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Ep. 121 - You're Marketing by Accident! Tayler from Enji
118 Plays10 months ago
Hot Topic: You're Marketing by Accident!
- Most wedding pros wake up everyday without knowing how they are going to market their business (the solution to this is to have a marketing plan)
- A big mistake wedding pros make is making too many assumptions about who their ideal clients are (the solution is going deep on customer personas and focusing on their problems/motivations)
- The key to better marketing is not necessarily MORE marketing, it's usually just consistency (the solution here is building marketing habits)
I met Tayler and her hubby at WMBA and I was blown away by them. I was drawn to their booth immediately.
A marketing consultant and small-business builder, Tayler is the Founder of Enji—though you might recognize her from one of her other companies: TAYLRD Media and Designs and Sourced Co.
In her newest endeavor, Tayler is taking everything she has learned over nearly a decade of helping small businesses with marketing to design and build a suite of online marketing tools that fit your lifestyle and make sense for you. Because, while you didn’t sign up to be Chief Marketing Officer of your business, at Enji, we believe becoming one doesn’t have to be so daunting—and our goal is to empower you with the tools and solutions you need to make more informed decisions, use your resources more effectively, get creative with how you connect with customers, and ultimately grow.
https://www.instagram.com/enji_co/
Connect with Carissa Woo
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Transcript
Introduction of Taylor Cusick-Homan and Engie
00:00:00
Speaker
Happy Woo Wednesdays! Today I have Taylor Cusick-Homan in the house, and she is the owner with her hubby for Engie. And it's like an all-in-one platform to do like all your marketing for you. So if you're feeling like overwhelmed or if you're not getting leads, you may want to check this out. It's so beautiful, the platform, so cute, so user-friendly,
00:00:23
Speaker
has a bunch of AI tools for like blogging and submissions and email sequences and posting your content, making your content. So literally it's like mind blowing. So I met this girl Taylor at wedding WNBA with her hubby, beautiful booth. And I was just so impressed by her company, her tech company. And I just had to have her on. So enjoy this episode.
Carissa's Background and Mission
00:00:52
Speaker
Welcome to Get a Heck Yes with Carissa Wu. I'm your host, Carissa, and I've been a Los Angeles wedding photographer for over a decade. I've traveled the world, built my team, and seen it all. I now coach wedding photographers hit 10K a month and build a thriving business. In this podcast, we are going to deep dive into how top wedding creatives get that heck yes from their dream clients. We are not holding back on the struggles of the business and how to push through the noise. Some healthy hustle, mindset shifts, up-leveling your money story,
00:01:21
Speaker
Time-hacks because I'm a mom of two, a little bit of woo-woo, and most importantly, self-love and confidence are just a few of the many things we will talk about. I want to give you a genuine thank you for following along my journey. I hope to inspire you every Woo Wednesday so that you say heck yes to listening to this podcast. See you guys soon!
00:01:44
Speaker
Hey, everyone, it's me, your girl, Carissa Woo. Welcome back to Get a Heck Yes. I have Taylor Cusick-Hulman in the Get a Heck Yes house. I met you and your hubby at Wedding MBA a couple weeks ago, and I was blown away by your booth, but she is a marketing consultant and small business builder. Taylor is the founder of Engie, E-N-J-I.
Taylor's Journey from Corporate to Consulting
00:02:10
Speaker
You might not recognize her from one of her other companies,
00:02:13
Speaker
Taylor Media and Design and Source Co. So welcome, Taylor. Hi, Carissa. Thank you so much for inviting me to be on the podcast. I'm shocked. Well, I'm not shocked because thankfully I was tied down at the booth and there were lots of people I didn't get to talk to. Yeah. Because I have been following you for quite a long time. They're like, I gotta meet Carissa somehow.
00:02:36
Speaker
Oh, that's so nice. Like I said, I was blown away by your amazing booth setup and your hubby show me a whole demo about NG. Today we're going to talk about your marketing by accident. So pretty much like consistency in marketing, all that jazz and how you can use NG, this new amazing platform, which I was kind of mind blown. But before that, I just wanted you to tell the audience who you are and a little bit about you. Anything you want to say?
00:03:14
Speaker
Deepin, I am a small business owner, like serial entrepreneur. And so that's where the Deepin breaths come from. Totally. If you're someone that owns a business, you know what that title comes along with. But I've been a marketing consultant and copywriter for, I'm coming up on nine years of being self-employed, which
00:03:30
Speaker
Yeah, so I am a... I just did a deep breath because I think everybody...
00:03:37
Speaker
blows my mind that it's been
Challenges in Small Business Marketing
00:03:39
Speaker
that long. And I've spent that time working with small businesses, mainly in the creative and wedding industries, and supporting them with figuring out what are they going to do to market their business, and then also writing a lot of the words for them, some of them alongside my partner for website copy Jillian of Gigi Copywriting. Because if there are
00:04:06
Speaker
facts like the sky is blue and the earth is round, like small business owners hate writing. And so that's one of the things that I've had a lot of opportunities to support people through.
00:04:18
Speaker
So, you know, professionally, I sit here in my home office working way too many hours at my computer. But if I'm not, you know, like plugging away, then you're definitely going to find me outside playing, like mountain biking or skiing or climbing rocks, like basically being a grown up child. Oh, I love that. So yeah, so that's kind of like in a nutshell who I am. Nice. And then what did you do before you were the entrepreneur?
00:04:47
Speaker
I mean, like a lot of folks, I gave the corporate world a good college try. It just didn't work out. I actually worked for the YMCA for four years, running an after-school program for my kids.
00:05:03
Speaker
I'm not a parent by choice, but I was in charge of 100 middle school kids. That's probably why. You can bet that I have all of the opinions about keeping little ones in line.
00:05:20
Speaker
But I really enjoyed that time because my background is in education and my intention, I went to grad school and got a master's degree in sociology because I wanted to spend my life in a classroom teaching sociology and all of the related topics. But as an older millennial,
00:05:41
Speaker
I had the extreme pleasure of graduating at the worst time. I couldn't get hired because I was competing with people who were older than me and had PhDs. I stuck around at the YMCA for a little bit longer. Then I had one properly corporate job at a software company based here in San Diego.
00:06:09
Speaker
And I made it like a year and a half. And I was like, this is too small of a sandbox for me to play in. There's so much structure in the corporate setting. And I think that that's the thing that pushes people like us away. But there are so many ways you could look at this problem or do it, or why don't we literally think outside the box. And the corporate world tends to just be like, please fall in line and do
00:06:38
Speaker
do this. So that's what I was doing before I decided to take like the very unexpected but exciting leap into self-employment.
00:06:48
Speaker
Wow, so I think I probably graduated like a year and a half before you because I knew about that like 2009 recession and at the time I was dating a chiropractor and he was getting like 100 resumes from like people that had their masters for just like a coordinator like desk shop or something like so like it was it was tough times back then. You know, was that chiropractor here in San Diego? No. Because I legit I
00:07:14
Speaker
I kid you not, I legit was one of the people who went to a chiropractor's office to try to get a job in between. He was trying to make people jump through hoops to see who would actually
00:07:30
Speaker
go through the effort and I showed up and I was like one of 50 people. Oh my god. So your example is like oh my god I actually did that. Yeah I was like I'm pretty sure like we were like that same time but um I was in corporate as well but um once you took that leap um I know you said you did like home pages or copy for um entrepreneurs like what was that what did that look like when you just started?
00:07:56
Speaker
Oh, so when I just started as a consultant, I like literally didn't even know what I was doing. Yeah. You know, if I were to like wrap it up neatly, I'd say I started with a really broad service space. Like, I'll do kind of whatever it is you need help with. And so when I started, I was doing a lot of social media management. And this was like in the days I said, I'm you know, I'm like that old fart.
00:08:22
Speaker
this is in the days before we had social media schedule. I always say that. That was the reality. Like if a client wanted me to post at 630 in the morning, then I had to set an alarm to like make sure I was up. Oh my God.
00:08:39
Speaker
That's hilarious. I know, right? You don't even know how good you got it these days. So I started with social media management and doing a lot of, in the wedding world, submissions and PR for my first couple clients and blogging.
00:08:57
Speaker
And then over time it just evolved into, Hey, you know, I don't want to be the person who's actually like doing the work all the time. Um, the teacher in me is like, you know, you can teach a man to fish and, you know, or teach, you know, give a man a fish, whatever.
00:09:12
Speaker
But I really wanted to put myself in a position where professionally I was supporting people to learn how to support themselves. I think that that is the most sustainable way to run a business.
00:09:27
Speaker
Even if you're not always the person who has to do the thing all the time, you need to understand how all the pieces of your business machine work in order to successfully outsource and manage someone else doing it. Totally. I started moving more into the strategy side of things where I was creating marketing plans and marketing strategies for people and really getting them to understand
00:09:52
Speaker
you know, everything that you need to be aware of and implement when you're, you know, trying to connect with your ideal clients. Wow. Yeah.
Entry into the Wedding Industry
00:10:00
Speaker
I mean, I'm sure you learned like a ton. Were you working? You said you were working with like whoever but how did you get into like the wedding professional world? That was one of the things where like I basically stumbled into this world and I was as soon as I found I was like, I'm not leaving.
00:10:19
Speaker
And I mean, long story short, I literally took an unpaid internship. I had a master's degree, and I took an unpaid internship with a local small business, a company called Race Case. They make really amazing handmade bags, like purses. And that business owner was friends with the person who would end up being my first client.
00:10:45
Speaker
who was Tam Ashworth of Isari Flower Studio. And so, you know, Julie from Race Case connected me to Tam because she needed help with some stuff. And I ended up, you know, she was willing to take a risk on me. And then from there, because she was such a well connected florist, like a lot of people in the San Diego wedding market were like,
00:11:10
Speaker
Hey, like you're on your social media is going really great. Like you're getting featured left and right. Like doing your stuff. And so it was this very organic process where all of a sudden I was like, I have clients. I need to start a business. And I guess I really need to get to know the wedding industry because this is where I'm going to play. Oh, that's awesome. I know we're going to, um, I'm looking at the hot topic and I'm like, this is really meaty and really good about marketing.
Overview of Engie's Marketing Solutions
00:11:35
Speaker
So I guess I have to ask you the big question, but what is NG?
00:11:40
Speaker
So, NG is for anyone who knows me as a person, it's me turned into software. But for anyone who's meeting me for the first time, it's marketing software for small business owners who have to do their own marketing and are not marketing professionals.
00:12:00
Speaker
everyone. One of the hats that we need to wear. And so the core of what NG is, is it helps you create a marketing strategy and then you get all of these recommended tasks from that to help you actually do your strategy. And then it's complemented with a lot of the tools that you need to do the ongoing
00:12:19
Speaker
maintenance of your marketing, so AI copywriting, social media scheduler, tracking your metrics, running and organizing marketing campaigns. So it's really supposed to be like a hub and a home for small business owners to use to actually get it together on the marketing side of things.
00:12:37
Speaker
Yeah, I guess to for me as a consumer, you know, I didn't want to walk the convention because it's a little overwhelming. But you know, your your booth really drew me in because it's just the brand new was just beautiful. You said your dad and helped you with with that. Everything was like
00:12:53
Speaker
you know, color coordinated, you had like the demos. And when you go into this platform, your hubby sat me down. It's actually very beautiful. And it kind of gives you like a sigh of release like you did in the beginning, like, Oh, like if this is making like marketing fun, like it shows you like when you need to blog, you know what you should say, like a lot of questionnaires about yourself. And then like you have a whole marketing strategy for a whole entire year. So I guess the question is,
00:13:24
Speaker
How the F did you do that? I love that question. It takes a lot of time and hard work to build software. And so we launched at the time that we're recording this, NG is just over six months
00:13:46
Speaker
post-launch, pushing our first version of the software out into the world, pushing the little birdie out of the nest. But we worked on building everything for about two years before we actually launched. And that's because I'm not going to lie, there were parts of what I needed to document and figure out how we were going to create the software, how the tools were going to
00:14:14
Speaker
work, what they were going to do. There were parts of that that I severely underestimated how hard it would be. Because as a person, it's very easy for us to make decisions. And we don't realize how much information we are processing in our brains at one point in time.
00:14:35
Speaker
And when I had to sit down to think of, okay, well, how do I like basically teach a computer how to do this? You start to realize how many pieces and inputs you are thinking about simultaneously to make a decision. And that was hard. So, I mean, I'm sitting here and there's right behind my computer is just like a blank space on my wall. And I stared at this.
00:15:04
Speaker
for so long, so many days, because it was just a lot of hard thinking. But I am not a developer. I'm a marketing consultant and creative. So I'm very fortunate to have two really great business partners and co-founders, one of whom is my husband, who you got to meet at Wedding MBA. And we have another co-founder who's
00:15:26
Speaker
Also, well, my husband is a very talented and experienced architect and engineering leader. And then our third partner is also a very talented engineer and developer. So two thirds of this team, I mean, it's just the three of us, but two thirds of the team are like,
00:15:46
Speaker
engineers, developers, people who write code. So I was very fortunate to be in a position where I could have normal conversations with them about how does the software need to work. And then they were able to translate it into technology. So yeah.
00:16:07
Speaker
It wouldn't have happened if I had just worked with some random developer that I hired off of the internet. It would be a totally different and far less functional thing. Yeah, it's beautiful. Amazing job. It's a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful website. I was just thinking back to like, I'm probably a little bit older than you, but
00:16:30
Speaker
Like back in the day, I didn't really even know what marketing is. I started blogging and just posting about myself. So I guess that's marketing, right?
The Complexities of Modern Marketing
00:16:40
Speaker
But then these days it's like, um, I feel like it's a lot more competitive. So people have to see you like in multiple like platforms and like blog posts and like all like social media platforms. And it's just, it's like, I feel like people just are getting more overwhelmed. Um, even like talking to some of my students, like they put so much pressure on themselves to like be successful. And it's like, they wake up and they just like, literally like they're basically like overwhelmed.
00:17:07
Speaker
Yeah, I think ng like empowers them and you and whoever is listening to kind of make marketing fun again and understand it. Because it's like there's just too many parts, like there's too many parts going. So it's like, what do I do first, you know, so it gives you kind of like an outline based on your needs and your wants and what you want in life and for your business.
00:17:29
Speaker
But yeah, with that said, how do like what's your mission statement? Like how do you get your heck yes from your dream client? Pardon this short interruption, but guess what? I have a new program. It's for all wedding professionals. It's called the triple threat. We redo your brand messaging the homepage of your website. Part two is we do all your marketing. We
00:17:55
Speaker
create a beautiful brochure so you could start getting on Prefer venue vendor list and we do all your sales so we actually make you a sales presentation leading your client to the heck yes so you get paid. I have a free 20 minute demo training. It's only 20 minutes. Go to my Instagram at Carissa Woo.
00:18:19
Speaker
and DM me the word DEMO. I will send it right over. It's how to get 10 to 15 quality leads in your inbox per month. Enjoy guys. Krista Wu is a LA based wedding photographer who's actually turning business coach. She helped me grow and change and I'm so proud to call you coach.
00:18:41
Speaker
Tell us how you're feeling. I want to just know a little bit more about your thoughts. It's beautiful and you're awesome. It's beautiful. I'm speechless. I just like the fact that it feels like myself. I feel myself when I see this. Oh, man. Well, you got me pumped and excited for this. Carissa, thank you. Our mission really is to just make marketing manageable for folks.
00:19:08
Speaker
It sounds kind of like a low bar to make something manageable, but the reality is most people are running around like chickens with their heads cut off in the day when they're trying to run a small business. Exactly. Making something manageable actually can have a really high impact on someone's life because
00:19:32
Speaker
It makes you feel like you're in control of it versus like, I don't even know what the heck I'm doing. So that's really what we're setting out to do at NG. That's awesome. Yeah. I mean, I just took an Instagram class right before this.
00:19:48
Speaker
90 minutes, but it was empowering. Um, but I feel like sometimes I just wake up in the morning and I'm like, what do I post? And then I'm like, literally driving my kids to school, like thinking about what I'm going to post. And they're like, mommy, mommy, like, and I'm like, what? So it's just to see things like in like a bird's eye view of, you know, what to post, what to submit, you know, what am I going to do this year to get more business? How am I going to grow my business? And to actually like see the metrics and like have chat GPT and
00:20:17
Speaker
like AI to help. I think that's so cool, but we're gonna get into Hot Topic. And it's a really cool title. I'm really excited to post about it, but it says you're marketing by accident. So what does that mean to you?
Understanding 'Marketing by Accident'
00:20:31
Speaker
And let's get into it. Yeah, you know what you just said about like, you're driving your kids to school and you're like trying to figure out social media every day. Like that is the that is the epitome of marketing by accident. And you know, for a lot of people,
00:20:47
Speaker
I'm putting on my soft kid gloves because I'm a very honest person, a straight shooter, but I don't ever want people to feel bad about what their reality is and what they have to just work through and make work.
00:21:06
Speaker
Like it's cool if you have stints of time where you've got to market by accident. But really what that is is just the experience of waking up on any given day and just being like, I don't know if I'm going to market my business today. Yeah, right.
00:21:22
Speaker
I don't know what I'm going to do. So, you know, you end up just like putting together this hodgepodge of things that you've done over the past couple of weeks or months. And nothing is directional. It's just like a bunch of cats just scattered in a bunch of directions. And you did a bunch of marketing, but nothing was intentional built on, you know, something else. And so.
00:21:52
Speaker
And that really happens because people haven't really been empowered to have a marketing strategy and get one quickly. Because when people used to hire me to create them, it would take me days of even me sitting down and thinking deeply about someone's business. So if it takes a marketing professional days to come up with one, then
00:22:15
Speaker
there's no way in hell that your average small business owner is going to have time to develop one. So you just kind of like, yeah, find yourself in this position where you don't have any other choice. And so you're just like, well, let's see what happens today. But it's also like, Oh, yeah. And then I took like leak break. And I feel so good about myself. And then you're like, Oh, wait, is that good? Or is that bad? Like, am I am I shooting myself in the foot? You know, it's like this,
00:22:42
Speaker
this constant unknown. One of the realities of marketing is there's a lag time between when you are putting in the effort to do your marketing and when you're going to actually reap the results and the rewards from it. Because it takes time for people to know, like, and trust you, for them to be nurtured to the point where they are actually reaching out and inquiring.
00:23:09
Speaker
it might not feel like if you take that break, it might not feel like it's that big a deal, but then X amount of weeks and months down the line, you're gonna find yourself and be like, oh man, I don't have any leads in the pipeline. Why? And it's because you didn't have a consistent plan that you could actually maintain without having to put in a ton of effort on any given day. Yeah, I think that's what I'm learning too.
00:23:39
Speaker
consistency in like your message and it's pretty cool, but you could say the same things like over and over again and like different ways because people are going to like know you for that and it's not like you had to like come up with this crazy caption and like take you 30 minutes of your time. So it's like repurposing different things that we have that vision. Like I said, it's so much easier. What is the biggest mistake wedding professionals are making right now in marketing?
The Importance of Client Insights
00:24:04
Speaker
Oh man, they're just making way too many assumptions about who they're actually marketing to. And again, things that I don't blame people for. Because when you start your business and you don't necessarily have this big book of clients to really have people to know, you make assumptions.
00:24:27
Speaker
You make assumptions about what people are going to like, what are the right emotional strings to pull, where are they potentially hanging out online and in real life so that those are the good places to market your business. But a lot of people never
00:24:42
Speaker
Get out of that like they they create their customer personas at the beginning based off of these assumptions And then that's that's just who their customer is forever even as they've grown and they've gotten to know the real people that hire them and
00:25:00
Speaker
And so really the solution to this big mistake of operating off of assumptions and guesses about who your ideal clients are is to actually take some time and do the deep thinking and like go through certain, you know,
00:25:18
Speaker
I mean, I'll come back to this because it's a slight tangent, but like do the deep thinking and the research and analyzation of things that you need to do to like know who your clients are and your happiest clients and like what motivates them to finally reach out to you. And you know, one of the
00:25:36
Speaker
the new tools that we have with artificial intelligence is you can take your inquiry emails and organize them into a document so you can feed them into an AI chatbot.
00:25:54
Speaker
And prompt that chat bot to pull out, like what are the common problems, reasons that people are reaching out to me? Like how are they describing the thing that they're trying to fix? And so now you are going to know with like a high level of certainty, what's the main reason people come to you?
00:26:16
Speaker
Right how what is your marketing doing to attract a certain type of person and then you can also do kind of on the Opposite end of things you can take your reviews from all your happy clients Run them through a chatbot ask it to pull out the common words phrases and things and now you've got like this great problem and
00:26:35
Speaker
solution statement. And you can then start using like the actual words and phrases that real people are using. And that's how you start to build real connection in your marketing and your messaging overall. Oh, that was my job. That literally was like the question of like, what is marketing, right? But it's like, you would never know that that actually could be whatever you just said, like put into a book.
00:27:03
Speaker
That's really interesting. Yeah, it's one of the things that we do have all these new tools available to us. We've all been sitting on client reviews and inquiry emails, but who's going to spend a bunch of time digging through them?
00:27:19
Speaker
as a human, try to find the common threads. No one, including myself. I'm not going to do that. It's not a good use of my time, but it is a great use of artificial intelligence to sic it on that and have it do the task for you. It's incredibly informative and empowering to know those things.
00:27:43
Speaker
we already have the stuff that we need to actually like make this marketing work, but people don't know. And, you know, even if you go to WNBA, I'm sure you talk to people and most of the people are not like brand new. Like, like they've been in the game for like five, eight, 10 years. So it's like, they're sitting on this content gold, but they just don't know how to use it. Like, I'm kind of even embarrassed to go to my like reviews page and like, look at it,
00:28:07
Speaker
even though they're really great, but it's like, you know, like that, like, um, it's hard for me to like read nice things about myself, but it'll be so cool to just like copy and paste, spit something in, give you really good copy and be like, Oh, that's me. Um, and that's like your whole content for the whole entire year. So yeah, this is really, really powerful stuff. And then what is the key to better marketing?
Consistency in Marketing Success
00:28:33
Speaker
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00:28:58
Speaker
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00:29:28
Speaker
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00:29:53
Speaker
You know, um, I know at some point you mentioned, you mentioned consistency. That really is key. It's like, I think I always like, just like, you don't like reading things about yourself. I kind of like, I'm like, Oh, that's such a boring answer to this question, but it's the truth because, you know, the least lazy marketer wins.
00:30:19
Speaker
Like, if you take a step back and you think about in your own market, there's always someone...
00:30:27
Speaker
Again, this isn't maybe the nicest thing, but there's always that person in your market that you're like, I don't get how they get all the clients. I don't get it. And maybe you just feel that they're not as good as you, or maybe they're actually not as good as you, but they somehow get all of the clients. And it's probably because they are not lazy when it comes to their marketing. They are doing their marketing.
00:30:56
Speaker
And so like, whenever you have those feelings of like, why is this person getting this? You know, really what you should be doing is looking, turning that spotlight right back on yourself and be like, what am I not doing? What have I let slip on the marketing side of things?
00:31:15
Speaker
And so the solution or like the key to having better marketing is it's consistency, but you end up with consistency because you build marketing habits. And so like a great marketing habit is for anyone who has to be on social media.
00:31:34
Speaker
that instead of, hey, what am I gonna post today? It's, hey, you know, I know that on every Tuesday of the week, I'm gonna sit down and I'm gonna schedule out next week's content. That's the marketing habit. Or, you know, on the first day of the month, you know, I like to celebrate KPI day, where I go through and I document all of my marketing metrics in the account.
00:32:03
Speaker
But that's another monthly marketing habit I have. On the first day of the month, I'm going to track my metrics. And then maybe you have another habit that is on the third Wednesday of the month, you're going to write a blog post and schedule it to publish. That's actually how you keep showing up online and potentially in real life without having to wake up with your hair on fire every morning.
00:32:34
Speaker
have a plan. That should be your slogan. The least lazy person wins. I know, you know, it's like, I keep saying it. I'm like, it doesn't really sound. But it's so true. The least lazy person wins.
00:32:48
Speaker
That's so interesting. I was thinking a lot about habits. I even posted I think yesterday or the day before about habits. I was like talking to my friend and you know she's really healthy and then you know her sister is like almost 300 pounds and it just goes down to like habits of like
00:33:06
Speaker
Do you have Oreos on your desk? Financially, I'm like, wow, all this money is being taken out of my account all the time. How can I ever save money? I started meal prepping, so the first time.
00:33:22
Speaker
you know, sometimes I've been podcast, I'm so busy. And then like, I resort to eating like ramen, because I'm like starving. So I'm like, I have these nice little like veggie veggies, and like a little bit of meat. And it's been so clutch for me. So it's like, everything is small habits that make into like a big, these big goals actually like get you to your goals. So yeah, that's something I've been really pondering about. Question for you.
00:33:47
Speaker
You're now in tech. You're the owner of literally this tech world. And you're a woman. And you're young. What is the biggest struggle or hurdle that you overcome or anything you want to tell me about that? Because I am not in that world. So I've worked at tech companies before.
00:34:16
Speaker
some in the proper startup phase of things. And the one stint in the corporate world was like a big corporate tech company. And it's like the same as just being a woman. It's just always the same. I mean, I am acutely aware of who I am, what I look like.
00:34:40
Speaker
when I walk into conversations about, or with people who are more experienced in tech or just men in tech, because I'm older than I look.
00:34:54
Speaker
I mean, at the time we were recording this, I'm 38, so I'm not a kid. I'm a proper professional, but people do look at me as looking really young, and it's this constant balance of
00:35:12
Speaker
how aggressive am I with saying what I want and what I want to build and like drawing a line in the sand kind of approach. And also, you know, I don't want to be known for being impossible to work with. And so like,
00:35:31
Speaker
NG is, we are a self-funded bootstrapped startup, which means we don't have millions of dollars sitting in our bank account. Personally, I don't really ever want to go after big institutional money.
00:35:52
Speaker
because that comes with a board, and that board is probably going to be full of men in suits, and that's like my worst nightmare. Wow, interesting. My two male partners are great.
00:36:10
Speaker
Like I'm clearly, I'm married to one. So I hope I would think that one of them. But even our other partner, like we're all very much on the same page and we have a very equal relationship. So I'm extremely lucky in that regard. But when you think to the bigger picture of like what the world of tech is like, you know, as a woman, you have to be scrappy, you have to be on your toes and you can't really ever get super comfortable because then you might do the wrong thing. So,
00:36:38
Speaker
So it's a very interesting world to play in. I'm mostly playing in my own bubble, but that'll change at some point and I'll have to figure it out. All of us women have to do all the time. No, I'm so proud of you. Speak from your heart to wedding professionals.
00:36:58
Speaker
struggling to get leads because that's like you know what people struggle with and kind of like the onboarding process for NG and just like how they could get started and this could like maybe be their secret weapon to becoming successful.
00:37:14
Speaker
Yeah. I really know how much marketing stresses people out because I am the person that all of the people text, DM, and email. They're like,
00:37:29
Speaker
along the range of I want to shut down my business today or I can't pay my bills. I hear all of the things. I'm kind of like a safe space vault. I don't call anyone out by name, but I hear all of the stories.
00:37:47
Speaker
And really when you are in that moment of freaking out about how few leads you might have, there's really only one way out of that mess, and that is to market your business. There's no amount of futzing around with your books,
00:38:09
Speaker
and how you spend money that's going to fix the problem. There's almost no amount of hiring that you could do that would fix the problem. It really comes down to marketing.
00:38:22
Speaker
really what I, my whole, I realized that my whole like life's, since I've been self-employed, my whole life's work for the past nine years has been to make people, give people what they need to be comfortable in this, you know, uncomfortable space of marketing. And so like everything about what we've built at NG has been designed to be super easy to use, not intimidating,
00:38:49
Speaker
I mean, yeah, maybe you have questions every now and then, but you're not supposed to log into it and be like, oh my God, what do I even do here? That would be the worst reaction for anyone to have. It should be like, okay, I can totally do this.
00:39:09
Speaker
I know that people can be hesitant to start something new, but no one has ever given small business owners something like NG. If someone knows of something like it that exists already, please tell me because I've tried to find it. That's why I'm like, I'm either a crazy genius or I'm just crazy for trying this.
00:39:33
Speaker
If you use something that's meant to help you get organized and stay on top of your marketing, it can be a total game changer for you. And that's been a lot of the initial feedback we've gotten is like, where have you been all of my life? I actually love marketing now. I've never been so focused.
NG: A Tool for Marketing Organization
00:39:54
Speaker
And so these are regular wedding business owners just like everyone else. And so it can happen for you if you just
00:40:03
Speaker
do a slightly uncomfortable thing and try something out and then commit to doing the work that is marketing, because it is a commitment.
00:40:11
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, AI has changed my life and this kind of like tech will empower you guys and you won't feel bad like going to lunch with a friend or like going to actually be like in person with people and not have to like check your phone. So all of these things are time savers. We're gonna go into rapid fire questions. You know, I'm a lover for love. So how did you meet your hubby?
00:40:37
Speaker
Oh, I met him. He was the roommate of a girlfriend's boyfriend at the time. Roommate of a girlfriend's boyfriend. Got it. And then what do you guys do to not talk about business?
00:40:54
Speaker
That's funny because we actually have a rule, no talking about NG at the dinner table. It's one of those important things. We work together, we live together, we play together. We can't talk about work all the time. So when we're not talking about work, if it's the summer, we're probably talking about mountain biking. And then during the winter, we're probably talking about skiing.
00:41:19
Speaker
You guys are really, really good couple together. That's really crazy that you have so many. I don't know. I feel like you guys are the same person. We spend a lot of time together. It's not normal. I don't recommend most people working with their spouses, but I think the balance is that
00:41:39
Speaker
we work together, but we also play together. And so if Brett as my spouse, or if Brett as my coworker has pissed me off, I can still have fun with Brett as my spouse. Aww, I love that. This is a question for me. I know it's like,
00:41:58
Speaker
Yeah, obviously marketing is important, obviously consistency. But what would you say like is most or top important like Instagram posting, reels, blogging, submissions, email sequence, lead magnets, like what should someone do like today to just like take action?
00:42:19
Speaker
Yeah, you know, I've yet to meet a wedding professional who tells me that referrals are not their best source of leads and the highest quality ones. So it's super important to maintain those relationships because it is relationship driven, right? Like if you
00:42:38
Speaker
if they forget about you or you just haven't kept in touch, you're probably not gonna get referrals from them. So there's that piece. But then the other two really big ones are, yes, finding one of the social media platforms to do a good job at. Then the other piece of it is,
00:42:58
Speaker
We live in the age of the internet. The internet has to understand who you are, what you do and who you are. And so blogging and SEO is the other really important. So like if nothing else, that's kind of like the trifecta that everyone at minimum needs to be thinking about. I love it. And then I'm sure you're just like efficiency on next level, but what is your biggest like time hack or efficient hack?
00:43:24
Speaker
Ooh, um, well besides the fact that I work really long days, which is not a hack at all, it is done, uh, like no kids, no pets. So like responsibility free adults. Um, I mean, it really is that I have habits.
00:43:40
Speaker
Like, I mean, if you look at my, my NG account, you know, every Friday come hell or high water. I am scheduling all of my social media content for the next week. And, you know, every other Tuesday, I am writing a blog post and working on email newsletters.
00:43:57
Speaker
I live what I am preaching because I have three businesses that I am actively marketing. And then I also have two other brands that I support. So I could not survive this crazy workload if I didn't have these habits.
00:44:15
Speaker
Wow, I really like that. I really, really like that. Okay, so everyone, the Instagram is n g n j i underscore co and then anything you want to tell people to just go and sign up or
00:44:30
Speaker
Yeah, everyone can try out NG for free for 14 days. So go in there. You have access to all of the tools. So create your marketing strategy. Start using the AI copywriter. We just released a social media scheduler. So get in there and try it all out. I hope you love it. And if there's something that you wish NG did that it doesn't currently do, I want to know what that thing is because I want to build it.
00:44:57
Speaker
So that's what we're, that's one of the great things about being so young is that like, you know, we've, we've done the first bit and now we're like, Hey, what do people want? So I am imploring you all to tell me what you want because I truly want to build it.
00:45:13
Speaker
Yeah. And I was going to say me and you have that in common. We're both 38 and we both look a little bit younger than we are. I mean, people also don't know that I'm half Filipino, but the Irish side of me. I can see it now. Right. We have we have the similar noses, but yeah, like that helps me to look younger than I am, I think.
00:45:34
Speaker
Totally. I have a friend half way looking at it. I was like, oh, you guys look alike. Anyways, you are a powerhouse, Taylor. Thank you for being on. Heck yes. I hope we are, you know, frienders now and this conversation is very empowering.
00:45:55
Speaker
Thanks for joining me this week on Get a Heck Yes with Carissa Wu. Make sure to follow, subscribe, leave a review, or tell a friend about the show. Take a screenshot and post to IG. Tag me. Also, don't forget to download my free guide on how to become a lead generating machine. See you next time, wedding pros!