Let's Talk with Leaha & Rhonda

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The following is a paid program sponsored by Crawford management group and smart time consultants. Please be advised that the voices and opinions you may hear do not necessarily represent the views of K u and v Las Vegas, the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education.

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Hi, this is Leah Crawford.

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And I'm Rhonda Nolan.

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Welcome to the let's talk with Lee and Rhonda show.

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We're here for you and we're ready to go.

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Let's do

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it. Good morning. Las Vegas. How are you doing?

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Happy Saturday morning, right? It's Saturday, Saturday. You know what Rhonda? We are through August.

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We are we are midway through August. It is the 21st of August beautiful bright Saturday morning and the year is almost over. Okay,

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so guess what? I did it I got I got a peloton. You gotta I got a peloton. Right? That's fantastic. Got a peloton got on a bike. So they have all of these fabulous, fabulous groups. And I just started hitting buttons. Right. So next thing I know I got the HBCU group I got the Howard group I didn't see a Las Vegas group. I'm gonna look for that next because an Orion and I'm like, yo people, people Rob, I mean, they really use this thing.

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Yes, when the pandemic hit last year, the sales of peloton went through the roof because everyone ordered one for their home because they couldn't go up to the gym, to exercise Oh my,

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and they have so many different platforms and everything else. I mean, I'm like four workouts in now. I can't wait. Because all my friends had like 302 54. And in one class, and when somebody got 1000, I'm like, Okay, I'm not going to be overachiever on this. I'm gonna take it one day at a time. But I am. So looking forward to the day my profile has, you know, at least at least a couple 100. That's great workouts on it. But it feels good to get up workout in the house, maybe do something, it just changes your whole,

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it changes your energy and just you get up in the morning to workout. You, you you become clear, clear. And you can think about different things. Whether it be personal or business. It does, it does.

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And I know starting off slow, a little 10 minute workout because you know, the little seat on your head had to buy me a bigger seat. Yeah, but I'm loving it. I'll let you know next month if I'm still loving it. But one of the talk the day because I was watching something, talking about entrepreneurs. And they came up with this term called solopreneur. a solopreneur. So not an entrepreneur, but a solopreneur. And then they were talking about marketing and sales. And we never believe let's talk about it, you know, marketing and sales. What's the difference between marketing and sales? Because you always hear those terms, things thrown out there. But what is the difference between marketing and sales.

Unknown Speaker 2:56
So if you have a business, let's just say I have a candle business, and I make candles, and I have a little storefront business where I sell candles and then I also sell them online through E commerce. So marketing is the things I do to promote my my candles, okay, it's where I advertise to let people know that I have these new scented candles available. And where you can buy them a you can walk into my store and Townsquare mall, or you can buy them online and we'll send them to you. So that's so letting people letting the consumers know where you can purchase your product

Unknown Speaker 3:30
is marketing. So as marketing also branding is branding as a part of my branding as a part of marketing. So say, Okay, let's say with us, we we did different things to brand us, the name, the photoshoot just different the conversations. That's the branding part. And that's part of marketing, letting them know what time the radio show was coming on what station? Got it? Sales? What is sales?

Unknown Speaker 3:59
So it depends on what your product is. So for my imaginary candle store sales are the sales of the candles. Okay? So you know, who are you selling to? Are you selling to individual consumers? Are you selling to businesses? Are you selling to hotels? Who What's your customer base? You know, your customer, you have all those people, you know, do you sell to all those people and you have different streams of income for selling said candles. So that's what sales is. And so then in terms of sales, and you have a candle store, you have to determine, you know, a monthly budget, how much money do I need to make to keep my business open and running? And how much money do I need to make to keep my life running? So you would give yourself a budget and you would do the math to figure out how many candles I have to sell each month to make it happen. And then from knowing those numbers, you build a marketing plan or a strategy to determine how am I going to sell 100 Candles a month? Where am I going to advertise to get 100 Candles a month to get

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people to see that I am selling these candles so basically, even though they're saying separate? Well, you just hit marketing sales. And then my part is the budgeting, accounting. All those things then work together correct. In order for you to be a successful business. That's correct. So this part of the business is working on the business. That's correct working on the business, which we talk about all the times the difference between working on your business and working in your business, because all of us have the same number of hours every week. And I know for me, I spend a lot of time working on my business, actually, I spend probably more time working on my business than in my business, and hiring employees. They're working in the business, right? They're working in the business. I'm working on it to make sure that we are productive. And you're right. So the marketing then the sales, accounting. Alright, so this is Les talk with Lee and Rhonda. And I am Lea Crawford. And

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I'm Rhonda Nolan. And we're so happy to be here with you today on this bright Saturday morning.

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Yes, we are and wanting to get really into that, because I think that a lot of us missed that. We missed that we missed that key, we opened up, we opened up said door, spend all this money for a build out, and we do all these fabulous things. Nobody comes in the door, right? Because nobody knows you're there,

Unknown Speaker 6:09
right? Because you don't we always talk about this in your marketing plan, you touch on your I mean, in your business plan, you touch on your marketing plan, and then you have a separate marketing plan to take you through your whole year. So you sit down and think about what are some of the goals I want to meet this particular year, and you put together a plan of how to make it happen. And so what really happens is that when people open up businesses, when they do their business plan, and they do their overall budget, they forget to put in money for advertising and marketing, they forget, they forget, I have to market and promote my business. But they on that line item, they have nothing. You know, people really think I can just open up and people can come and people go, they're not gonna not gonna come. I mean, your friends might come, your friends and family will come. Because they'll come you'll have, you know, you'll have a day where you'll invite them to come. But here's where the networking comes in as well. Because you need in my opinion, if you open up a business, whether it's storefront or online, you need to be part of a Chamber of Commerce. So there are many Chamber of Commerce here in Las Vegas, there's the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce, the urban Chamber of Commerce, the Asian Chamber of Commerce, the Latin chamber, Latin Chamber of Commerce and chamber, women's commerce, the African commerce, so it's a whole bunch of a bunch of organizations, and depending upon what your business is, you know, you should at least pick one. But if your business crosses over all those demographics, then I would join a couple of them. So what

Unknown Speaker 7:34
I did was and I've been bad about this because understanding branding, you are your brand, you are your brand, or your brand, you're the face of your brand, or the face of your brand and business cards, because for two years, I didn't have business. I know I'm saying it out loud now. But two years, I didn't have business cards because I was changing the logo and me trying to push myself to change the logo, I figured out when to go buy business cards, biggest mistake I made. Because what I'm noticing now like everywhere I go, so when we go out basketball, games, football, you never know who you're going to meet, never know who you're going to come across. And I think we missed some opportunities, especially the place we just went. just handing out business cards,

Unknown Speaker 8:14
we did and and I missed that opportunity because I didn't have my big purse. As you know, when you go to sporting events here in Las Vegas, and everywhere in the world, when you go into these arenas, they no longer allow you to carry big handbags and backpacks and things of that nature. So we need to clear purse, right. So you have to have a plan that they want you to have a clear purse, really. And if you don't have a clear, they at least want you to have a small camera sized purse. So with that being said, when we went to St event last weekend, we forgot our business cards and we met all kinds of people kinds of people that we could have given our cards out to to market and promote our business. And so you're right. So rule number one small business people always have your business cards ready and in your wallet, your purse or your business card holder, because you never know who you're going to meet.

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never know who you're going to meet and make sure that your business cards has know that they have different information on him because I know even in creating a business card. That was that was that was challenging, right? Because first up is picking out a logo. And when you are going to a designer, they send you so many things. It's just I mean, it's Oh, you're overwhelmed with information and just being able to pick Okay, I want this one but just know that you're not stuck with that one. Right? You can change it. But I mean, I know for me, I know some I try not to I try to stay consistent with it so that it is something that you can, when you look at it, it brings to mind I think about the big M with McDonald's. Whenever you see those large ends, my son couldn't read and he knew when he saw McDonald's because of

Unknown Speaker 9:45
the logo, the logo, right the logo, so when you're starting your business, it's so important to make sure you have a great name for your business, but to make sure you have a great logo and to make sure you have a great website and business cards because all of those go together and all those line items have to be In your overall budget, you have to know what that cost and what the monthly fee is for, you know, your web hosting site and all that fun stuff. So you have to really, really do your research, when you're putting your budget together to determine how much money you need to be in business. But you absolutely need those little things.

Unknown Speaker 10:13
And the website, okay, so I'm not gonna lie to you. The website thing is my Achilles heel. Because I've had a website for a decade, I couldn't tell you how many people I have. And that was one thing I said I was going to work on during the pandemic. But I started doing some other things. But as soon as November hits, I'm going to go full fledge into the website, because the website can work, it can link everything up. And it can really work.

Unknown Speaker 10:40
You can put together campaigns to drive business to your websites. And then if you want to know you know how much business is coming there, you can go to Google Analytics. And Google Analytics will tell you exactly how many people visit your website, what what their demographics are, what part of the world they're in, in the whole nine. So if you because that's really part of marketing as a marketing function. And if you don't feel comfortable doing that, there are companies that can help you with that, you know, so but yeah, if you, if you're selling a product, and especially e commerce product, and you're driving business to your website, you want to know, if the messaging you're putting out is effective. Got it.

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And you have to measure if it's effective by set by the analytics, and all the other things, and you want to be able to analyze it, because you want to know if the dollars that you're spending makes a return on

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exactly when you place ads on Facebook, and Instagram and all those places you want to see, you know, how much money did you spend on these ads? And what's my return on investment? You know, if I spent $100 on these ads? Did I sell $100 worth of candles? You know, or did I sell $200 worth of candles? You know? Did it make sense for me to advertise?

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Did it make sense? Or did did that advertisement make sense? That

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messaging makes it a messaging? Did it? Did it make them want to come and visit my website? Consumers? Right? Did did the campaign make consumers drive consumers to my website to make a purchase? Or did did the consumers Did I did I drive consumers into my my my storefront, you know, what a special coupon to get, you know, 25% off, you know, on their order of candles, you know, got it. So

Unknown Speaker 12:15
yeah. And then we were talking about I mean, I was watching a video and they were talking about sales. And they were like, you know, everybody says I'm not a salesperson, I'm not a salesperson, not a salesperson, but you are you are a salesperson. And if you look at it, when you were in as a baby, you are a salesperson, as a child in school. And let me give you an example. Like if you went over and you made you a new friend, you are a salesperson, right? Because you got this person to talk to you engage, I mean, some of your childhood friends still talk to him, You are a salesperson, you know, and they bought up, if you ever got married, you convince somebody to marry you are a salesperson. So we are sales. And I think that we when we think about sales, we think about that, you know, the the shady car salesman, right? And that's not it, it's it's relationships is building because people buy from people they know when they like,

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and as entrepreneurs, we always have to have our two minute elevator pitch available, right? When we're out and about networking. And people say hey, what do you do for a living? Or what does your company do? We should be able to tell them in two minutes what our company does, like interests 30 seconds,

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because you should leave them wanting more you should that should leave them wanting more. So I teach a

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class and we teach people how to do elevator pitches and to make sure they have the right information. Oh, well, I

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Well, when the class comes up again, please let us know when the class is so that we can so people can come because I think that that's very, very important because you are you're because you're in your skin, you know you you're your brand, you you are you are your brand. So what does your brand say about you?

Unknown Speaker 13:45
And in addition to that, you have to train your workers also. So you have to train your employees on who your company is. What is your mission and value statement mission, vision and value say exactly what services do you provide? What what are those services costs, you know, so you have to educate now you have to not only educate yourself, but you have to educate your employees because they're your mouthpiece. They are your marketing people. Because if they love working for you and they love the show you selling it shows go out and tell other people

Unknown Speaker 14:16
well the thing about it is I want to give kudos because Brenda is my office manager and Brenda. People tell me all the people try to try to um, hire Brenda. I tried to steal Brenda all the time for me. And Brenda, Brenda is always like no because it's a good flow. It's an easy flow. And even when challenges happen, we're able to communicate through it. It's funny I don't think I've ever discussed with her our mission, vision and value statement but it shows in our everyday action. Our client is first and we care about each individual client like a boutique type of service. You have our attention while you're in there. We're not we're not you know, every week we're not you have we have to see somebody every 20 minutes in order to meet a number right we are Know the relationship and the money will come. Because a happy client tells a few other people but a disgruntled client, I'll tell everybody, everybody, and we've worked hard. And we've had some, some disgruntled clients, we've had some happy, but we have had some happy clients. But what I can say is we take the time to understand where you are, and to talk to you. And listen, listen, and not just listen to respond, but listen to really understand, Okay, what did I do wrong? How can I improve on the service because mine is a service industry, I don't have a product, right, you get the candle and the wick wasn't there or something like that didn't smell the way you thought it was going to smell, right? Mine is a personal service. And with personal professional services, it is all about the relationship. And sometimes I have to keep notes to remember said person bought a house, that person bought a car, this person is going through a divorce, this person just had a baby, this person, you know, family member does that. And for us, like when we find out, Brenda send out condolences we got well, we got a whole office full of cars, just show our clients that we appreciate you. Because all of you help us to live our life. That's right and our lifestyle. Okay, but yeah, I marketing, sales, marketing sales, are there any tips you can give? How much money I'm creating my initial budget, starting up? How much money should I put in for I mean, just just low in. So basically,

Unknown Speaker 16:32
when you do your budgets quarterly, and you come up with how much money you believe you're going to make, you should take 20% of that and use for marketing and advertising. So whatever that number is, 20% should be set aside. And that's what you should use as your budget to guide you. And let me just say, each business is different because one of the businesses, I have to be quite honest with you, I don't advertise for that business. Not in a big way. I advertise kind of locally in that business. But basically, for that particular business, I'd get a lot of word of mouth customers. So customers that I've done business with and companies, I keep getting repeat business number one, so I know I'm doing a good job. But number two, when they tell someone else about me and what I've done for them. That's how I get my business. So I don't for that particular business, I don't have to spend a large amount of money to advertise

Unknown Speaker 17:23
and see that's what I do when my business to start my business was strictly word of mouth. It was word of mouth. And like I said, when you provide a good service that people can count on, they definitely time and time again, they keep on coming back and coming back and coming back. And I know I was in business. I want to say 10 years before we started doing the radio shows, before we really got out there and started advertising. And we were offering a bunch of services because not only do we do taxes, business and personal, we do doc prep so we can create your LLC, we set up nonprofits. We also you know, people that have their nonprofits revoked, we help them get reinstated. So we do we do a lot of things. Now we're also doing notary services, we're mobile notaries and we're also, you know, signing agents now. So we do a bunch of services there. And with small business owners, just to ensure that we are taking care of you working on your business and working with you your growth plan. Okay, so you say you want to retire in 10 years? Well, what does that look like? How do you get there? You know, working with I know, with, with the real estate show, on this station, you know, building wealth through equity, you know, we talk about that a lot. And how do you do that, you know, insurance same way, you know, how, what type of insurances do you have on your business, and those are the conversations that we have, and then try to take you to the right person, so that you can um, do their I know what the SBA loan, people realized they needed risk of the thing was risk risk insurance, or property damage insurance,

Unknown Speaker 18:54
sometimes hazard insurance that you had to show when you receive your idle loan, or after you receive your loan. You know, months later, they came back and said, Hey, we need to see your hazard insurance.

Unknown Speaker 19:04
Well, not only that, because I had a client, I didn't realize that I had my policy already had has hazard insurance in it. And when I looked at the policy, it was a whole lot more stuff in there. I was like, Oh, got it, you know, and then workers comp, having employees, you got to have workers comp insurance, you have to have workers comp insurance. And if you have contractors, you can say, well, I'm I have 299 employees, we'll check to see if you need workers comp insurance for those 299 employees, because because if they don't have the proper documentation, you kind of you got to pay on those as well. So learning all of those things from being in business all of these years and just knowing who to ask the questions, because if somebody tells me No, all I say is, you know, well, you don't need that. Tell me why I don't need it. Or if I do need it, tell me why I do need it. But more importantly, show me the legislation. Because when the governmental officials come in there, I need to have proof of why I Who? Or why I don't need it right. And I need to be able to show them that this is my interpretation of what I did. And what I learned the best practices just ensure I'm up to my eyeballs and insurance because I don't know, I don't want no trouble. I don't want no drama. You know, I've dealt with workers comp, I've dealt with the IRS for myself and for clients. And knowing that being in compliance is so much easier. It really is. It's so much easier and cheaper,

Unknown Speaker 20:28
right? It's your it's a lot cheaper. And one of the things I want to stress to the small business owners out there is take care of your people. Because if you take care of your employees, okay, are you alright? Well, my

Unknown Speaker 20:38
name is Leah Crawford.

Unknown Speaker 20:40
I'm Rhonda Nolan. And you're listening to less talk with Leah, and Rhonda. And we are just talking about, you know, marketing and sales, and all the little things you need to have to market and promote yourself and network. And we're talking about the value of your employees, people who took good care of their employees right here in Las Vegas knew how well they were doing when the pandemic was over. And it was time for those people to come back to work. So if you took good care of your people, you got employees you had, if you took good care of your people, when you open back up for business, your people came back to work. If you did not take good care of your people, they may or may not have come back to work. So always remember that

Unknown Speaker 21:18
I know my like I said, my printer, you ain't going nowhere. You know, we lasted through I mean, no, because I and she said the Lee, I'm just grateful that during the pandemic, I still have a job. I was like we I didn't realize, again, knowing where to go to get the information, right. Accounting businesses were essential. We were essential. And I was like, Oh, who knew? Essential, non essential, and I was wondering why during a pandemic, the attorneys and stuff downtown offices were open, we were opening, social distancing. And I was like, Don't let nobody in the building, we got to figure out how to do everything virtually right, which pushed us to grow, because now I'm using more, we're doing a lot more stuff virtually, which allows us to have clients all over the country. That's right. So it's, I mean, it's worked out in, in our favor, you know, this, this thing was bittersweet. And a sweet part of it pushed me to really look at my business model, see how I can maintain, but in all actuality, I grew.

Unknown Speaker 22:19
Right. And for some small business owners, this was a time to think about what other businesses you want to open to diversify your funds. So if you just have one business, and you're only getting one check, and a pandemic, you know, kind of put you out of business for a little bit. What other business do you have? Or what other business can you come up with to make sure you have another stream of income so that you can stay in business and be able to feed your family,

Unknown Speaker 22:45
I understand that Well, I am Lea Crawford, I am Rhonda Nolan. And we are let's talk with Leah and Rhonda. And again, we are just going over again, just the Business Essentials. These are some some foundational, basic things. But as I say, if you want to have a nice house, you got to have a strong foundation, you want a good relationship, it has to have a strong foundation. These are foundational things that you do for your business, especially if you're thinking about it, you know, this new term or her solopreneur. You know, you're out there you want to be entrepreneur, you you want to do you want to go on business, but people always say, you know, well, nobody ever taught me how to be in business. That's why we're having these conversations so that we can start to talk about it to jog your memory, you know, your phone. Back in the day, you had to go to the library right now you got a whole library in your hand. That's right. You know, you can Google things a Google bubble. You know, you can Google stuff and you can find out you know, almost anything you want to know by typing in some key or ask Siri you know Siri smart. ask Siri. Siri is very smart series very smart. Um, again, I am Lea Crawford.

Unknown Speaker 23:50
I am Rhonda Nolan. And this is less talk with Leah and Rhonda. And we are at K u and v radio 91.5 Right here in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Unknown Speaker 23:58
I want to say you want to thank you, thank you to our engineers, you know, these guys are the best. Just meeting us being able to host our show. Thank you guys. We really appreciate you. We really appreciate you. Finally I got a call for you to go I want to know in our last couple of minutes what you think about this, okay. And one day she started living the life she imagined she got out of her own way and amazing things start to happen for entrepreneurs. What's one thing you can tell them that they need to do to get out of their own way

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hire other people to be part of your team? You don't know everything you know a lot.

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I don't know everything. Really? I'm not okay, I got I got a crystal ball. I

Unknown Speaker 24:44
don't know if you do not know everything hired the correct professionals to help you with your business. That means accountants bookkeepers, lawyers, you know, marketing consultants, business consultants, remember Byrd the Presidents have a team, they have a cabinet, a cabinet. And when there's a big decision to be made, they go and talk to the team and the team weighs in on what we should or should not do. And then the President makes up his mind what direction he wants to go in. But he just doesn't go in their heart and just says, Hey,

Unknown Speaker 25:15
I'm doing this push the button.

Unknown Speaker 25:17
I'm mad. So So with that, either like them, I'm pushing the button, we go into war. They don't it doesn't work like that. So make sure you have a strong foundation. The team? Yeah, good team, I'm gonna show you have a mentor, oh, my God, you need a mentor, you need to where would I find this mentor? Mentors could be older people in the same business you're in, in other cities, or states or right here. They could be professors from when you went to undergraduate or grad school. I didn't go to school, you didn't go to school? Well, you know what, you just have to make friends with other businesses, period, you know, get to know other entrepreneurs, you know, kind of talk about some of the things that you go through as a business owner, and they can help you out. There's plenty of people to talk to. And if not, you know, you can gather information online, like you said, you can go to Google. And if there's a question about something you can put it in, and Google will ask you, or Google will guide you to a book or person that can help you.

Unknown Speaker 26:08
And that's so funny. You say that because I have a mentor, I have a attract one. That's something different and mentor training, I have a coach, I have a I have my tribe, my girl tribe, that is amazing. And I liked the way that even though we all are in different industries, we all push each other to be the our best selves, and we cheer each other on, it's not a Oh, she's doing this, it is a matter of no yes, she's doing this, you know, and we're proud for you know, we're proud of each other. We're, I mean, just encouraging each other. And when we have hard things happen, we can have a conversation and think through it strategically, like Okay, so if we're at a how do we get to Z, alright, so if we skip to D, we might have to, you know, somebody, you show, we get skipped a D without doing B and C, you know, just how do we do this. And I love the fact that all of us do different things. We bring a variety of information, and we always work together to get to where we need to go.

Unknown Speaker 27:09
We sure do. So you got to have a strong team. Also, if you just need basic help, I believe the SBA has a program called

Unknown Speaker 27:18
score. They have score yep, yep, score score, mentor, you can get a score mentor, it costs you nothing. And they are they try to match you up with someone that season in your arena. And then I know that they have different classes like urban chamber commerce has ducks in a row or they have next level, different things to help you as entrepreneur to meet different entrepreneurs meet different people. I know I teach a class but I also take classes and I like taking beginners classes because you get a different perspective with young minds that are just starting because they aren't tainted it's like talking to children right that's why I like talking to kids because kids have a different just a different approach on just what they think differently and you're like oh, I never thought about it like that. No and when you're open and again being season some might call me they were like you oh gee and this and I'm like, no, no, I'm just getting started. I get I hit my stride yet. I'm just getting started. Almost there. Almost there. Well you want to override this is going to end our show for today. And until next month again, we will come up with another interesting topic but marketing sales guys, look it up. Get into it. You are your brand and you can if you can see it, you can pay it. Absolutely can have

Unknown Speaker 28:36
it fantastic. Phil it's been wonderful speaking with you today Las Vegas. I'm Rhonda Nolan and I'm Lea Crawford and you have been listening to less talk with Leah and Rhonda on KUNV radio. Please have a wonderful wonderful Saturday Do not forget to exercise and drink some water and drink plenty of water it's hot out there it's hot out there. See you next month all right bye.

Unknown Speaker 29:35
You have been listening to a paid program sponsored by Crawford management group and smart time consultants. Please be advised that the voices and opinions you heard do not necessarily represent the views of K u and v Las Vegas, the University of Nevada Las Vegas or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai