Laura Kåmark [00:00:00]:
Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Be Bold Make Waves podcast. If you're looking for strategy, systems, list building, and marketing tips to help grow and scale your business with ease, then you are in the right place. I'm your host, Laura Kåmark, an email marketing and tech strategist who works with coaches and consultants who love their work, but not the tech. Join me for conversation packed with actionable insights, strategies, and systems to help you take control of your tech and simplify your business. Let's go ahead and dive in to this week's episode. Hello, and welcome to this week's show. For those of you who don't already know me, I'm Laura Kåmark, Evergreen email strategy systems and setup for coaches and consultants who love their work, but not their tech.
Laura Kåmark [00:00:47]:
My guest today is Rita Suzanne. Rita is a marketing and business growth strategist with over a decade of experience in building her own successful business while raising 4 children. She's the secret weapon for busy moms who want to simplify marketing, attract their ideal clients, and create a business that provides both financial security and personal fulfillment. As a single mom, Rita understands the unique challenges of balancing motherhood and entrepreneurship. She's passionate about helping other moms ditch the overwhelm, create profitable businesses, and build a lasting legacy. Rita's expertise goes beyond just marketing. She empowers moms to take control of their financial future through strategic pricing, profit maximization, and smart decision making. Her popular podcast, mom owned and operated focuses on actual marketing strategies, lucrative revenue streams, and the mindset shifts that drive real results for mompreneurs.
Laura Kåmark [00:01:43]:
Rita, thank you so much for coming on the show today. Can you tell our listeners a little bit about how you got to where you are today?
Rita Suzanne [00:01:51]:
Oh, thank you so much for having me, first of all. Well, it's been such a long winding road. I don't even know where to start. I wanted to start my business so that I could be home with my sons. So, you know, I could I could go on and on about, like, how that all happens. But, yeah, that's that's what, I guess, prompted me to start my business was to be home with my boys.
Laura Kåmark [00:02:21]:
I love that, and I can relate to that so much. I started my business not because I chose to be home when my I was pregnant with my first daughter, but my corporate job actually decided to eliminate my position. So it was a very much a, like, oh, crap. Now what are we gonna do sort of situation? But it's been so fulfilling to be home with my kids and be able to be there through them as they just started. I we just, like, finished up kindergarten and second grade. So I'm like, yes. So we're getting into you know, they're finally in school full time, and I finally have more time to work on my business. So I love that.
Laura Kåmark [00:02:55]:
Can you talk a little bit more about we were talking before we started recording about the term marketing and how that's such a big word for a lot of things that we all do. How specifically like, what kind of things do you do when you say that you help moms with marketing their businesses? What sort of marketing things do you do?
Rita Suzanne [00:03:16]:
So for the longest time, I used to say, you know, as you know, I started by doing web design and web design is a form of marketing, right, because you're marketing yourself through web design. But I used to always talk about branding. And what I found is that when you would talk about branding, people assume that I was talking about logos and color palettes and things of that nature. But really what I was talking about was more so your brand strategy and, you know, who's your target audience, your messaging, your positioning, all of that stuff. But when I would speak about that, people would almost, like, not hear it. And so then I started to talk more about marketing because that's what they really wanted to hear. They wanted to hear about marketing. And so, really, in order to effectively market your business, you have to have that really critical piece, which is your brand strategy in order.
Rita Suzanne [00:04:20]:
And, you know, there's so many aspects of marketing your business. But if you don't have that brand strategy piece in order, like, who is your target, and then how are you going to reach them. Right? Because no matter who your target is, there's different ways to really connect with them. So you have to really figure out what is the best way for you and your business to connect with your target audience. And so I guess it just really depends on what's gonna work for you.
Laura Kåmark [00:04:54]:
Absolutely. So when you when we're reading off the bio, it talked about helping moms kinda ditch the overwhelm. What's one of the things you find with your clients that they're coming to you and they are, like, feeling so overwhelmed with all the things? How do you help them get past that?
Rita Suzanne [00:05:09]:
Well, I mean, again, speaking with the marketing piece of it, I think that we have been taught that we have to be everywhere all the time. Right? And you see other people online. They're in all the places, and you think, oh my gosh. I have to do all of these things, and it just becomes so overwhelming with the, you know, with the idea. And so I try to teach my clients really just to come up with a more simplistic strategy and to and we've all heard this, you know, repurpose, schedule things out, and, you know, now using AI, we can kind of really just take off pieces and, you know, extract things and, you know, cut out pieces from maybe a blog post and pull out quotes that we wanna use and maybe video pieces from, other things and and utilizing these things in order to kind of take some of that off of our plate, and, obviously, we wanna delegate. So I think for some people, it's just really figuring out what are the pieces that we need and other pieces that we don't need. And, again, just having somebody else who's gonna kind of show you the way versus, like, just sitting here figuring out, like, oh, what do I need to do? Or, you know, or instead, I need to do all the things. Let me figure out how to make all the things happen, you know, or somebody else just telling you, you don't really need to do all the things.
Rita Suzanne [00:06:46]:
Right? Like, you don't.
Laura Kåmark [00:06:49]:
No. Absolutely not. I find I struggle so much with looking at my own business because I'm so close to it. And then I have friends that I mean, I have one of my really good friends, Nicole Capek, she's been on the podcast before, she's a copywriter, I'll link her episode up in the show notes. Nicole, I was talking to her the other day, I was like, oh, I have this great idea, you can do this, and oh, you could do this. Oh, you know what'd be really cool for you to talk about? And because I told her, like, she has, we have an evergreen email nurture sequence we put together for her a little over a year ago, to put some of her email stuff because I felt so bad because she has these great emails. And I'm like, I feel so bad for the people just now getting on your list because they will never get this beauty that you wrote that was so good, and also you're not reusing that content. So let's put it on an evergreen sequence so that people will get those emails continuously.
Laura Kåmark [00:07:36]:
And then she's like, oh, I need to come up with some more ideas. I'm like, I got a ton of ideas of things you can talk about because it's not my business. It's easy for me to see it from the outside. So I love getting, for me, outside perspectives as well on things that I can do for marketing for different content to put out because, again, we're so close to it.
Rita Suzanne [00:07:55]:
I used to feel like, such a hypocrite when I would tell my clients things that they should be doing in their business that I wasn't doing in my own business. I'm like, listen. Listen. Just believe me. Just take my word for it. Just just believe me. I know what I'm talking about. Like, I know it doesn't look like it, but I know what I'm saying.
Laura Kåmark [00:08:18]:
I I remember I had told, a group I was in a little, like, accountability group. I'm like, oh, I'm we're gonna start working with this face or not Facebook, Instagram gal, and she's gonna do my Instagram. She's like, well, I just went and looked at her Instagram. There's, like, nothing on. I'm like, well, don't look at her Instagram. Go look at her client's Instagram. She doesn't have time to do her own.
Rita Suzanne [00:08:40]:
And I know that. Think that's the truth. Right? Like, you you have to really take that into consideration. But, you know, I got so wrapped up in feeling like that, and I think that's something that we need to, as service providers, not really not really feel, you know, that shame associated with it because we I think we do do that to ourselves way too often.
Laura Kåmark [00:09:05]:
Do you have and it's okay to say no because you don't pick favorites. But do you have a specific platform right now that you're finding clients are getting a lot more results from, or where are you kinda recommending people go?
Rita Suzanne [00:09:17]:
You know, I'm still I I'm loving Instagram right now, but I'm I mean, my favorite thing has always been build your email list. Like, I I still feel that people should continuously drive leads to build their email list. That should be your number one thing. And I heard this I heard this, analogy that I just loved, and I just am holding on to it. There well, there's 2 of them, but I'm just gonna tell you one that I've been holding on to, and it's like, the 1031. And the 10 is like there's these 10 things that, business owners who are maybe not making so much money are focusing on, and it's you know, there's let's just name 10 different things. You know? Maybe like their design, their, you know, just 10 different random things. Right? And inside of that is fulfillment, sales, leads, you know, maybe their design, their marketing, their their emails, their their website, and, you know, just 10 random things.
Rita Suzanne [00:10:25]:
And then you have the business owners who are maybe making a little bit more money, and they're focusing on 3 things. And the 3 things that they're focusing on are their sales, their leads, and their fulfillment. And the those those business owners are making, like, middle, you know, middle range, but the business owners who are really, really killing it, they're richer business owners, are focusing on one thing. And what do you think it is?
Laura Kåmark [00:10:55]:
Nurturing that email list.
Rita Suzanne [00:10:57]:
It's leads. It's leads. Everybody assumes that it's sales. Right? They assume the thing that they should be focusing in on is sales, but it should be a continuous drive to push more leads into your business. Right? Because the more leads you have, the more sales you'll get, the more you can fulfill the the sales. And so I think oftentimes people feel like they need to focus in on especially, like, one of the newest free things that I created is a freebie guide. It's like, are you really marketing? Right? Because as as mom business owners, we're, like, caught up in the busyness of our days, updating our websites, sending out this, you know, doing this kind of busy work, updating our systems, you know, these things. And we're like, oh my gosh.
Rita Suzanne [00:11:49]:
I'm so busy. I'm so this. I'm so that. But are you actually marketing? Are you driving any leads into your business? Right? That's what you need those are the things that you really need to be focusing on. And I think that we get so caught up in these other things, these shiny things that we don't really focus in on the thing that we should be focusing on.
Laura Kåmark [00:12:16]:
Absolutely. Something else that I feel like I see a lot lately that is kind of like, oh, it hurts my soul is when people are in launch mode, and they're running ads, they're getting all these new leads coming in, their list is growing, and then they get done with the burnout of launch, and they kinda stop emailing. And I'm like, no, you have to keep nurturing because not everyone bought, and that's okay, because they're not going to right away. Sometimes, what is it? It's like 7 or 10 touch points, sometimes it's years for someone to buy. You have to nurture those new people that came in.
Rita Suzanne [00:12:48]:
Yeah. And so one strategy that I like for email, especially, like, not during a launch period, right, like, is obviously using some segmentation. Right? Like, turning turning this off during a launch period, but it would come back on, would be, automating some some just regular emails. So let's say that you go in there and you create 3 to 4 months worth of educational email. Obviously, you tell some stories. You educate. You sell. You pitch at the end of each of these emails.
Rita Suzanne [00:13:27]:
Right? And then you automate that for every goes out once a week for 3 months. You have a new email that comes out every single month for 3 to 4 months. And that way, it's kind of on autopilot, and you don't have to really think about it. And you can just, you know, write that stuff up for the next 3, 4 months, and then you have it out there, and you don't have to really worry about it, especially during periods of that like that. Right? You could just you set it and you forget it because we do get in those periods where we can't always come up with new stuff.
Laura Kåmark [00:14:03]:
Exactly. And then you're also repurposing that past content. Because, yeah, that's exactly I was doing mostly web design, we talked when we first met a few months back, and then I did a full pivot. It's not a pivot, I'm sorry, let me rephrase that. I did a niche down. Yeah. Because my business coach, Sarah Massey, who you also are very familiar with, Sarah was telling me, she's like, you do too many things, because I can do all the tech and all the I can do the website, I can do the design, I can do all this fun stuff, I can do the email, And she said, You do too many things, no one can refer you. You need to just really focus in on She's like, You're super passionate about evergreen email systems, which is the exact same thing you just talked about.
Laura Kåmark [00:14:45]:
It's putting a system in place that's going to put a lot of those consistent emails on autopilot. It's not just sales emails. It's the nurture emails. It's the sharing, the back behind the scenes. It's the trainings. It's just the little facts of, like, here's little tips and tricks. Here's some recommendations of some really awesome other products that you know about that you can use affiliate links for, all that stuff, and it's the stories too, so people get to know you. And it's putting those pieces in that I've been really like honing in on an offer for my audience to be able to put in place where they can put a lot of that on autopilot, because again, as busy moms, there's so many things to do, and so often we put that right that email as the last thing that we want to, you know, it's just on that to do list.
Laura Kåmark [00:15:33]:
And sometimes we're not in the mood to, like, be creative and write the email.
Rita Suzanne [00:15:38]:
I I would see that with a lot of my clients. They would focus in on building email lists, you know, and as a, you know, their designer or whatever, I would sign up for their things just so that I could see how it function. And the one of the things I would notice is that a lot of them wouldn't have a welcome sequence. Their nurture sequences would be very weak. You know? So, I think that, you know, those are those are things that although they are time consuming, you just have to just remember how important they are because you're getting that personal space with somebody that is you know, they're choosing to be with you versus, like, that social media where you're just coming on their feed, and it's, you know, it's less personal.
Laura Kåmark [00:16:31]:
Yep. Absolutely. You brought up AI. I wanna talk a little bit about AI. What are some of the tools that you're, like, using and really loving with all this new fun AI stuff that's been constantly bombarding us? Oh, everybody everybody loves ChatGTP.
Rita Suzanne [00:16:48]:
I'm not a huge I don't use it, not because I don't think it's it's good. I think that it has its place, but I personally use Gemini, which is Google's baby. And I use it just because, you know, I because I'm so into marketing, I'm using you know, I've optimized my Google My Business profile, and Google or Gemini actually integrates with your Google My Business and with your website. And so it kind of is sinking in and talking to those 2 at the same time, and they kind of work together. And I've done a comparison, right, of the the results and see which one I liked better, and I do feel like the results that I would I got off of Gemini were much better than what I got off of chat GTP. And I'm such a such a Google advocate, you know, because I have Google Workplace. And even for my podcast, I use, like, Google Meet and all of that stuff. So I I'm, you know, just a huge proponent, and so all of it it goes together.
Rita Suzanne [00:18:00]:
But, also, for, AI, I like the Opus clips. I don't know if you use that, but it kind of extracts. So for instance, since we're recording on video, what it would do is you could tell it, like, keywords that you want to pull from our conversation, and it could pull clips from our conversation. You've seen, like, on social where it has those top those interviews, those up down interviews. So it'll have the interviews, like, in vertical, and it will, it'll pull you several clips, and it rates them based on what it feels is gonna perform the best. And, and then it will add the captions and, you know, and you can and you can edit it from there. So that one is also, very nice. You can also take maybe a blog post of yours or something like that, put it into chat GTP or whatever your provider is, and, like I said, pull quotes out of there to use in, like, a Canva or something like that in order to to make images and things of that nature.
Rita Suzanne [00:19:11]:
So those are my favorite. I don't really try to get too complicated, too complex in in the AI because, you know, I like to keep it pretty simple. So
Laura Kåmark [00:19:23]:
I can relate to that. I spent I've I've spent different time periods in the last year, like, honing in and trying to really get GPT to speak my voice and understand all things, and then it comes out with an update and I'm like, ugh. And then I feel like I spend so much time trying to get it to spit out what I want it to, that I've actually found better success of just giving an idea of what I want and then taking what it gave me as a just a a very basic starting point, and then I just rewrite it in my own way.
Rita Suzanne [00:19:53]:
Well, I'll say this is, my recommendation for that. You know, it has the the custom GPT. Right? You you can do that. However, what I found to be effective, and this could be for Gemini or it could be for chat GTP, then you could try it, but is to have your your brand strategy, right there. And I go in-depth with my brand strategy, like, you know, mission values, you know, ideal client, all that stuff. But then I have pain points, buyer behaviors. I have, positioning, all of these other things in one document usually, and I will copy and paste all of that. And I'll say, based on my brand strategy, what do you think that and I will ask it based on my brand strategy because I wanted to know who I am, what I'm wanting, and then I want you to give me.
Rita Suzanne [00:20:52]:
And then also, like, for chat GTP, you could always tell it, act as if. Right? Act as if you're an email marketer, and then give me results based on this. Right? And but I always tell it things like, give me a outline. I'm not that. I don't want it to write me anything from scratch, to be honest with you.
Laura Kåmark [00:21:13]:
Not right. Uplevel and, oh, I can't even list them off the top of my head. I know. I haven't opened up any of it in a little bit now because it just sometimes is a little
Rita Suzanne [00:21:24]:
time consuming. Tell what, you know, what people are using for, you know, by what they what they say. And, you know, I will recommend to people, like, whatever it's writing, read it and make sure that it aligns with what you say because, you know, because my target audience is moms, one thing that I hate is when it tries to tell me I've told I've told it, do not use these words, particular words that I do not use, like mama. I do not use mama, boss mom, mom babe, any of those words. Those do not align with me. If they align with you, that's great. They just don't align with me and my voice or things for me. And so I will tell it, don't use these these words, and it will use these words.
Rita Suzanne [00:22:16]:
And I swear to you, I feel like throwing my computer across the room. It rages me so much.
Laura Kåmark [00:22:22]:
I told her not to use these words. Oh, you want all these words? I know. It's not I'm like,
Rita Suzanne [00:22:28]:
I said don't use them, and then every other word is, you know, boss mom. I'm like, what is the problem?
Laura Kåmark [00:22:35]:
Oh my goodness. Too funny. So I want to talk a little bit about some of the other techy sides of your business, since we already talked a little bit about some tech some AI tech. What other tech tools would you say are, like, some of your favorite? Like, for me, I love acuity. I don't know that I can run my business without acuity. I just love it so much. That's, like, hands down, one of my most favorite tech tools that I use in my business. So I'd love to know just because I love talking tech with people.
Rita Suzanne [00:23:05]:
So I used to be a huge lover of like, I've tried different project management tools. Right? So I used to be all about ClickUp. You know, of of course, before that, I was all about, Asana, and I've, you know, tried them all. But, recently, I've jumped back into Notion, which I really, really am loving a lot. I just love the idea you know, the note aspect of it, and I've been using it using it for my calendaring, as far as, like, creating, like, marketing calendars and stuff like that. As far as, like, scheduling, I use, book like a boss, which is, similar to, like, your acuity, but I got it a 1000000 years ago off of AppSumo. And, I don't know if you guys know what AppSumo is, but AppSumo is like when somebody wants to launch a new software, they will sell it on AppSumo, and it's, like, at a onetime price. And then as they they will continue to update the software and and improve make improvements in over time, and you just you, you know, basically got in on the ground floor.
Rita Suzanne [00:24:16]:
And I've really loved it because it's they've continued to improve it and add all of these elements to it, and I've never had to pay a monthly fee for it. And one of the things that I talk about, like, in my speaking or, like, even on podcast interviews is, you know, finding profit leaks. Right? Like, leaks where you could be losing money. And so this is why I've never paid for, like, Calendly and Acuity and stuff like that because I've already pay I've already paid
Laura Kåmark [00:24:50]:
for
Rita Suzanne [00:24:50]:
Brown Book Like a Boss. Right? So, so that and that's also why I don't pay for Zoom anymore because I pay for Google Meet. So you know what I mean? So these are things. But, ultimately, like, my one of my favorite tools of all time is, ActiveCampaign. Like, I have tried a million other email softwares, and, I cannot live my business without it. I don't know what happened to my can you still hear me?
Laura Kåmark [00:25:19]:
I can hear you. Okay. Where'd you go? I don't know.
Rita Suzanne [00:25:26]:
Yeah. I don't know. Yeah, like, I've tried other softwares and stuff like that, but none of them are as good as ActiveCampaign. And I've had people argue with me about it. And what I if I think really what it comes down to is the ability the ability to segment from any aspect of your, campaign. Right? You can because a lot of times people can and I've tried all of them, especially with clients. Right? I've tried every single one. And oftentimes, what I find is the automations and the segmentation is really lacking.
Rita Suzanne [00:26:12]:
And with ActiveCampaign, you can segment from anything, whether that's a tag, a list. Are they inside of an automation? Have they started an automation? You can't do that in a lot of these other softwares. And like I said, I've had people argue with me, and and I'm not the one to argue with. I really do not have the interest to argue with you. I'll just be like, I'm glad it's working for you, but and just let you go on with your day. But for me, I think that it's the best tool that you can get. Now for a while, I wasn't happy with them because they had raised their prices, but, luckily, they've introduced some reasonable pricing again for people.
Laura Kåmark [00:26:57]:
Yeah. I'm a big fan of ActiveCampaign. I'm on the same boat as you that I wasn't real happy when they suddenly did a price increase a couple years ago and didn't tell anyone about it.
Rita Suzanne [00:27:08]:
It was bad. It was a it was a big jump, and I I thought, like, this isn't it's just not reasonable.
Laura Kåmark [00:27:13]:
Yeah. But, I mean, it can do so much more that, like and there's some little things that's not but, I mean, I was working in a client's ConvertKit account, and I just wanted to alert her when someone got to a certain place in the automation. I just wanted to send her an email to alert her, and you can't do that. I'm like, why can't I have it send you an email? That's just not a thing. I'm like, I do this all the time in ActiveCampaign. I send myself emails so I know people hit a certain place. I send myself emails about all sorts of stuff. Just a little numbers.
Rita Suzanne [00:27:48]:
And then the goals part, you know, like, if somebody hits a goal in the automations, then, you know, like, they bypass the rest of the automation. I think that's I like and that's actually the best customer service feature. Right? Because nobody wants to continue to go through an automation when they've already purchased your thing. And I think that that's, you know, annoying for them to continue to get sales emails when they've already paid.
Laura Kåmark [00:28:17]:
Mhmm.
Rita Suzanne [00:28:18]:
You know?
Laura Kåmark [00:28:19]:
It's just it it makes things really easy. I'm I'm a huge fan of ActiveCampaign. Most of my clients are on ActiveCampaign. I've moved a lot of clients from, like, Flodesk
Rita Suzanne [00:28:29]:
Mhmm.
Laura Kåmark [00:28:29]:
Or the monkey to ActiveCampaign.
Rita Suzanne [00:28:34]:
Yeah. I mean, I have clients who will I wanna say, I have clients who are on all of the things, like even, you know, the big one, the optimized press and all of that, all of that. So, you know, it it it you know, it is what it is. But I will continue to just say that that Convert Air ActiveCampaign is the the best for especially for us. I think if you're trying to do anything that's going to kind of save time and really be supportive of your visitor, then ActiveCampaign is is the way to go.
Laura Kåmark [00:29:15]:
Agreed. I wanna talk a little bit about some mindset stuff. I love talking about some of the struggles that as entrepreneurs, we come up against a lot of, like, mindset blocks and things like that because that's the reality. It's not the thing we see typically on Instagram, although I feel like there's been a little turn where people are showing some more of that. But what would you say was one of the biggest mindset challenges you overcame since starting your business?
Rita Suzanne [00:29:41]:
Yeah. So when I started my business, 10 years ago, my, first coach friend, she said to me, you have a mindset problem. Now mind you, I just came out of corporate. I had zero clues what mindset was. I didn't even know what that meant. And a lot of people didn't. You know, back then, it wasn't as widely talked about as it is now, And I I really didn't know what what she meant. And I think what is the hardest is really for a lot of people is comparing themselves to other people.
Rita Suzanne [00:30:22]:
I see a lot of my clients doing that, and so I always tell them to kinda put on those blinders and, like, really don't look at anybody else, and compare yourself. Like, initially, right, you have to do your your your comparison, right, for for fun, you know, just for figuring out who your competition is. But then after that, don't really pay attention to them because what I see happening is we look at our competition and we're like, I want my website just like them. I want my services just like them. I want I'm gonna price just like them except lower. And that is often one of the recipes for disaster as well. Right? Because not only is this client charging less than this person over here who is perceived to be doing so well, but you have probably 10 to 50 other people pricing themselves lower as well. Therefore, it just brings down the market value of whatever you guys are selling.
Rita Suzanne [00:31:31]:
And just over time, it just depletes the value of what you do. And, so I am always trying to recommend that people don't base their prices on what somebody else is charging.
Laura Kåmark [00:31:46]:
I think that's great advice. What would you say you're doing that's different in the industry? How are you making waves and being bold?
Rita Suzanne [00:31:57]:
I think one thing that I do really differently is I speak my mind. I just really have this approach of not really caring what other people think at this point. You know? Just telling it how I feel like it is even if it doesn't really go with the flow of what everybody else says it is, and that's fine. I just I'm just gonna keep doing what I feel is right. And and I'm only basing this on experience, you know, and and what I see oftentimes is you get these people coming out who've taken maybe one YouTube course, who who are now experts in business telling everybody else how to run a business, and it just baffles my mind. And so I just really would tell anybody listening to really just be mindful of who you hire. You know? And, so I think the thing that I'm doing is just speaking up for, for other people and and just telling it how it is and just, you know, not falling falling what everybody says is the right thing to do. And, yeah, you just gotta do what's right for you.
Laura Kåmark [00:33:20]:
I love that. I would love to know because I know I've been hearing from a lot of clients, 20 fourteen's kind of a tough year. I think we saw this coming. It is an election year for those of us in the United States. Where are you finding your clients mostly? What marketing are you doing that's really bringing in those leads that are converting to paying clients?
Rita Suzanne [00:33:43]:
Yeah. So I still am getting referrals from old clients even though I feel like they have obviously, it's like that river kind of runs dry after a certain period of time. I still have clients who come to me even still after, you know, me stopping web design, starting web designs.
Laura Kåmark [00:34:04]:
So, you know,
Rita Suzanne [00:34:05]:
they still, they still come back to me for, you know, projects here and there. But, just seeing me online, I I sometimes, I don't even know where clients come from because they just purchase things, and I'm like, shoot. I I don't even know where this one came from because they're not on my email list. I don't see them on my social media. I don't really know where they come from. So I I just am not really sure all the time where people come from because I am like I say, I'm marketing everywhere because I'm repurposing and I'm doing a lot of things. But I also do a lot of networking with people. Like, through my podcast, I'm networking, so people are re you know, hearing about me through my podcast.
Rita Suzanne [00:34:52]:
I do my local networking, and then, I've done, like, some local speaking and stuff like that as well. So, yeah, I don't know. I do feel like at this point, you need to have what I call, like, a 3 tiered approach to your marketing. Okay? And so that means you you need to local, you need to network locally. Whether that's just, like, once or twice a month, like, really just find an event that works for you and do something locally, and connect with other people. And then you need to be on social media, again, delegating, repurposing, doing something. Don't spend, like, your whole life on social media, but but spend a little bit of time on there, maybe an hour a day, worth of content, and it shouldn't take you you shouldn't be rerecording things to try to make it perfect. Just get something out there and just do it.
Rita Suzanne [00:35:51]:
And then the 3rd tier is your online marketing. And so what that means is, like I mentioned earlier, your SEO, your Google My Business, your website, and your email, all of those things kind of are together, and they kind of run together and kind of, you know, drive that online presence, and you need to make sure that those all of those things are kind of working cohesively. And, yeah. So
Laura Kåmark [00:36:21]:
So as a online business, I mean, my business is fully online. It's rare. I work with local clients. Mhmm. I don't know that I have a Google My Business because I don't really wanna put my address on the map for that. What do you recommend for online? Fully you know, a 100% online business owners in terms of Google My Business.
Rita Suzanne [00:36:42]:
I mean, I'm still I'm fully online as well, but I just have a virtual address that I use for my business. And you can still do and and Google My Business is still beneficial for a solely online business because it helps you get found online. It gives you more credibility online as well because even if you're not a local business, it's going to help you Google's gonna see you out there. Right? It's going to help you rank a little bit better. You're gonna have be able to get more, reviews up of people up there. So one approach that you can do with Google My Business is to ask people to submit reviews. But let's say you have a bunch of testimonials, and this is something I need to do or have my assistant do. But let's say you have a bunch of testimonials.
Rita Suzanne [00:37:36]:
You can take a screenshot of those testimonials and upload those as images to your Google My Business, and they'll still they're still there giving you credibility even though they're not added as that, image or as that actual physical written, thing. And then so every week, just try try to go in there and add more content. So one thing that I do with my Google My Business profile is I use SocialBee as my scheduler, which also an AppSumo purchase. It was a good one.
Laura Kåmark [00:38:13]:
Lucky. I I got that just a couple years ago.
Rita Suzanne [00:38:17]:
So, I and I love and I love Social b, but so Social b connects to your Google profile. So every time that I have a post that goes out, it goes to my Google profile as well because I want to then share with Google. I have new content coming out, and it goes to Google as well. So we're we're gonna continuously do that because we're sharing all of our new stuff. And just like another tidbit I'm gonna share with everybody, this is a little insider. But, so on LinkedIn, you can do newsletters. Right? And so if you already have your email newsletter that you're sending out, what I did recently was I created a newsletter for LinkedIn, and it's called mom's guide to marketing. So I created it on new on LinkedIn, and almost instantly, I had, like, a 100 people sign up for it.
Rita Suzanne [00:39:20]:
The good thing about it is the emails that I or the newsletters that I share on my LinkedIn go to not only their feed, but they go to people's inboxes. And so they go to the subscriber's inbox even though it's on they subscribed on LinkedIn, and then they can read it on their in in their inbox. And then, obviously, it's gonna click them out to take them over to LinkedIn to read the rest of it. However, that means you, 1, you don't get access to their their email address. However, you're still getting in their inbox, and you don't necessarily you don't have to market it at all. LinkedIn is marketing to other people to get you signed up, to get you subscribers, basically, to get you more exposure. You can include links in there, and you can get them subscribed and and signed up in other ways to your business. So, again, when you say, like, how are you get I have no idea because I have all of these these revenue, like, these all these different ways of marketing that I'm not really sure how people come in because I'm marketing pretty much everywhere.
Laura Kåmark [00:40:36]:
Oh, I love that. You have I have so many, like, ideas percolating right now that I'm very excited to start implementing after this completed this thing. We I could sit here and talk to you all day. This is so much fun. I love talking all things website, tech, marketing. This is beyond fun. I do have one question that I ask everyone who comes on the podcast, and that is what is one piece of advice you would give to someone when they are growing and scaling their business to help them be bolder, be louder, and make waves?
Rita Suzanne [00:41:10]:
I think that the one thing I would I tell people right away is to get help, like, to hire out almost immediately if you can. And I think that that's one thing that people do not do fast enough is to hire. And especially if you're trying to scale, you can either spend time or you can spend money. And so if you're trying to scale, then you need to spend the money in order to scale up.
Laura Kåmark [00:41:45]:
I love that. I think that's such great advice. Rita, thank you so much for coming on the show today. Can you tell our listeners where they could come find you, hang out with you, sign up for your email list, sign up for your LinkedIn mom's marketing tip newsletter?
Rita Suzanne [00:41:59]:
Yeah. Definitely. So my website is ritasuzanne.com. My podcast website is momownedandoperated,.com. And then on all the socials, I am @ritasuzannestrategy, and that's it. I'm over mostly on, mostly on Instagram, but, you know, I'm everywhere pretty much.
Laura Kåmark [00:42:22]:
Love that. I will link all those up in the show notes. Thank you so much for coming on today. This was such a fun conversation.
Rita Suzanne [00:42:27]:
Thank you so much for having me.
Laura Kåmark [00:42:29]:
Thanks so much for listening to this week's episode. Be sure to check out the show notes at laurakamark.com/podcast. And if you're ready to get more sales without more work, save time so you can focus on the work that you do love, and automate and simplify the back end of your business, Grab my free resource, how to get more sales from your email list on autopilot. Head on over to laurakamark.com/email. And don't forget to follow the show and leave a review in your favorite podcast app. It helps get this show in front of other business owners who want to grow and scale with ease. Thanks again for listening. I'll see you in the next episode.
Laura Kåmark [00:43:11]:
Bye now.
Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Be Bold Make Waves podcast. If you're looking for strategy, systems, list building, and marketing tips to help grow and scale your business with ease, then you are in the right place. I'm your host, Laura Kåmark, an email marketing and tech strategist who works with coaches and consultants who love their work, but not the tech. Join me for conversation packed with actionable insights, strategies, and systems to help you take control of your tech and simplify your business. Let's go ahead and dive in to this week's episode. Hello, and welcome to this week's show. For those of you who don't already know me, I'm Laura Kåmark, Evergreen email strategy systems and setup for coaches and consultants who love their work, but not their tech.
Laura Kåmark [00:00:47]:
My guest today is Rita Suzanne. Rita is a marketing and business growth strategist with over a decade of experience in building her own successful business while raising 4 children. She's the secret weapon for busy moms who want to simplify marketing, attract their ideal clients, and create a business that provides both financial security and personal fulfillment. As a single mom, Rita understands the unique challenges of balancing motherhood and entrepreneurship. She's passionate about helping other moms ditch the overwhelm, create profitable businesses, and build a lasting legacy. Rita's expertise goes beyond just marketing. She empowers moms to take control of their financial future through strategic pricing, profit maximization, and smart decision making. Her popular podcast, mom owned and operated focuses on actual marketing strategies, lucrative revenue streams, and the mindset shifts that drive real results for mompreneurs.
Laura Kåmark [00:01:43]:
Rita, thank you so much for coming on the show today. Can you tell our listeners a little bit about how you got to where you are today?
Rita Suzanne [00:01:51]:
Oh, thank you so much for having me, first of all. Well, it's been such a long winding road. I don't even know where to start. I wanted to start my business so that I could be home with my sons. So, you know, I could I could go on and on about, like, how that all happens. But, yeah, that's that's what, I guess, prompted me to start my business was to be home with my boys.
Laura Kåmark [00:02:21]:
I love that, and I can relate to that so much. I started my business not because I chose to be home when my I was pregnant with my first daughter, but my corporate job actually decided to eliminate my position. So it was a very much a, like, oh, crap. Now what are we gonna do sort of situation? But it's been so fulfilling to be home with my kids and be able to be there through them as they just started. I we just, like, finished up kindergarten and second grade. So I'm like, yes. So we're getting into you know, they're finally in school full time, and I finally have more time to work on my business. So I love that.
Laura Kåmark [00:02:55]:
Can you talk a little bit more about we were talking before we started recording about the term marketing and how that's such a big word for a lot of things that we all do. How specifically like, what kind of things do you do when you say that you help moms with marketing their businesses? What sort of marketing things do you do?
Rita Suzanne [00:03:16]:
So for the longest time, I used to say, you know, as you know, I started by doing web design and web design is a form of marketing, right, because you're marketing yourself through web design. But I used to always talk about branding. And what I found is that when you would talk about branding, people assume that I was talking about logos and color palettes and things of that nature. But really what I was talking about was more so your brand strategy and, you know, who's your target audience, your messaging, your positioning, all of that stuff. But when I would speak about that, people would almost, like, not hear it. And so then I started to talk more about marketing because that's what they really wanted to hear. They wanted to hear about marketing. And so, really, in order to effectively market your business, you have to have that really critical piece, which is your brand strategy in order.
Rita Suzanne [00:04:20]:
And, you know, there's so many aspects of marketing your business. But if you don't have that brand strategy piece in order, like, who is your target, and then how are you going to reach them. Right? Because no matter who your target is, there's different ways to really connect with them. So you have to really figure out what is the best way for you and your business to connect with your target audience. And so I guess it just really depends on what's gonna work for you.
Laura Kåmark [00:04:54]:
Absolutely. So when you when we're reading off the bio, it talked about helping moms kinda ditch the overwhelm. What's one of the things you find with your clients that they're coming to you and they are, like, feeling so overwhelmed with all the things? How do you help them get past that?
Rita Suzanne [00:05:09]:
Well, I mean, again, speaking with the marketing piece of it, I think that we have been taught that we have to be everywhere all the time. Right? And you see other people online. They're in all the places, and you think, oh my gosh. I have to do all of these things, and it just becomes so overwhelming with the, you know, with the idea. And so I try to teach my clients really just to come up with a more simplistic strategy and to and we've all heard this, you know, repurpose, schedule things out, and, you know, now using AI, we can kind of really just take off pieces and, you know, extract things and, you know, cut out pieces from maybe a blog post and pull out quotes that we wanna use and maybe video pieces from, other things and and utilizing these things in order to kind of take some of that off of our plate, and, obviously, we wanna delegate. So I think for some people, it's just really figuring out what are the pieces that we need and other pieces that we don't need. And, again, just having somebody else who's gonna kind of show you the way versus, like, just sitting here figuring out, like, oh, what do I need to do? Or, you know, or instead, I need to do all the things. Let me figure out how to make all the things happen, you know, or somebody else just telling you, you don't really need to do all the things.
Rita Suzanne [00:06:46]:
Right? Like, you don't.
Laura Kåmark [00:06:49]:
No. Absolutely not. I find I struggle so much with looking at my own business because I'm so close to it. And then I have friends that I mean, I have one of my really good friends, Nicole Capek, she's been on the podcast before, she's a copywriter, I'll link her episode up in the show notes. Nicole, I was talking to her the other day, I was like, oh, I have this great idea, you can do this, and oh, you could do this. Oh, you know what'd be really cool for you to talk about? And because I told her, like, she has, we have an evergreen email nurture sequence we put together for her a little over a year ago, to put some of her email stuff because I felt so bad because she has these great emails. And I'm like, I feel so bad for the people just now getting on your list because they will never get this beauty that you wrote that was so good, and also you're not reusing that content. So let's put it on an evergreen sequence so that people will get those emails continuously.
Laura Kåmark [00:07:36]:
And then she's like, oh, I need to come up with some more ideas. I'm like, I got a ton of ideas of things you can talk about because it's not my business. It's easy for me to see it from the outside. So I love getting, for me, outside perspectives as well on things that I can do for marketing for different content to put out because, again, we're so close to it.
Rita Suzanne [00:07:55]:
I used to feel like, such a hypocrite when I would tell my clients things that they should be doing in their business that I wasn't doing in my own business. I'm like, listen. Listen. Just believe me. Just take my word for it. Just just believe me. I know what I'm talking about. Like, I know it doesn't look like it, but I know what I'm saying.
Laura Kåmark [00:08:18]:
I I remember I had told, a group I was in a little, like, accountability group. I'm like, oh, I'm we're gonna start working with this face or not Facebook, Instagram gal, and she's gonna do my Instagram. She's like, well, I just went and looked at her Instagram. There's, like, nothing on. I'm like, well, don't look at her Instagram. Go look at her client's Instagram. She doesn't have time to do her own.
Rita Suzanne [00:08:40]:
And I know that. Think that's the truth. Right? Like, you you have to really take that into consideration. But, you know, I got so wrapped up in feeling like that, and I think that's something that we need to, as service providers, not really not really feel, you know, that shame associated with it because we I think we do do that to ourselves way too often.
Laura Kåmark [00:09:05]:
Do you have and it's okay to say no because you don't pick favorites. But do you have a specific platform right now that you're finding clients are getting a lot more results from, or where are you kinda recommending people go?
Rita Suzanne [00:09:17]:
You know, I'm still I I'm loving Instagram right now, but I'm I mean, my favorite thing has always been build your email list. Like, I I still feel that people should continuously drive leads to build their email list. That should be your number one thing. And I heard this I heard this, analogy that I just loved, and I just am holding on to it. There well, there's 2 of them, but I'm just gonna tell you one that I've been holding on to, and it's like, the 1031. And the 10 is like there's these 10 things that, business owners who are maybe not making so much money are focusing on, and it's you know, there's let's just name 10 different things. You know? Maybe like their design, their, you know, just 10 different random things. Right? And inside of that is fulfillment, sales, leads, you know, maybe their design, their marketing, their their emails, their their website, and, you know, just 10 random things.
Rita Suzanne [00:10:25]:
And then you have the business owners who are maybe making a little bit more money, and they're focusing on 3 things. And the 3 things that they're focusing on are their sales, their leads, and their fulfillment. And the those those business owners are making, like, middle, you know, middle range, but the business owners who are really, really killing it, they're richer business owners, are focusing on one thing. And what do you think it is?
Laura Kåmark [00:10:55]:
Nurturing that email list.
Rita Suzanne [00:10:57]:
It's leads. It's leads. Everybody assumes that it's sales. Right? They assume the thing that they should be focusing in on is sales, but it should be a continuous drive to push more leads into your business. Right? Because the more leads you have, the more sales you'll get, the more you can fulfill the the sales. And so I think oftentimes people feel like they need to focus in on especially, like, one of the newest free things that I created is a freebie guide. It's like, are you really marketing? Right? Because as as mom business owners, we're, like, caught up in the busyness of our days, updating our websites, sending out this, you know, doing this kind of busy work, updating our systems, you know, these things. And we're like, oh my gosh.
Rita Suzanne [00:11:49]:
I'm so busy. I'm so this. I'm so that. But are you actually marketing? Are you driving any leads into your business? Right? That's what you need those are the things that you really need to be focusing on. And I think that we get so caught up in these other things, these shiny things that we don't really focus in on the thing that we should be focusing on.
Laura Kåmark [00:12:16]:
Absolutely. Something else that I feel like I see a lot lately that is kind of like, oh, it hurts my soul is when people are in launch mode, and they're running ads, they're getting all these new leads coming in, their list is growing, and then they get done with the burnout of launch, and they kinda stop emailing. And I'm like, no, you have to keep nurturing because not everyone bought, and that's okay, because they're not going to right away. Sometimes, what is it? It's like 7 or 10 touch points, sometimes it's years for someone to buy. You have to nurture those new people that came in.
Rita Suzanne [00:12:48]:
Yeah. And so one strategy that I like for email, especially, like, not during a launch period, right, like, is obviously using some segmentation. Right? Like, turning turning this off during a launch period, but it would come back on, would be, automating some some just regular emails. So let's say that you go in there and you create 3 to 4 months worth of educational email. Obviously, you tell some stories. You educate. You sell. You pitch at the end of each of these emails.
Rita Suzanne [00:13:27]:
Right? And then you automate that for every goes out once a week for 3 months. You have a new email that comes out every single month for 3 to 4 months. And that way, it's kind of on autopilot, and you don't have to really think about it. And you can just, you know, write that stuff up for the next 3, 4 months, and then you have it out there, and you don't have to really worry about it, especially during periods of that like that. Right? You could just you set it and you forget it because we do get in those periods where we can't always come up with new stuff.
Laura Kåmark [00:14:03]:
Exactly. And then you're also repurposing that past content. Because, yeah, that's exactly I was doing mostly web design, we talked when we first met a few months back, and then I did a full pivot. It's not a pivot, I'm sorry, let me rephrase that. I did a niche down. Yeah. Because my business coach, Sarah Massey, who you also are very familiar with, Sarah was telling me, she's like, you do too many things, because I can do all the tech and all the I can do the website, I can do the design, I can do all this fun stuff, I can do the email, And she said, You do too many things, no one can refer you. You need to just really focus in on She's like, You're super passionate about evergreen email systems, which is the exact same thing you just talked about.
Laura Kåmark [00:14:45]:
It's putting a system in place that's going to put a lot of those consistent emails on autopilot. It's not just sales emails. It's the nurture emails. It's the sharing, the back behind the scenes. It's the trainings. It's just the little facts of, like, here's little tips and tricks. Here's some recommendations of some really awesome other products that you know about that you can use affiliate links for, all that stuff, and it's the stories too, so people get to know you. And it's putting those pieces in that I've been really like honing in on an offer for my audience to be able to put in place where they can put a lot of that on autopilot, because again, as busy moms, there's so many things to do, and so often we put that right that email as the last thing that we want to, you know, it's just on that to do list.
Laura Kåmark [00:15:33]:
And sometimes we're not in the mood to, like, be creative and write the email.
Rita Suzanne [00:15:38]:
I I would see that with a lot of my clients. They would focus in on building email lists, you know, and as a, you know, their designer or whatever, I would sign up for their things just so that I could see how it function. And the one of the things I would notice is that a lot of them wouldn't have a welcome sequence. Their nurture sequences would be very weak. You know? So, I think that, you know, those are those are things that although they are time consuming, you just have to just remember how important they are because you're getting that personal space with somebody that is you know, they're choosing to be with you versus, like, that social media where you're just coming on their feed, and it's, you know, it's less personal.
Laura Kåmark [00:16:31]:
Yep. Absolutely. You brought up AI. I wanna talk a little bit about AI. What are some of the tools that you're, like, using and really loving with all this new fun AI stuff that's been constantly bombarding us? Oh, everybody everybody loves ChatGTP.
Rita Suzanne [00:16:48]:
I'm not a huge I don't use it, not because I don't think it's it's good. I think that it has its place, but I personally use Gemini, which is Google's baby. And I use it just because, you know, I because I'm so into marketing, I'm using you know, I've optimized my Google My Business profile, and Google or Gemini actually integrates with your Google My Business and with your website. And so it kind of is sinking in and talking to those 2 at the same time, and they kind of work together. And I've done a comparison, right, of the the results and see which one I liked better, and I do feel like the results that I would I got off of Gemini were much better than what I got off of chat GTP. And I'm such a such a Google advocate, you know, because I have Google Workplace. And even for my podcast, I use, like, Google Meet and all of that stuff. So I I'm, you know, just a huge proponent, and so all of it it goes together.
Rita Suzanne [00:18:00]:
But, also, for, AI, I like the Opus clips. I don't know if you use that, but it kind of extracts. So for instance, since we're recording on video, what it would do is you could tell it, like, keywords that you want to pull from our conversation, and it could pull clips from our conversation. You've seen, like, on social where it has those top those interviews, those up down interviews. So it'll have the interviews, like, in vertical, and it will, it'll pull you several clips, and it rates them based on what it feels is gonna perform the best. And, and then it will add the captions and, you know, and you can and you can edit it from there. So that one is also, very nice. You can also take maybe a blog post of yours or something like that, put it into chat GTP or whatever your provider is, and, like I said, pull quotes out of there to use in, like, a Canva or something like that in order to to make images and things of that nature.
Rita Suzanne [00:19:11]:
So those are my favorite. I don't really try to get too complicated, too complex in in the AI because, you know, I like to keep it pretty simple. So
Laura Kåmark [00:19:23]:
I can relate to that. I spent I've I've spent different time periods in the last year, like, honing in and trying to really get GPT to speak my voice and understand all things, and then it comes out with an update and I'm like, ugh. And then I feel like I spend so much time trying to get it to spit out what I want it to, that I've actually found better success of just giving an idea of what I want and then taking what it gave me as a just a a very basic starting point, and then I just rewrite it in my own way.
Rita Suzanne [00:19:53]:
Well, I'll say this is, my recommendation for that. You know, it has the the custom GPT. Right? You you can do that. However, what I found to be effective, and this could be for Gemini or it could be for chat GTP, then you could try it, but is to have your your brand strategy, right there. And I go in-depth with my brand strategy, like, you know, mission values, you know, ideal client, all that stuff. But then I have pain points, buyer behaviors. I have, positioning, all of these other things in one document usually, and I will copy and paste all of that. And I'll say, based on my brand strategy, what do you think that and I will ask it based on my brand strategy because I wanted to know who I am, what I'm wanting, and then I want you to give me.
Rita Suzanne [00:20:52]:
And then also, like, for chat GTP, you could always tell it, act as if. Right? Act as if you're an email marketer, and then give me results based on this. Right? And but I always tell it things like, give me a outline. I'm not that. I don't want it to write me anything from scratch, to be honest with you.
Laura Kåmark [00:21:13]:
Not right. Uplevel and, oh, I can't even list them off the top of my head. I know. I haven't opened up any of it in a little bit now because it just sometimes is a little
Rita Suzanne [00:21:24]:
time consuming. Tell what, you know, what people are using for, you know, by what they what they say. And, you know, I will recommend to people, like, whatever it's writing, read it and make sure that it aligns with what you say because, you know, because my target audience is moms, one thing that I hate is when it tries to tell me I've told I've told it, do not use these words, particular words that I do not use, like mama. I do not use mama, boss mom, mom babe, any of those words. Those do not align with me. If they align with you, that's great. They just don't align with me and my voice or things for me. And so I will tell it, don't use these these words, and it will use these words.
Rita Suzanne [00:22:16]:
And I swear to you, I feel like throwing my computer across the room. It rages me so much.
Laura Kåmark [00:22:22]:
I told her not to use these words. Oh, you want all these words? I know. It's not I'm like,
Rita Suzanne [00:22:28]:
I said don't use them, and then every other word is, you know, boss mom. I'm like, what is the problem?
Laura Kåmark [00:22:35]:
Oh my goodness. Too funny. So I want to talk a little bit about some of the other techy sides of your business, since we already talked a little bit about some tech some AI tech. What other tech tools would you say are, like, some of your favorite? Like, for me, I love acuity. I don't know that I can run my business without acuity. I just love it so much. That's, like, hands down, one of my most favorite tech tools that I use in my business. So I'd love to know just because I love talking tech with people.
Rita Suzanne [00:23:05]:
So I used to be a huge lover of like, I've tried different project management tools. Right? So I used to be all about ClickUp. You know, of of course, before that, I was all about, Asana, and I've, you know, tried them all. But, recently, I've jumped back into Notion, which I really, really am loving a lot. I just love the idea you know, the note aspect of it, and I've been using it using it for my calendaring, as far as, like, creating, like, marketing calendars and stuff like that. As far as, like, scheduling, I use, book like a boss, which is, similar to, like, your acuity, but I got it a 1000000 years ago off of AppSumo. And, I don't know if you guys know what AppSumo is, but AppSumo is like when somebody wants to launch a new software, they will sell it on AppSumo, and it's, like, at a onetime price. And then as they they will continue to update the software and and improve make improvements in over time, and you just you, you know, basically got in on the ground floor.
Rita Suzanne [00:24:16]:
And I've really loved it because it's they've continued to improve it and add all of these elements to it, and I've never had to pay a monthly fee for it. And one of the things that I talk about, like, in my speaking or, like, even on podcast interviews is, you know, finding profit leaks. Right? Like, leaks where you could be losing money. And so this is why I've never paid for, like, Calendly and Acuity and stuff like that because I've already pay I've already paid
Laura Kåmark [00:24:50]:
for
Rita Suzanne [00:24:50]:
Brown Book Like a Boss. Right? So, so that and that's also why I don't pay for Zoom anymore because I pay for Google Meet. So you know what I mean? So these are things. But, ultimately, like, my one of my favorite tools of all time is, ActiveCampaign. Like, I have tried a million other email softwares, and, I cannot live my business without it. I don't know what happened to my can you still hear me?
Laura Kåmark [00:25:19]:
I can hear you. Okay. Where'd you go? I don't know.
Rita Suzanne [00:25:26]:
Yeah. I don't know. Yeah, like, I've tried other softwares and stuff like that, but none of them are as good as ActiveCampaign. And I've had people argue with me about it. And what I if I think really what it comes down to is the ability the ability to segment from any aspect of your, campaign. Right? You can because a lot of times people can and I've tried all of them, especially with clients. Right? I've tried every single one. And oftentimes, what I find is the automations and the segmentation is really lacking.
Rita Suzanne [00:26:12]:
And with ActiveCampaign, you can segment from anything, whether that's a tag, a list. Are they inside of an automation? Have they started an automation? You can't do that in a lot of these other softwares. And like I said, I've had people argue with me, and and I'm not the one to argue with. I really do not have the interest to argue with you. I'll just be like, I'm glad it's working for you, but and just let you go on with your day. But for me, I think that it's the best tool that you can get. Now for a while, I wasn't happy with them because they had raised their prices, but, luckily, they've introduced some reasonable pricing again for people.
Laura Kåmark [00:26:57]:
Yeah. I'm a big fan of ActiveCampaign. I'm on the same boat as you that I wasn't real happy when they suddenly did a price increase a couple years ago and didn't tell anyone about it.
Rita Suzanne [00:27:08]:
It was bad. It was a it was a big jump, and I I thought, like, this isn't it's just not reasonable.
Laura Kåmark [00:27:13]:
Yeah. But, I mean, it can do so much more that, like and there's some little things that's not but, I mean, I was working in a client's ConvertKit account, and I just wanted to alert her when someone got to a certain place in the automation. I just wanted to send her an email to alert her, and you can't do that. I'm like, why can't I have it send you an email? That's just not a thing. I'm like, I do this all the time in ActiveCampaign. I send myself emails so I know people hit a certain place. I send myself emails about all sorts of stuff. Just a little numbers.
Rita Suzanne [00:27:48]:
And then the goals part, you know, like, if somebody hits a goal in the automations, then, you know, like, they bypass the rest of the automation. I think that's I like and that's actually the best customer service feature. Right? Because nobody wants to continue to go through an automation when they've already purchased your thing. And I think that that's, you know, annoying for them to continue to get sales emails when they've already paid.
Laura Kåmark [00:28:17]:
Mhmm.
Rita Suzanne [00:28:18]:
You know?
Laura Kåmark [00:28:19]:
It's just it it makes things really easy. I'm I'm a huge fan of ActiveCampaign. Most of my clients are on ActiveCampaign. I've moved a lot of clients from, like, Flodesk
Rita Suzanne [00:28:29]:
Mhmm.
Laura Kåmark [00:28:29]:
Or the monkey to ActiveCampaign.
Rita Suzanne [00:28:34]:
Yeah. I mean, I have clients who will I wanna say, I have clients who are on all of the things, like even, you know, the big one, the optimized press and all of that, all of that. So, you know, it it it you know, it is what it is. But I will continue to just say that that Convert Air ActiveCampaign is the the best for especially for us. I think if you're trying to do anything that's going to kind of save time and really be supportive of your visitor, then ActiveCampaign is is the way to go.
Laura Kåmark [00:29:15]:
Agreed. I wanna talk a little bit about some mindset stuff. I love talking about some of the struggles that as entrepreneurs, we come up against a lot of, like, mindset blocks and things like that because that's the reality. It's not the thing we see typically on Instagram, although I feel like there's been a little turn where people are showing some more of that. But what would you say was one of the biggest mindset challenges you overcame since starting your business?
Rita Suzanne [00:29:41]:
Yeah. So when I started my business, 10 years ago, my, first coach friend, she said to me, you have a mindset problem. Now mind you, I just came out of corporate. I had zero clues what mindset was. I didn't even know what that meant. And a lot of people didn't. You know, back then, it wasn't as widely talked about as it is now, And I I really didn't know what what she meant. And I think what is the hardest is really for a lot of people is comparing themselves to other people.
Rita Suzanne [00:30:22]:
I see a lot of my clients doing that, and so I always tell them to kinda put on those blinders and, like, really don't look at anybody else, and compare yourself. Like, initially, right, you have to do your your your comparison, right, for for fun, you know, just for figuring out who your competition is. But then after that, don't really pay attention to them because what I see happening is we look at our competition and we're like, I want my website just like them. I want my services just like them. I want I'm gonna price just like them except lower. And that is often one of the recipes for disaster as well. Right? Because not only is this client charging less than this person over here who is perceived to be doing so well, but you have probably 10 to 50 other people pricing themselves lower as well. Therefore, it just brings down the market value of whatever you guys are selling.
Rita Suzanne [00:31:31]:
And just over time, it just depletes the value of what you do. And, so I am always trying to recommend that people don't base their prices on what somebody else is charging.
Laura Kåmark [00:31:46]:
I think that's great advice. What would you say you're doing that's different in the industry? How are you making waves and being bold?
Rita Suzanne [00:31:57]:
I think one thing that I do really differently is I speak my mind. I just really have this approach of not really caring what other people think at this point. You know? Just telling it how I feel like it is even if it doesn't really go with the flow of what everybody else says it is, and that's fine. I just I'm just gonna keep doing what I feel is right. And and I'm only basing this on experience, you know, and and what I see oftentimes is you get these people coming out who've taken maybe one YouTube course, who who are now experts in business telling everybody else how to run a business, and it just baffles my mind. And so I just really would tell anybody listening to really just be mindful of who you hire. You know? And, so I think the thing that I'm doing is just speaking up for, for other people and and just telling it how it is and just, you know, not falling falling what everybody says is the right thing to do. And, yeah, you just gotta do what's right for you.
Laura Kåmark [00:33:20]:
I love that. I would love to know because I know I've been hearing from a lot of clients, 20 fourteen's kind of a tough year. I think we saw this coming. It is an election year for those of us in the United States. Where are you finding your clients mostly? What marketing are you doing that's really bringing in those leads that are converting to paying clients?
Rita Suzanne [00:33:43]:
Yeah. So I still am getting referrals from old clients even though I feel like they have obviously, it's like that river kind of runs dry after a certain period of time. I still have clients who come to me even still after, you know, me stopping web design, starting web designs.
Laura Kåmark [00:34:04]:
So, you know,
Rita Suzanne [00:34:05]:
they still, they still come back to me for, you know, projects here and there. But, just seeing me online, I I sometimes, I don't even know where clients come from because they just purchase things, and I'm like, shoot. I I don't even know where this one came from because they're not on my email list. I don't see them on my social media. I don't really know where they come from. So I I just am not really sure all the time where people come from because I am like I say, I'm marketing everywhere because I'm repurposing and I'm doing a lot of things. But I also do a lot of networking with people. Like, through my podcast, I'm networking, so people are re you know, hearing about me through my podcast.
Rita Suzanne [00:34:52]:
I do my local networking, and then, I've done, like, some local speaking and stuff like that as well. So, yeah, I don't know. I do feel like at this point, you need to have what I call, like, a 3 tiered approach to your marketing. Okay? And so that means you you need to local, you need to network locally. Whether that's just, like, once or twice a month, like, really just find an event that works for you and do something locally, and connect with other people. And then you need to be on social media, again, delegating, repurposing, doing something. Don't spend, like, your whole life on social media, but but spend a little bit of time on there, maybe an hour a day, worth of content, and it shouldn't take you you shouldn't be rerecording things to try to make it perfect. Just get something out there and just do it.
Rita Suzanne [00:35:51]:
And then the 3rd tier is your online marketing. And so what that means is, like I mentioned earlier, your SEO, your Google My Business, your website, and your email, all of those things kind of are together, and they kind of run together and kind of, you know, drive that online presence, and you need to make sure that those all of those things are kind of working cohesively. And, yeah. So
Laura Kåmark [00:36:21]:
So as a online business, I mean, my business is fully online. It's rare. I work with local clients. Mhmm. I don't know that I have a Google My Business because I don't really wanna put my address on the map for that. What do you recommend for online? Fully you know, a 100% online business owners in terms of Google My Business.
Rita Suzanne [00:36:42]:
I mean, I'm still I'm fully online as well, but I just have a virtual address that I use for my business. And you can still do and and Google My Business is still beneficial for a solely online business because it helps you get found online. It gives you more credibility online as well because even if you're not a local business, it's going to help you Google's gonna see you out there. Right? It's going to help you rank a little bit better. You're gonna have be able to get more, reviews up of people up there. So one approach that you can do with Google My Business is to ask people to submit reviews. But let's say you have a bunch of testimonials, and this is something I need to do or have my assistant do. But let's say you have a bunch of testimonials.
Rita Suzanne [00:37:36]:
You can take a screenshot of those testimonials and upload those as images to your Google My Business, and they'll still they're still there giving you credibility even though they're not added as that, image or as that actual physical written, thing. And then so every week, just try try to go in there and add more content. So one thing that I do with my Google My Business profile is I use SocialBee as my scheduler, which also an AppSumo purchase. It was a good one.
Laura Kåmark [00:38:13]:
Lucky. I I got that just a couple years ago.
Rita Suzanne [00:38:17]:
So, I and I love and I love Social b, but so Social b connects to your Google profile. So every time that I have a post that goes out, it goes to my Google profile as well because I want to then share with Google. I have new content coming out, and it goes to Google as well. So we're we're gonna continuously do that because we're sharing all of our new stuff. And just like another tidbit I'm gonna share with everybody, this is a little insider. But, so on LinkedIn, you can do newsletters. Right? And so if you already have your email newsletter that you're sending out, what I did recently was I created a newsletter for LinkedIn, and it's called mom's guide to marketing. So I created it on new on LinkedIn, and almost instantly, I had, like, a 100 people sign up for it.
Rita Suzanne [00:39:20]:
The good thing about it is the emails that I or the newsletters that I share on my LinkedIn go to not only their feed, but they go to people's inboxes. And so they go to the subscriber's inbox even though it's on they subscribed on LinkedIn, and then they can read it on their in in their inbox. And then, obviously, it's gonna click them out to take them over to LinkedIn to read the rest of it. However, that means you, 1, you don't get access to their their email address. However, you're still getting in their inbox, and you don't necessarily you don't have to market it at all. LinkedIn is marketing to other people to get you signed up, to get you subscribers, basically, to get you more exposure. You can include links in there, and you can get them subscribed and and signed up in other ways to your business. So, again, when you say, like, how are you get I have no idea because I have all of these these revenue, like, these all these different ways of marketing that I'm not really sure how people come in because I'm marketing pretty much everywhere.
Laura Kåmark [00:40:36]:
Oh, I love that. You have I have so many, like, ideas percolating right now that I'm very excited to start implementing after this completed this thing. We I could sit here and talk to you all day. This is so much fun. I love talking all things website, tech, marketing. This is beyond fun. I do have one question that I ask everyone who comes on the podcast, and that is what is one piece of advice you would give to someone when they are growing and scaling their business to help them be bolder, be louder, and make waves?
Rita Suzanne [00:41:10]:
I think that the one thing I would I tell people right away is to get help, like, to hire out almost immediately if you can. And I think that that's one thing that people do not do fast enough is to hire. And especially if you're trying to scale, you can either spend time or you can spend money. And so if you're trying to scale, then you need to spend the money in order to scale up.
Laura Kåmark [00:41:45]:
I love that. I think that's such great advice. Rita, thank you so much for coming on the show today. Can you tell our listeners where they could come find you, hang out with you, sign up for your email list, sign up for your LinkedIn mom's marketing tip newsletter?
Rita Suzanne [00:41:59]:
Yeah. Definitely. So my website is ritasuzanne.com. My podcast website is momownedandoperated,.com. And then on all the socials, I am @ritasuzannestrategy, and that's it. I'm over mostly on, mostly on Instagram, but, you know, I'm everywhere pretty much.
Laura Kåmark [00:42:22]:
Love that. I will link all those up in the show notes. Thank you so much for coming on today. This was such a fun conversation.
Rita Suzanne [00:42:27]:
Thank you so much for having me.
Laura Kåmark [00:42:29]:
Thanks so much for listening to this week's episode. Be sure to check out the show notes at laurakamark.com/podcast. And if you're ready to get more sales without more work, save time so you can focus on the work that you do love, and automate and simplify the back end of your business, Grab my free resource, how to get more sales from your email list on autopilot. Head on over to laurakamark.com/email. And don't forget to follow the show and leave a review in your favorite podcast app. It helps get this show in front of other business owners who want to grow and scale with ease. Thanks again for listening. I'll see you in the next episode.
Laura Kåmark [00:43:11]:
Bye now.
