The Secrets of Brand Consistency with Vicki Winkler
Marketing consistency is crucial for small businesses and nonprofits, yet many overlook its importance. RJ Parrish sits down with Vicki Winkler, a seasoned marketing expert with over 35 years of experience, to explore the evolution of marketing and the challenges faced by modern entrepreneurs. Vicki shares her journey from working with Saturn Corporation to founding her own marketing firm, highlighting the need for a strong brand identity and the dangers of inconsistency across communication channels. The conversation emphasizes the value of resilience and adaptability in business, particularly during challenging times like the COVID-19 pandemic. Vicki encourages entrepreneurs to embrace creative thinking, seek outside perspectives, and remain open to pivoting their strategies to thrive in an ever-changing landscape.
Takeaways:
- Consistency in branding across all touchpoints is crucial for business success.
- Entrepreneurs should remain open to pivoting and exploring new business opportunities.
- It's important to seek outside perspectives to gain insights into brand messaging.
- Effective communication can significantly enhance client relationships and drive business growth.
- Consider creating structured packages for services instead of offering everything as custom.
Connect with Vicki:
Transcript
If you're a solopreneur or small business owner who wants to achieve business success without sacrificing your relationships, well being, or happiness, you are in the right place.
RJ Parrish:This is the entrepreneur Breakthrough Lounge podcast, where your host, certified business coach and media strategist RJ Parrish, and successful guest entrepreneurs share their experiences and insights to help you succeed without making the same mistakes they did.
RJ Parrish:Please enjoy the show.
:Welcome to the Entrepreneur Breakthrough Lounge podcast.
:My name is RJ, and I'm thrilled to have you here.
:Our mission is to inspire and empower entrepreneurs, digital service providers, consultants, coaches, creatives, and small business owners who are building businesses that allow them to live on their own terms.
:I'm your host, RJ Parrish.
:My guest for today is Vicki Winkler.
:Vicki is the owner of the marketing shop, a firm that offers outsourced graphic design and marketing services for a variety of industries, including nonprofits, medical practices, professional services, manufacturing, and plenty more.
:Vicki has 35 years of experience in the marketing field, and I'm thrilled to have her here.
:Vicki, thank you so much for coming on the show.
Vicki Winkler:Thank you so much.
Vicki Winkler:I'm super excited.
Vicki Winkler:Always glad to talk about all things marketing and just really excited for first time on your show.
:Yeah, absolutely.
:So, before we get into the details of marketing and brand, which I know is a huge area of specialization for you, I want to hear more about your journey.
:So, 35 years of marketing.
:Take us back to the start.
:How did you first get introduced to marketing, and what did that look like for you?
Vicki Winkler:Right, right.
Vicki Winkler:Well, thank you.
Vicki Winkler:Yeah.
Vicki Winkler:So I started out with.
Vicki Winkler:I went to college for marketing.
Vicki Winkler:I got my undergrad in marketing.
Vicki Winkler:I got an MBA in marketing management.
Vicki Winkler:And so I kind of always did that from the start.
Vicki Winkler:Well, what was fortunate about my career is I worked for.
Vicki Winkler:I went to.
Vicki Winkler:It used to be called GMI back then.
Vicki Winkler:It's now called Kettering University.
Vicki Winkler:So I had an intern with General Motors.
Vicki Winkler:And when I finished my degree, I was able to go right into working for Saturn Corporation.
Vicki Winkler:And for those of you that remember Saturn, you know, it was this brand new thing, Spring Hill, Tennessee.
Vicki Winkler:So I was able to actually work on location in Spring Hill, Tennessee.
Vicki Winkler:Got to see the first car roll off the line, and it was really what formed all of my kind of thought process on target marketing and just really about branding, because that was what Saturn.
Vicki Winkler:I was actually the logo cop for a while when I was at Saturn.
Vicki Winkler:So it was my job to make sure that people didn't use the logo in a way that they shouldn't.
Vicki Winkler:And so we had to sometimes delicately call places in Spring Hill, Tennessee that were trying to do the right thing and using the Saturn logo in various ways that we had to say, you, you really can't use the logo like that.
Vicki Winkler:So that was, you know, that was really where I got my start.
Vicki Winkler:So I had, you know, I'd worked there for eleven years and then I, you know, I decided in my early thirties that I wanted to do something bigger with my life.
Vicki Winkler:So I quit my career, I sold my house, and I joined the Peace Corps and I was in Nicaragua as a small business consultant for a short time.
Vicki Winkler:And amazing experience.
Vicki Winkler:You know, it really, it changed how I felt just about myself and about work and about others and kind of just globally.
Vicki Winkler:So when I came back from the Peace Corps, kind of armed with that passion to do something more with my life and career, I went to work for a nonprofit organization working with adults with disabilities and in vocational rehab.
Vicki Winkler:And that was where I landed for five years, being their marketing director.
Vicki Winkler:And so I had been there for a while and then I formed the marketing shop.
Vicki Winkler:And that was just a little over 21 years ago and have since then.
Vicki Winkler:I have two companies.
Vicki Winkler:I have the marketing shop and Stillwater branding and design, which are both related to branding and marketing.
Vicki Winkler:And here I am today, still going strong with the business 21 years later and just really, really love the field of marketing.
:Yeah.
:How much do you feel marketing has changed?
:Because I think the front end answer is you jump to it and like, well, everything's changed.
:But I think that's a very superficial answer and I think I'm curious.
:For someone who's been in a practitioner prior to the Internet really becoming a prevalent use case for marketing, how has it changed from your point of view?
Vicki Winkler:Yeah, I mean, obviously it's changed from more print based to being electronic, electronic media.
Vicki Winkler:And definitely over the past 20 years.
Vicki Winkler:But I also do feel like people have become a little less concerned about their overall brand.
Vicki Winkler:They will just kind of go and get a logo done and not realize or really think about how important that logo is.
Vicki Winkler:And it's not just a logo.
Vicki Winkler:It's going to be on all forms of electronic media, it's going to be on shirts, going to be.
Vicki Winkler:And it's more than just that logo too.
Vicki Winkler:It's everything about the brand.
Vicki Winkler:It's, it's the colors, it's a theme, it's the, the graphical layouts, it's the form of photography, it's how you answer the phone, it's how you write an email, it's how your email marketing, your social media, your print, your letterhead.
Vicki Winkler:It's about how you conduct yourself in a Zoom call.
Vicki Winkler:It's what your background look looks like.
Vicki Winkler:It's how professional you sound, you know, how you respond, how you deal with an issue or a problem or complaint.
Vicki Winkler:So all of that needs to be consistent.
Vicki Winkler:And so I think that there's been less importance placed on that because everything is so immediate and electronic and that people, it's easy to fire off a text so quickly and not really think about what you're saying.
Vicki Winkler:And so if you're texting with a client, your brand personality needs to come out in that text message as well.
Vicki Winkler:And so we forget about that as we're doing things so quickly and we're firing off an email and we're doing this and we're doing that to really kind of stop and really think about, you know, or do an analysis.
Vicki Winkler:You know, we have, we actually have a tool for our clients that is the four touch points of brand consistency.
Vicki Winkler:And it kind of, it's, it's, rather than just getting like a number at the end, which it does give you a number, but it really helps you to think through all of those other things that encompass what is my brand.
Vicki Winkler:So how it's changed, I think, is that there's been, there is less thought sometimes that goes into all of those other aspects of what a brand really is for a company.
:I agree with all of that.
:And I think when you, at least when I look at, my assumption is that with how things have kind of blended together over the last 20 years, there's less of a distinction for a business now in the operator or the owner acting as themselves, a person, an individual, and acting as owner of the business, where they blend pretty seamlessly back and forth, especially if your business is small or if you're a solopreneur, which isn't always a bad thing, because I think it's easier for people to remember people than a brand so that you get this sort of marriage in personal branding.
:But I do think people kind of, they shortchange themselves because they start thinking of themselves as the business rather than creating an identity for an organization that exists out of them.
:So they shortchange themselves and make it really hard to scale beyond that initial sort of like launch or solopreneur stage.
Vicki Winkler:Yeah.
Vicki Winkler:And I think that that's important too.
Vicki Winkler:The point you made, if a business really is looking to scale and to grow beyond, who is that, that face of the company?
Vicki Winkler:Who is that owner that having, having a really strong brand identity for the company is important.
Vicki Winkler:And now I also do think, though, that there's companies that have scaled very successfully still having the owner, the large, who's at the helm, having a real sense of strong personal branding.
Vicki Winkler:So, you know, that really does depend.
Vicki Winkler:It really does depend on who is that face of the company.
Vicki Winkler:And there's times where it might be a good idea to not have that person be at, you know, really the face that people see.
Vicki Winkler:And then sometimes that person is so strong and so part of the brand of that company that it can really be a great business tactic to have them and their personality be part of the brand.
Vicki Winkler:But I would say that it's, it doesn't happen in a lot of cases, that it's, it's rare to see that.
Vicki Winkler:And when it does, it can be a perfect combination.
Vicki Winkler:But you really have to be, be able to recognize that, hey, maybe I shouldn't be the face of the company because it's just, it somehow just doesn't jive quite with the brand and how we want to scale.
Vicki Winkler:So it, I would say that it really does depend, but there's times where it can be a really powerful way to.
Vicki Winkler:A really powerful tactic.
:Yeah, I think the cases where it's done the best are when it's done very intentionally.
:It's not just a by accident thing where the owner has this really vibrant personality and they just copy that to the business and everything flourishes.
:It's always very defined where you look at certain brands that have done very, very, very well because they had a powerful personality at the helm.
:A great example, I think, and I think one of the, probably the best marketers of our generation is Ryan Reynolds, most known for his movies.
:But he has a marketing business and he took his personality and injected that into advertising campaigns and created essentially a formula where when you see something that his agency produces maximum effort, it is immediately clear that it was their work because it's incredibly consistent.
:It's sassy, it's sarcastic, it's kind of irreverent, and it has this humor injected into it, but it didn't happen by accident.
:And then you have the personality at the top with the face tied to it and it just solidifies it all together.
:Where I think a lot of smaller companies, they're just like, it's the owner just kind of going about their way of doing things and just whatever happens, happens.
Vicki Winkler:Yeah.
:So in your experience, when small businesses, nonprofits are thinking about their brand, or perhaps not thinking about it, what are the things you see happening over and over again that are sabotaging them.
Vicki Winkler:I think probably the biggest thing is a lack of consistency, that, you know, it's really a good idea to get an outside perspective, have somebody who's not ingrained in every day of the business to, to have that broad look, that broad stroke of, you know, how are we doing?
Vicki Winkler:And to really get into every aspect of communication, every touch point that an outsider looking in looks at this organization.
Vicki Winkler:Now that's not to say that every memo that every piece of paper that goes out, that every email needs to be completely on brand, but in general, to have most of the things that you do, the biggest one is that when you interact with somebody, maybe at an in person function or in Zoom, however it might be, and you hand them your business card or they've met you and they talk to you and then they go to your website and they think to themselves, is this the same company that in person that I just talked to?
Vicki Winkler:So real breakdown in brand consistency.
Vicki Winkler:And so I think that that is probably the biggest thing and it's not.
Vicki Winkler:And I often say, you know, we don't have to do things 100% because nobody can do things 100%.
Vicki Winkler:So, but you want to get to a good 85%.
Vicki Winkler:So when it comes to branding and brand consistency, change the things you can to make sure that you're consistent.
Vicki Winkler:And the big thing is, is your website.
Vicki Winkler:And if your website is not consistent, then that needs to be fixed because that is oftentimes the face of your company.
Vicki Winkler:And also, too, there's a lot of things that we can do when it comes to marketing our companies and our businesses.
Vicki Winkler:And so I always say, choose a few things that you and do them really well as opposed to trying to spread yourself too thin and do too many things, but doing them mediocre, it's a lot more important.
Vicki Winkler:And sometimes we have to stop and look, and I'm guilty of this, too.
Vicki Winkler:In my own company, I kind of get the shiny Penny syndrome where I'm like, oh my gosh, that sounds like a great idea, let's do this and let's go up and do this.
Vicki Winkler:And all of a sudden I kind of step back and I'm like, we're doing a bunch of things, but we're doing a mediocre, we need to rein this in.
Vicki Winkler:We need to look at some of the core things and decide we're just going to have to let these things go.
Vicki Winkler:We're just going to have to stop doing them.
Vicki Winkler:And we have done programs where we have put a lot of money, a lot of time, a lot of effort, and it's not brought us in a lot.
Vicki Winkler:And we just have to say, you know what?
Vicki Winkler:We need to just stop doing it.
Vicki Winkler:We need to consider it a lesson learned.
Vicki Winkler:It didn't work, or it's not working.
Vicki Winkler:And sometimes it's hard as you're investing a lot and you had high hopes at the beginning of whatever it might be, a social media campaign, a LinkedIn campaign, a government contracting, and you kind of put all this effort in and you think, oh, my gosh, but we've been putting all this effort in.
Vicki Winkler:We haven't really gotten anything.
Vicki Winkler:It seems like such a shame just to say we're going to stop doing that.
Vicki Winkler:But sometimes that's the right answer.
Vicki Winkler:And so you need to stop periodically and take a look at, okay, what are all the things I'm doing here?
Vicki Winkler:And, hey, I'm not doing a, b or c really well, maybe we need to stop doing them.
Vicki Winkler:And let's focus on, you know, d, e, and f, and let's figure out how we can do those really well, and let's just let these other ones, you know, fall off and let's just focus on the things that, you know, that we can do really well.
:Yeah, I both agree and disagree with certain points of that.
:And that I agree with is when you realize you've concluded definitively that something is just not working out, time, money, whatever, that it's okay to stop.
:However, I think where people can sometimes fall into the cycle of they started 19 things, they don't see any of them through, and then they say none of it worked.
:You need to have criteria that you fall back on to determine whether something's working.
:So in the realm of marketing, there's a lot of different ways that work.
:In marketing, it all works.
: annel they use is blogging in: :It still works.
:Does that mean that if you start a blog tomorrow, it's going to provide you a bunch of leads?
:Probably not.
:No clue?
:Maybe.
:But the point is, is your approach right?
:Is the market right?
:Are you doing it well enough?
:Are you doing it often enough?
:Are you measuring the results and adapting accordingly?
:Are you following best practices?
:If you run an ad campaign, there's a ton of variables that you need to check to see if that campaign was a success or not.
:And if you just throw up one set of creative and one set of copy, and you just targeted out, brought, like, you boost a post and you're like, Facebook ads are broken.
:They don't work well because you approached it like an amateur, and that can step on some people's toes.
:But the reality is there's a lot of science behind this stuff.
:There's a lot of effort and testing and research that has to happen for things to work effectively.
:And I think the biggest danger is when something is performing broadly well and there's a low skill barrier for it to perform.
: For example, back in, like,: :And now that is not the case.
:It's wildly more expensive.
:It's much more competitive.
:You need a much more thorough approach to see those kind of results, if they're even, if that output is even viable anymore.
:But people don't have that mapped out, which is why it's important to know when it's the time for you to stop and to find someone who knows more about it than you.
Vicki Winkler:Right?
Vicki Winkler:Right.
Vicki Winkler:Yeah, I totally agree is that there are lots of variables.
Vicki Winkler:And so I have a great example.
Vicki Winkler:I was talking to someone just today on a Zoom call, and he was doing some sales work for his own company, and he had the right target market, he had the right message, but it was the way he was delivering it.
Vicki Winkler:And so for him, it was a simple thing is he was telling people after he would meet with a prospect, he was like, well, you can go to my website, and I got some things on there that you can poke around.
Vicki Winkler:So basically, he was kind of telling him, go diy it.
Vicki Winkler:You go ahead and fumble around my website.
Vicki Winkler:He said he changed his tactic and instead he would send.
Vicki Winkler:He took kind of the things on his website and he turned them into little PDF sales booklets.
Vicki Winkler:And it was just a nice, like, little cover and had a little nice about me.
Vicki Winkler:And then it explained what they had talked about, and he would email that to them after instead of just saying, go to my website.
Vicki Winkler:He said it propelled his business.
Vicki Winkler:Now he was thinking he was going after the wrong target market, that his message was wrong, that what he was trying to sell was maybe not viable.
Vicki Winkler:Maybe he had to change his packages.
Vicki Winkler:All he needed to do was change the way he was communicating and the way he was putting together the materials to send to them.
Vicki Winkler:He said, he said, all of a sudden, he propelled his business.
Vicki Winkler:And so just to your point is that there might be something in there that one little change of that can all of a sudden make all the difference.
Vicki Winkler:So another good reason to always bring in an outside perspective and ask someone else.
Vicki Winkler:Ask someone who's in your target market.
Vicki Winkler:You know, hey, I, you know, a trusted, a trusted client who is willing to give you an honest answer can be one of the most valuable methods of doing research.
Vicki Winkler:And I've done this before.
Vicki Winkler:I mean, we went to our top clients, people that I personally knew recently, and asked, why do you work with the marketing shop?
Vicki Winkler:What's important to you?
Vicki Winkler:Every single one of them said that, you make my life easier.
Vicki Winkler:I mean, we kind of knew that intuitively because we tried to do that, but until it was really articulated, we were like, there's the message.
Vicki Winkler:So that's what makes us different from another graphic design and marketing firm.
Vicki Winkler:And so that's something that now I talk about all the time, and people are like, that makes sense.
Vicki Winkler:Like, yep, that's it.
Vicki Winkler:I get it.
Vicki Winkler:That's what I need.
Vicki Winkler:You know, because it's, it's.
Vicki Winkler:I don't, I don't want to do this anymore, and I want to hire out to have it done.
Vicki Winkler:So, yeah, so it's important to really do a little bit of research and figure out, okay, well, let's not throw the baby out with the bath water.
Vicki Winkler:Let's really look at why this might not be working, and a tweak might be all you need.
:Yeah, that's fantastic.
:When you think about a marketing business, if you ask what the most important thing is to a client, the assumption would normally be return on investment.
:That's usually what comes to mind, having a tangible return on whatever that is.
:While that is important, you want to make sure you're getting results for clients, that is important.
:But looking at kind of the experience you've had, what do you think for having the marketing shop for 21 years?
:You said, what do you think is the most important skill you've developed over that time that's helped you keep things going?
Vicki Winkler:Yeah.
Vicki Winkler:Oh, I think it's resilience.
Vicki Winkler:I think it's just pivoting when you need to pivot.
Vicki Winkler:And, you know, Covid, I mean, obviously, I've had my business 21 years, so all kinds of fluctuations and, you know, starting to say, you know what?
Vicki Winkler:Maybe we need to do things a little differently, you know, and not being afraid to try something that might not work.
Vicki Winkler:We tried.
Vicki Winkler:We tried something a year and a half ago that somebody had said, oh, Vicky, this would be a great, great for you guys to do.
Vicki Winkler:So we went, we got certified in this certain area.
Vicki Winkler:I'm not going to mention it because I don't want anybody listening to hear us saying anything bad about what we did.
Vicki Winkler:But it was, they said, oh, this is, this is going to be great.
Vicki Winkler:You should do this.
Vicki Winkler:And we tried it for a year and a half and we got almost no return.
Vicki Winkler:And so we had to say, okay, well, you know, we're just not going to do that.
Vicki Winkler:We're just going to need to pivot and we're going to need to try some new things.
Vicki Winkler:And so always looking at what are new markets that we can look at, what are new offerings that we can do, you know, putting our offerings into set packages instead of always saying, you know, oh, everything we do is custom.
Vicki Winkler:You know, it used to be everything's just custom.
Vicki Winkler:And then people are asking for packages.
Vicki Winkler:Let's try that.
Vicki Winkler:Let's see how that goes.
Vicki Winkler:Let's try to put some offers together.
Vicki Winkler:You know, hey, if we do a, B and C will give you a discount because we're doing it this way.
Vicki Winkler:And we actually had tried that many years ago and it worked for a little while and then it kind of stopped working.
Vicki Winkler:And so it's okay to revisit things, too, because times change.
Vicki Winkler:And in 21 years, things have changed.
Vicki Winkler:Things are going to continue to change.
Vicki Winkler:And always looking for ways that you can pivot and to not be afraid to take some risk, but to do the research, ask around, find out as much as you can about something, a campaign or whatever it might be that you're thinking of doing, and then get about 80% there and then take the leap because you're never going to find anything that's going to be 100% guarantee that you're absolutely certain it's going to work.
Vicki Winkler:So sometimes there's a little bit of a leap of faith to do it.
Vicki Winkler:And again, though, at the same time, don't do something that you got a mortgage, second mortgage, your house, that you have to take out a huge loan that you're just not enough sure about.
Vicki Winkler:Because I have seen people really lose their shirts on things and had to close their businesses down because they didn't have enough research done, enough investigation.
Vicki Winkler:But at the same time, I think if you get 80% there, then you're good to take that leap to take some risk.
:Was there ever a season in the 21 years where things were really dark days, rock bottom, things were bottoming out, nothing was working.
:Do you have any of those seasons?
Vicki Winkler:Well, fortunately, I have to say that I've never had it that bad where I have thought, this is it.
Vicki Winkler:I just have to throw in the towel.
Vicki Winkler:I would say that the hardest time we went through was Covid as it was with many businesses now.
Vicki Winkler:We were fortunate that we were already in the business that we were doing.
Vicki Winkler:We were working with several companies that were in critical industries and creating signs and posters and things that they had to place in their business.
Vicki Winkler:We were able to continue to operate, but we lost a lot of clients.
Vicki Winkler:Didn't lose them, but a lot of our clients were not operating.
Vicki Winkler:And so I had to, I had to lay off employees.
Vicki Winkler:We had to get a PPP loan, and we had to, Vicki had to dig really deep into how much do I want to keep this business going?
Vicki Winkler:And I knew that I did, and there was no end in sight.
Vicki Winkler:We didn't know how long it was going to last.
Vicki Winkler:And I was the naysayer when they said there's a worldwide pandemic.
Vicki Winkler:I remember literally having the conversation with some of my employees, and she said, you know, they're calling this a worldwide pandemic.
Vicki Winkler:I laughed out loud.
Vicki Winkler:I said, that's crazy.
Vicki Winkler:I said, you know, they're so dramatic about this thing.
Vicki Winkler:Like, it's not.
Vicki Winkler:And then it happened.
Vicki Winkler:And then days later, the governor came out and said, you know, we're shutting the state down.
Vicki Winkler:And it was a devastating, it was a really hard day, you know, to have to, have to say to my employees, I don't know what's going to happen.
Vicki Winkler:I don't know if we're going to make it.
Vicki Winkler:I don't know if you all are going to have jobs.
Vicki Winkler:We don't know how long this is going to last.
Vicki Winkler:And so it was hard, but I pretty quickly in my heart, thought to myself, I've been through things before in my business, and we're going to be okay because I have faith that it always works out.
Vicki Winkler:And somehow this is going to work out.
Vicki Winkler:I don't know what are my company's going to look like when this is all said and done, but we're going to, we're going to.
Vicki Winkler:And so it was funny because one of my employees and I were like, okay, well, what's plan b?
Vicki Winkler:We said, okay, well, we're going to figure out plan b, and then we're going to figure out plan C.
Vicki Winkler:And we're going to figure out, and if we have to start opening, open a dog grooming business, because plan a and plan b didn't work, the plan c is going to be the dog grooming business.
Vicki Winkler:And so we kind of have a little bit of fun with it, but we had to have that mental pivot where we said, okay, this is it.
Vicki Winkler:This is what we have to deal with.
Vicki Winkler:And no matter what we're going to figure out, we're going to figure this out.
Vicki Winkler:And we made it through, and here we are.
Vicki Winkler:And in fact, the year after Covid was one of the best years that we'd ever had.
Vicki Winkler:And I think it was more because of our perseverance and to just to get through that time.
: So thinking about, I think: :Like, that was an extreme example, and it's so relatable because we were all faced to go through it.
:It's weird to think about now, four years later, where it feels sort of like a bad dream.
:When you think back to how uncertain everything was whenever you hit it into a really bad stretch, that's kind of how it feels every time.
:Whenever you're like, I don't know if I'm going to come out of this.
:I don't know how long I can hold my breath or how long I can let this go on before I need to get out of this, before I need to make decisions.
:And I think there's something to be learned from.
:If you can go through something major that affects everyone, the whole world was impacted, that the next time something comes around, that if you can just wait it out and don't quit and you get a little bit creative and you make some changes and you don't get overly emotional about how you get through it, I think then we can weather most things.
:So when it comes to changes that you've made, to how you think about things or beliefs that have changed over time, is there anything that you used to believe to be true about business or success or marketing that you just realized wasn't true?
Vicki Winkler:I mean, I guess it really does kind of relate to the, you know, the getting through the tough times.
Vicki Winkler:And so I think that early on in my business, things would happen, and I would, I would think this might be it.
Vicki Winkler:Like, I just, I don't know.
Vicki Winkler:I just don't know if I'm going to be able to do this or that.
Vicki Winkler:You have to stay doing the way you've always done things.
Vicki Winkler:And I think that that's something that I have learned over time, is to, I mean, we're in a creative, I'm in a creative industry, but to get creative and I, and to reach out for help, you know, I had right before we got on this call, I was on a Zoom call with a dear client of mine that is.
Vicki Winkler:So we went through some rebranding for her a number of years ago, and she's in an industry that is really changing.
Vicki Winkler:And she was talking, and I could tell that she was feeling down.
Vicki Winkler:She just wasn't quite sure how she was going to get through the low period that they're going through.
Vicki Winkler:And we just talked about some ideas, and I told her about some things going on in our business and some things that we've experienced.
Vicki Winkler:And at the end of the end of the conversation, we had a couple ideas of some things that she can do that she hadn't really thought of.
Vicki Winkler:And to your point, which I loved earlier, is doing some things that she has done, but doing them a little bit differently.
Vicki Winkler:And by the end of the call, she said, I'm just.
Vicki Winkler:Thanks for talking about, you know, your business and what's going on and being transparent with me with some of the things that you're going through and just talking through, because I don't.
Vicki Winkler:She said, I don't have anyone to talk to about it this way.
Vicki Winkler:You know, she always has to put on the face in front of her clients of, everything's good, everything's great.
Vicki Winkler:My employees, it's all wonderful.
Vicki Winkler:And so it was for her to be able to let her hair down and be able to have a really frank conversation with me.
Vicki Winkler:And so I, and so I encourage people to do that, to find, find your tribe, find some people that you can go to that you could take a walk with and, and just talk about your business that you can.
Vicki Winkler:I have a, I have another friend that owns her own business, and we have, we have partnered up over 20 years in all kinds of capacities, and we're on instant messaging, and sometimes she'll just be.
Vicki Winkler:It'll come across, and I haven't seen, I haven't talked to her in three months.
Vicki Winkler:How are you doing?
Vicki Winkler:And I'll be like, you know what?
Vicki Winkler:I'm having a really rough day.
Vicki Winkler:And she'll be like, you know what?
Vicki Winkler:I am, too.
Vicki Winkler:What's going on?
Vicki Winkler:I just had to.
Vicki Winkler:I had to let somebody go.
Vicki Winkler:Oh, you know, that's tough.
Vicki Winkler:I know.
Vicki Winkler:So really being able to find those people because creative things come out of somebody's, somebody else that someone else has gone through, and we're not unique.
Vicki Winkler:We're really not.
Vicki Winkler:And the problems we're going through, as much as we feel they're so personal to us and that no one else is experiencing them, there is other people.
Vicki Winkler:And to reach out because their answers are out there.
Vicki Winkler:They really are.
:Yeah.
:So core theme of this show of, I think they're where all of us are struggling with something.
:I mean, it's tough.
:You get beat up all day, every day.
:And there are a lot of great things about owning your own business and the freedoms that come with it, the earning potential, the chasing something that's yours.
:But sometimes it feels like you're just getting kicked in the teeth day after day.
:And it can be really tough, especially when you are doing it on your own.
:So I would echo what you said, because people hear it.
:Like, you go talk to someone, find someone to talk to.
:Open up.
:Actually do it, though.
:Actually reach out to someone, because I think it takes someone being willing to go first and express that things are not okay, and suddenly people have permission to actually share what's going on, rather than just sort of maintaining the.
:The facade of like, yep, everything's great.
:Couldn't be better.
:You know, it's all looking up.
Vicki Winkler:Yeah.
:It doesn't.
:You can be grateful for what you have and things have things going well and also acknowledge the things that are not going well.
Vicki Winkler:Right.
:That's okay.
Vicki Winkler:Right.
Vicki Winkler:And that's why I always in anybody I talk to, you know, I say, hey, it might.
Vicki Winkler:It might not be about marketing, anything about your business.
Vicki Winkler:You know, if you just want to have a brainstorming session and talk about things, that's what it was today with this.
Vicki Winkler:With this gal.
Vicki Winkler:Whether we'll do anything from a marketing perspective together in the near future, I don't know.
Vicki Winkler:But, you know, she needed to talk through a few things, and that's okay.
Vicki Winkler:So, you know, I always try to be open to that for anybody that just needs it, because I know how powerful that is for me.
:Yeah.
:So to wrap up, if you had to take the summary of your experience so far and distill it down into, like, one tip for an entrepreneur to walk away with, what would that be?
Vicki Winkler:I would say that always be thinking about plan b.
Vicki Winkler:I mean, that doesn't mean, oh, my gosh, my business is going to fail and I need plan b.
Vicki Winkler:It's always be open to other options of, well, gosh, you know what?
Vicki Winkler:Like, my employee and I said, gosh, maybe we could do a dog grooming business.
Vicki Winkler:If that was what we had to do, that's what we would do.
Vicki Winkler:So just always being open, thinking outside the box, taking some time, stepping away, having some quiet time to really analyse and think about, okay, what's going on and then say, okay, well, if this didn't work, what maybe could I do in my business and dream and think about that?
Vicki Winkler:Because those dreams just take small steps to sometimes become reality.
Vicki Winkler:And sometimes you do.
Vicki Winkler:You need to pivot in your business and it's okay.
Vicki Winkler:It's okay to do that.
Vicki Winkler:Your business is not going to look, if you like me, if you've had your business for 21 years or five years or seven years, it's not going to look the same.
Vicki Winkler:It's just not.
Vicki Winkler:Things are always going to be changing and always be okay with that, that it's okay that it changed and it maybe wasn't what I envisioned it to be, but it's something different and probably better.
:Vicki, how can people get in touch with you?
Vicki Winkler:Probably the best way be just go to our website at www.
Vicki Winkler:Dot Tms marketing or send me an email directly Vickyvic Yms marketing amazing.
:Vicki, thank you so much for coming on.
Vicki Winkler:Great, awesome.
Vicki Winkler:Thank you for having me.
RJ Parrish:Thank you for joining us in the entrepreneur breakthrough lounge.
RJ Parrish:We hope you find your time has been well spent.
RJ Parrish:If you wish for additional assistance or insight, be sure to visit our other episodes and to stay tuned for our next release.
RJ Parrish:If you require direct assistance with growing your business or solving an issue, please feel free to inquire on our website or by scheduling an appointment using the link in the show notes or description.
RJ Parrish:Thank you and we bid you farewell.
