Marketing Efforts Not Working? Try This!

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"I’ve tried everything and spent so much on my marketing efforts but nothing is working!"

We unfortunately hear this from far too many solopreneurs.

It is so frustrating and so incredibly difficult to stand out these days. Just when you think you’re getting the hang of something, an algorithm seems to change and you’re back at the drawing board.

What’s a person to do?

Well, we recently spoke with Victoria Hajjar to try to answer that.

She is the founder of Ugli Ventures and specializes in helping businesses go from 6 to 7 figures in revenue. An entrepreneur herself, Victoria knows what it is like to be the person wearing many hats, with little to no support. She teaches the playbook she wishes she had as she began her marketing journey 15 years ago.

Victoria also runs the popular Podcast - “The Scalable Marketing Machine” and has been featured on CNN and in numerous webinars and forums.

We invited her on the show to discuss things like:

• The marketing funnel that most solopreneurs are missing that slows business growth

• How solopreneurs can recover when they’ve spent a ton on marketing and nothing is working

• What the top 10% of startups do that separates them from the rest

Plus so much more. So be sure to tune in!

Being a solopreneur is awesome but it’s not easy. It's hard to get noticed. Most business advice is for bigger companies, and you're all alone...until now. LifeStarr's SoloSuite Intro gives you free education, community, and tools to build a thriving one-person business.  So, if you are lacking direction, having a hard time generating leads, or are having trouble keeping up with everything you have to do, or even just lonely running a company of one, be sure to check out SoloSuite Intro!

Access SoloSuite Intro

Like the show? We'd love it if you'd leave a 5-star review!

Connect with Victoria Hajjar

• Visit Ugli Ventures
• Listen to The Scalable Marketing Machine podcast
• Connect with Victoria on LinkedIn

Favorite Quote About Success:

Being a solopreneur is awesome but it’s not easy. It's hard to get noticed. Most business advice is for bigger companies, and you're all alone...until now. LifeStarr's SoloSuite Starter gives you free education, community, and tools to build a thriving one-person business. 

So, if you are lacking direction, having a hard time generating leads, or are having trouble keeping up with everything you have to do, or even just lonely running a company of one, click here to check out SoloSuite Starter!

About Victoria Hajjar

Victoria Hajjar is the Founder of Ugli Ventures, which specializes in assisting startups as they scale from 6 to 7 figures. She focuses on aiding female entrepreneurs in optimizing sales and marketing strategies, team building, and leadership development to establish sustainable, profitable 7-figure enterprises. Less than 2% of women have broken the million-dollar mark in their business, and Victoria is on a mission to change that. With a proven track record of success, she has cultivated global brands across various sectors in countries including the US, UK, China, Sri Lanka, UAE, and Mexico.

Like this show? Click on over and give us a review on Apple Podcasts Thanks!

Episode Transcript

Carly Ries: 00:00

I've tried everything and spent so much on my marketing efforts, but nothing is working. We unfortunately hear this from far too many solopreneurs. It is so frustrating and so incredibly difficult to stand out these days. And just when you think you're getting the hang of something, an algorithm seems to change in your back of the drawing board. So what's a person to do?

Carly Ries: 00:21

Well, we've recently spoke with Victoria Hajjar to try to answer that. She is the founder of Ugly Ventures and specializes in helping businesses go from 6 to 7 figures in revenue. An entrepreneur herself, she knows what it's like to be the person wearing many hats with little to no support, which a lot of you can relate to. She teaches the playbook she wishes she had as she began her marketing journey 15 years ago. Victoria also runs the popular podcast, the scalable marketing machine, and has been featured on CNN and in numerous webinars and forums.

Carly Ries: 00:52

We invite her on the show to discuss things like the marketing funnel that most solopreneurs are missing that slows business growth, how solopreneurs can recover when they've spent a ton of marketing and nothing is working, and what the top 10% of startups do, it separates them from the rest. We discussed this plus so much more, so be sure to tune in. You're listening to The Aspiring Solopreneur, the podcast for those just taking the bold step or even just thinking about taking that step into the world of solo entrepreneurship. My name is Carly Ries, and my co host Joe Rando and I are your guides to navigating this crazy, but awesome journey as a company of 1. We take pride in being part of LifeStarr, a digital hub dedicated to all aspects of solopreneurship that has empowered and educated countless solopreneurs looking to build a that resonates with their life's ambitions.

Carly Ries: 01:43

We help people work to live, not live to work. And if you're looking for a get rich quick scheme, this is not the show for you. So if you're eager to gain valuable insights from industry experts on running a business the right way the first time around, or want to learn from the missteps of solopreneurs who've paved the way before you, then stick around. We've got your back because flying solo in business doesn't mean you're alone. Okay.

Carly Ries: 02:06

So before we jump into this episode, I just have to share this new free offer we have called the SoloSuite Intro. Being a solopreneur is awesome, but it's not easy. It's hard to get noticed, and most business advice is for bigger companies, and you're all alone until now. Lifestar's solo suite gives you free education, community, and tools to build a thriving one person business. So if you're lacking direction, having a hard time generating leads, having trouble keeping up with everything you have to do, or even if you're just lonely running a company of 1.

Carly Ries: 02:39

Be sure to check out SoloSuite Intro at LifeStarr.com and click on products and pricing at the top menu. It's the first one in the drop down. Again, it's totally free, so check it out at lifestarr.com Click on products and pricing, and it's the first one in the menu. Hope to see you there.

Carly Ries: 02:56

Victoria, welcome to the show.

Victoria Hajjar: 02:57

Thank you, guys. I'm so excited to be here and have this conversation with you today.

Carly Ries: 03:02

Well, I'm so excited to have you here, and I think our audience will really appreciate this because we have marketers on. I'm a marketer. We're like, this is what you should do. This is what you should do. But a lot of times it's like, that's what I'm trying to do and it's not working and why is it not working?

Carly Ries: 03:17

And they're just missing a few things and you are here today to tell us what we might be doing wrong when we're trying so hard. So I just kinda wanna kick things off with kind of a controversial opinion. And I want you to to defend this opinion, and and say why. But you think social media might be a little bit of a of a waste of marketing dollars. And I wanna know where should solopreneurs focused instead and what are some other cost effective marketing tactics they can use that's not social media?

Carly Ries: 03:50

Because I think that's where most people go when they just don't know better.

Victoria Hajjar: 03:54

Yeah. Well, this actually came out of the fact that, you know, over the past decade, I've spoken to so many, especially women, that have spun their wheels showing up and showing up on social media and wondering why it's not turning into sales. And one of the biggest, like, missing pieces of the puzzle, especially as a solopreneur or when you're just starting out, is not to underestimate the importance of your network. Like, talking to people in your world, your friends, your friends of friends, letting everyone in your world know what you're doing and how you serve clients. These, like, very basic first steps sometimes are missed.

Victoria Hajjar: 04:44

But at the same time, we can't prioritize social media over growing our email list. Right? And I think a lot of us believe that if we just show up every day on social media that our channels will grow. And as we've even seen in the past couple years with the algorithm, like, if you're not playing the right game on social, it's very, very difficult to grow. And beyond that, if you're not investing in boosting posts or in ads, it's also very difficult for your content to even show up to the people that follow you.

Victoria Hajjar: 05:19

So even if you're putting sales messages through, there's no guarantee that that your audience is even gonna see it. So when I'm talking to founders, I think that first and foremost, what we need to focus on is growing our email list from day 1 in our business. And there's so many ways that we can do that simply by really being clear with people in our world. There's so many, entrepreneurs, and I was victim to this myself for many years where, like, my own mom couldn't even tell people what I did. Right?

Victoria Hajjar: 05:53

Because we don't make that effort to make it clear. And so we we miss this, like, huge opportunity with our existing network for it to be very clear so people that already love us can recommend us. Right? And so, yeah, I think social media is a very powerful tool, but I think sometimes we put too much emphasis on it and too much energy in on it and realize that social media is just a small part in your holistic marketing effort, and you need all of the pieces kind of flowing in order to see kind of the ROI on any of it. So that's what I would say to that.

Carly Ries: 06:32

Yeah. I was laughing because, I overheard my mom telling people that I'm a creative director for an advertising agency, And I was like, I do neither of those things. Back in the day, I worked with an ad agency when I like, 15 years ago as an intern, and then, like, fresh out of college, but I was never a creative director, and you're so right, the low hanging fruits. We interviewed somebody, Jonathan Price, a few weeks ago, the episode was just released, but he was like, I didn't wanna tell people what I did because I didn't wanna sound salesy. He was like, but when I told them what I did, that's how he started to grow.

Carly Ries: 07:12

And so many people forget that.

Joe Rando: 07:14

But he did have a huge social media following.

Victoria Hajjar: 07:16

Well, again, a huge social media following can be very useful, but there's a couple layers to it, though. And this is something that I've seen getting my hands dirty with clients is that, you know, followers don't necessarily translate into sales, and I'll give you a very good example. On Instagram and on TikTok, I think people are very focused on viral content, but there's tons of really interesting statistics that have shown, and there's a lot of people on LinkedIn or even on on on Instagram that have showed sort of the stats of, you know, sales on months that reels have gone viral, do they do not correlate with new followers and sales rising. Why? Because a lot of times when we're creating viral content, we're not creating content that has anything to do with what we do, our products, and how we serve people.

Victoria Hajjar: 08:17

And so the problem is we're bringing in maybe followers that are not really interested in our product or service. They just think the content is entertaining because a lot of the viral content is entertaining content. But what we need to do is try to really be conscious to, for the the time, energy, and effort we are spending on social media that any content that we put out is very relevant to speaking to our ideal customer and, you know, reaching the people that we're gonna that are gonna be prospects. Because otherwise, it's just like a vanity metric. Doesn't matter if you have, you know, that hundreds of thousands of followers if they're not going to be customers, if they're not ever going to buy from you.

Victoria Hajjar: 09:05

It's kind of pointless. Right? And so just like doing silly dances and stuff, maybe not right for your brand. So that's something that I like people to pay attention to.

Joe Rando: 09:15

I'm so glad you've talked me out of the silly dance videos because, I was dreading it.

Carly Ries: 09:20

That was it.

Joe Rando: 09:22

Victoria, it's interesting. You remind me of a guy I saw at Inbound, last year. a guy named Dale Bertrand. And he was basically saying that a lot of SEO, content for SEO, is the same thing, not driving sales, and that people are putting out this content that's getting, you know, it's getting it's getting highly ranked on Google. It's generating clicks, but not generating conversions because it's not the right kind of content. And I think you're saying the same thing here about what how you approach social media, that you've got to approach it from the right perspective, or you're not engaging people that are gonna wanna buy from you.

Joe Rando: 10:01

Fair enough?

Victoria Hajjar: 10:03

yeah. And I think that when we create content or what I teach, to founders that I mentor about content, right, we have to build consciously build the content that's going to bring people through the buying journey. Right? And so we have to create content in different buckets that is going to move people along that sales process, from like, problem aware to a solution aware, and kind of understanding you know, once they understand what the solutions are, helping them to make a decision that your product or service is the decision to make. Right?

Victoria Hajjar: 10:37

A lot of times, I think we understand that value based content's really important, but what that content is is just as important. Right? We could be adding value but still showcasing to people. Right? What what is the real problem? What is the real problem they're trying to solve? And really explain to him then how our product or service solves that problem. That's kind of like the basic. We need to match the needs, with the solution and we need our content to do that for us, to help bring our customers on that or our prospective customers on that journey.

Victoria Hajjar: 11:14

And that's a piece of the equation I think people get a little bit lost in, and that's when all of this content can feel a lot like a rap wheel. Right? And how much is our content driving those leads to get onto our email list so we can continue the conversation? So if we have our social media flowing flowing flowing, we want always to be pulling people off of social media and into our email list And there's so many reasons for that. The the biggest reason being that, like, we haven't we don't own our contacts on social media platforms. So if something happened, like TikTok gets banned and you have a 1000000 followers on TikTok, but you don't have their email addresses, they're gone to the wind. But, you know, so our work becomes yes. We need to attract the right people on social. It's a great tool for that, and then convert them into subscribers so we can then they become we own that asset. That email address, we own, and we can have that relationship until, you know, our you know, until they unsubscribe or until we go out of business or we sell our business or whatever. But the email list is really important, and and I think that that for solopreneurs and and earlier stage companies, there's so much that we can be doing, just like within our own network. Right? Or kind of manually especially in the beginning.

Victoria Hajjar: 12:38

So we're really having those conversations. We're talking to perspective customers and clients. There's no way to skip that step because that step is such an essential step to understanding the language and the problems and all of that stuff. And the more we know our customer, the better we can market to them.

Carly Ries: 12:54

So you talk about a marketing funnel that a lot of solopreneurs are missing and it slows their business down?

Carly Ries: 13:00

Is this part of

Carly Ries: 13:01

that or is that something completely different?

Victoria Hajjar: 13:04

Well, social media is part of your core marketing file. So what I teach is what I called the 24 by 7 marketing flywheel. And what this is are the 6 stages that essentially moves, you know, from people, prospects, first knowing about your business and what you do all the way to sort of purchasing with you and becoming a raving fan. I I didn't create this. This flywheel is part of your client journey, but this idea is the single most important thing that founders must focus on.

Victoria Hajjar: 13:39

Everything that you do for your business in terms of marketing, has to be part of this flywheel, part of this client journey. And if it's not, if it's not contributing to, you know, reaching more people, getting those leads, those email addresses, converting them into paying customers, making sure that they are happy and satisfied, getting, you know, testimonials and case studies for them. There's this process that always has to be flowing, and I think if it's not set up, this flywheel, oftentimes we're we're we're maybe throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. We could be in this situation where we're doing a lot and social media tends to be the culprit. Right?

Victoria Hajjar: 14:22

We're just we're showing up a lot. We're creating a lot of content, but if it's not part of this, funnel, it's not going to actually turn into revenue. So the first step of the 24 by 7 marketing flywheel is your awareness stage. And for a lot of solopreneurs, this is a piece that's often missing. The awareness stage is like, how am I getting in front of new audiences?

Victoria Hajjar: 14:48

Right? Now in my opinion and we wanna look at ways that we can reach brand new audiences that are that is in our control. There are only 3 ways to do that. 1st is through advertising, right, which may or may be in the budget. Right?

Victoria Hajjar: 15:09

So we can reach new audiences through advertising. The second is through SEO, right, that Joe just mentioned. We're connecting with search, and that can go beyond Google. Right? We can be SEO optimizing our content for search, for example. But how are we making sure that our website or our content is searchable and answering questions that are paramount for our prospects. So SEO, so search, so ad search. And the third is what I call OPA, other people's audiences. And there's a lot of different ways that we can get in, you know, with other people's audiences either through partnerships, with other brands or through influencers or even joining conferences, for example, or or Vest.

Victoria Hajjar: 15:55

We're getting in front of a premade or preaggregated audience from another brand and letting them know about our business and what we do. But what I wanna say in this regard is I didn't mention social media as an awareness strategy because of just how difficult it is to rely on the algorithm to serve your content to brand new audiences. When I'm working with with marketing strategies, I think of my social media followers and my growth on social media and the new people I reach as, like, icing on the cake. Because you may be working, on Instagram or TikTok or whatever in a moment where the algorithm is favorable to the users. But we've seen in patterns over the years how those platforms change from being, you know, really rewarding the users. And a lot of times, users are rewarded when the platform, the business, when it's advantageous to them. So for example, when new platforms emerge, they are they pay us back handsomely for being active on the platform and creating the content because the business prioritize the user acquisition. So they wanna get as many people onto the platform as possible. And by rewarding people for what they do with likes and and shares and all of this stuff, it's advantageous to the platform.

Victoria Hajjar: 17:25

But as that model changes more to the advertiser focused, right, that's when it becomes much harder organically to get in front of audiences. And so the problem with relying solely on social media for your awareness strategy to get in front of new people is that the games changes. The game changes. Right? The kind of content that's attracting new people, the kind of you know, we've and we've all seen, like, from the pandemic to now, you know, it's like it's video.

Victoria Hajjar: 17:56

It's shorts. It's reels. It's this. It's that. That's working.

Victoria Hajjar: 17:59

This is not working, and that is gonna change. Right? And so, yes, play the game. Know how to play the game. That's really important.

Victoria Hajjar: 18:09

But the awareness strategies I've mentioned previously are ones that are kind of tried and true and you have more control over them. That's my whole spiel on awareness. The next is the engagement phase. So once you've gotten their eyeballs and they know about you and what you do, you need to make sure that you have a piece of content or something that engages that audience and inspires them to give you their email address. Because as I said in the beginning, like, the most important thing for businesses is to get that email address.

Victoria Hajjar: 18:42

So we can again, we own it. It's like an asset in our business. If you, you know, growing your list and being able to sell to people in their inbox in an intimate way, you have way more control than selling over social, for example. And so this is where we talk about lead magnets. So either, you know, if you are a service based business, this could look like a resource of something of value.

Victoria Hajjar: 19:07

If you're a product based business, oftentimes, this means, like, a promotion. This could mean a discount. This could mean free shipping. This could mean, like a like a gift with purchase or whatever. Something that we, you know, need to collect their email address in order to get the benefit.

Victoria Hajjar: 19:24

So we need to have some kind of engagement piece set up in our business. Right? So we got, attract, nurture, attract, engage. The next phase is nurture. And this is the stage where most people think about marketing the most.

Victoria Hajjar: 19:39

These are our weekly emails that we send showing up on social media. Right? Adding value. And this is a really important piece of the puzzle because in the nurture phase, we're building the like, know, and trust factor. But to our point before, our job also in this nurture, content is also to make that connection with the client between what we sell and their problem, and how we solve their problem.

Victoria Hajjar: 20:06

The content has to build that, that connection. So that's the nurture, and you can show up, you know, how do you show up each and every week in for your audience and, remind them that you exist, that your business exists. A lot of times, you know, that simple reminder is so powerful. So we've got aware, engage, nurture.

Victoria Hajjar: 20:27

The next is invite. This is also a a problem I see with a lot of solopreneurs as well, especially service based businesses where we can build, this audience and and we're kinda doing this, you know, again from new audiences. We're nurturing them with great content, but we can't forget to, like, ask for the sale. So in the invite phase is the moments in the in the marketing calendar where we're actually, like, creating promotions. And my rule of thumb is at least once, you know, once a quarter is usually a good cadence that you're building kind of a bigger campaign, a bigger sales campaign that's gonna move these kind of nurtured warm leads that are on your email address into action. To either, like, book the call or buy the product or whatever. But we need to have, like, campaign set up in order to do that. After that invite phase, we invite them. We convert them into paying customers, but the marketing actually is not done at that point in my opinion.

Victoria Hajjar: 21:35

In the next stage, which is the delight phase, is we need to make sure that our customers are super happy, and marketing can affect that quite a lot. We can do, you know, you know, we can have onboarding sequences if we're service based. How do we kind of welcome people into working with us? Or that could look like the unboxing experience for products. That there people are super happy and excited when they get the product and that they love the product. So that's the delight phase. And then the last phase is advocate. So we need to have systems in place where we're getting testimonials, getting case studies, getting referrals.

Victoria Hajjar: 22:17

And so our raving fans, our happy customers can help fill this whole, like, system again. So this core funnel, this 24 by 7 marketing flywheel, in my opinion, for any business owner, the only job that we have in terms of marketing is to set up this flywheel and, you know, make sure that each piece has activity that there's, like, something going for each of these pieces and then iterating and improving on the performance of each of these pieces. And and that's really it. It's like not chasing a bunch of different ideas. If it doesn't fit as part of this core funnel, we should not get distracted by that.

Victoria Hajjar: 22:57

Right? And we shouldn't take on too much. As solopreneurs, we should you know, let's make we don't need 10 lead magnets. Let's just make sure we get one working correctly.

Victoria Hajjar: 23:09

We don't need to be on all of the social platforms for nurture. Let's just make sure we get one working correctly. I think that's where, a lot of business owners get tripped up.

Carly Ries: 23:18

What if somebody's listening to this and they're like, oh, this flywheel sounds amazing. However, I heard about this too late and I've spent a gazillion dollars on marketing and nothing worked. How do they rebound from that? Is it just starting to put this in place now, or what do they do if they're in the hole and are trying to dig themselves out?

Victoria Hajjar: 23:38

Well, I talk to a lot of people. Like, one of the reason why marketing fails is that they don't understand that they need to set up this system. And so we hire people. We get people to help in our business, and the the big mistake is that, yeah, we get, like, individual contributors or freelancers or virtual assistants or whatever, and they're executing things kind of in a silo. And they could be working on one thing, like, let's say the example of hiring a social media manager. And this social media manager is totally focused on just, like, putting out content and the things that they're held accountable to is growing the followers. Right? And you're spending, I don't know, maybe 1,000 or $2,000 a a month on this person, and then you're saying, how come it's not turning into revenue?

Victoria Hajjar: 24:27

A lot of or, you know, you have someone, you hire them for SEO, and they're gonna make your, you know, website searchable. But, again, if we don't have a lead magnet that's working for them to get into and we don't have you know, we're not nurturing those people and we're not running campaigns to convert them, there's something that falls off. There's a leak.

Carly Ries: 24:50

So what can we do if we're kind of, like, in the hole?

Victoria Hajjar: 24:52

So if we're in the hole, what we do is we step back.

Victoria Hajjar: 24:55

What I would say is we can kind of look at this from a strategic standpoint and say, how am I going to create this flywheel? So all of it doesn't have to be done at one time, and I think this is where the the pressure, the stress comes in. No. Of course, it's totally unrealistic to be working on all of these 6 phases, like, in 1 quarter or or in in 1 month. What I would do is is first, I would run an audit.

Victoria Hajjar: 25:23

I would first run an audit, and I would say, and by the way, I have a guide that's free that runs through all of these steps, and I can you can put it in the show notes. But if you go to my website, ugli ventures, it's ugly with an i. U g l I v e n t u r e s. Ugliventures.com/overwhelm So ugliventures/overwhelm. There's a free guide that walks you through all of these steps, but the first step I will always do, is an audit, and it's saying, like, what's working and

Victoria Hajjar: 25:59

what's not working, seeing what's missing. Right? So maybe you have, you know yeah.

Victoria Hajjar: 26:05

You have a so, you know okay. Let's look like awareness. Let's say, oh, I'm working, like, with some partners sometimes, but a lot of times, businesses have the biggest trouble with lead generation. So you kinda wanna be honest with yourself and say, am I getting in front of new audiences?

Victoria Hajjar: 26:19

Like, really, am I? Yes or no? That's, like, how we dread the audit. Right? What's working or what's not working there?

Victoria Hajjar: 26:25

And think of all the activities you're doing. Next is you're engaged. Do I have a lead magnet? Yes or no? Do I have a way to get these email addresses from folks so I can continue to build a relationship? If the answer is yes, then the next question is like, is it working? Do people like it? Is it actually converting, like, people giving me their email address?

Victoria Hajjar: 26:49

So we're gonna answer that question. Next, we wanna look at nurture. Am I showing up consistently on some kind of platform and adding value? The answer for that may be, like, I'm everywhere and I'm not nothing seems to be working. And to that, I would say you wanna, like, we wanna simplify to amplify.

Victoria Hajjar: 27:13

That's a Marie Forleo quote, which I love. We would say, okay. If we're kinda, like, trying to grow TikTok and Instagram and we've got a YouTube show and a podcast or whatever, the first step, like, if you feel like you're in the hole is say, like, let's get rid of all of this except for 1 and just get really good at one of these things. And for business owners and solopreneurs, I love for them to connect to what is the one that they need. Like, if you're if you're gonna eliminate some of the social platforms, the barometer there is, like, which one do you like to show up on yourself the most?

Victoria Hajjar: 27:49

Because if you hate Instagram, it's always gonna be a pain in the butt for you to get into Instagram. You know? So for for a lot of folks, it's like, hey. You know, you could and and with marketing, especially when it comes to, like, nurture, I always like to equate this to a diet.

Victoria Hajjar: 28:11

You know, if you wanna get healthy and you and you're trying to look at, like, what diet should I do? keto or paleo or, whatever. Like, what kind of exercise should I do? CrossFit or yoga or whatever. The reality is, any of those routes can get you the result as long as you are consistent.

Victoria Hajjar: 28:30

Any one of those diets, if you're just consistently implementing it and any one of those exercise modalities will give you results if you're consistent. We have to apply that same to our marketing. Right? If you, like, dibble dabble in all of these different tactics and you don't have a team to support you and you're doing it all yourself, you can grow in a lot of different ways. Just making the choice and say, you know what?

Victoria Hajjar: 28:55

I love showing up on video. I'm gonna focus wholly on YouTube. Like, YouTube's my channel. Or maybe, you love LinkedIn because a big part of the equation for the nurture is also, being social on these platforms, engaging, answering the questions.

Victoria Hajjar: 29:12

Yes, You can get people to help you do that, but if you don't have the help, or even if you do have the help, it's very useful for you also to have a hand in it. And so don't, like, go against the grain. If you hate the platform or you hate the or you hate the modality or whatever, don't make that be your one thing.

Carly Ries: 29:30

Joe and I tried TikTok, years ago, and it was not our jams.

Victoria Hajjar: 29:36

If it's not your jam, don't do it.

Victoria Hajjar: 29:38

Because I mean also I feel like that the audience feels that too. So you gotta show up, where you feel the most authentic and all of that. But anyways so, going back to if we're in

Victoria Hajjar: 29:51

the hole. So we're doing this audit. So we're in the nurture phase.

Victoria Hajjar: 29:54

We're auditing what are all these different things I'm executing, and how can I zone in on the 1 or 2 things that I can get really good at or I can or the team that I have can get really good at? Right? And, you know, invite campaigns. And do I have a can do I have a promotional calendar? Like, ask that question to yourself. What's working or what's not working? You know, delight. Do people do people churn? They don't, like, they don't stick around as customers and not repeat customers?

Victoria Hajjar: 30:23

Is there something wrong with my product? Answer these questions. So and and then advocate. Do I am I getting testimonials? So you wanna just do this quick audit for yourself, and then you're gonna quickly see, like, what you have in place and where some of the missing pieces are.

Victoria Hajjar: 30:38

And then you're gonna wanna prioritize, like, what, you know, what help you have on hand that can help you kinda fill in the missing pieces and really, again, simplify to amplify. What are the simplest ways that I can set up one activity for each of these, 6 stages and work towards that? And and for me, I love this idea of doing that audit every quarter and then prioritizing, like, 1 or 2 things that you're gonna focus on each quarter. And little by little, you'll fill out this flywheel, and it doesn't need to be all solely done for you to feel the benefits of it.

Carly Ries: 31:16

I'm glad you you brought light to that because I feel like a lot of people could be listening be, like, oh my gosh. This sounds like so much and so for you to say you don't need, like, just focus on what you can. You'll still get benefits. I think it's so beneficial for some of our listeners.

Victoria Hajjar: 31:30

And you also wanna get into the shoes of that perspective client. And you wanna look at the journey that they go on and put those pieces together and see if it makes sense. Because when I say the only job you have in marketing is building out this system and then and always improving it, It really is the truth because the difference between success and failure could be something as little as you know, yes, you're reaching these people in your awareness phase and you're sending them to this landing page. And if the landing page stinks or it's unclear or links are broken or whatever, things could be that easy to fix. But it's just paying attention to all of these pieces of the puzzle. And, you know, oftentimes, it's it's not rocket science. Like, if landing pages aren't converting and you sit there and you look at it and you're like, okay. I have some ideas on on how this could be easier or at least you identified as an area where you can get help.

Victoria Hajjar: 32:40

And I think it's like we have to escape this mentality that it's the one freelance marketing manager or the social media manager that's gonna come in and fix all of your marketing. A lot of of these folks that I I work with and and and I I build team, you know, I help founders build their marketing teams, And there's this this idea that this, like, freelancer, this contractor, it's gonna do all the strategy part and build all of this. And that's that's the big mistake because oftentimes, these these folks are really good at executing the one piece of it, but maybe they don't have the experience to build out your full, you know, journey, your full 24 by 7 marketing flywheel when all of the things are playing into one another. And that's really where the failure quote unquote comes and why we're pouring money into marketing and it's not seeing the results. You know? that's why I'm such a big advocate for for business owners to understand how to be the lead that their marketing team needs. And it's out of necessity. As a business owner, you need to know marketing and sales. Like, there's really no way around it. Like, without marketing and sales, like, you're not gonna get revenue, it is not gonna come.

Victoria Hajjar: 33:57

So it's the most important thing we can really focus on as solopreneurs and business owners.

Joe Rando: 34:02

I just think that's such a great point. You know, you have tried it. you cannot outsource any of the real deep thinking part of this process. And we've tried it in a couple of places, and it hasn't worked.

Victoria Hajjar: 34:17

Marketing can be very complicated. But I feel like at the at this kind of client journey level, on this marketing flywheel level, it's it's not rocket science. We as owners, as solopreneurs, we don't need to know all of the pieces of the puzzle for these individual tactics for marketing. That's why we get help and support from individual contributors because it's like, listen.

Victoria Hajjar: 34:47

I'm never gonna know everything about Instagram at any given time, especially since everything's changing. It's not realistic for me too. Or with with organic search or with running ads. Right? But we need to know enough to to to be dangerous, quote, unquote, to understand if something's working or not working. And then we seek to get the help that we need, and this can be and I think one of the big problems is, like, understanding how to ask the right questions and really understanding what where the problem is. Because when we as all business owners understand what the problem is, we can get the help and support. And that could look like, again, like, it could look like someone on fiverr that's hired for a project base doesn't always mean a full time retainer person on your team.

Victoria Hajjar: 35:39

That could mean, like, hey. You know, if one landing page you're having a hard time, converting and getting those email addresses, well, you can hire someone on an hourly basis to do an audit and give you some suggestions. Doesn't mean you need to, employee up and make your costs go higher. So it's like we need to know the bigger picture and kinda understand the marketing strategy piece and then be able to kind of supplement, the teams with these, like, project based people, when things maybe are a little bit more technical because marketing can go very deep in all of these different areas.

Carly Ries: 36:18

But like you said, it doesn't have to. It really can be that simple. And, we always say flying solo business doesn't mean you're alone. So team up, contract up, and figure out how to make it work for you. Victoria, I think this is so helpful for people that haven't heard about the flywheel.

Carly Ries: 36:37

I think that really helps put a structure to something that they don't necessarily they're that they wouldn't have had before. So you're helping them find success, and this is something we ask all of our guests. Since you help people find success with marketing, we want to know what your favorite quote is about success.

Victoria Hajjar: 36:54

Okay. So my ultimate favorite quote, and I wanna say it originally comes from Jim Collins, but it actually was repeated with one of probably the most successful CEOs that I've worked with, directly in my career, which is, you know, "our job as as leaders, as business owners, is to build our team and then the team builds the business." And this is so true when it comes to marketing. So many of us as solopreneurs, especially, we're kinda said this storyline that we need to, like, execute everything ourselves, that we need to learn how to manage our own Facebook ads.

Victoria Hajjar: 37:31

We need to learn how to write our own copy. We need to learn how to. You know, and we were scared to kind of invest in ourselves, but what we wake up then realizing is that we've not created the life of freedom that we wanted when starting our business. We've created, like, a pretty crummy job for ourself where we work way longer hours probably than we did when we were at a job and probably getting paid a lot less where we need to start thinking a little bit bigger. Even if we want to keep our business small and we want to keep a very lean team, we still, I think, need to be in this mentality and this idea that as business owners, we are leaders and we need people to help us grow.

Victoria Hajjar: 38:15

That's how we build a kind of scalable, sustainable growth model for ourselves instead of running ourselves ragged forever, right, in the the lifetime of our business. So let's focus on getting great people to work with. And again, it could be freelancers or contractors or virtual assistants. Doesn't have to be full time employees. I know a lot of business owners that have had wonderful contractors working for them for years. you could still have that loyalty and that power of the people. they don't have to be employees, so to speak.

Carly Ries: 38:53

Absolutely. Well, I think this is so helpful. Victoria, if people want to learn more about the 24/7 flywheel, more about you, where can they find you?

Victoria Hajjar: 39:05

Yes. So the place to go is ugliventures.com. That is my company name, Ugli Ventures because business can be ugly

Victoria Hajjar: 39:13

sometimes. But with marketing systems, we can make it beautiful. That's my my whole jam.

Joe Rando: 39:17

And ugly with an I.

Joe Rando: 39:22

U g l I

Victoria Hajjar: 39:23

Ugli Ventures. Okay. Ugliventures.com/resources Actually, if you go to ugliventures.com/resources I have a number of guides that cover sales focused marketing strategies, how to build a effective brand communication strategy, all on the website.

Victoria Hajjar: 39:41

But if you wanna connect with me directly, you can get the link from the website as well, but I hang out on LinkedIn. That's where I love to spend my time. That's the platform that I love the most, that I enjoy opening up. So that's where you can find. You can send me a DM if you have marketing questions or whatever.

Victoria Hajjar: 39:58

I would love to help you answer them. Wonderful.

Carly Ries: 40:03

Well, we are also on LinkedIn, so we share that sentiment with you. And all of those will be in

Carly Ries: 40:07

the show notes. But, Victoria, thank you so much for taking the time today with be with to be us. I know I found it helpful. I'm in marketing, but it's always nice to have that refresher. So sure it's helpful for those that aren't even in this field.

Victoria Hajjar: 40:21

Absolutely. Well, with marketing, I love this also this idea of mastering the basics. That is really I think we get into that mentality. We need to master the basics with marketing.

Victoria Hajjar: 40:32

We will have success. Problem is that there's so many sexy shiny objects when it comes to marketing. We get a little bit distracted, but mastering the basics and you'll be okay.

Joe Rando: 40:42

Great advice.

Carly Ries: 40:45

Thank you so much again for coming on. Listeners, we hope you enjoyed this just as much as we did. And as usual, we love putting on this content for you. We love showing up every week to do that and to continue to do that, Please give us that 5 star review, that subscribe.

Carly Ries: 41:01

You know how it works. Please do that. We would so appreciate it. Otherwise, we will see you next time on The Aspiring Solopreneur. You may be going solo in business, but that doesn't mean you're alone.

Carly Ries: 41:14

In fact, millions of people are in your shoes, running a one person business and figuring it out as they go. So why not connect with them and learn from each other's successes and failures? At LifeStarr, we're creating a one person business community where you can go to meet and get advice from other solopreneurs. Be sure to join in on the conversations at community.lifestarr.