Can You Have a Business You Love While Being The Parent You Want?

 

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Hey guys, what's going on? I hope you're well. Thank you so much for taking time to watch the replay. I want to talk to you right now about the realities that you can have in your life, of being able to be a great parent and run your own business. I just want to start out religious by sharing a little bit of my story and then I want to tie this all back into. This isn't just my story and I am not a special isolated incident, but I really want to just showcase to you how these things can also be possible for you and your business. So I want to first just say, I want y'all to know that you may be asking yourself as you're sitting there, can I raise a family and have a business to? How can I go about doing this? What do all of these pieces look like?  Am I able to play bigger in scale and grow or do I need to just always keep things small, keep things just local with maybe my friends and my family? Or is it possible for me to be able to make more income? Is it possible for me to make a bigger end cap impact and have a larger audience? Is it possible for me to be able to stay home with my kids or spend more time with my family and take more vacations and create more fun memories and actually have a business on your terms? Well I just want to let you know that I am passionate about telling you the answer to that is yes. And so I thought the best way would be for me rather than talking hypothetically for you to hear a little bit about my story.

So one of the things, way back when, when I was interested in having a family, I knew that I wanted as a top priority to be able to raise a family and not have to put my kids in daycare. This wasn't based on anyone telling me that's what I needed to do. That was based on just something I had within me as a child. As I grew up through high school, yes, I went to college. Yes I became a school teacher. But on that journey I always knew my number one desire was that I wanted to be a mom. I wanted to be a mom and everything else was going to be extra and I meant that so much to my core that I would be willing to make sacrifices to keep that as a top priority. Have you ever wanted something so bad that you did sacrifices even though sacrifices were things that you maybe did not want to ideally do? That was my case.

I ultimately want you guys to know that I didn't even have this entrepreneurial vibe or desire until around 2011 so that's not that long ago, guys, that's seven years ago. But prior to that, I've always wanted to be a mom. We had our first child in 2002 and on that journey I have had many jobs, but they've all been quite non-traditional jobs where I was not outside of the home. And so what I want you to know is that my skillset happens to be in marketing, happens to be in business and sales and social media. That's my area of love, of excitement. That's my jam. That's my happy place. That may not be your happy place and that's okay, but what I am sharing with you today in this video is I want you to know that you can take these skills that you have in grow and make a remarkable business.

Do you believe that, truly in your heart of hearts, believe that? I want you to know that no matter what your business is, product, service, speaker, restaurant owner, you can't succeed without other people knowing that you have a business and how you choose to go about that can be very diverse, but someone has to at some point know that you are out there, that you exist, that you have a great quality, something to offer and that you can have someone give you money, you know, really hold cold, hard, real cash money that people can give you in order to use engage your services and your products. So I want to let you guys know that when I became a business owner, I was in graduate school. I had something inside of me come on fire, where I knew I loved business and I knew that I craved more opportunities to have work in a business atmosphere.

But guys at the time, I had kids that were ages five, two and one. I had little itty bitty kids and I was not wanting to wish away that time with them, but I was going through the season while I was getting ready to create my first business and I said, what are my gifts? What am I excellent at? What am I good at? What kind of a business can I even create? So that first business I created was simply out of a need to say, ‘what's out there?'.What needs are out there? What can I do that there's truly a need for in the marketplace? So we have to ask ourselves is what we want to do in order to make money a true need in the marketplace? You can't just guess. You can't just wonder and hope. You definitely don't want to have a product based business and just invest thousands and thousands of dollars into something that isn't sure.

I have no idea. I'm just going to come talk to this brilliant idea up in my head and then just go and pray and hope it works out. No, we have to do our due diligence. In my business model I said, I'm going to make a website. I'm going to create a blog. I'm going to create a place to make people's lives easier and I'm going to put all of this fun stuff in one easy website and use social media to grow that business. I used Facebook, I used Twitter. I used very, very minimal marketing dollars with Facebook as it was all authentic, organic, showing up and creating a lot of content and building relationships and proactively going out and looking for businesses that wanted the attention of the people that I was bringing into my circle (which happened to be adult age 20 to 50) That was the whole start of this journey of me getting on this path of doing social media marketing.

It was not a business of me saying, ‘I am going to create a business where I do social media for other people or talk to them about it'. That wasn't it at all. It was me creating something that wasn't there, that there was a need for, there was nothing. There was no online digital resource in the town that I lived anywhere. There was nothing, there was no competition. But I know the reality is that busy families and even families that may not have two working parents, they want to have fun things to do with their kids. So I knew it was a need and it aligned with my talents, where as a connector, as someone that loves to draw information together. And so I moved forward guys. I created it just as a Facebook page. I didn't build the website first, I just did a Facebook page and said, ‘let's see what happens with this'.

And you know what happened? My page started getting traction. People started sharing the posts that I was putting out. Then I said, ‘You know what? I know how to do web design, but it's been a long time. I'm going to watch a thousand Youtube videos and I'm going to stay up til 3:00 AM and I'm going to build a website'. And so I did just that and I just kept moving forward, taking steps, one action step at a time, and at the end  I did become profitable within my first 60 days of starting. Having a business and being someone that registered with the county and said, here I am. I am this business and I want you to know that I use the power of social media to grow that. And what surprisingly happened, or maybe not surprisingly, the cool thing that happened was I had people coming after me asking me to help them with social media.

That was not my business model. That was not my plan, but opportunities kept presenting themselves in such a way based on what I was doing and I was getting results. So they were like, ‘can you help us?' So it ended up leading to another job where I helped a much larger organization, a chamber of Commerce needed help with their social media, and I then was able to help them. Then I had small business owners, same thing. It just kind of grew and became something bigger than what I even anticipated. Now for many of you all that might know more of my story, you know that I ended up moving in 2014. I left everything I had created regarding my physical location and I moved 10 hours away to South Carolina. I still ran this business but I created Sweet Tea Social Marketing because after doing it for myself and helping several other businesses in between, I realized I was onto something.

I realized that there is a need for this beyond just the local market and so I said, ‘you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to now help people no matter where they live using the power of social media strategy', and that is where I am now. Here it is four years later after I've created Sweet Tea Social Marketing and I still have the joy and the privilege to not only know that I successfully sold that first business for a profit and have been able to add continued value to that town and that city that I don't even live in anymore. And to know that I am able to still continue growing my Sweet Tea Social Marketing business using the gifts I feel that God has me with. And so as you sit here hearing just a little bit of my story, I want you to ask yourself, are you playing small?

Are you doing things to let other people know that your business is amazing? Or is it like the best kept secret? If you said ‘yes' to that last part, I know that's not what you want. You do not want your business or your organization to be the best kept secret. We want more people to know about what you're doing, whether it's a business, food product, speaking accountant, you name it. The opportunities are endless. And so my why for me was I wanted to be able to be the very best mom I could be and also financially add to our family. That is what my biggest business goal on how this all looks like, what the business model looks like. I don't know where you are on this journey. Go ahead and think about that for a second. Where are you? Are you in a place of just wanting to make that first $2,000, that first $5,000 or are you at a place where you want to make $3, $5, $10 $15,000 a month in your business?

Are you at a place where you have a team or you have partners or are you at a place where it's just you and you feel all of the weight of everything that has to get done is on you? Your struggles may not be the same as mine, but here is what I ask. I ask you to believe me when I say that social media marketing is a game changer and letting more people know about what it is that you do and about what it is your product or your service is about. This works if you are online only. This works if you just want to serve the u s this works. If you just want to have customers that are within a two five 10 2030 mile radius from where you live.

This also works if you just want to reach hairstylists or if you just want to reach authors or coaches or accountants. This works because this power of social media guys is here to stay. One of my greatest joys is knowing that I have been able to not only grow my own business, two totally different businesses, totally different business models. I've been that local business owner that knows exactly what it's like when you want the eyeballs and the attention of people that live within a 5, 10, 15, 30, 50 mile radius of where you live and I have created the Sweet Tea Social Marketing brand for a global audience. I have shown up on social media and I have practiced what I teach, I've implemented and I have done it. I am actually my own case study twice, different scenarios, different dynamics, different demographics and I want to encourage you today to know that you can too.

You can too. Stop thinking that just because maybe you weren't number one in your high school class or maybe you didn't go to college or maybe you're not a member of the Chamber of Commerce or you don't know how to use Linkedin or you don't know how to use Instagram or Twitter, that you can't do this. You have to get your head straight. You have to get your mind right. I want to encourage you to know that you can do it.

The one thing that kept me up at night about two years ago, almost every night, was am I going to get another client? Am I going to be able to add enough money to our family for us to make the money that we want to make. I just posted this week on my personal profile, nothing business-related, just a little bit of a success that I've had and it was even eyeopening for myself to write it down. But for those of you that don't know, I in all of this journey of wanting to be a business owner, for me going to graduate school, all that stuff, that was not because I needed to financially contribute to our family, for us to be able to pay the bills. It's always just been an extra.

Is that you? Is your business fun money or vacation money? If it is, that's okay. And what I know to be true is that if that's what it is for you now you can go on bigger and better vacations. Maybe you can go camping too. Maybe you are renting a boat on the lake too. Maybe you want to go on a four day vacation to the mountains or to the beach and rent a beach house. Or maybe you've got a bigger goal like I do that you want to go to Australia for three weeks and pay for the vacation in cash. That's one of my things that I'm going to do in the next seven years and it will happen.

But then there came a time about two years ago where my husband was not liking his job.

His Sundays were awful because all he think about was Monday morning and how he didn't want to go into work. I said, ‘Quit your job. Life is short.'

He said, ‘I want to do insurance.'  And I'm like, that's weird. Who wants to do insurance? But whatever. I support you. I love you. And so my husband two years ago, pretty much quit his job. We had no health benefits. We were paying to have health insurance out of our own pocket, which was very expensive, and my job suddenly no longer felt like vacation money. Now it was, ‘Oh wow. You've not only quit your job, but this is taking a little bit longer than we thought. And you're actually not bringing in any income. It was very stressful to me.

I was up all at night and to say that I had a fire underneath me. Have you ever been motivated or driven? I want you to know on that journey, when I realized I had to step it up, I had to up level my business. I had to increase the income in my business. I had to get more clients in and it was no longer for the Disney cruise. It was to make sure that our mortgage got paid and to make sure that we would be able to pay all of our bills.

Have you ever experienced that? Have you ever personally felt that it's heavy? And so if financially you need to grow your business, I want you to hear me when I say I get it. I understand. Just within 2018, my husband and I have been able to pay off a little over $30,000 in credit card debt. We ended up selling a condo. We used the cash that we made from that condo to pay off my car and now we are in the mode of building a lifestyle that allows us to not only be able to financially be successful and be able to meet the needs of our family, but we want to be able to have a much bigger kingdom impact. We want to see around us and we want to be able to make that donation out of being a cheerful giver because we know that as God blesses me and blesses our family with more finances, that we're going to be able to be a bigger givers and be bigger helpers to other people.

And that fuels me. I love that I'm going to be able to give to other people.

My whole desire in everything that I'm doing with social media marketing is because I feel that it is what I have as a gift of communicating and building relationships through digital and social media, that I am able to be a digital missionary and I am able to come alongside Christian business owners and help them grow their businesses. And when Christian businesses and Christian people are out there having success, guess what that means guys? That means more seeds are being planted for Christ. Can I get an amen? More seeds are being planted for Christ.

This to me is mission work. This is mission work. So over the next couple of weeks you're going to be hearing some stories from other people that have had a chance to be inside of my Social Thrive Business Academy. You're going to be able to see in here some of the awesome growth and results they have and I am so excited to let you know that I am not just motivated to grow and have more success for me and for my family, I have a huge desire to help other Christian business owners grow with the power of social media.

Social may not be something you are passionate about or love, but you might be at a place where you are the person that's handling it. Or maybe you have a team and someone else is taking care of the social media. I encourage you, stay with me, stay tuned, be on the lookout. Know that I am going to have an amazing fun challenge for us that we're going to be doing right here on the Facebook page of Sweet Tea Social Marketing. I'm going to be talking about you getting more results and becoming more visible.