Straight from my Cohort Speech that I put together for my flower friends, I bring to you a bunch of neat tips for starting your own business, including branding, finding clients, marketing, and more. I even have an easy guide and affiliate links for tools I use every day in my own business and highly recommend!

Whether you already have a business or you’re looking to start one, you’ll find everything you need to get in this episode!

Today’s Goals: Take a close look at what you have put together for your business so far, such as the products and/or services you offer, pricing and budget, your ideal client, your workflow, and more. Once you have a bird’s eye view, identify the flaws and gaps and get started on smoothing it out!

IN THIS EPISODE, WE TALK ABOUT:

• Who is your ideal client? Because it’s not everyone!
• How to target your ideal client to start bringing in that money
• Setting up your marketing, especially on socials, to work for you and without you
• Ironing out your sales processes to be professional and profitable
• Creating a perfect overall client experience
• Charging the right price and setting yourself up to get booked or paid right away

Check these out:

Download the guide here of tips for starting your own business!

Get advice and tools at www.lyssmorton.com/coaching

Rebel Studio Design – For all your branding and website needs!

Quickbooks – Save 30% on your first six months for accounting, bookkeeping, and tax services

Tonic Site Shop – Use my code TONICREGULARS and list Alyssa Morton for 10% off your website template.

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Episode 6 Transcript: 6 Tips for Starting Your Own Business

Hello, and welcome to the Making Mommy Moves Show. This is your host, Alyssa Morton. I’m a mom of two, wife, event floral designer, serial entrepreneur, and becoming increasingly aware of the power of mindset. I am so happy and thankful that you’re here. I’m on a mission to help empower moms to create a lifestyle of wealth, health, fulfillment and happiness so that you can become the very best version of yourself and live a life that you love. Three days a week, I am bringing you inspiring stories, strategies and tips to feel empowered to create a lifestyle you love. So stay tuned, and let’s get into it.

Hello, my mommy friends. Welcome back to the show. Last week, I had the honor of speaking to a group of aspiring floral entrepreneurs and I wanted to share some of the main takeaways that I shared with them. I thought it would be really helpful for any of you feeling inspired to start your own creative business. And as a gift to you, I even put together a helpful guide to help walk you through the process. Find the guide at www.lyssmorton.com/coaching. Some of the key takeaways that I talked about with a group were niching down, marketing, aligning clients, establishing your branding, and marketing. Plus, I’ve outlined some of my favorite resources of all time, and I was able to secure some discount codes just for you as a token of my appreciation for listening and watching the show. Ready? Let’s dive on in.

So if you go to my website and you download the free Starting Your Own Business guide, one of the first things that we talk about is identifying your niche. It’s really important that you identify your niche, you want to be as specific as possible. And the more specific you can be, the better.

Then you want to try and break it down even more specifically. So for example, in my floral design business, I want to serve couples getting married and hosting events. More specifically, couples with an organic and whimsical style that value a white glove experience and are willing to pay a premium for the hands-off experience. More specifically, couples have booked select wedding venues.

See what I mean? By breaking it down to be as specific as possible, you’re able to better understand your target market, which means you’ll then be able to better identify your aligned clients, brand that speaks to these clients, and market to those clients specifically. It’s important to know that you don’t want to serve everyone, you can’t serve everyone. Everyone has different budget points. Everyone has different styles. Everyone has different goals, different needs, different problems that they want to be solved. So it’s best for you to identify who you like serving, who do you want to serve? Who do you enjoy serving for? This is an important question to answer deeply because it’s the foundation of your marketing strategy. Understand your aligned client at the core of who they are.

So you can speak to them and them only. Some questions I want to ask are what do they do? What did they like? Where do they shop? What did they eat? Who do they surround themselves with? What’s their style? Are they wealthy? Where do they live? What did they drive any question that you can ask to identify who they are at their core, the better. It’s important to remember that everyone is not your aligned client and the earlier you begin to speak to your aligned clients, the easier it will be to attract them and the better off your business will be.

Next, I talked about establishing your branding. At the core of your brand is your values, your voice, or personality. It’s literally like the soul of your business is communicated through your logo, your colors, your typography, and everything in between. Use the tools on gardeninthepines.com/floralcoach or the tools on lyssmorton.com/coaching to help you establish a solid brand when you’re ready.

In this guide, I put together some key questions that you can answer to get you started. Some of the questions include what do you value in your business? What is your business purpose? What is your business personality, your style business communication style? Do you have a business promise and some other things that you should be asking or what tone should you write in to best communicate to your line clients? What photo should you include, what color speak to your brand identity, what fonts? And then if you could pull examples, you’ll be able to bring these to a brand guru.

I always recommend Rebel Studio Design. I will link her information in the show notes for you. And I listed some examples on there also.

Next, you’re going to want to build your brand website and your social media accounts. In this day and age, everybody goes to your website and your social media first to check you out at the end of the day. That’s where they’re going to see you in live action these days. They’re going to get behind the scenes on social media. Your website is going to be your portfolio essentially, it’s going to communicate everything that you’ve done in the past everything you want to do in your future, and your process like what they can expect from working with you.

Ideally some testimonials you want to include everything on your website again. I’m gonna plug Rebel Studio Design because she did a beautiful job on my website. I used her for my website Gardeninthepines.com. Go check it out. And her website is rebelstudiodesign.com. It seriously speaks for itself and just use my name Alyssa Morton as your referral.

So on your website and your social medias, you’re gonna want to post where your aligned clients hang out. Keep in mind like who you’re targeting. So are they on Facebook? Are they on Instagram? Are they on Tik Tok? Do they search Pinterest? Or are they searching Google? These are things to keep in mind that you can put your marketing efforts into those platforms. I wouldn’t waste my time on LinkedIn if people are searching Pinterest, you know what I mean?

Then you want to keep it on brand. I know I am a stickler for a nice aesthetic on my social media, especially on Instagram, I want the grid to reflect my brand beautifully. I want it to reflect the colors, the styles, I want them to see my face. I like to follow the “Jenna Kutcher Five.” If you’re not familiar with it, it’s like five categories that you’re comfortable sharing. So for Garden in the Pines, I have wedding and events, like couple photos that are professionally taken by their photographers and I always credit them, then I will share some of our preservation work. It helps to remind couples that we do that. If you’re looking for it, you know keep us in mind. We preserve bouquets and florals in resin.

Something else I like to include is our testimonials. So I will do a graphic that’s not every five, it’s more like every ten, and I always make sure that it’s in the exact same spot. So it’s aesthetically pleasing when you’re scrolling in the grid. It’s like spaced far enough apart, but like close enough together that you see one every time you scroll, I also include a picture of myself or myself and my husband, because we’re partners. And I think it’s important for them to see our face, who’s behind the business who they can expect to meet with. And then I like to share a photo of like our family, because at the end of the day, this is our small business. This is who they’re supporting. And I like to reinforce that we’re human. And this is what we’re doing. Like every day. These are my kids. This is what we’re building and we appreciate them supporting us, feel free to check out my Instagram. It’s @NJgardeninthepines on Instagram and it’s @lyss.morton on Instagram. I try to bring my aesthetic super pleasing on both of those platforms and my website is on brand as possible, so feel free to use me as an example.

Finally, when it comes to your social media and your website, be consistent, you want to update your website consistently. You want to update your socials consistently, you want to go on your stories, you want to go on your Pinterest, keep everything up to date for a couple reasons. One, people need to see that you’re in business. If you’re not posting regularly or updating your website regularly, they’re gonna assume maybe you don’t do it anymore, or you’re not in their area, you’re not serving them. So by posting regularly, it keeps you top of mind and shows them that you’re still in business.

For another reason, you want to be updating the work that you want to be doing. So if you’re a florist, like I am, keep posting work that you want to continue to do. So if you don’t like the blush and white weddings, don’t post that work. Post the colorful weddings so people see that that’s what they do. And they associate that with you. Likewise, if you want to work at only specific venues, only post those specific venues or only put it on your website that these are the venues that you serve, these are the venues that you’re affiliated at. So they make that recognition that oh, if I want to work with Alyssa, I need to go book my wedding at the Shadowbrook. Does that make sense?

Also in the packet, I outlined some of my favorite website and social media tools. Of course, if you have the budget, I recommend hiring somebody outsourcing your website and brand design totally and completely. I told you I recommend Rebel Studio Design and I will recommend them to the moon and remind them that Alyssa Morton sent you. If you decide to go the DIY route, I can’t speak loudly enough about the Tonic Site Shop they are the show it website brand. They create templates that you’re able to make on brand with your needs. And everything looks as customized as it could get honestly.

Use my code TONICREGULARS and list Alyssa Morton for 10% off your template.

Then when it comes to social media, of course, outsourcing, that would be like the best thing in the world. But again, when you’re starting your business, maybe you can’t afford it. And I recommend using the scheduling app makes it super easy to batch create all of your content, so you don’t even have to think about it daily. I like to do it once every two weeks, give or take. I sit down for maybe two hours and I just plan out my schedule. I post everything and my aesthetic pleasing design. I currently use Planoly but other platforms include HootSuite, Tailwinds and Loomly.

Once you have all of this information, you want to establish your marketing strategy. Of course, if you need one on help with this, schedule a coaching call with me on my website. It’s www.lyssmorton.com/coaching.

Creative businesses like event planners, designers, florists, photographers, calligraphers, interior designers, we’re not just selling a deliverable at the end of the day, we’re selling an emotional need. So it’s important to keep this in mind. When you’re creating your marketing strategy, identify your goals and set a timeline that you’re going to achieve these goals. I don’t recommend setting more than three because it can be really overwhelming. Then you’re going to dig deeper into the action items you can accomplish that will move the needle on those goals.

So let’s say my goal is to book 10,000. Now I was in sales this month, an action item that I can do to accomplish that goal would be connect with local designers and planners, post three times a week on Instagram, and attend a bridal show. Like those would be the actions that I’m going to take to accomplish that goal or hopefully reach that goal. So play around with that as it relates to your business.

Do you hate taxes, sales, tax income? Tax bills, expenses, and deductions are just some of the items your accountant will want to see when they’re creating your tax plan to try to help you save as much of your hard-earned money as possible. Make everything so much more organized with QuickBooks, I use it every single day in my business, my bookkeeper and my account are able to have their own logins, and everyone is able to stay current on my business numbers so that we aren’t too far behind come tax season. QuickBooks makes it easy for you to categorize your income and expenses, create invoices and collect payments, track your mileage, and organize your receipts and statements. And it syncs to just about every platform that you use in your business to make your life as easy as possible.

Save 30% on your first six months with my link in the show notes.

Finally, have fun with it. Marketing is the business system that brings leads into your business. Without this crucial, crucial system, your business does not have a reason to sell, do the work or maintain business organization. If you don’t have leads, you can’t sell to anybody. Like it’s as simple as that. I think that this is probably the most important part of creating a business. And I think that it can set you apart even further than anybody else that might be starting out. And it might seem weird, especially if you haven’t started the business yet. But the second that you decide to start a process. And what I mean by this is that you want to have a way that you conduct business. And of course, like you can always change it, you can always edit it, you can always improve it. But the second that you decide, okay, these are the steps that my prospects are going to have to take to go through my inquiry process, or this is how I’m going to guide them through the sales process. And this is how I’m going to treat them in working with them, this is going to be their client experience. And then this is what I’m going to walk them through when they’re, you know, I’m done working with them so that they always keep me in mind for future referrals, right.

So the second that you create your processes and write them down, I recommend writing them down because then you can look back at them. And you can improve it over time, as you find that like oh, this doesn’t work, or I really liked the way that this worked for this client. Let me try that for future ones, it’s always going to be an ever-changing thing. But the second that you have a process, the more professional you’re going to feel, the better communication you’re going to have with your clients, the more they’re going to trust you because it’s going to feel like you’ve done this before a million times, even if you haven’t, they’re going to feel like you have. So I definitely recommend creating a process.

This is one of the things that I struggled with really hard in the beginning because, you know, I never started a business before. So I was trying to figure out what would make me feel the most professional. So in my inquiry process, I would send my clients like five emails and it would explain what they can expect, you know, me to walk them through as we’re trying to book their date, then I would give them a welcome document upon booking that would explain how it’s going to look like to work with me like how many meetings they can expect to have when we’re going to finalize the details, because at the end of the day, they’ve never planned a wedding before. And I want to make myself look like the professional and like I’ve done this a million times. And at this point I have, but when I first started, I didn’t. So I wanted to make it feel like I did and having the process and explaining it to them communicated that and then at the end of the work together that we did, I would offboard them.

So that would mean they would get another email, they would get asked to write a review or for testimonials, or schedule a quick chat so that we could talk about their wedding and the things that went really well and the things that they weren’t happy with so that I can improve it for the future. These are all super, super important. And I can’t shout it loud enough to the rooftops to start your process and create one. To help you with this. I created some swipe files that you can swipe on my website. It’s www.lyssmorton.com/coaching.

So I put together some quick tips that I just want to remind you when creating your business. First, you want to be consistent. I know it’s really overwhelming, and it feels like you have a million things to do. But if you continue to be consistent with your social media posting, with your marketing efforts, with everything that you’re doing to grow the business, you have no choice but to move forward. Like by putting in consistent effort, you’re going to be learning from any mistakes that you have, you’re going to do it better next time.

And at the end of the day, like a kid hitting a pinata. Like the more that you hit at it, like the quicker it’s going to all the candy is going to come out right? That same kind of concept applies to your business. Don’t give up just keep going. Keep being consistent with your work and I promise it’s going to work out.

Finally, the last piece of advice that I can give you – because I struggled with it really really hard even still – don’t charge your chapter one to anybody else’s chapter 19. This one is hard even for me right now. But once you stop comparing your daily action to someone else’s that is farther along than you in the process, the better your mindset will be and the more abundant you’ll feel. Compare yourself to your peers and where they’re at. So you’re chapter one to somebody else’s chapter one, your year three to somebody else’s year three, you want to be able to compare that because it’s a level playing field. If you’re comparing yourself that starting out with no social media followers, no audience, no email lists, somebody else that’s been in business for five years, they’ve got 100,000 email subscribers and 15,000 Instagram followers, it’s not a fair comparison. They’ve got five years on you. If you want compare yourself to last year you, then you’ll really see how far you’ve come and how much like you should be proud of yourself because at the end of the day, you did this thing. You’re building it, you’re putting in the work, and you’re gonna see some really amazing results.

I’m wishing you so much success in your business. If you need any help, tune in to the podcast every single Monday, Tuesday and Friday, I share my favorite stories, tips, strategies, learned lessons with all of you, my mom-friends. You can also find Lyss Morton on YouTube, Tiktok and Instagram for real-time day in the life inspiration tips and hacks on YouTube. I like to post these clips so that you can watch them if you prefer that route.

Then if you need even more help, I offer one on one mentorships. One of the most valuable relationships you will build will be with a mentor who has done what you want to do. Let me repeat that. Because I think it’s really important to like think about this because you shouldn’t be taking advice from somebody that hasn’t been in your shoes or doesn’t understand what you’re going through or what your goals are. One of the most valuable relationships you will build will be with a mentor who has done what you want to do.

So if you’re interested in working one on one with me, email me at the thelyssmorton.com so we can chat about all of your needs and how I can help you.

That’s all for this episode, guys. Thank you for tuning in. I hope that it was really helpful for you. As always feel free to screenshot this episode, tag your friends, tag anybody that’s looking to start a business. I hope that it helps them and I’m excited to talk to you guys next time.

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RESOURCES

• Download the guide here for tips for starting your own business!
• Get advice and other tools at www.lyssmorton.com/coaching
• Get on THE LYSST– Never miss an episode, blog, or exclusive deal for my favorite mom friends
• Rebel Studio Design – For all your branding and website needs!
• Quickbooks – Save 30% on your first six months for accounting, bookkeeping, and tax services with my link
• Tonic Site Shop – Use my code TONICREGULARS and list Alyssa Morton for 10% off your website template.

CONNECT WITH LYSS

Follow me: @lyss.morton

Follow Garden in the Pines: @NJGardenInThePines

Follow Larry: @mortmotoshow