Welcome back. This is a bonus episode of Big Business. And you know what, Xander, we need to come up with a little name for these kinds of episodes where people have sent ins like a DM to us and then we're answering, you know, like the Advice series or whatever. Yeah, the Business the BBA.
What's that Big Business Advice?
Yeah, the BBA Advisory Board with Brittany. And but it's not just for business. You know, if you're an employee or if you're wanting to start a business, you can send in your questions as well.
If you've got a nasty coworker, send me.
Tell er, if you've got a workplace drama.
Was like, ask the.
Way, this is the BBA.
We want to give you the advice, but also know.
That the details. Okay, so we've got another message today, Xander.
Yeah, does say so? It says, Hey, britt I'm a big fan of the podcast, thank you, and was wondering if you could offer advice. I am an emerging designer with my own business that is completely so funded. I have grown from using any spare income from my normal job, pouring that into the business, and now having the sales from my business fund the business itself. My question is where the heck do I go from here? How do I keep scaling the business forward? Much loved you always.
I really hope I'm submitting my question in the right place.
You have, yes, And by the way, send your questions to our Big Business podcast Instagram account, because that's where we see all of your dms and we collect them and screenshop them and we use them for episodes. This is a really kind of hard question to answer, frag you. This is hard for me to specifically answer without knowing the details of what kind of business that you have.
In the context of fate, for example, you wouldn't have been making a ton of the money in the beginning that would completely self fund the business. Like I know you poured like fifty grand into it when you started, and that all came from your pocket.
Ye.
Now she's in the spot where she can actually pour all the money she's earning from the business to.
Fack into the business into it.
So, like, what are some steps you would have taken?
My step from there? This is me assuming that she is still the only one working in the business, because she hasn't mentioned if there's staff or anything. I would say the next step there for your business is to keep ramping it up, whether that is hiring someone. And again, I don't know if you have the kind of business where you can just have someone come in and help, because I'll just use a reference of like someone who
does like nails. You can't just have someone come in and help to do all the day to day tasks because you have to train someone a lot and they
had to be like qualified or whatever. But like with me, for Fate, it was hiring that first person to take some of the tasks off me so that they could keep the day to day stuff going, like packing the orders, processing returns, you know, writing stuff on our website in the product descriptions, so that I could then focus on doing bigger picture things, which was going to in turn make the company more money. I could then focus more
on the marketing. You know. My next suggestion would be, whatever you are going to do, take it slow and don't make any huge jumps because you're feeling confident in this moment. It's great to see momentum in a business, and it's amazing that you know, you were funding it from your outside job and now the business is kind of funding itself, which is a great position to be in. Be very careful with every step you take from here.
And let's say, for example, the next step for you isn't hiring someone because they can't do what you do
kind of thing. If you need to still be really hands on with your designs, it would be I guess building your client tell And again this might be hiring someone that is going to build the client tele with and for you, whether that's through organic social media, Like I'm not sure if you're looking for more clients, I don't know exactly how your business works, but it might be worth you investing some money into paid marketing if that's going to work for your business type, whether that's
like Facebook Ads or Google. You might want to take your social media to the next level. Again, I don't know what your business is or if it's suited to social media, but in saying that, every single business can benefit from being on social media. If you're wanting more eyes on your business, maybe this is the time where you invest more time of your own into your social media. Or maybe you can have that first hire come in and they're going to work as a social media assistant.
Maybe they've got a really good eye for content creation, you've got the eyes for the designs. Both of you could come together and work together to bring eyes onto your brand through posting organically on Instagram and TikTok. I think that would be a great spot if you're wanting to grow and have more eyes on your business and maybe get new clients. And another point would be in your position. Again, it's really hard for me to answer
without knowing exactly what your business is. I wouldn't suggest hiring any external companies. That's a big tip for all of you out there, if you're in those early days, don't go and sign up to like an agency that's going to charge you eight thousand dollars a month to give you the best PR and marketing ever or like ads, because I've been there, done that. A lot of business
owners have been absolutely burnt by that. But they're like my main two things, Like, if you're wanting to scale from where you are, you're obviously wanting to get more customers or clients. However, your business is set up and it's it's thinking about whether it's hiring and all rounder to come and help you with the designs if that work.
But I know that's so specific or hiring someone to come in that's going to help with your marketing to build your business bigger across paid media and organic socials. You might be able to explore working with content creators and influencers. That's another great way to get exposure. Again, you kind of got like a lot of options, but it's really hard for me to answer. I know I keep saying this without knowing the full context of your business. Can we like tap on her profile and see what it is?
Yes, it is eoshop spelled eeyo dot shop on Instagram.
So show me the Instagram page for one second. Okay, I've got this all wrong. I thought you were like a freelance designer, but now that we've looked at your website, you're a clothing brand. I thought she was like a freelance graphic designer or something. So now I can answer
this exactly from my own experience. Hire that first employee that's going to be the one packing your orders, that's going to be doing your emails, going to be doing your returns, so you yourself can focus more on the pieces that you're coming out with and your marketing. Another great hire for you will be that social media person. Let me go look just quickly at your TikTok and your Instagram. She's already doing great. Oh and she's making it herself as well, sewing it by hand. I can see you're
sewing things at home. So again that's a hard thing to hire someone to come and help when she's got the art of the craft with her hands. My advice would be all of the above that I've said, keep going with your organic marketing on Instagram and TikTok, which you're already doing. From what I can see like you're doing, making and packing orders on TikTok, I feel like you've
already got the right idea. The next step for you once you feel like you're nailing your organic social content, which you're already doing, I would just say do it more and more and more. Then you need to be looking into those paid ads taking it to the next level, learning how to do meta ads if you don't already know. But make sure your organic social media is super super
strong before you start investing in paid ads. The thing with like running Facebook ads is what a lot of people get wrong, I believe is just say you launch a brand and straight away you go to Facebook and meta and you set up ads and you start spending money in hopes to get customers. People don't realize how much organic content plays a part in that, and like
your brand awareness in general. And when I do my ads, sorry, when I do my videos on my reels and stuff about my ads, people see how well our fate ads perform and think, how, like, how are you getting these results? It's because we have such strong social media presence and brand awareness. So for you, there's so many things that you could do, but I would focus on fostering a community even more on your organic socials. Build a strong community around your brand. Keep going with those behind the
scenes videos. You're on the sewing machine at home, you doing all the things people love seeing that. They love seeing the behind the scenes, So I would say spend even more time on doing that, even if it's hiring that social media person that's going to come in and film all of that for you. Because you're the one that's doing the work. You're using your hands to make
your tops. I would say do more of that and have someone else even edit and put all the videos together, because I know how time consuming it is.
The close a sleigh, Yeah, I'm just looking out. You might actually get they because I sometimes like buy women's clothes and wear them. It's like yummy, Like everything is yummy on here, and I've seen I can see you on here. You in some of your like marketing and stuff and photoshoots. You've actually got food with the clothes, which is so the thing right now. Actually, we're going to get someone on the pod brit and have a chat about the way food is used in marketing at the moment.
Yeah, love that, But yeah, I would say keep doing what you're doing, keep hosting that organic content on your Instagram and TikTok, especially TikTok the behind the scenes taking
people on the journey. And if it's getting too much for you, because I know how hard it would be to be sowing all of your clothes and packing all the orders and then making all the content, have like a freelance social media person, even if you're not ready to hire someone else, Hire a freelancer to come in once every two weeks and just bulk film a heap of videos with you, just anything that's going to take that time off you so you can focus on what
you actually need to do. That would be my advice, but I think it's amazing that you are at where you're at in your journey right now. You've started this business whilst working another job. You've funded it to the point where it is now the business is paying for itself, which is amazing. And I think slow and steady wins the race, but you're doing bloody awesome and just keep going and don't forget to ask for help when you need it. That's a really important one as well.