‘Attitude, behaviour, and commitment.’
‘Small Biz Lady,’ Melinda Emerson is America’s #1 small business expert and has been the CEO of Quintessence Group for more than 20 years. They consult with Fortune 500 brands that target small businesses. Learn about how she turned failure into wisdom and success, helping other entrepreneurs along the way.
‘We do not live to work. We work so that we can live our dream life.’
Melinda took the long road toward being an empowered entrepreneur. She understands success doesn’t come overnight. Having nurtured an entrepreneur mindset over many years, she now shares her business knowledge and helps other entrepreneurs succeed in business through her book, online school, blog, and more.
Find more about Melinda’s work here:
Personal website: https://succeedasyourownboss.com/about/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melindaemerson/
Online Courses: http://www.smallbizladyuniversity.com/
John: Welcome to the Business Sphere. Don’t forget to subscribe to our podcast and share this episode. My guest today is Small Biz Lady, Melinda Emerson, she is America’s number one small business expert, and has been the CEO of Quintessence group for more than 20 years. They consult with Fortune 500 brands that target small businesses. Thanks for being on the show today, Melinda.
Melinda: Oh, I’m so happy to be here.
John: Well, I’m excited to learn a little bit about you, and how you became who you are. So maybe share with the audience members who are listening, go as far back as you would like, but share about your journey and what you would like to discuss later on in this episode.
Melinda: Sure. Well, my journey starts in journalism school, I went to college to be a broadcast journalist. When I graduated from college, I got my very first job. I went to Virginia Tech, by the way, shout out to the Hokies. I, you know, got my first job and market 20 television in Pittsburgh in my hometown as an associate producer. And I got my second job, I actually got my dream job as my second job. I got a producer job in a top five market in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and it was an amazing job in money and in scope, and in everything I was doing. But you know, what I learned along the way, is that you got to be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it. So, I ended up getting my dream job and I gotta be honest with you. I hated it. I hated what I was doing, I hated the people I was working with. I was like, if I don’t get out of here, I’m going to be the big story on action news I gotta go right? You know and so literally, I in the middle of February sweeps in 1999 I took I you know, I basically had a laptop, a fax machine in a dream and I started my first business in the basement of my house and I had been planning it kind of a year before I did it but the day finally came, they were sick of me, I was sick of them. I was like, “Alright, I’m out!” you know.
So, that’s how I started my business, I was 26 years old. So what I knew about business at that time was that I didn’t know very much. So fortunately for me, I kinda turned myself into a student of small business. So every year I was in business, I took some course, whether it was on leadership, negotiation, business planning, whatever it was, I did what I could to build my business skills and along the way, I started doing really well, like literally, Philadelphia has sort of like a mini version of the Inc 5000 list and my company was like number 29 on that Philly 100 list one year, I had offices in downtown Philadelphia, my husband was able to quit his full time job at GE joined the business. I mean, we were doing well and then all of a sudden, I got pregnant with my son and at 32 years old ended up on bedrest with a high risk pregnancy, which is something nobody would have ever anticipated I certainly didn’t anticipate that for myself. But what that meant, and I’m and I want to get you in my time machine so we can go back. So, this happened like, 0506 so that was before Wi Fi was in everybody’s house.
So when I got sent home on bedrest, I was just at home. I mean, I had a palm three cell phone, trying to run my life, but you can imagine, it didn’t run so well and it was at that time that I realized the cardinal mistake I had made, I had built a business that couldn’t run without me, and I had built a culture in my business where you had to come as mom right before you made a decision and man when I was on bed rest, it was the first time I wasn’t on go every day, grinding, hustling, working the phones, going to conferences, meeting clients working on stuff and I basically had become a workaholic and I had made that a culture of my business. You could call my office at three, nine o’clock at night, people would answer the phone like it was three o’clock in the afternoon. I mean, I was bad and you know, my secret sauce back then was we just go outwork the competition. That was not a good decision for me. However, it put me on my path to become the Small Biz Lady and so basically I crashed, right? The business was in shambles you know at that point, my marriage was struggling and I had this brand new baby that I had to take care of and I was like, alright Lord, what would you have me do now? Because I don’t have a plan I don’t have a clue, I just know I’m unhappy everywhere and I can’t keep doing what I was doing because once I had my son, I didn’t want to work 12, 14 hours a day anymore I wasn’t even interested in that and, but then I had to sit back and figure out what was I going to do next? And literally, I started evaluating my business well, what was valuable in my business wasn’t my equipment? No, it was depreciating as I was looking at it, was it my employees? No, they did anything I asked but nobody proactively did anything. They basically watched my battleship thing then I was like well, was it my customers? And at that time, we were very niche in the pharmaceutical space. People were retiring and people were suing pharmaceutical companies and it was it was a mess and I was like, okay, so what is that?
So, then I figured out the most valuable thing in my business was what I learned from running it and what I realized when I was on bedrest was that I would have run my business better if I had had better advice. But back then, in the early 2000s, there wasn’t anybody giving out small business advice, there was, there were people talking about finance like there was Suze Orman, there was Jean Chatzky on the dead today’s show, but those guys were talking about 401k’s and they were they were talking to people with jobs. They weren’t talking to entrepreneurs and so, I when I looked around at the landscape I said “Wow! you know, there is room for someone to try to educate and inform small business owners”. So, after after praying over, you know what I should do? God gave me a vision and a dream three times to become America’s number one small business expert and I decided that was what I was going to do so, the first thing I did was I took all those notes that I had made while I was pregnant.
On all the expensive lessons, I had learned all the real hard ones and it became my best selling book, Become Your Own Boss in 12 months but ironically, my book was due to my publisher, September 1, 2008 and you may or may not remember what happened about September 14, 2008. The market crash you know the sky fell, people’s 401k’s became 10k you know how that is and literally my publisher called me up and said “Thank you so much for being a first time author that actually turned your book in on time but we don’t think anyone’s thinking about entrepreneurship right now. So, we’re going to shelf your book until March of 2010.”
And I was like, holy macaroni batman what am I supposed to do? People are shuffling my book for 18 months but a good friend of mine in the National Speakers Association said “Look, if I were you I would hire a publicist and start publicizing that book like it’s coming out anyway.” and so I was like, and she said “As a matter of fact you might want to learn this, this social media thing everyone’s starting to talk about, I think it really might become the next big thing.” Okay, whatever you know at this point I’m so dejected and upset I don’t even wanna talk to anybody about this book at this point but a friend of mine said “I got the lady you can hire.”
So, I hired a lady by the name of Kathy Larkin to help me and she was actually so excited when I told her this sad story. She said “Wait a minute you mean we have 18 months to build your author platform before this book comes out? Oh, my God, this is awesome.” And I’m sitting up there thinking I’m talking to a crazy person on the phone like “What are you talking about?” She said “No, no, this is actually gonna be a good thing for you.” I said “Really?” and she said “Yeah, we’re gonna go out on Twitter and build your brand. And I remember saying to her “What is Twitter?” I didn’t even know what she was talking about right? And she was like “Don’t worry about it. I’ll teach you how to use Twitter.” So finally, the day came for me to get my own Twitter account so I got in front of my computer, on the phone she was in front of her computer on the phone I went to twitter.com and I put in Melinda Emerson and then I got a notice back this name is already taken. What? First of all, my name Melinda is not common right? And I’m like, and the combination of Melinda and Emerson, give me a break. Anyway, long story short I went out to Facebook and found out that there are seven other Melinda Emerson’s however, I’m the only black one and I own melindaemerson.com. I read over 5000 articles on small business they all know who I am.
So anyway, long story short we had to come up with a nickname for me and I was like “A nickname?” and she said “Yes, we did figure out some kind of nickname for you unless you want to be Melinda_Evans.” that I didn’t want to be there I was like “No, no, no, no.” So literally, we came up with the nickname “Small Biz Lady” which we now know it was the best branding thing than ever could have happened to me because there’s 1000s and 1000s of small business experts but there is only one Small Biz Lady and that is how I got on the path to helping entrepreneurs and by the time my book came out just to finish that story, I had 10,000 followers on Twitter. Today, I have over 300,000 and one of the largest brands online that reaches 3 million entrepreneurs each week online.
John: That’s amazing. I mean, I love the story and I love your grit along the way right? Like the perseverance that you didn’t give up. I know, there’s a lot of challenges that you went through but I’m gonna ask you to take yourself back a little bit because during those years while you were employed, for instance, your second job in particular and you basically had that best job that you kind of imagine at that age would have been your dream job. What was it that really, really stuck out? Because you mentioned that you know, yes you were highly paid, highly recognized those top five brands, but what really drove you to be so miserable that you wanted to leave and start your own business?
Melinda: To be honest with you, it was the people, it really was the people. It’s very true what people say “People don’t leave jobs, they leave people.” and for me, I just felt like people were so arrogant and unkind and self important and they acted like the work was so important I’m like, this is local news no one cares about this but the weather you know what but people really I just I didn’t like it I really felt like everybody was forced to assimilate in a way that if you didn’t think like a 30 something white male, you were just not going to get ahead and I was like, I don’t even know how to do that. So I’m going just Extra Stage Left right now so that I don’t even have to think about that and it worked out for me, and God has blessed me you know to have an amazing career and opportunity that has literally taken me all over the world.
I’ve had the opportunity to be a columnist for entrepreneur, have had the opportunity to be a columnist for the New York Times, I had the opportunity to lecture in France, in China, in Singapore, in Nigeria, as the Small Biz Lady and these are things I never would have done from behind my desk at a cubicle inside a television station. So for me, I’m so glad the trajectory that I got put on because you know I’m just, I think this is my true calling like what I do now I’m very fortunate that my occupation is also my advocation. So it doesn’t even feel like work, it’s just every day.
John: Oh, that’s amazing to hear because you know I, I hear culture as you know workplace culture right? And it’s from what I hear from you dressing off it was really the people and the culture, the values that they brought, what they were saying, how they were saying it, who they catered towards, who they were really trying to you know, impress versus genuine authenticity and I feel when your corporate and I used to work in corporate as well and I worked for 10 years in advertising corporate and it was different because when I went out on my own 8 years ago, it was more about trying to just be myself, helping people that I truly love, and I knew who I wanted to serve because if I just can sleep at night, take care of my base, and make sure that they’re valued, listen intently, then I can make sure that I have a prosperous, successful life, right? Like you actually enjoy what you’re doing every single day. So it seemed like you know at that moment at say 25 or 26, you kinda figured it out. But there’s always ebbs and flows right? So, can you share with the audience members what were some of the you know tie points and some of the low points along the way? Because that Twitter story was great and a lot of businesses today believe social media is you know the Godsend for a lot of businesses but it’s really about the longevity as well. It’s the consistency, it’s the brand awareness, and it’s a lot of years in but however, the social media space is all about getting people to think that it’s a lot faster, quicker, and not realistic right? And maybe you can explain a little bit about your journey along the way.
Melinda: Yeah, I’m actually really glad you asked me that because I do think people think it’s like this overnight success thing and so the, so let me back the story because I think going back to my Twitter journey actually will illustrate this really, really well. You know, what people don’t understand even about books, right? Just because you write a book, you first of all book publishers pay royalties twice a year six months behind. So when you get a check in June, that’s the cheque from December right. So be clear, unless you’re Stephen King writing books, books are very expensive business cards. So,, with that as the backdrop let me tell you what happened to me. When I first got on Twitter and Twitter was the main platform that we focused on. I worked Twitter every day like a job literally three times a day, I posted an article, I shared something personal about myself, and I answered somebody’s small business question every day. About three months in from that, I created small biz chat which I ran weekly on Twitter for 10 and a half years, every Wednesday night from eight to 9pm Eastern, I answered people’s small business questions live with a guest every week.
I want to say that again, every week right? It was, it was like I took three weeks off you know July 4 week, Thanksgiving week and the week between Christmas and New Year’s and I did that because I spent so much time every day looking for people with questions that I wanted to figure out a way where people with questions could find me. So I’m, I’m I’m doing small biz chat, right? Every week then about six months in we said okay, I needed to create a blog because at this time I didn’t even have a blog ranking. So then I created succeedasyourownboss.com and I created succeed as your own boss, very strategically. I didn’t call it melindaemerson.com, I didn’t call it smallbizlady.com because I wanted to build a separate business asset one that I could sell one day and I wanted to build it with incredible SEO juice, and I know you appreciate this. So back then my book was coming out, it was called Become Your Own Boss in 12 months well, we couldn’t get becomeyourownboss.com.
So we actually did keyword research and realize that succeedasyourownboss.com would pull the same search results as becomeyourownboss.com which is why we called it succeedasyourownboss.com, and then I started building and when I first did it, I publish twice a week and then we realized that wasn’t enough value, that wasn’t enough content. So then I started posting three times a week and ever since the second year of my blog I have published three times a week and that’s a lot of work considering I’m a person right? I’m not inc or anything like that I’m one person and so, we really had to get really strategic about the content but we knew the content was gonna drive the engagement and it was gonna drive building a community because if people knew they could count on me for quality content, they would always come count on me. And so that was my grind, building content, writing articles, interviewing other guests, experts, posting q&a posts, and I did this, I didn’t make money from social media for almost 2 years. It was 22 months of posting, tweeting, responding, engaging, being helpful, sharing other people’s content, liking other people’s posts, leaving comments, I’m saying 2 years of doing that making no money. Book was out but it’s not like you get a royalty check the week the book comes out right?
So I need people to understand that it takes time to build a brand but I was very focused and I was very strategic, and I focused on a specific platform, and I decided to make my main content strategy blogging, and that was my secret sauce but I was also relentlessly consistent. You could set a watch to when we post a new blog post on my blog and that is what built up my brand and built up my reputation and that was when people realized there was no way that I would be able to write all that stuff if I didn’t know what I was talking about. You can only fake it for so long especially now I think there was so many people developing content and so many people in so many different platforms. One of the things that we decided to do 2 years ago was I only published long form content, I only publish 1500 words or more because what I want to do is be the last word on the subject so I don’t mess around, I don’t 300, 500, 700 word posts, you’re just playing around if you want to be serious go 1500 to 2000 words every post, do that but you got to know what you’re talking about to do that. So, that is how I built my brand over time but I’ve also had to reinvent as the content mode you know modality has changed. So now we’re doing a lot more video content because video is the future of marketing so I think you really have to pay attention to your customer, you have to pay attention to how your customers consuming content, and then you have to realize what you’re good at, you know, writing is my secret sauce, I have a journalism degree from Virginia Tech. So yeah, it’s not that hard for me to develop content because that’s what I’ve always done my whole career. So, you’ve got to think about what you enjoy doing, if you don’t like to write please don’t start a blog because that’s not a good you know do videos, do podcasts, do something else but just know that it’s all part of a big picture to grow your business and your brand.
John: This is great nuggets that you’re giving because people have to be aware that you strategically thought and plan things out even before you launch your website, launch your Twitter platform, as well as the book right? You put together a roadmap I would say and you know you maybe you hire a publicist or not but at that time, it was more about a long plan knowing that you’re not gonna generate revenue or sales or profit or salary for multiple years and you have to be willing to put in that time, effort of consistent working daily, weekly, hourly, or monthly, so that you can get closer to your first client, second client, fifth client, 100th client, or whatever it is and what I look, love about like entrepreneurship is it’s like very similar to athlete. You know, everyone looks at LeBron James, or Michael Jordan, or any of those spectacular you know whatever athlete it is from soccer, football, basketball, but they only look at them when they win a championship or add the glory of winning an MVP or whatever. What about when they were three or four or five years old? They started practicing with coaches, nutritionists stretches you know people that are drilling them consistently working 10 hour days to get them refining their art, to then go to you know high school prep school, you know college and not get paid along the way but constantly needing to perform, to then get drafted to whatever combine and with an NBA team or NFL team, then to finally get paid. But it takes so many years of commitment, 10 20 years of daily grind.
Melinda: And there’s so deep opportunities right? It’s not like I mean, there’s only 75 slots on any NFL team right? You know, so you, you got to think about all of that and the shot is still you know, it’s still so small and it’s the same thing for us. Me, you know, there’s tons of people out here talk calling themselves a small business expert right? Just like there’s a ton of people out here calling themselves an SEO expert but there’s only only the few are chosen, right? A few will have a brand that rises above and that is important for us to think about as we know it’s very important for you to have a value proposition and really not even just a value proposition. Here’s the bottom line, you have to have something about your business that is not easily duplicatable by the competition because if it is, anybody can put you out of business without thinking too hard about doing it and I think that’s the thing that I don’t think enough people think through, I think they think they can just go out here and you know buy purses and resell them on Amazon.
Well, you can do that but somebody else can sell cheaper, right? When you don’t have anything distinctive about your business price becomes the only thing you’re competing on and the race to the bottom is a race, nobody wins. So that’s, that’s not ever who you wanna be in business.
John: And it’s great that you mentioned about branding because then you’re not selling yourself anymore, you’re not content creator, and you’re not a solopreneur you’re looking at scaling and growing, so that you can take yourself away from the business, work on the business, and it can still continue running without you and that’s the art of really grew up being an entrepreneur and business owner. So you actually have fun right? Because if you’re working 12 14 16 hour days, how about your family, your friends, activities, hobbies, relationships, they’re not going to have the same amount of time like you only have limited time 24 hours a day you need to sleep to either work or not right? And if you’re working all day and you only sleep, when do you have time to do anything else? So you really enjoy the rest of your life, so realize what you’re trying to set up and if you’d set it up properly, then you could work on the business and have fun along the way that suits your lifestyle and I think that’s what your the premise of your book is, really.
Melinda: It is because it’s really about understanding the impact of your business on your whole life but before you even get to that, though it’s really about thinking about what you want out of life first, and then building a business that’s gonna allow you to live that way. We do not live to work, we live, we work so that we can live our dream life and that is the whole point of my book. I mean, I really want people to develop a life plan first, and then figure out their finances, how are they going to pay for their new business, because banks do not loan money to startup businesses, the money to start your business is going to come from your right or your left pocket, then you’ve got to really validate your business concept and figure out what skills you have versus what skills you need to run your particular kind of business, then you got to figure out who your paying customer is, who is your niche target customer, then you do I need to develop a business plan. I know there’s all these people out here now telling people they don’t need business plans but that is madness. Why would you spend more time planning your vacation than how you’re going to support yourself and your family financially? Like that doesn’t even make any sense and the last thing, and this is a little bit controversial but it’s always been my belief, I believe inside hustling first, I do not believe in quitting a job to start a business. because it takes 12 to 18 months for small business to breakeven let alone replace your corporate salary. So it does not make any sense for you to be out here quitting your job before your real clear about who your customer is, and how much they’re willing to pay. So that is really the crux of the the main point of the book about starting a business but the rest of the book is about how to stay in business.
John: And I love that you’re mentioning all these huge pillars, right? Because a lot of entrepreneurs, business owners they’re an idea concept, they have a dream right? Of wanting to do more, serve others you know be, they all talk about like you know follow their passion, follow their why in meaning or impact but to be honest, if you don’t plan things out there won’t be a passion, they’re won’t be a why, there won’t be a meaning, because most importantly you need to survive, you need to ensure that you have profit, revenue, sales, and margin, if you have no margin, what are you doing? Because you can make more working somewhere else and they will have a better lifestyle because you can still pay the bills and not be homeless or you know not have the foods and shelter and the places that you wanna travel to because ultimately, that’s what people want, choice they want more freedom and with that mindset of planning a little bit so that you plant the seeds and I always mentioned like real estate, right? Like, people don’t just go out and buy their first home, banks aren’t gonna just loan the money, right? They’re gonna make sure that you have a job, you have Safaree, they check all the checks and balances to ensure that you can pay for the home on a monthly basis. So, think about it as a business owner right? Like you need to plan things out properly. So, I love the fact that you’re mentioning all these in your book so, so tell us a little bit about this new book like what’s going on with some of the new editions I know you mentioned that it got released back in 2010 and also 5 years later, and then there’s also a new release that you’re talking about.
Melinda: Yeah, so this edition of the book is actually the third edition and it’s called Become Your Own Boss in 12 months revised and expanded and what’s so cool about this new edition is that I really got it the old book and and really redid it because I really wanted to make sure that all of the marketing and sales stuff was really up to date because things have changed quite a bit especially because of the pandemic and what we saw was a lot of the businesses that went under struggled with their digital pivot struggle to get online, didn’t know how to get online really didn’t know the best platforms, certainly didn’t know how to buy ads and all this kind of stuff and and now all of that’s necessary and so what I did was break down all the new stuff. So we’ve got six new chapters and three other chapters that were completely updated so you know after chapter 8 everything in this book is different and new and so I’m really, really excited about the new stuff we have in there. So some of the new chapters are, who is your target customer really go into marketing and understanding that today’s customer you got to be customer centric because customers have way too many options now.
We also talk about how to build a social media brand which is very, very important now, you do social media used to be optional isn’t now, but you got to be strategic because it can be a huge time suck and wasted money too. So you wanna make sure that you’re strategic about where you’re spending time online, then we talk about selling online period, that’s what the chapter is called and we break down, whether you’re gonna sell on your website, or you’re gonna sell on a marketplace platform like Amazon, we get into all of that including how to buy ads even on Amazon’s platform and then I developed a chapter called how to develop a sales process because in all my years of being a small business coach. What I see is people don’t know how to generate leads, and people do not have follow up systems in their business. So, I broke down all of that stuff, and how to put all of that together because that is what I want for people to really understand their sales systems in their business because that’s like the blood in your heart that that’s the pump that’s driving your business and then the other chapter I added in this new edition is your leadership matters.
You know a lot of times people think just because they own a business, that they’re a leader and I’m like, you’re just a business owner, leadership is actually something that you have to work on because leadership has a lot to do with your communication style and what I tell people is, hey what does it like to work for you? Are you a good boss? Are you a bad boss? Are you the kind of boss where everyone knows what kind of day you’re having by how you’re barking at people are treating people? You really have to realize that 50% of all business problems are not so well hidden personal problems. So, I walk people through really understanding leadership and why they need to work on it and the last chapter of the book is completely brand new it used to be 10 things you must never forget in business now it’s 15 and it’s 15 new things, and my favorite one of the 15 is in the original version of my book. One of the 10 things you must never forget in business was ABC always be closing, which is advice I would never give to someone now. So now, ABC stands for the three things you can always control your attitude, your behavior, and your commitment and so that, yeah. So that you know that great thing about this book is you see how much I’ve grown you know how much I’ve grown as a business owner from it.
John: And I love that you are revising it and you’re adding to it and that becomes wisdom because now you’ve been doing it for 10 plus years right? Just like myself 8 years in the business I’ve matured I know who I’m really wanna target and work with, the personality types, the avatars that different profiles, niches in this industry, the type of clients based on so many other factors right? And it’s just takes time because at the beginning you take on everyone in anything because you need to pay the bills but as you get better, as you systemize, you listened and get you know hover you you really wanna resonate with then you kinda know you wanna track so that you will find the target you know message, the different types of marketing materials that goes out to your idea of profile of customers. So, I love you talking about that and yes, I wanted to ask you because you mentioned SEO in earlier right? About when you started doing your website. How important was the SEO for your business when your branding it for that success term versus become your boss and has it helped you in any way because of the keyword research that you made and implemented as long as the long format vlogs cause you are a writer yourself. How has SEO come into your business?
Melinda: Oh woah, SEO is really important in my business but I have to be completely transparent with you. I didn’t really start paying attention that SEO has something that I paid for into about maybe like 4 5 years ago because early on my SEO was just right and good articles. Making sure I use you know the SEO plugin all in one SEO plug in on the back of their mind site you know. So, I did, I did “basic SEO” but at the very beginning when we trying to figure out what URL we were definitely doing SEO research, we were definitely I mean in all those cool tools like BuzzSumo and some other stuff that’s out here now, that stuff didn’t exist back then. So, you know SEO was really new you know 10,12 years ago really new, people really you know late people didn’t understand in big corporations and advertising folks did but everybody, late people didn’t.
So, SEO is something that I have learned to really appreciate especially because as long as I’ve been blogging and I’ve had my site, my site is about 62% organic search reference and that’s because of how much content, how many titles, how much stuff we rank for and we get you know a lot of search traffic to the site so SEO is something that I completely understand, I pay for every month is something that is really important if you wanna play in the content game out here on the internet for sure.
John: And that’s so pivotal to you know let the audience know because you being the expert helping business owners, if they forget to even utilize what is that their disposal because that website, yes you can pay for ads, yes you can create content but you’re optimally helping them generate some traffic that’s free, natural, right? Google gives you a platform with millions of users daily searching for queries, questions, problems, services, products, and if you’re not utilizing to your full disposal such as yourself 4, 5 years ago where you use these free plugins when you started paying for SEO provider that when in deep detectable aspect, the link building, the brand awards, the anchor text, the you know sitemap and
Melinda: Big problem because we had a lot of pictures that weren’t optimized, that were too big.
John: Image tags. Yes.
Melinda: Oh. Like we had ignored all image tags so it was like, I think one of the SEO firm I worked with they were like we just did 2,000 pictures on the back of your site check you know I’m just like, oh my God! They were like you spend weeks just like reformatting and that kind of stuff and that has made a huge huge difference you know.
John: Even with images not just the tag itself but compressing it so that it loads quickly right? And there so many other factors because it’s over 200 signals right? And SEO constantly changing not only as algorithm of google is updating but there’s constant competitors trying to over take you. So, that keeps us going as an SEO agency but I love you hearing that you know you took it full on and you’ve embraced it because now you’re an you know you want to understand the power of SEO versus paid ads for instance and yes social media is huge. I know Twitter and Facebook, and Instagram, and LinkedIn are huge platforms and yes, there’s different audience types that consume content on those platforms, where you need to really refine your content piece to attract those types of eyeballs, short form video, you know blogs, Twitter feeds which are short little messages.
So resonate with your audience type on those platforms, and with blogs on your website or on other publishing sites like Inc. Entrepreneur, Forbes and you’re saying who that audience type is and connect with them with content that resonates with those readers. People don’t even think about that right? And I love hearing this from someone that is a seasoned entrepreneur now because it’s not coming from me, it’s coming from you and it’s hard for me to explain it because I do this for a living and people think I’m only gonna sell them, right? But it’s because I’ve worked with thousands of business owners, seeing what works and what doesn’t so that I do wanna help serve by providing the value of SEO for clients and the reason I have you on the show is our you know, our type of clients are the SMB’s, I love only working with small business owners, because that’s my background like I worked at Yellow Pages.
Melinda: Oh, wow!
John: And I worked there for 5 years, working with over 5000 business owners and my VP of sales was there for over 30 plus years. So, all we know is working with SMB’s and that’s what resonated with me to want to reach out to you, you get SMB’s.
Melinda: That’s all I deal with is SMB, I do SMB strategy for my large clients but the reason why they hire me is because I have these other people that trust me every day to share powerful, helpful information and because my mission is to end small business failure and every single thing I do, every article I write, every book I write, every interview I give is about giving somebody that kernel, that just one more thing that they don’t know about the business of running a business that is what I’m trying to do because most people can build their widget but a lot of people struggle actually running their business and so that’s where I come in, I’m the Small Biz Lady, I’m your fairy godmother, I try to help you with tools and advice and information so that you can grow your business.
John: So last couple questions I have for you, Melinda. So where do you see yourself in the near future? Like what do you see yourself doing for the next 5, 10 years? What are some of the major pillars in your life? And, you know it seems like you’ve built something, and you are still enjoying what you’re doing because you know releasing a new book, having fun doing it, having a huge audience and followers, What’s next for you?
Melinda: Well, I’m really excited about our brand new products that we’ve built in connection with the book, actually. So we’ve created something called Small Biz Lady University and I am so excited about it because I built 4 brand new courses in it. One, is how to sell and market online, the other one is ultimate guide to email marketing. I also have a course called Social Media selling and of course, there’s a course called Become Your Own Boss and I’m so excited about building up my school, making it multilingual. I’m really, really excited about that but I also have another product called bossquizcom. and I worked with some scientists that do research on entrepreneurs and I developed a comprehensive assessment to help people figure out the right business for them, what kind of entrepreneur they are, what kind of work values they have, what kind of sales skills they have. It’s about a 15 minute quiz but it’ll print out an 8 to 9 page report on who you are as entrepreneur.
So you’ll know, do you really need a business partner? You need to consider maybe a franchise or buying an existing business? Or are you ready to start that business from scratch? My boss quiz will break down everything you need to know about yourself as you’re going into business and I think it is invaluable information.
John: That’s amazing and I love how much passion you’re sharing all this information with because it seems like it took you a long time to create these courses and I know how much time it is to write a book because I’m in the process of it and creating a community is a lot of time and effort. So everything an entrepreneur does they do it for the real purpose of resonating with their audience, because they see and listen and hear what they want, which is their customers. So I see that yo`u’ve been doing a lot of that and that’s why you put out a course to really help these entrepreneurs that are having challenges and trouble in growing their business online. So I love that. Well, thanks a lot Melinda. So how can some of the listeners reach out to you as you if you have any questions, check you out if you don’t mind sharing with audience members, how to you know connect with you?
Melinda: Oh, sure. Well again, my name is Melinda Emerson, but I am Small Biz Lady on every platform except for TikTok I envy Small Biz Lady on TikTok but if you were interested in grabbing a copy of my book or get a the bonuses that we have out here, if you buy the book this week head over to become yourownbossbook.com. and if you just want to send reach out to me, reach out to me on LinkedIn that’s probably the best way just to like, try to get my attention if there’s something that I can do to help you but just know this, I want you to win. So that is why I’m out here doing what I got to do you never lose in business. Either you win, or you learn and so as long as you keep that, you’ll be fine.
John: Amazing. Well, thanks a lot, again. Ultra grateful for you to be on this episode today and for sure we’ll get to have all that in the show notes, your contact information in some of your social handles and your websites. Thanks again, Melinda.
Melinda: Thank you so much for having me.
