Navigating the Business Landscape w? Holly Fisher: From Journalism to Marketing Entrepreneurship

0:02Hi, and welcome to this week's episode of the Epic Entrepreneurs podcast where we are all about helping business owners just like you achieve success. So we don't do fancy smancy. We don't do flashing lights. We don't do a lot of things that a lot of podcasts will do. These are just real stories about real people and their entrepreneurial and business experiences. We go into their wins, their challenges, and their learnings. So we hope you enjoy it.

0:37Welcome to this week's episode of Epic Entrepreneurs powered by Action Coach Growth Partners. You likely went into business to have more freedom and flexibility so that you could spend more time with your family, do more things or travel or enjoy your hobbies or whatever it is that you like to do in your spare time. We're here to help you find better ways to make more money, build better teams and get that time back so that you can have that freedom and flexibility. We'll help you simplify things and make sense of business, investing, and wealth building so that you can be epic and achieve all your dreams and goals.

1:10And now, enjoy the show. Thanks, Bill, for having me. I'm Holly Fisher. I'm the owner of Fisher Creative Marketing. And I know for a lot of businesses, marketing can feel kind of complicated, right? It's really easy to waste time and money. And so I take businesses and organizations through a really seamless process to help them clarify their message and then build out the rest of their marketing toolkit. So a website, email marketing, lead generation tools, kind of all the things they need to really be set up for marketing success. So what led you to become a marketing professional? Yeah, I kind of fell into this business, to be honest.

2:00My original career path was a newspaper reporter. That's what I had wanted to do from the time I was probably about 12 or 13 years old. And I went to college, got a journalism degree, worked in newspapers for a number of years, loved that. Still love that profession and respect to the people that are doing that work. And in 2008, which a lot of people might remember, 2008, I had a flavor from my newspaper job, as were many people in all kinds of industries. And so that was the point where I was kind of like, OK, well, I might need to at least temporarily find something else to do. You know, obviously, a lot of newspapers weren't hiring.

2:49A lot of people were getting laid off. all of that. So I sort of made this shift into doing a lot of public relations. I also did some freelance writing. I also did some social media marketing, which was kind of a brand new thing at that time in that 2008, 2009 time period. And I worked for, I was in Charleston, South Carolina at the time. And I worked for another company there for a couple of years. And then in late 2011, decided to start my own business. I wanted to just kind of have a little more control over what I was doing. And I worked with a lot of local Charleston-based businesses, a lot of nonprofit organizations, helping them with public relations, content creation, social media, and did that for a number of years and really loved it and had some fantastic clients.

3:41And then in February of 2018, I actually got certified as a story brand guide. Story brand is a marketing framework that helps you clarify your overall marketing message and really draw customers into a story and really compel them to take action. And at that point, I really loved doing that kind of work. And so I started shifting my business over the next few years to largely helping people with their messaging, writing their website copy, writing email campaigns, and also started working with businesses locally, but also all over the globe, really. Yeah, we really like StoryBrand and StoryBrand Framework and Donald Miller.

4:27I think it's really a nice framework. And what I like about it and what you've said is that you've taken all this experience that you have and all these from the journalism, from the writing, from the public relations, the social media, the marketing. And then you're able to layer the framework on top of what you already knew and actually built a business out of it. So I'm guessing it wasn't always just a smooth road. So I'm sure there's some lessons in there somewhere. So let's jump in on some lessons that you learned along the way of working for other people and then taking the plunge and then what you've learned and why it was important to potentially add to what you were already doing.

5:17Yeah. Yeah. Definitely not always a smooth road, for sure. And as I said, I did just sort of fall into having a business. I was not really thinking of myself as a real entrepreneur and I want to start a business. It was just kind of like, this seems like a good next step. And so I definitely did not exactly know what I was doing when I first got started in terms of the business aspects. I knew what I was doing for the client work, but there's a lot of stuff that you have to do for a business, right? You have to pay bills and taxes and all these things that sometimes people are like, oh, yeah, I have to do that too.

5:59And so learning that, I think also learning how to price your services is huge. And I talk with people about that all of the time. People that have been in business for a number of years and people that are new. Especially creative services can be really difficult to price. And so I definitely look back in my early days and go, yeah, I definitely did not charge enough for some of that work that I was doing. And so that's been a lesson learned over the last many years is how to more accurately price my services so that I'm getting paid what I'm worth for the amount of experience that I have. and then so I started out as kind of a solopreneur and then um probably five or six years in made a switch to an LLC and got a little more formalized as a business and was like okay I'm gonna have quick books you know instead of tracking everything in a spreadsheet right I'll have quick books I'll have you know some of these more um you know big girl business uh things that I needed And I've also had some contract employees at different seasons.

7:13Now I pretty much work solo, which I've decided I really enjoy. And I think that's one thing that I've learned over the last couple of years is that sometimes you see other people building bigger businesses, right? Hiring a lot of staff, growing, adding more services. And you can feel some pressure to think you should do that as well. And I really decided I don't want that. I really enjoy just working solo, not having the pressure of a lot of staff or a big office or something like that. I just like I want to stay in my lane and serve my clients really well with the things that that I do really well.

7:53Yeah, I think it's really important to understand who you are and what you and what you want, what your goals are and what kind of business you want to build. I always tell people you can, you know, when you when you have a business, it's like a blank. easel or a blank sheet of paper or flip chart and you can build whatever you'd like. And, you know, that's up to you to build what you want. I want to come back to the pricing thing because I think it's something that people almost always don't get right or feel like they don't get right. So do you have a set of guidelines on, you know, for your clients on how to price their services or, you know, what are your, what are, what are Holly's rules for pricing?

8:36Yeah, I feel like it's, we probably can almost always charge a little bit more than we think. Right. I think the struggle is that, and this was, this was for me, I would look at things and go, well, that's, that's easy for me. That doesn't take that long. I can get that done really quickly. piece of cake, right? And not valuing how quickly and how much expertise and training that's taken, right? So something that might take someone else all day to do, I can do in an hour or two, but because I've put in the work over the years, right? I always kind of give the example of, you know, setting up, when I set up my QuickBooks and I was like, okay, I got to get in here and get this.

9:22And I was like, Oh, I do not like I don't I don't know what's happening here. This is kind of complicated. I didn't want to do it. And so I hired a bookkeeper. And once a quarter, she cleans up my QuickBooks, and she makes sure everything is good to go at the end of the year for the accountant. And I was like, that is the best money I can spend because I hired someone that can knock that out in a couple of hours. Otherwise, it was gonna take me all day and I was probably gonna mess up half of it. And so hiring that expert that can really help you. And then in turn, recognizing that we have that expertise and then appropriately charging for it and not devaluing all of the work, maybe the 10, 15, 20 years that you have put into developing your craft.

10:11And just going, well, it's easy for me. I don't wanna charge people too much. They're paying for that expertise. Yeah. I mean, it, it doesn't take a dentist a real long time to pull a tooth, but you got to know the right way to do it. So it's not, I mean, you know, it's not, you know, you can't charge for the time and you're, you're charging for the knowledge of how to do it and how to do it the best way and not get sick or anything. So I think it's, I think that's great. I think people do devalue their, their education and their experience and their years of trial and error to figure out to get it, how to get it down from eight hours to one hour.

10:49And yeah. So, yeah, I mean, I think one of my rules is charge for the job, not the hours. A hundred percent. I almost never do any hourly work. It's pretty much all a project based because it is really hard. Because again, I can do, I might be able to do something in a couple of hours. It might take somebody else four or five. um so it's it's yeah it's really hard to charge for hourly i totally agree yeah it's hard it's hard to do that so you were doing um sort of what i would call the back-end nuts and bolts the website stuff the writing the copy all that stuff and you and you took on the story brand and now you're more helping people get their message right are you still doing the website back-end stuff or do you outsource that?

11:40So I write all of the content for the website. I don't do the actual design or like building the site in WordPress or something like that. I have some folks that I will work with when clients need that. If they don't have a web designer, I've got folks that I'll loop in. I have folks that I can loop in for, you know, logo design, graphic design, things like that as needed. I really try to stay focused on the messaging, making sure that we understand how we're talking about the business, what problem are you solving for your customers and clients, really getting all of that nailed down. And then just writing the content, writing the websites, writing the email campaigns, trying to stay in my lane with the things.

12:23Can I build a website in WordPress? I can, but I'm not that great at it. It's not the best use of my skills. I'd rather have someone else that's really good at that do that work. And I'll stay focused on the stuff that I'm good at. Brilliant. Brilliant. I love that. I love that. So, so what you've done over the years is at first you were responding to kind of what the market was telling you. Well, first the market was telling you, go do something else. And, uh, you know, journalism and well as most everything else in the world, 2008, 2009 was pulling back. So, So you responded to that and then you responded by doing social media marketing, the websites, all that other stuff.

13:04And then you said, well, hang on. This is what I'm good at. Yes. Yes. And that's not always easy because when you have a business and people are like, can I hire you to do this? Your first inclination is to say, yeah, I can do that. Right. You need to say no to dollars. Right. Most of us are like. I think in the beginning you probably should say yes to dollars. That's right. Yeah. And so in the beginning I did, I kind of said yes to everything that I could do and kind of make money at. And then as I progressed in my business and in my skill sets, it was like, no, I actually, yes, I can do those things, but I'm better staying focused on this small core area of work.

13:46And so now it's, you know, again, really just kind of helping folks with that messaging piece. And and some of the you know, I'll also help with some like strategy and consulting and also do a lot of speaking and things like that as well. So trying to branch out into some of those areas. Right. So are you doing speaking to get paid or to get? Well, that's the goal. Yeah, a lot of it is right now is sort of speaking just for sort of, you know, getting getting the word out and kind of helping, you know, businesses and sharing my expertise, but I would love to. That's one of my goals in the next year is to see if I can maybe find some paid speaking opportunities, maybe doing some workshops.

14:26I actually love speaking and teaching and talking to people about marketing. That's really fun for me. Awesome. Awesome. So yeah, we'll, we'll get to how people can reach out to you in a little while. So if they went, if they'd like to have you come to a workshop or book you for speaking or just to find their message. So tell us who your ideal client is, like who really works for you? Yeah, it's usually someone that has been in business for at least maybe three to five years, right? So they're not necessarily just getting started, although I have worked with a few startups, but usually they've been in business for just a little bit.

15:04They're kind of at that point where they're going, okay, okay, we need to professionalize and level up our marketing a bit. You know, maybe they did their first website themselves, kind of bootstrapped that in the first couple of years. And now they're finding, you know, we need to just professionalize our marketing or we're not really getting the leads or the sales that we think we could. Maybe they're not getting a lot of leads from their website or they don't have an email marketing strategy in place. So it's kind of like, OK, what are those next steps that we can take to help folks be more successful in their marketing?

15:45And those are usually the folks that are really good to work with. Most of the time, people are coming to me thinking about their website. That's kind of the thing that's on their mind is I need a new website. And then usually we kind of have to take a step back and go, all right, what are we going to say on that website? It's not just how it looks, but it's the words on the website and the message and how are we compelling people to take that action and actually buy something from you or set up a consultation call or whatever. So that's a really important foundational first step. Yeah. So what's the story we want to tell, in other words?

16:21Yeah. Yeah, with the website, because that's a lot of times people's first impression of you. Or if it's not their first impression, it's the second, because immediately if they're actually interested, they're going to go to the website. And we all do it, right? I mean, we meet somebody and that first thing I do is go out and look up Holly Fisher's website. Yeah, absolutely. Check it out and see what it is. So it's great. All right. Well, let me ask you. If it's complicated and confusing and hard to navigate, it's not a great second impression. No, no. No, it's like, yeah, never mind. I can't get around.

16:53I can't figure it out. Yeah. That's right. I was looking at ours the other day and just there was a few things that jumped out and we need to need to correct right away. Yeah. So anyway, so EPIC is an acronym. I'm going to ask you four questions and just just give me your quick thoughts on each. So the E is education. So what is what is the importance of education in building a business? that's a great question i mean i am always trying to learn i think we always have to be honing our skills um developing what we do understanding also our changing marketplace right and just kind of keeping up with what's new in our industry and just in the world in general so that we can we can respond in a way that you know customers are going to find us yeah that's awesome the p is planning so what what would you say the importance of planning is in building your business this is an area i haven't always done as good of a job in i've tried to do better over the last couple of years but i definitely have some work to do there but really just you know when we go into you know i like to do a little planning at the end of the year of course like for the next year as a lot of people do and it can really help you stay on track and focused, right?

18:14If I know what I need to be working on, because it can be really easy to just get caught up in the day-to-day client work and putting out fires and responding to emails. And then the next thing you know, six months have gone by and you haven't done anything that you thought you were going to do. Yeah, it's easy. It's easy to get 100 % reactive. And planning helps you turn that around and make some of it proactive is what we've found over the years. Absolutely. That's good. All right. So the I is inspiration. We believe that if you do the basics right, if you do education well and you learn what you need to learn and you plan well and you execute well, then, you know, but sometimes it's hard.

18:54Business is hard. So inspiration is the I. You know, where do you find inspiration? Great question. from a lot of colleagues, I think, even just folks that are also in the story brand guide community. I can take a lot of inspiration from them, other folks that are in marketing, and then also just from the outside, right? So from faith, from being outdoors, being active, things like that that are just separate from the business, but can really fill you up and inspire you and give you the refreshment you need to then do really well in your business. Yeah. I mean, we find that sometimes, you know, not every morning you're going to get up, fired up to go to work.

19:37That's right. Yeah. So you've got, I mean, but I think you've, you know, keeping, you know, finding that purpose and finding that, you know, finding some, some downtime to really let your brain do some creative things. And I think this, I think it's very, very helpful. So I keep a little folder of emails too, that I call kudos. And so those are nice emails from clients, people that I've helped or just people that have complimented me on something. And so sometimes if you have one of those days where you're like, I don't want to do this, or you've had a difficult situation, you can go back and remind yourself of all the good work you've done.

20:16Yeah. Just read, read through those, read through your testimonials, watch those things. I think it's, I think that's a great idea. There's a, there's a tip for you out there. If you, if you, if you, you know, we had a guy one time who was scared to do testimonials and we sent him out and he came back and he was like, oh man, this is the greatest thing ever because it made him feel so good from actually asking because his clients loved him. He was just not self-confident enough. Once he did it, he, you know, as a photographer, once he did it, he got, and he's like, oh yeah, we love you. He was like, you just felt better.

20:47So yeah, that's a great idea. Just read your testimonials, read your, read your emails. Thank you. Read your gratitudes. I mean, it's exactly, Exactly. Exactly. All right. So the C is commitment to round out Epic. So commitment, we find you got to commit to a path. So what's the importance of commitment? I think it's a little bit of what we talked about earlier, which is committing to the work that you enjoy and the work that you're really good at. And that's been hard for me to do. But over the last couple of years, I really have tried to stay focused and I've had some opportunities come along and I'm like, yeah, I could do that.

21:23but I said I wasn't going to do that kind of work anymore. And I have to stick with it, right? I have to be committed to that path that I've set. And so I have to say, no, I'm sorry, I'm not doing that work anymore. Let me give you some referrals or something like that. It's not always easy. Yeah. So some, well, all the time I have a mentor who said success is what you say no to. Oh, that's so true. Yeah. And so the things you don't do that would have derailed you. or, or yeah, I think that's awesome. Well, give us some last thoughts on anything that's on your mind or a community or, or growing businesses or anything along those lines.

22:06Sure. Well, I'll just say, you know, just kind of from a marketing standpoint is really making sure that you, you know, we talked about planning earlier and, and really making sure that you have that plan in place for your marketing, right? Sometimes people go, oh, I need to send emails or I need to redo my website. And we need to kind of take that step back and go, okay, what are we trying to achieve here? What's the ultimate goal? And do we have the messaging in place? And so letting some of those foundational pieces can sometimes feel like, oh, I don't want to do that. I don't want to spend the money on that.

22:41I'm excited about building a new website. But your work is going to be so much more beneficial. You're going to have much better return if you can lay that foundation, right? We don't build a house without some sort of foundation and you need to do the same with your marketing efforts as well. Got to have a plan. That's why with the P is on there. Got to have a plan. It's good stuff and you certainly need a marketing plan in there. Well, hey, this has been great. How can people get a hold of you? Easiest way is just to go to my website, which is fisher-creative.com or find me Fisher Creative Marketing on all the various social media platforms, YouTube and Instagram and Facebook.

23:25I have a lot of videos and content that I put out, good marketing tips for folks as well. Yeah. So we'll get all that in the show notes for everybody out there. So this has been fun. This has been great. There's a lot of good lessons in here. I love the kudos thing and then commit to what you enjoy. I really like the kudos on finding inspiration and then commit to what you enjoy. So thanks for being with us. Thanks for having me, Bill. Hey, and until next time, all the best. Thanks for joining us for this week's episode of Epic Entrepreneurs. Here's four things you can do. First, you can listen every week on Biz Radio Mondays at 1.

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