Mike Watkins with The Joy of Business Strategy and Casey Howard with Flourish for Moms

Intro: [00:00:07] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Woodstock, Georgia. It’s time for Cherokee Business Radio. Now, here’s your host.

Stone Payton: [00:00:24] Welcome to Cherokee Business Radio Stone Payton here with you this morning. And today’s episode is brought to you in part by our local small business initiative, the Business RadioX Main Street Warriors Defending capitalism, promoting small business and supporting our local community. For more information, go to Main Street warriors.org and a special note of thanks to our title sponsor for the Cherokee chapter of Main Street Warriors Diesel David Inc. Please go check them out at diesel. David.com. You guys are in for a real treat this morning. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast, first up on Cherokee Business Radio this morning with The Joy of Business Strategy head coach Mike Watkins. Good morning, sir. Good morning.

Mike Watkins: [00:01:13] How are you Stone?

Stone Payton: [00:01:14] I am doing well. It is a delight to have you in the studio. I got a thousand questions. I know we’re not going to get to them all, but yeah, I’m thinking a good place to start would be if you could articulate for me and our listeners mission purpose. What what are you and your team really out there trying to do for folks?

Mike Watkins: [00:01:33] Man So thanks so much for asking. Stone and for having me here. It’s really a pleasure to be with Business RadioX the The Joy of Business Strategy. Our mission is to help business owners and leaders make better decisions through strategic, through strategic thinking. And so basically what I like to say, I listen to help you see the one of the biggest challenges really in life. Think about my marriage. If I could always see things through my wife’s lens, that would be awesome. And in business, quite often that’s the big challenge. Business owners don’t see their business through their customer’s lens, through their employees lens. And so having someone with a different perspective kind of watching from the sidelines and saying, Hey, what if you did this? What if you did this? How about this? And much like a head coach would do on a football team or a basketball team, it helps players with great talents become even better. And that’s what we do with businesses. Well, it sounds.

Stone Payton: [00:02:50] Like a noble pursuit to me. And I got to believe, having run my own business for, gosh, 30 plus years now, I don’t think you’re going to run out of market opportunity because we could all get better at making decisions and and seeing things from a from a different perspective. I got to know the backstory, man. How in the world did you find yourself in this line of work?

Mike Watkins: [00:03:11] Well, I’m a radio guy, a former radio guy now. I was in the radio business for 45 years. Wow. In multiple places in Ithaca, New York, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Chicago, Illinois, and here in Atlanta with some of the premier radio stations around the country. First radio station ever in the country, the first radio station in the south. And and so I’ve had a lot of experiences both on the content side as a program director and on the sales side as an individual sales person, as a sales leader, as a business development manager and all of those things. And I loved radio, been a part of some great experiences and at the same time had a plethora of experiences of working with different businesses, different audiences. At the end of the day, it was always about understanding what other people wanted to help bring them, what they wanted. And so it was time to retire. From what I did with Cox Media Group, I was with 95.5 WSB Radio for 25 years, and I had a loved my career there. And and it was just time to move and do some different things. And taking all of those 45 years of in the industry, the collective experiences, what I found in most cases I was really coaching people on what to do differently and what to do better and how to take something that was really good and make it even better. And and so here we are today with the joy of business strategy, because helping people with their strategy is what brings me joy.

Stone Payton: [00:05:08] So where is the most joy for you now that you’ve been at it a while? What are you finding the most rewarding? What are you enjoying the most about this work?

Mike Watkins: [00:05:17] You know what’s really great is to to deliver, whether it’s a nugget. Or a process or a strategy and see it come to formation or see it come to life and see how it benefits somebody. So right now I’m working with a law firm and we’re. I’m sorry.

Stone Payton: [00:05:40] No, I’m kidding.

Mike Watkins: [00:05:43] I’m sorry. Go ahead. Well, here’s here’s the good news. There are plenty of law firms. That’s true. But I’m working with a law firm right now. And and we’re shifting their focus from multiple services to a specific line of work so that they can be focused on that. And we’re really transforming everything down to the way they intake callers. And so that’s one of the things that we’re talking about right now. How does everybody answer the phone? Where do we direct the calls when someone has an inquiry? How do we manage it so that from the very beginning the relationship starts off on a positive note as opposed to simply here’s how much it costs. And so taking that and seeing everybody take hold of that and watching that process, that’s what again. So you see, I light up like that when we talk about that, those kinds of things. That’s what brings me joy.

Stone Payton: [00:06:47] All right. So let’s talk about about the work a little bit. I think it’s great that you landed there on on that and on that. One specific thing that sounds very tangible. It’s something we can see results from. We can throw our hat over the fence, try some things, make some adjustments, see the see the results. Back me up a little bit, like especially early in the relationship and in the in the engagement are you you’re just sitting at the table with the principles of a firm or the leaders of the firm and I don’t know, asking good questions to figure out where they’re hurting. What is the early part of an engagement look like?

Mike Watkins: [00:07:18] I love that. So it starts off with conducting, you know, basically a needs analysis. Everybody does an initial discovery meeting, you know, in just about every business, right. Every situation you’re doing a needs analysis or some type of a discovery moment when we’re understanding what’s important and where is the real pain and we’re narrowing down to the real pain. And and so we do that in some initial meeting or meetings. And really the focus of what generates whether it’s a simple engagement to help you develop a single strategy or an ongoing coaching relationship. The real work takes place when we do what we call a strategic marketing focus session. And that session, it’s about a half a day session where we sit down, we get all of the principal stakeholders, everybody who knows something about the customer. And how the customer interacts with the business. And we spend time, we have a four step process. First of all, we want to talk about who is our target. I like to say you might take money from everybody, but you’re only going to spend money to get your ideal customer profile. All right. So with most businesses, I’ll take business here. I’ll take business there. But this is the customer that I’m most equipped to work with. I’ll do the best job of delivering. And they are that Peralto principle. They’re the 20% of the people who will deliver 80% of our revenue. So we we first of all, we start off with the who are you targeting? Who’s your ideal customer profile? Next, we want to look at what do they want? Probably the biggest mistake most businesses make is that they focus what they sell, what they do, what services they offer on what they like to do. As opposed to what people need.

Stone Payton: [00:09:25] I think I might resemble that remark. Casey, how about you? He’s been reading my mail.

Mike Watkins: [00:09:33] Yeah. Most people think about, Hey, here’s what I do. Well, here’s what I like to do. Yeah. Even in the coaching circuit, you know, I get emails every day from, Hey, could you take on to, you know, more clients? Here’s our strategy, here’s what we do. And I think, well, what if your strategy doesn’t fit with this customer needs. So so the second thing that we talk we talk about who are you targeting, What do they need? What’s most critical when they make a decision to go with the business? What are the things that they got to have? And so we look at that. Then we think about where. Where else can they get the things that they need? So we think about in our own box what we do, but we often don’t really take a look at the competition. And so if I’m trying to sell somebody something, who else is trying to sell them? There’s a great line from the movie Scarface. I love this line. Don’t underestimate the other guy’s greed. That’s one of that’s one of my favorite lines. So so you’ve got to understand what the competition is, what your customer’s competition is, how do they satisfy the things they need? So who are you targeting? What do they want? Where else can they get what they want? And within that, where is the place that you can settle in and find your niche? And then finally, finally, how how do we deliver the message to them that you can satisfy what they need better than anybody else? That’s the big that is probably the most critical thing that we do is spend that that strategic marketing focus session to really from there we do some ideation and develop different concepts to to understand how we can satisfy the need of your ideal customer.

Mike Watkins: [00:11:35] And from there we map out a strategic plan. And then, you know, our motto is plan, focus, win. So once we map out that plan, then my job is to help you as a business owner really stay focused. Mission drift is prevalent in business. I love this plan. But you know what? I just had this customer walk in and this is like, this might be a great customer. It’s not it doesn’t fit my plan, but that might be a great customer for I might actually have to take a loss on the deal to get them. But they’re really a big customer and we just have this mission drift. So my job as a coach is to say, No, I didn’t tell you to run down and out. I told you to run a fly pattern, stay on the course. And so that’s what that’s what we do. And and that relationship ongoing is, is really let’s focus on the plan. Let’s continue to tweak and modify the plan based on the changing environment. And from there, that’s how we win.

Stone Payton: [00:12:45] And by that time, you the group has a common nomenclature. You’re calling the same things, the same things. So you’ve got this common language and the trust that you must personally have to cultivate to be able to work with teams at this level. I mean, you must really pay a great deal of attention to the way you carry yourself from at go. And you’ve got to be talk about cultivating and maintaining trust in a relationship like that, because I got to believe it’s paramount in your work.

Mike Watkins: [00:13:15] Boy, that is a great question. So I earlier referenced that ideal customer profile. And that ideal customer is the people whom you can serve the best, who are really great customers for what you do. I actually have an ideal customer profile.

Stone Payton: [00:13:35] You got to eat your own cooking.

Mike Watkins: [00:13:36] I got to eat my own cooking. That’s right. Yeah. This cobbler’s children tries to have shoes. At least they have crocs. We. What I do is I target business owners. I’ve got a formula. They have to have a desire to win. So a D desire and drive, they have to have ego. You cannot be a business owner without some aspect of ego. Ego gets a bum rap. You know, when ego becomes arrogance, it becomes a negative. But ego is really important because you get kicked every day as a business owner. And in third, you have to have humility. You can’t look at yourself as the smartest person in the room all the time. So if you’re driven, you have ego, but you have enough humility to be coachable. That’s the that’s the makeup of my ideal customer profile. Okay. I’m a relationship guy, and I can tell from the very beginning if we’re going to be able to develop a relationship and if you’ve got those three characters, we’re going to be able to work. I love somebody who’s driven got a little bit of an edge with with with the ego because they want to own it, but at the same time, they’re coachable and they want to hear more. And so we start from the very beginning, understanding relationship. And when you understand what somebody needs, that’s half the battle in developing that relationship because it’s not all about me. It really is about you.

Stone Payton: [00:15:09] So have you had the benefit of a mentor or a coach of your own to help keep you in check the way you were describing helping your clients stay focused? Or do you have to pull all that off by yourself? Well, I.

Mike Watkins: [00:15:22] Mean, there are multiple, you know, multiple coaches that I’ve got, you know, from a personal standpoint and from a professional standpoint, you know, I’ve had over the 45 years of when I was working for someone, I probably had somewhere in the range of 80 different managers or leaders or bosses or bosses bosses thing. And I always found to take something from everyone. And so in doing business, I do a lot of networking. I talk to a lot of people who have been there before who can coach me on certain things. There might be different levels and different aspects of things that I just don’t know because I can’t be the smartest person in the room. One of my best coaches right now is the one who’s working with me on social media. I think he’s 25. He good for you, though? You know, I’ve got. But but that’s what I need. I need someone to call my baby ugly. And help me in every arena there is.

Stone Payton: [00:16:34] So how does the whole sales and marketing thing work for a guy like you? I think it’s marvelous that you get into the boardroom. You’re talking to these folks. Obviously, I can tell just in conversing with you for 10 or 15 minutes, I can see why a lot of people would say, yes, let’s do this. How do you get to have those conversations in the first place? Are you out there shaking trees? Is it all referral? How does it work in a business like yours?

Mike Watkins: [00:17:00] A lot of it is is referral or relationship. You know, anytime I talk to a business owner. What they might do from an advertising perspective to bring in customers is important. But if they’re not telling me their number one source of customer acquisition is referral. That means they have some work to do. So relationships and referrals and those kinds of opportunities are really critical. And then you know what situations where you can offer things to people, where you can offer advice to people, where you can coach. I just just last week I spoke to a business incubator, a group of about 30 entrepreneurs, sharing with them what I call OPM, other people’s mistakes. So we we did a workshop on marketing and much of that workshop was on other people’s mistakes. And, you know, coming out of that have a couple of conversations going on. And, and so it’s just that it’s all of those kinds of things. The more you give, the more you get back and sharing content and sharing ideas and being open to relationships and networking, all of those kinds of things. All of that is what leads to the end goal.

Stone Payton: [00:18:26] Well, in my experience at least, it’s been it comes back to you in some way and maybe not often in a straight line necessarily. When you go help out a, you know, a group of young entrepreneurs or that kind of thing. But it seems to come back in its own way sometimes, you know, tenfold. Just being out there, serve first, serve early, serve often. But even if the only thing that comes from that is just when you articulate those ideas and you’re trying to help someone else with whatever your specialized knowledge is, it helps crystallize your own thinking and make you that much more effective for the next guy that you’re serving who is writing you a check, doesn’t it?

Mike Watkins: [00:18:59] That’s exactly right. When you teach, When you teach, you get better. Yeah. Yeah, that’s exactly right.

Stone Payton: [00:19:06] So you’re obviously clearly it comes through on the airwaves. I’m sure it definitely comes through in the studio game. This guy is passionate about what he’s what he’s doing outside the scope of your of your work, of what we’re talking about. Any other passions that you pursue? My listeners know me. I like to hunt, fish and travel. So it’s no secret anything kind of outside the scope of this that you like to nerd out about and dive into.

Mike Watkins: [00:19:29] Well, what I’m as passionate as I am about being strategic and marketing and helping business owners. My my biggest passion, my biggest two passions are my family and helping people with marriages. And so my wife and I are heavily involved in marriage ministry and we work with couples and we work in a marriage ministry. We we do an ongoing couples groups. And we’ve got a great big old married couples retreat that we do annually. And so that’s really that that’s one of the reasons God placed me here. It’s to work with people in their marriages.

Stone Payton: [00:20:15] I think that’s marvelous. I’m glad I asked.

Mike Watkins: [00:20:18] I’m glad you did, too. All right.

Stone Payton: [00:20:20] Before we wrap, I’d love it if we could leave our listeners with a couple of actionable I’ll call them pro tips. Right. Just to I mean, number one, pro tip gang, if you want to have a conversation about any of this kind of thing, reach out, tap into Mike’s work. I’m sure he’d be glad to have a conversation with you, but maybe something. Someone’s listening. What are some things that they could begin to think about? Maybe start doing stop doing? Maybe a book they could read? Let’s just give them a little something to chew on. If we could.

Mike Watkins: [00:20:47] Have a plan Number one thing. Have a plan. I can’t tell how many times I receive calls about, Hey, I want to advertise on the radio. Great. Tell me about your plan. What’s your. Well, I do X. Okay, so tell me about your plan. Who’s your customer? So have a plan. Know your customer. Know your customer. It is critical. You can’t sell anything to anybody if you don’t know what they want. People buy for two reasons. One, it’s a problem that’s important enough to put money behind. Two, it’s a problem that they either can’t fix or don’t want to expend the resources on their own to fix. So if someone’s going to spend money only for those reasons, so understand what people need, excuse me, and then be focused and remain focused on what they need. Don’t start this way on other things. Squirrel and you get an idea Over here. Hello? That’s me.

Stone Payton: [00:21:54] He caught me again. Casey. That is me.

Mike Watkins: [00:21:57] Yeah, I mean, those are. Those are. Those are some of the biggest. Don’t get persuaded by your. Your competitor or your friend. I have a friend in Saint Louis who’s doing what I do, but they do x. I need to do X. No, you don’t. We don’t have arches in Atlanta, so don’t do what someone else does just because it works for them. Those are probably kind of the biggest rocks that I see. If you’re going to do some advertising, spend what you need for that particular medium. If you don’t have the budget for that medium, do something else or you’re not ready to advertise. You know, there are just some things that folks have done that you want to be careful.

Stone Payton: [00:22:42] Marvelous. Thank you. Sounds like marvelous counsel to me. All right. If someone would like to reach out, have a substantive conversation with you or someone on your team, begin to tap into your work. What are the coordinates? What’s the best way for them to do that?

Mike Watkins: [00:22:54] Easiest way is to go to the website. The Joy of Business strategy.com. The joy of business strategy.com. We’re on LinkedIn we blog on LinkedIn, go to the website. You can find all kinds of information there about what we do. Contact information, reach out, read some of the blogs that’ll give you a sense for who we are, and we’d love to talk to folks.

Stone Payton: [00:23:22] Marvelous. Well, thank you for coming in, man. It has been an absolute delight having you on the show. Keep up the good work. You’re doing Important work, man. And we appreciate you. And we want to keep up with your story as it continues to unfold.

Mike Watkins: [00:23:36] Stone Thanks so much for having me. We love small businesses. We love major businesses. We just love business and and helping them with their strategy. And I appreciate you having me.

Stone Payton: [00:23:45] Well, it’s my pleasure, man. Hey, how about hanging out with us while we visit with our next guest?

Mike Watkins: [00:23:49] I would love to do that because I want to hear what she’s got to say because I’m fired up.

Stone Payton: [00:23:56] All right, gang. Me and Mike are ready for the headliner. I hope you guys are, too. Please join me in welcoming back to the Business RadioX microphone with Flourish for Moms. Ms. Casey Howard, how are you?

Casey Howard: [00:24:09] I’m so good. How are you?

Stone Payton: [00:24:11] I am doing well. What’d you learn in that last segment? Anything touch you there?

Casey Howard: [00:24:15] So many great nuggets there. I mean. Yeah, I just feel like we could all use someone like Mike.

Stone Payton: [00:24:22] There you go.

Casey Howard: [00:24:23] All the other people that come here need his services.

Stone Payton: [00:24:26] Isn’t that the truth?

Stone Payton: [00:24:27] Literally everybody on my logo wall ought to be talking.. Yeah. I’ll put his interview on a CD and sell it to you for $4.95. You know, free. Just pay $4.95 for shipping.

Casey Howard: [00:24:36] Okay. Sounds good.

Casey Howard: [00:24:37] It’s a deal.

Stone Payton: [00:24:38] All right. Tell us a little bit about Flourish for Moms, product services and your mission and purpose. Who are you helping and why?

Casey Howard: [00:24:45] Sure. So Flourish for Moms is a. A product based brand. Where? Basically, we are so long story short, I went on this whole journey kind of late last year where I was just really feeling like crap to say it in the most, you know, layman terms possible. But I just wasn’t feeling that good and I wasn’t sick. There was really nothing that I could pinpoint that was wrong with me. It really just boiled down to the fact that I was not taking care of myself. I’m a mom of three kids and I just let that completely take over me. And so I wasn’t taking care of myself. And when that happens, you end up just not feeling that great physically, not feeling that good mentally. You’re super stressed all the time. So I went down this whole path of starting to implement self care into my daily routine, and I started to feel so much better. Long story short, I’ve kind of always wanted to have some kind of product based business, and it just kind of all seemed like that was the perfect fit. I never really knew, like, what kind of products I wanted to sell these past few years when I had this in my mind. But when I went through my own personal self care journey recently, I was just like the light bulb went off and said, This is what my business is going to be. And so, yeah, I’ve created this brand for moms where they it’s encircles their whole journey of self care.

Casey Howard: [00:26:21] So essentially we’re selling self care products from a journal manifest your best life journal a weighted blanket to help you de-stress and sleep better at night vitamins to help you just make sure you’re taking care of your body. Um, exercise pants to get yourself out and moving. All sorts of things like that. Essential oils. Those are all the initial products I have in my lineup that I’m going to release over this next year. Um, but yeah, it basically encircles this whole entire person and what they will need to take care of themselves as a mom and feel so much better. As moms, we just really we forget about ourselves. Honestly, I would say like 85% of us do. There’s some moms that are really good at making sure after they have babies to just still work out and eat healthy. But most of us, we just kind of were focused on taking care of the kids and we don’t have time for anything else. And it just kind of takes over. So and forgetting about ourselves, you just you really find yourself not feeling that great. And so here I am. I started this whole brand and it’s really exciting. So the first product that we launched just recently over the past few weeks was our journal. So that that’s what’s going on now. And then over the next year’s time, I’ll release the other different products that I mentioned.

Stone Payton: [00:27:55] Well, I’ll tell you, for whatever my opinion is worth, I love it that you’ve launched with something that has these these ladies being introspective and beginning to think about the whole picture and working on their mindset rather than launch with a tangible product. I think that’s a are you finding that you’re beginning to cultivate community and get a tribe around the whole idea and mindset of this work?

Speaker5: [00:28:23] Yes. So…..

Stone Payton: [00:28:23] That’s great.

Casey Howard: [00:28:24] Yeah, it’s really exciting. The The Journal is all about manifesting your best life. Like what do you want as you are a mom, you have kids and that’s great, but you cannot forget about yourself. And so we’re every morning writing down our goals in the journal. Big things, small things and like monthly goal, weekly goal goal for today. And also what is your mantra? All this kind of stuff. It’s really getting back to what do you want and what is your plan and just focusing on yourself. But for the you asked about the community. I do. I did start a Facebook group for moms. So we’re all in that group just kind of interacting together and throwing out, you know, what what are some great tips for some quick exercises you could do today to de-stress your mind? You know, here’s like these are just all examples, like, oh, here’s a picture of my my breakfast this morning, you know, like eating clean and just kind of keeping each other in check.

Stone Payton: [00:29:31] Just communal support, I would think. It’s very important. Be very powerful, right?

Casey Howard: [00:29:34] Yeah. We have a also in the Facebook group, we have a like a early morning accountability group. So I always get up early before the kids so that I have time to. Basically get my head screwed on straight before the kids come at me. Rapid fire. You know, the kids are just like, You have kids, right? Well, they’re grown, but, you know, they just wait.

Stone Payton: [00:29:55] I stand by the product and it’s not me. It’s Holly that made it happen. But I’m still enjoying the fruits of that labor.

Casey Howard: [00:30:01] You wake up if you wake up when the kids do, it’s. It’s too much for me. I can’t take, like, rapid fire questions from three young children without having, like, a moment to myself before they get up. So I’ve been making it this past year at least, a habit to get up before them, do my journaling, have coffee in peace, and just have that moment in time. And so I mentioned that to all the the moms and the Facebook group and they all seemed very interested that they would want to do it too. And so we said, Well, let’s just have an accountability group. And so every morning I just do a quick poll in the group, early morning accountability check in who did it today. And everyone pipes in and there’s a lot of things going on in the group, but the community part is really nice.

Stone Payton: [00:30:50] Well, I think it’s terrific.

Stone Payton: [00:30:51] And I got to tell you, I was teasing my sister in law. She’s staying with us while they build our house in Acworth. And I was up making coffee for everybody. That’s how I contribute around the house. And and I had made mine before I had made hers. And then I was teasing with her. You know, they tell you on the airplane, put that mask on you first and then. Yeah, exactly. But there really is some merit to that on on these more serious right.

Casey Howard: [00:31:15] For for my kids to have a good day you know like I need we set the tone for them so we have to be mentally in a good place before they get up. So we’re setting the tone for them. So I just think it’s really important to get up before they do. If you can. You don’t have to do all the time. I mean, sleep in on the weekends, whatever. But yeah, so the Journal has been the, the first product that we’ve rolled out and other products to follow.

Stone Payton: [00:31:46] Well, again, with that mindset, that ethos and following the kind of counsel that that Mike is describing about, you know, pick a focus, I got to believe the resources, the products, the services, I think they’re just going to continue to pop up for you and then you can make your decisions against. I think Mike would would back up back up this idea against some predetermined criteria. Does it serve these people in this way the way we want? Yeah, I’ll bet you they’re going to continue to crop.

Casey Howard: [00:32:13] Up for you. Yes, I always have all these thoughts in my head about other products I can release for these moms, but it’s really nice because I am my ideal client. I have been through the exact thing that a bunch of other moms out there are going through. So I, I know their their problem. I know their pain points. I know what will help them. And so really, I just I feel lucky that I’ve already gathered this information because this is the most important piece. Before you really, like start your business, you got to find out who your person is. So luckily I am that person I didn’t have to go to of a deep dive. But I. I mean, I feel like I can also really relate to these moms for sure.

Stone Payton: [00:32:55] So say more about what you were doing before this little detour, this little dip and this in this recovery. And are you still serving in that arena as well.

Casey Howard: [00:33:05] Before.

Stone Payton: [00:33:07] Before you started this business? Right, Because because you’ve been here before talking about that work. Are you still doing that work?

Casey Howard: [00:33:14] Oh, yeah. Yeah. That’s still my bread and butter for sure. Okay. So, yeah, I’m a maternity and newborn photographer. My portrait studio is in East Cobb. Okay. Still very much doing that. And so that will never go away.

Stone Payton: [00:33:28] Well you meet a lot of moms.

Casey Howard: [00:33:30] Exactly. I know.

Stone Payton: [00:33:31] Sounds like a funnel to me.

Mike Watkins: [00:33:33] How about you, Mike?

Casey Howard: [00:33:34] Yeah, I just. I just put a sign in my studio the other day that said that let them know about the moms Facebook group that I have created. Let them know to join it. And that’s kind of like my my hopper, you know, get all the moms in there and then kind of let them know about these great things I have for them and send them to the other places where they. But, you know, there’s not too much like selling in the Facebook group, but it’s more of like a community and support type thing. But I did yeah, it’s a good funnel for sure because I, I definitely let all the moms know that come into the studio.

Stone Payton: [00:34:05] Well, it’s got to serve each other, right? Because I got to believe one of the things you can do for yourself is go get pictures that you’re proud of and that you like. So yeah, they feed each other, which I think that’s that’s terrific.

Casey Howard: [00:34:17] Yeah.

Casey Howard: [00:34:18] So it all kind of works together in a weird way. It wasn’t that wasn’t really the plan, but it. Yeah, it seems.

Casey Howard: [00:34:25] To be perfect.

Stone Payton: [00:34:26] You get focused on who you want to serve and why, and you invest in serving early, serving often, I think. I don’t know. I just think it just comes to you.

Casey Howard: [00:34:34] It does.

Casey Howard: [00:34:34] And I always now that I think back, I any time a mom, especially a new mom, would come into the studio to get their newborns pictures taken, I always felt the urge to. Just tell them a few. Not too much because I know it’s annoying for someone to tell you all the things when you’re having babies and you’re like, I know whatever. You don’t want someone to tell you. You know what I mean? Like too much advice, like, relax. But I did just feel the strong urge to to let moms know, like just little things that I discovered along the way that no one told me. Like, make sure you’re still taking care of yourself. And, you know, if something’s not working out for you the way that, you know, everyone says you should do it for your child, then just do what works for you. And, you know, I just always felt the urge to tell these moms advice, I guess. And so here I am. I’ve created a whole

Stone Payton: [00:35:27] Now you’ve got a vehicle for it.

Casey Howard: [00:35:28] Brand to help them. Yeah.

Stone Payton: [00:35:30] All right, let’s talk about me a minute. You know, it’s my show.

Casey Howard: [00:35:33] Yeah, go. Go for it.

Stone Payton: [00:35:35] So I’m a managing partner and and a equity partner in the Business RadioX network, and I’ve got a couple of communities, so I really do want your insight and the benefit of your experience and expertise on on cultivating and serving a community. And I’ve got a couple of different constituencies, one of which is the group of people who are doing every day in their studios, in their markets, in Arizona and Florida and Tennessee exactly what I’m doing here. And so we call them studio partners, right? And they have their own studio. And I just know I’ll take credit for knowing we could do a much better job. And I just lessons learned ideas for for continuing to build that community, support that community and provide value to them. I mean, I’ll take all the help I can get. And of course, the other group is the end user client community who are, you know, they come in here and they host or co-host their own shows or sometimes they let us do the hosting, but they do the other parts. Those are two communities. I feel like we’re serving them well. I know we’re delivering them. Roi right? But I feel like Man Stone, you could be doing such a better job at Stone and Business RadioX of just, yeah, anything you could offer on that front, I’ll take it. Or maybe even if you’ve had some challenges along the way.

Casey Howard: [00:36:53] Community wise. Um. Yeah, I’ve just found that my my Facebook group that I’ve. I mean, that I’ve created just to. I’m really just there to help and I’m not there to, like, try and make money off of.

Stone Payton: [00:37:10] You’re not hammering them, trying to sell them the blanket.

Casey Howard: [00:37:12] I’m not selling anything in there. I’m literally just there to help them and create a good community where we all enjoy interacting and keeping up with each other. So I think you just. Need to make it a point to be providing value for these different groups of people in some form or fashion. I found that the Facebook group is really nice. It’s just an easy way to get people together. So was.

Stone Payton: [00:37:40] There a little bit of.A chicken and egg thing of like, you know, Hey, come join my group. You’re you’re number three or did it or did it.

Casey Howard: [00:37:47] It was it was a little yeah, a little weird at first, like a slow start. But I just initially invited all the moms on my Facebook group that I thought would enjoy being there. And then I did to kind of ramp it up faster. I did tell everyone that had joined the group, you know, tag ten of your mom friends in a Facebook post that you think they would enjoy to be here. And you’ll get entered into a contest to win a $50 Starbucks gift card. So that got a lot of moms to. Yeah, they were all sharing with ten of their friends. So if you have like ten moms share with ten of their friends, then you potentially could get, if everyone joined 100, 100 extra people joining. So I did kind of do something like that at the beginning to get. People to join faster. So that was fun. Yeah.

Casey Howard: [00:38:38] So it’s a work in progress?

Stone Payton: [00:38:40] Well, sure it is. But congratulations on the launch and congratulations on the on the momentum. It may be early to ask, but I’m going to ask it anyway. Share an early win if you can that really sticks out for you. And if you’re open to it and if you experienced it, maybe, you know, a shot in the gut.

Casey Howard: [00:38:59] Okay, Let’s see. Early win. Well, I just recently received the physical sample of the journal that I created. And so shortly after that, I felt like I’m like, Oh, well, I guess now I can start taking pre-sales and take some sales for this journal, you know? And so I did. I threw it out there and I started, I pre launched the journal. So we’re in, we’re taking pre sales right now and I’ve had quite a bit of preorder sales come in so that’s exciting. Like I, I thought of this product, I made it, I designed it, I had a supplier make it for me. They sent it to me and I showed it to everyone. And then now they’re buying it. Even strangers that I don’t know have bought it. So that’s very exciting for me. So it’s just, yeah, got to keep the snowball effect rolling and just, yeah, keep getting more and more sales. So that’s exciting for sure. A punch in the gut, huh? I don’t know. Right now, I really don’t know.

Stone Payton: [00:40:04] Good, I’m glad you can’t think of one. I think that’s fantastic.

Casey Howard: [00:40:08] I’m gonna think about that. I’ll get back to you later.

Stone Payton: [00:40:09] Well, you’ve been in business long enough to know that you’ll get one at some point. Oh, yeah. But you’ve also learned, I suspect, that you’re resilient enough and you have the strategies to work your way through it.

Casey Howard: [00:40:20] Yeah, absolutely.

Casey Howard: [00:40:21] It’s been nice already owning a business and knowing basically what I need to do to get to where I want now. But I mean, the beginning of this business for sure has been kind of difficult. It’s just a lot of the initial start of it all and I think I kind of forgot about. You know how hard the initial stages are because my studio has been up and running for years now. So these past few months and already having a business and starting this business and having three kids and I’m just like, I think I might be like. Yeah, just losing my mind. But then I come back to reality. I’m like, it’s the grind will be over soon. The grind of this new business and I’m going to get it off, you know, and really launched and, you know. It’s not going to be so stressful anymore. So just the initial stages.

Stone Payton: [00:41:09] Yeah.

Stone Payton: [00:41:09] So one nugget I picked up in the victory that you described is pre-sales, right? And I’ll share with you why I kind of zoned in, lasered in on that is it’s not uncommon at all for young entrepreneurs, people who are doing startups, right? And they’ll come to me. And in my case, it’s rarely a formal consulting coaching relationship. In fact, I don’t know if I’ve had one of those in years. It’s often, you know, a beer under the elm tree over there behind Reformation or, you know, something like that.

Casey Howard: [00:41:39] But a good spot.

Stone Payton: [00:41:40] It’s a marvelous spot. That’s where all my best work gets done.

Casey Howard: [00:41:42] Great conversations go down there. I’m sure.

Stone Payton: [00:41:44] You better believe it.

Stone Payton: [00:41:45] And so but so often in their mind, they’re going to they may have without the benefit of some direction from somebody like me or you or Mike going out. Spend X dollars on the journal. Yeah, it’s parked in mom’s garage or, you know, or in their basement and now go out and sell it and you really, especially at this day and age, with so many products and services, go out there and sell it, or better yet, go out and find out what the customer wants. Maybe they don’t want that journal, Maybe they want this journal, you know, or whatever. Yeah. And then pre-sell it and it sounds so simple and straightforward, but I mean people get excited about their ideas but.

Stone Payton: [00:42:26] Right?

Casey Howard: [00:42:27] Yeah. So you don’t always have to. Just. Find out where you’re going to get all this money from to start a business and use all of your own funding to. Buy all the inventory that you need. I just did the reverse and I am taking pre-sale orders now. I’m getting all the money up front and they’re very well aware that the pre-sale period will take several months and you’ll get the journal when it’s ready. They’re just excited that that they’re going to get it. They are have preordered paid their money and once the pre-sales are over then I’ll take that. Capital to go and buy all the journals and and then some some extras with all of that money and ship them out to everyone. And then the rest of the bulk of the inventory will be dispersed to all the different sales outlets.

Stone Payton: [00:43:22] What’s my favorite form of financing? Again, I talked to people trying to get anything from grants to loans like Main Street Warriors. They’re they’re either competing in a contest or winning a grant or a loan or were these startup competitions that we do stuff at. And but my favorite form of financing is customer funding. Yes, that’s the way to run a sustainable business.

Casey Howard: [00:43:42] Getting a loan and all that stuff and using your own money, that’s extremely stressful. So I was excited to figure out the route of going pre-sales, and when I heard that, I’m like, Yeah, bingo, we can start now.

Stone Payton: [00:43:56] It might be a little unfair to ask you on the air.

Casey Howard: [00:43:58] That’s okay,

Stone Payton: [00:43:58] But I’m going to ask it. Do you think you’ll have product available to ship in time for Christmas?

Casey Howard: [00:44:06] Oh yeah. So pre-sales. I’m okay. So pre-sales are supposed to be ending May 20th and then after that I will order everything and that. They’re saying it could take 30 to 60 days, depending on what kind of shipping I select. So. Here In about two months, I will have a bunch of product. So definitely before Christmas.

Stone Payton: [00:44:33] I wasn’t a strategic business question. It was a very selfish question because I want to get Katie one and Kelly one for Christmas.

Casey Howard: [00:44:39] Oh, that’s so sweet.

Casey Howard: [00:44:40] Yes, they’ll definitely be around.

Stone Payton: [00:44:43] They’ll be all over it. Well, Katie will appreciate it. My youngest, Kelly will. She will just jump on it with all fours. She’ll just love it. I don’t even know what it costs. And I just committed to buy two so I can see. I think you’re going to be successful.

Casey Howard: [00:44:56] Go ahead and preorder it now because it’s $5 off during preorder, so do that for sure. It flourished for mom’s dot com in the shop.

Stone Payton: [00:45:04] Well I will jump on that. Anything else that you might be willing to to share with with especially those the the people who are this is their first swing at entrepreneurship. You know maybe they’ve got a corporate job but they’re trying a little side hustle or something. I don’t know. Surprises. A couple of tips, a couple of dos or don’ts. Let’s let’s see if we can, you know, remove a little bit of the friction and shrink the timeline for them.

Casey Howard: [00:45:31] Yeah.

Casey Howard: [00:45:32] Well, so my my studio, my portrait studio that I have that was initially a side hustle where I was taking pictures just on the weekends for people while I worked my corporate job. And I did know in the back of my mind that eventually I want to quit this corporate job and I want to do this full time. And so I was very much this person you’re describing, you know, about five years ago, I would say just to really focus in and and work on it all the time, consistently, consistently posting, never giving up, even if you feel like you’re not really getting anywhere and just if this is what you want to do, just continue on. It’s going to be it’s a little stressful, I guess, at first to get the business kind of started and going. But if this is something you really want to do and you want to eventually leave your corporate job, then just keep up with it because the rewards are so great when you get to work for yourself. I’ve been at both ends of the spectrum. I like I liked where I worked my corporate job. That was a great company. However, I just feel like working for yourself is so rewarding. So if you if you can get there and work for yourself, you’ll you’ll definitely see the benefits for sure.

Stone Payton: [00:46:48] Well, there’s certainly rewards, aren’t there? Yes.

Casey Howard: [00:46:51] I mean it’s very hard, but it’s kind of like the benefits really outweigh the little daily stresses that you might feel sometimes. So.

Stone Payton: [00:46:58] So I stack the deck. I married way up and she’s got a great job, And she’s very supportive. So that’s my first piece of advice to entrepreneurs. If you can marry up.

Casey Howard: [00:47:10] I know, at least have someone who’s supporting you. That is so important, though. You’re right. Like to have my my husband was very supportive of me quitting my corporate job and going out and. No, that’s everything, right? You don’t have that. That’s very sad. And it’s hard to. Yeah. To really continue on and go out on your own if your spouse is saying like, you know, like this is never going to happen. And I have I can’t imagine met people that they were trying to go out on their own. Their spouse is just really not supportive. So have a good support system. If it’s not your spouse, then get in a bunch of Facebook groups full of the people that do what you want to do, or entrepreneur group or a mentoring group, mastermind group, whatever, and be surrounded by that support group for sure.

Stone Payton: [00:47:56] Great advice.

Stone Payton: [00:47:57] And I do I do think it’s been my experience that feeding your mind consistently and maybe making a habit of it, a discipline of it, and maybe for you, it’s an early morning thing. For someone else, it might be a after the kids are in bed thing. But I do think that that discipline of feeding your mind. Yes, over time is anyway, it’s proven helpful to me and it sounds like it has.

Casey Howard: [00:48:18] It is important.

Stone Payton: [00:48:19] All right. So what’s next for you and what can we do to help? And by we, I mean me, Mike, the Business RadioX Network, Cherokee Business Radio, the the community here, which of course, as you well know, in Cherokee County and I mean, just so supportive. What can we do to help?

Casey Howard: [00:48:34] So what’s next for me is I will after pre-sales I’ll be fully launching. Meaning right now I’m just taking pre-sales through my website, but I will be selling my journal through all their bigger sales outlets. So through Amazon I have a Shopify store, so we’ll be going all over the place here towards the end of the year. So that’s what really for anyone that buys the Journal or anyone that has learned my journaling method that I’ve taught you in the Moms Facebook group or wherever you may have seen it, like I really if you could go on to Amazon when I do launch there, I need your reviews. Okay, Amazon reviews to get up there. In the. On the list of sellers. So yeah, reviews are helpful for sure. Yeah. Other than that, just sharing with your friends about my business. There are so many moms out there and so many moms that need to take care of themselves and that aren’t so. Let them know about Flourish or Moms.

Stone Payton: [00:49:43] You got it. And you made two sales this morning.

Mike Watkins: [00:49:46] Probably a lot more than that.

Casey Howard: [00:49:47] I’m excited.

Stone Payton: [00:49:49] All right. So what are the coordinates? What’s the best way for people to learn more or talk to you website, email, LinkedIn, whatever you feel like is appropriate.

Casey Howard: [00:49:56] So the most important thing you want to do is subscribe to our email list. That’s how you will never miss a update or a launch of a product or any, you know, special pre-launch sale that we’re doing. So you first and foremost want to get on our email list. And the way you do that is on our website. It’s pretty direct. You’ll see where you can sign up to subscribe to our email list. So that’s on flourish for moms.com. Go and subscribe to our email list and then also that website flourish for moms.com is where you can find us anything that you might need. And of course we are on Facebook and Instagram as well under flourish for moms and any moms that want to join the moms Facebook group I mentioned that is on Facebook and the group is called Moms De-stressing and Flourishing in Life Together. It’s a long one, but it describes exactly what we want.

Stone Payton: [00:50:47] So there you go.

Stone Payton: [00:50:48] Nobody’s having to question it.

Casey Howard: [00:50:49] Right.

Stone Payton: [00:50:50] Well, thanks for coming in and getting us updated. What an exciting time. We’re excited for you. We want to continue to follow this story and we’re going to try to help any way we can.

Casey Howard: [00:51:00] I’m excited. Thank you so much.

Stone Payton: [00:51:02] Well, it is my pleasure. All right. Until next time. This is Stone Payton for our guests this morning. And everyone here at the Business RadioX family saying we’ll see you again on Cherokee Business Radio.