Hey there, welcome back to my third podcast episode of Make Marketing Yours.
About this podcast:
In this episode, I’m going to talk about why I am doing what I am doing now. I get asked this question quite often. For many people, they think the idea of leaving a job and starting a business is amazing, but at the same time is very risky. Not a lot of people are actually put this into action. So I wanted to share my entrepreneur journey with you so that you get to know me more.
I have been in the corporate world for more than 20 years. That’s what I always wanted to do or to be told what I should do. A very typical Asian story, I guess. Study hard, get a good job, get married, have children and live happily thereafter. This is so good to be true.
Now, I’m taking you back to my university time. I’ve got an Economics degree and a postgraduate diploma in Business Administration, but my true passion is in marketing. I didn’t realise it until my last year in University. And you know, I went down to a so-called ‘normal career path’ after graduation. I started working in a bank, and I hated it. After a couple of years, I decided to move on to marketing. I don’t mind to start as a marketing assistant or marketing officer as I was young back then. I just wanted to get the foot into the door. Luckily, I found something, and since then, I have been in marketing.
After I have my boy, my husband and I decided to move back to Australia. Better work-life balance and more space. I remembered I have to start everything from scratch, really from scratch. Unemployed for 8 months before I found a job in a call centre. Again, I hated it! It’s not what I wanted to do. I couldn’t find a job even though I have the qualifications and many years of marketing experience. It was tough as a migrant, I guess. A lot of tears. I was then lucky enough and finally got back into marketing at some points. Very sweet! I thought I finally got back into what I wanted to do.
Guess what happened? It was like drama after another drama. I was made redundant because the organization is centralizing the marketing team in another place. It was devastating. I cannot describe how bad it was. I keep asking myself ‘what did I do wrong to get this? Why this happened to me?’ I asked so many silly and unreasonable questions. Tried very hard to find a job. Again, nothing happened. My confidence level was at the lowest.
Back then, my husband has to work on two jobs to support the family. I didn’t see him very often as he would be out most of the time working. I felt bad. I wasn’t able to bring income to the family and make contributions. Remembered I used to be the main income earner in the family. We couldn’t go anywhere, not even a short local trip during school holidays or weekends. We were on a very tight budget. I remembered at one point; I have to use a calculator on my phone in a supermarket which I have never done it before. I had to make sure I have enough money to pay for my grocery shopping. And for the first time, I actually used the scale in a supermarket. I had to make sure those grapes were within 1kg which I could afford. Oh, …it was so tough. I was stuck. I couldn’t find a job, not even part-time. What should I do? What’s the next step? But to other people, I have to show that I am doing well. I’ve got this. Things will be fine. What can you say? You can’t spill all your pains to everyone you met, right?
One day, I suddenly had an idea. Since I have so many years of marketing experience, then I think maybe I can start my own agency business and help others in their marketing. I’m sure someone out there needs marketing support, right? I didn’t niche down back then because I had a lot of experience in offline and online marketing, above the line and below the line promotion experience. I think I can help everyone.
I was very excited and started building my agency website, created a logo, tagline, set up FB page, Insta page, set up my email platform, think of my company name and doing so many different things, but only one thing that I didn’t think of at the start. How am I going to get clients? How do they find me? Or how do I find them? Entrepreneurship gets me very exciting, but no one else told me how difficult it is to actually get clients. How much money I need to invest at the beginning or how much should I have in the pocket to sustain my business.
All the people around me at the time were all employees, and no one actually sat down with me and told me what’s going to happen. Welcome to the new world!
Ok then I think I might start by telling my friends and hopefully, they will like my FB page. So I sent out the page invitation. I remembered one of my best friends sent me a message on FB saying ‘Vanessa, I’m not going to like your page because I’m not interested in your services and I don’t think I will benefit from liking it.’ Ok, I left it like that. I didn’t even bother to say your friends will see what page you like and maybe your friends are interested in my services or your friend’s friends they might be interested. I just felt very hard to comprehend. Please ladies, if you have a friend who is starting a business, please give him or her an encouragement. Please show your support. It means a lot to startup businesses.
So I have started what other people do even though I don’t have money. Go online and register for a thousand of different courses. Jumped into affiliate marketing because ‘the guru’ says it’s easy when you don’t have a product. You don’t have to invest a lot of money to get started, and you can earn a commission. I even paid thousands of dollars to get 1 on 1 coaching with a so-called ‘affiliate marketing guru’. I bought so many software, and they’re still sitting on my desktop. I guess you know where I ended up, right? Nowhere!
As you can imagine, no jobs, sitting in front of the computer all day long, no income, and I was very emotional. I didn’t even want to hang out with friends, so no social life. I didn’t want people to ask me how I was doing because there is nothing to talk about. I didn’t want to know where they’re going on holiday next and what car they’re going to buy. They’re not entrepreneurs, and they don’t know what I went through. They don’t understand how difficult it is to build a business because they don’t have to worry about it. They have a fixed income coming in every month. It was like that for maybe 4-5 months. I just couldn’t get out of that circle.
Because I spent so much time in front of the computer all day, I met some wonderful ladies in the network marketing industry online. I’m telling you. It’s very important to surround with positive and supportive people. They’ll just lift you up. Then I met a mum from school, and she spent a lot of time with me, guided my heart to God. I guess at one time; I was to the point that I think I need to do something. I couldn’t find a job, so I have to find a way to make my business works. And I was very focused, blindfolded, no matter what happened out there, I don’t care. I started to do 1 on 1 coaching for the startup entrepreneur. It’s more like working alongside them in their business, step by step. I tailor-made materials for them for their business. I helped them to identify their ideal customers, to build their brand (both business and personal brands), show them how to do FB ads, setup email automation, etc. They know I have practical experience in marketing, so they trusted me, and also I am not charging them a fortune. Because they’re starting up, they don’t have a lot of money to pay me. That’s ok; I need money to pay my bills.
Since then, I started to build up my confidence, get rid of my internal struggles, get rid of shiny objects syndrome, break free from the past and created a new ME. Just focus and look forward.
I have to say thank you to God as he pointed me in the right direction and guided me. Thank you for the lady I met online. Heidi introduced me to essential oils to help and balance my emotion. I’m still using essential oils every day. I just can’t live without them. I need oils to boost my day, and I need oils to give me relaxation at night. I even have a diffuser in my car! Yes, I am one of those oil ladies. Because of Heidi, I started to understand how people build a successful business. You’re your brand. People see you and work with you, not your business. People buy from people unless you have a unique product that only you have it. I started to get clients (I mean good clients) to my marketing agency. For me, it’s a complete transformation bringing me from A to B.
A lot of people hate MLM network marketing and don’t even want to talk about it. But I am telling you when you take a step back; you can actually learn a lot from the network marketing business model. I’ve learnt a lot by working with one of my agency clients, and she is in network marketing and selling skin care products. How you can stand out from the crowd when everyone is selling pretty much the same products? I’m going to share some secrets with you next time.
It’s time to wrap up for today. I hope you like my back story, which I never shared it with anyone publicly. If you can resonate with me, please drop me a line. I would love to hear your story. There’s always a story behind you or your business. You can reach me at branding@makemarketingyours.com.
Have a lovely day no matter what you’re doing. Enjoy and bye for now. See ya!