode number 82, we talk about mindset. We talk about the psychology of the business owner. That's a very good episode two. So I'm gonna link that below. They are on the podcast. They're not on the YouTube channel yet, but I do think you guys should have a listen to on Spotify, Apple, and all the rest.
 
Okay. I hope you guys enjoyed this show. Make sure you hit subscribe the bell and follow wherever you are catching this episode. And if you want even more great episodes, you can head to boss club.com/podcast, and you can visit us on Instagram at boss club. We are very active there as well, and we will see you guys again next week and remember.
 
Make a plan and take action and yes, you can have it all. I'll talk to you guys again later. Bye.

Sophia Noreen: So my fellow Bosses, did you enjoy that episode? Now, it's time for you to make a solid plan and take action. But first, remember to subscribe and follow the Boss It Podcast so you receive a notification whenever we drop an episode. Remember to leave us a review on iTunes. Take a screenshot of your review and share it on Instagram as a post or a story, and tag us at Boss It Club. If Instagram is not your thing, no worries. Email your screenshot to [email protected]. As a massive thank you, we will be sending you our top 50 tips for starting and scaling a business. This list is exclusively for podcast reviewers so don't miss out. Now, remember Bosses, make a plan and take action in all aspects of your life. Yes, you can have it all.