Media training 101 for small businesses

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Great news: you just scored a big press interview to promote your business. The story will expose your brand to the perfect new audience and drive meaningful traffic to your website. So…don't blow it. Yes, just as quickly as the excitement for the opportunity arrived, the realization that you now have to do an interview sets in. I get it—press interviews can absolutely be intimidating. The resulting coverage represents a significant opportunity to acquire new customers, drive sales, or raise awareness, and you want to be sure to represent your brand well and really compel the audience to check out your company. On top of that, you have to contend with adrenaline and nerves in the moment. You may be thinking, "So many other business owners are so polished and articulate in their interviews. How am I going to pull that off?" Deep breath. A successful interview is usually the result of good media training: preparation and practice in advance of an interview. I've tr...
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How a female entrepreneur helps other female entrepreneurs streamline their businesses

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Pia Beck just turned 26, and she's already running her own successful business. Through Curate Well Co., Pia helps other women do what she did: create the business and life they want—and leave an impact.

Going beyond on-paper success

A portrait of Pia Beck
Pia Beck, founder of Curate Well Co.

"I went through life checking all the boxes. I did all the right things, and while I had a great-on-paper life, I couldn't shake the feeling, 'is this it?'"

After college, Pia advanced in her HR career quickly. She was successful by every measure, but something didn't feel right. "I didn't feel appreciated for my strengths, and I didn't feel like I was making a difference," she tells us. "Plus, my life looked nothing like I wanted it to." So she decided to make a change.

I left to start my own business with a goal of getting paid for doing what I was already great at, working with people who genuinely appreciated my expertise, getting to make a tangible difference in the lives of people, and becoming the person I always knew I was, but hadn't had the chance to become yet.

Today, through Curate Well Co., she works with emerging and established female entrepreneurs to help them scale and streamline their service-based businesses. Her zone of genius is in organization and execution, so she takes her clients through a journey of strategy > structures > systems > steps. "It's all with the goal of helping them make an aligned and authentic impact, live a life they love, and leave a legacy."

How Curate Well Co. supports female entrepreneurs

A portrait of Pia and her team
Pia and her team

Pia's team works with impact-driven female entrepreneurs whose expertise ranges from life and leadership coaching, to herbalism and chiropractic care, to personal training and fitness, to IT strategy, to marketing.

No matter who she works with, the core of the process is about streamlining logistics to see the business's strategy through to fruition.

One of Pia's clients, for example, is a Life and Leadership Coach and Consultant. "Her strengths are in generous listening, building relationships and holding empathetic space for her clients," Pia tells us, "and she needed help with the strategy and logistics of transitioning from a decade-long career to launching her own coaching business." With Curate Well Co.'s support, this emerging entrepreneur saw rapid success: nine new clients in two weeks and $31k in sales (with another $50k projected).

"By looking closely at the amount of time she was spending on different areas of her business, we were able to improve profitability and design her programs to scale—without sacrificing the transformation she provides for her clients."

Another client was an attorney focused on proactive planning, largely estate and business planning. "We focused on switching her from the industry-standard billable hour model to a completely customized a la carte package model, with a proprietary spreadsheet formula to determine pricing (read: consistent and predictable revenue)," Pia tells us. "She's currently renovating her dream office space, as she runs her value-driven firm."

How Pia uses automation to streamline her processes

In just over 14 months, Pia went from checking boxes to building her business to multiple six-figures. And just like she coaches her clients to do, she did it by creating a streamlined system that allows her to execute on her strategy.

A key part of that system is automation. Pia uses all sorts of apps to run her business: Slack, Typeform, QuickBooks, G Suite, Kartra, Gusto, Canva, Calendly, Zoom, the list goes on. In order to focus more time on the human side of her business, she uses Zapier to connect these apps.

Her favorite Zap—Zapier's term for an automated workflow—connects her inquiry/intake app with her team chat app. Whenever a potential client completes an application on Typeform, Pia's team gets a notification in their #onboarding Slack channel letting them know to check the form and schedule a discovery call.

They also use Zaps to do things like automatically add people to their email marketing list. "Our Zaps allows us to get notified as a way to automate our workflows, remove human error, and take the manual monitoring out of our SOPs and weekly tasks," Pia says.

Pia saves 1-2 hours/week using Zapier. With that time back in her day, she has more bandwidth to make human connections, advance long-term projects in the business, serve her clients and community with high-quality content, and build the Curate Well Co. culture.

She's also able to spend time thinking about new projects. Currently in the works? A physical product line, project management app, and her dream—a luxurious coworking community center.

What's your story? Tell us how you use Zapier to do more. You can also read even more customer stories and find new ways to improve your workflow and productivity.



from The Zapier Blog https://ift.tt/32wtIVc

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