Embracing the Imperfections of Entrepreneurship

"Just do it messy; don’t wait for perfection because growth comes with action." - Bonnie Conrad

In this episode, we chat with Bonnie Conrad, a digital marketing expert and business owner, about the realities of entrepreneurship, navigating change, and the importance of embracing imperfection. We explore the messy yet rewarding journey of building a business, getting past perfection, and being adaptable. Bonnie shares how her experiences as a military spouse has helped her become resilient to change, giving her the courage to start her own business and redefine success on her terms.

In this episode, listen for: 

• Start Messy and Learn Along the Way: We talk about how the path to entrepreneurship is often full of imperfect first attempts, but growth happens by starting messy and learning from mistakes.
• Celebrate Your Progress: Reflection on looking back and realizing how far she’s come. The journey might be challenging, but recognizing growth milestones is essential.
• Mindset Shift from Corporate to Entrepreneur: Transitioning from corporate life to business ownership requires a shift in mindset. Bonnie shares her tips on making this change, empowering entrepreneurs to define their own rules and prioritize authentic, impactful work.

Tune in to learn how to embrace the messy path to success and build a business that aligns with your passion and strengths! 

Connect with Bonnie Conrad:

Website: https://inn8ly.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/inn8ly/

Shop: https://inn8ly.com/inn8ly-shop/

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We’re Dana Johnson and Sara Lowell hosts of Entrepreneur Encounter, a growing and thriving entrepreneur podcast dedicated to soft skills development and we’re so grateful you found us. We started this podcast to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you feel more empowered, thrive, and be fulfilled as you reach your entrepreneur goals. 

We interview experts and thought leaders so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of yourself you’ve never seen before. 

Click the Subscribe button to help us spread the love with Entrepreneur Encounter.

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Transcript

Have you ever encountered a hurdle with launching or growing your business? Listen, there are two things that run a business, the backend and your soft skills. Telling you right now, if these aren't in place, you'll lose clients and you'll lose money. You don't want that while you're in the right place. Hey, I'm Dana. Hey, I'm Sara. We're your hosts of the Entrepreneur Encounter and we're going to give you a behind the scenes glance into our businesses, give you genuine feedback, tips and tricks,

Plus occasionally bring on guests that care about supporting you to grow your business organically and nurturing authentic relationships. Are you ready?

Welcome back to another episode. I'm your host, Sara, and we have Bonnie today. She helps business owners drive growth through digital marketing by helping build professionally designed websites. Bonnie, it's so nice to have you on today. Can you tell us all the amazing things about you and your business and how you got started?

Yeah, absolutely. So I am actually a military spouse. We have moved every couple of years for the past 14 years now. And about year eight or nine, I kind of got sick of quitting my job and always being the new person at every state or every city that we lived in. And just got to the point where I was like, I don't want to do this anymore. Having like years of experience and being the new person and kind of having to listen to like whoever is there that's been doing it for six months. It got

frustrating to me. when we were in California, we were very secluded area, I decided I'm gonna start my own business. It was kind of accidental. I wanted a farmhouse kitchen table. I didn't want to pay the price for a farmhouse kitchen table that I saw at like all the furniture stores. But also they were kind of like not great quality wood. So I thought to myself, I could build that. It's not that hard. So I did.

I built us this beautiful farmhouse kitchen table with matching benches and the whole nine yards. Then I had someone stop by with her friend and her friend looked at my table and she said, where did you get that? I have to have that, that is awesome. And I was like, I built it. And so it outbloomed my crafting building business and I named it, I built this workshop because I would build large furniture or small home decor or whatever the case may be.

but I grew the joke that I was like the hobby lobby of the desert. That's awesome. Because we were so secluded. Yeah, it was fun. So I grew this crafting building business for about five years. And in that time, I realized how hard it was to do marketing for your business as well as run your business. And so when we were moving from California to Texas, I of went down deep dive of digital marketing of literally everything that you need to know about digital marketing from your website to your.

email marketing to like anything that's online is your digital marketing. And so I did a really deep dive into how to do digital marketing, but also how to like figure it out in a way that if you're a brand new to marketing, not knowing what it is, it's easy to understand and to consume and then do by yourself. In this time, I had started my own virtual assistant business because I wanted to like do something different and also

Find something that I could take with me, because I mean, I took all my power tools with me, but I wanted a little bit more flexibility. So I started this virtual system business and then I had a client. She was like, maybe we could start working on my social media. I'm like, OK. And I loved it. So I ended up getting a full ride scholarship to finish my bachelor's for digital marketing. nice. Amazing. And then about a year ago, innately.

approached me and James and I started working together and then we merged our businesses back in December, January. So now my virtual assistant slash digital marketing is all with James now. And so James handles a lot of the website development stuff. We build websites for businesses that are professionally designed and they're not like outrageously priced because we found a lot of businesses we're getting almost taken advantage of, of like...

having extravagant costs for websites when it's not necessary. And so together, we've built this great full-scale digital marketing when it comes from your social media all the way to your website because ultimate goal is to drive traffic to your website. So in that time, I built two businesses. It was messy and nothing was perfect. But I think that's the biggest thing when it comes to starting your own business.

getting past the perfection of everything. Yeah, I be like, this has to be perfect. I love your story. yeah, getting past that to do it messy, just do it. Just get it out there because it's so funny. Maybe on Facebook, when your memories pop up like this is what you posted a year ago. The flyer that I posted when I first started my business was so bad. I'm like, I can't believe I created that. You look back and then you're like, my goodness, like I've grown. It's insane. And I think

anybody that's in that spot. So definitely celebrate the fact that they made it this far and you can still put your mind to it by getting further ahead, especially if that's your passion and that's what you want to do. So of course, a lot of things you start look cringe, I guess. You look back and like, I really made that. I really said like, it's all these things, but that's great. And I can also relate to the fact that moving a lot, like I went to

four different high schools, like having to start over and like meet new people and that's frustrating. But I'm really glad that that made you decide to like, okay, I'm gonna start something on my own. So I don't have to keep doing that. Yeah, it's been really great. I've actually brought in several of my like friends that I've met at different duty stations. They now like work with us on our team and it's been fun and I really enjoy doing it. I also enjoy like

pumping people up of like, if you want to do that, just do it. What's the worst that can happen? Just do it. Exactly. Also, like you can change your mind. Like if you decide to like try something and six months down the road, you're like, I hate this and like do something else. But you have the right to change your mind. And I think that's a big hurdle that people have to get past of like, okay, I decided to do this. Now I'm like stuck with this. Like I thought I was going to be in the medical field like forever. That's what I thought I was going to do. But I think

moving so much and like the military just kind of like forcing me to be flexible has made me a little bit more resilient to like change and going at it and not worrying about what's going to happen, but not so much of like just doing it and then dealing with what's going to happen afterwards. For sure. When you mentioned being like affordable to businesses, because I've seen people talk about it, like they hire somebody to build their website.

you know, and they don't have access to it for some reason, or all like these horrible things are happening. And I came across one of your posts on social media and it said something about, you have a problem, you can call us. I've noticed online service providers, they don't pick up the phone for some reason. I don't know if it's because we're online service providers. I've told people, you can call my phone. We don't have to get on a Zoom. If I'm away from my computer, you can give me a call.

especially when people start out, they're like, I don't want to give out my phone number, but you can create a business phone number. To me, that's more personable. If you have an issue, customer service, be there for your clients. That was good that you pointed that out. Yeah, it's like our big tagline. We answer the phone. We're actually there. If you have an issue or question about your website, we also offer smaller website packages. It's $49 a month. You get a professionally designed website that you DIY.

So you add the assets to it, but we take care of the backend of it. We host it. So if your plugins are broken, we fix it. And then if you continue to have questions or if you want to add something else, our specialists are there. They will answer the questions for you. So you're not like spinning, waiting a month, not hearing from someone from who knows where. We're actually going to answer the phone and help you and walk you through it. Or you could hire us.

you can hire a content specialist to just go in and fix it for you. We really love the fact that we have that affordability and the accessibility of our content specialist to help you. Yeah, that's great because we've talked about it so many times over the last couple of years on our show, like communication. Communication is like the number one top soft skill that you should have in your business. And if you don't communicate with your clients or your team, they're going to want to go somewhere else.

Even if it's just a quick update, like, hey, this is what's going on real quick. Like just making sure that you are there for your clients is so important. Yes. And I know that there are times, like if you can't communicate with your clients right then and there, then maybe offer like a turnaround time. I can get back to your email in the next three hours, whatever the case may be, like just being able to ensure that they know what's going on in the loop.

Not left in the dark and like clearly communicating that in the beginning with your clients is super important. I don't work on the weekends. I take the back sometimes I do, but I'm not accessible in the weekends. I try not to work. Don't advertise that. Yeah, I try not to work on the weekends, but there's some times I'm like I really want to do that and have the time right now. So clearly communicating that right up front with your clients and letting you know like hey, if I don't answer within this time, I'll get with you within 24 hours. Like these are my.

office hours, you can book a time with me at any time. But communicating that right up front is super important and setting those boundaries so you don't get overwhelmed six months down the road when you're answering phone calls on the weekends and you're responding emails at 930 at night. You will overwhelm yourself quickly. So setting those boundaries right in the beginning is so important. Yeah, for sure. Myself and probably a lot of other entrepreneurs out there, too, when you start your business, it's a mind shift.

change because a lot of people come from corporate. They have that corporate mindset. They have to be attached to their computer all the time, changing that mindset from employee to business owner. We talked about boundaries, but do you have any tips or advice to entrepreneurs that are just going from corporate to starting their own business and having to change that mindset? Yeah, absolutely.

It's important for you to think about the fact that that's your business. You make the rules. I mean, you do what you want. It's your thing. And so you don't have to do it the way that they did it in corporate world. Honestly, you probably don't want to do it the way that they do it in the corporate world. The communication. My clients appreciate that I'm very honest with what I say to them in regards to my advice. I had a client

He was on Instagram and he's like, have all these followers on Instagram. I'm like, that's cool. Are you making any money off of Instagram? He's like, no, I'm like, then you're wasting your time. And I could see it in his face, like, but I'm very honest about that. so knowing that you can be yourself in your business and not have to put on like a front is huge. Also, before we started kind of like recording, we talked about delegating. I think that's huge when it comes to starting your business.

There's so many people out there that want to be entrepreneurs. They want to start their own business. They just want to work from home. Connecting and networking with those people, I think, is super strong for you because if you have a friend down the road and she's like, look, I'm really wanting to get into data entry, which I mean, just an idea, not that anyone's dying to get into data entry, but she wants to get into working from home. If you have stuff that you need to do, you can absolutely reach out to her. And if you don't have the budget, you can be like, hey,

I can't afford to pay you, but in exchange for you helping me, could you give me a great testimonial? And then I could also give you a great testimonial for when you are reaching out there. That kind of like exchange of services is really big in the beginning. Like if you have a photographer friend and I do marketing, if you can exchange like, can you take some brand photos for me? I'll help you with your marketing.

Those types of little things go a long way, but they also help you with not trying to like learn everything because you don't have to do everything. But just being really good at what you do and then finding other people in their zone of genius to just do that for you. And it is a freeing experience when you delegate. I am still struggling with it to this day, but it is so nice when you get it actually out there. It definitely is tough to do that. So, for example, one of the clients I have

She's stepping back a lot the last few months. And for the last two years, it was hard for her to, Sara, can you do this for me? Can you do this for me? And I kept asking like, what do you want off your plate? Like, that's why you hired me so that you don't have to do these tasks. And now there's so many opportunities as a business owner. If you are able to delegate, then you can go out to networking events. You can make more sales calls. You can get more clients so that

you can then delegate more. Like there's so many great reasons to delegate. And like you said, like even just exchanging services that compliment each other, that would help somebody else out. Because let me tell you, like if you're doing everything by yourself, it can become very overwhelming and you feel like, you know, want to quit in a way. Like I don't want to do this anymore. There's too much going on. Well, you don't have to hire somebody, but like you can just hire out for maybe five hours a week.

if you can afford that. Yeah, exactly. When it comes to social media, and if you're not making money off of it, then why are you on it? So when you're talking about building websites, what do you advise? Like, okay, if social media is not working, then that's where websites come in. I've seen a lot of times entrepreneurs don't even want to create a website. For some reason, I believe that having your website gives you all the information. Everything's on there. I think social media is one of those things where

You just want to escape for the day and like get out of your mind. Yeah. So your website is more there for confirmation than conversion. And I know this is always a controversial topic because a lot of people say, well, there's for conversion and we don't think so. People, by the time they make it to your website, they already know who you are. They already know that you could solve their problem and they're just on your website to verify that information.

and understand that you are going to be able to help them in a way that they need at that moment in their journey. Your social media is more like your top of the funnel stuff. They kind of know who you are. But starting out, I always say number one is an email list, not even a website. You don't have a website yet. Build your email list because you own that email list. You mentioned like how I said, if you're not making money on that, then you're wasting time. I think the biggest thing to understand about

your marketing across the board is if you're not tracking it, then you have no idea where any of it's coming from. I talk about UTM codes a lot and how they are helpful with your marketing because you can literally track where your traffic is coming from and where are they clicking and like, is this campaign doing better on Facebook versus Instagram or on

YouTube versus TikTok or whatever the case may be. If you're not tracking, if you're not using UTM codes and if you're not like checking your analytics at least once a month, then you're wasting your time on your marketing because you have to look at the numbers and you have to pivot from there. makes a lot of sense because I saw that on my website where the traffic was coming from and I wasn't honing in on that. I'm like, OK, well, that's where it's coming from. That's where I'm going to stay on.

So I think when you track that and making sure like, where is this traffic from your website coming from? So then if one platform is not working, then something else, like you were saying, like track those analytics to see where that stuff is coming from. Yeah, absolutely. And those all can be connected to your website. The UTM codes are through Google Analytics and it's all free for any website owner. So it's not an extra expense because as starting up Bunchpreneur, sometimes like the budget's short. And so

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This right here could help you with your budget because you're going to see what you need to be continuing to like pay attention to and what you can get rid of. It's essentially watering the flowers and pruning the weeds. It's doing more of what's doing good and getting rid of the stuff that's not doing great. Yeah, exactly. What's that saying? Like try something for 90 days and if it doesn't work, do something else that matches up with the analytics too. If you're checking your website, then you can go, OK, why try this for 90 days? This is coming from here.

like this source, then go focus on that rather than this platform over here. So for sure. Hey there listeners, ever feel like you're struggling to connect with customers or lead your team effectively? That's where soft skills come in. Entrepreneur encounter isn't just another podcast. We're a community dedicated to helping early stage entrepreneurs like you master the soft skills that make or break a business.

Technical skills are important, but without communication, collaboration, and confidence, your business might never get off the ground to the next level. In our membership, Dana and I share actionable insights and tips to help you nurture the soft skills you need to thrive. Give you access to bonus content, workshops, and a network of like-minded entrepreneurs who are all on the same journey. We'll teach you how to boost your confidence. Become a leader who inspires and motivates your team.

navigate conflict like a pro. To resolve disagreements without drama and build stronger relationships. Communicate clearly and concisely. Get your message across, build trust, and close the deal. If you're ready to take your business to the next level, join the circle by clicking the link in the show notes. I wanted to talk about confidence because I know one of the times when entrepreneurs start.

They start with a confidence and there's so much noise out there, right? Like you have to do it this way. You have to show face. You have to make a video. All of these things are out there. And then when an entrepreneur tries to do everything and nothing is working, then they kind of lose confidence. I mean, I was in that boat. I lost all confidence the first year I started business because I was listening to everybody. But when we were talking about like when you

see where your traffic is coming from, that's where you should focus on that. So when it comes to confidence, you can see things on social media and examine what you see online. But I thought you were confident on your social media. So like, from being confident to not confident, because you're hearing on the noise to getting back to that confidence, like how can somebody boost their confidence in a way to make them not feel like they're overwhelmed and not make them feel like, I got to quit?

Don't consume more content than what you're creating. That's really hard to do. And then you can't compare yourself to like anybody else on social media because you are in a completely different journey than what they are. And so understanding that and also just getting out there and letting it be. We talked for this about being messy. There's so many videos of me that I like. I have chipped fingernail polish. My dog runs through the video or my husband starts talking in the background.

And there's a couple that I just like put out there. I'm like, this is me. This is what's happening of my day. Or like this morning I was driving home from dropping my son off at school and I spilled coffee all over me. I have like coffee stains on my pants right now and it's OK. I just know that like you can't see my pants right now. And so that's fine. I think just getting over that initial like what are people going to think of me? You will attract more of what you want to attract. You're going to attract the people that.

you want in your business and in your life because those are going to be the people that are going to lift you up. Like for making reels on like Instagram, for instance, just have fun with it. Sometimes it's silly and sometimes you just get out there. But practicing it all the time, it gets easier. I have a rule in my house. I don't record reels when my family is home because if I do, I always start laughing or like my husband will like.

clap in the background and be like, yeah, that was great. And I'm like, I can't record that stuff with anybody else around. I set time aside when everyone's gone to record those things. But just I think getting over the perfectionism is so hard. The super polished stuff is now what works. It's the real stuff. And so if you're nervous, say that. Be like, I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm here. And just showing up just will

boost that confidence and then getting out there. And if you get zero likes, that's fine. If you get 10 views, that's 10 people. Like not comparing yourself to like these people on Instagram who have like millions of followers, that's cool. But think of it as if you get 100 views, and I see this a lot on like TikTok, especially they're like, I'm stuck at 200 views. That's great. If you were in a room talking to 200 people, that would be amazing. So

Changing your perspective on it and not comparing yourself to what other people are doing is going to make a big difference in your mindset and in your confidence of just knowing like, I did this, I talked to 10 people today. It's huge. That's great to look at it that way. It's funny that you mentioned that about the numbers because a lot of the times we're like, there's not many views. And I think it was like the first podcast episode that we put out and like, we have two listens, we had two people listen to our podcast.

And I thought it was the coolest thing. And I posted some reels on YouTube and like I got 400 views like to me, that was like the coolest thing ever. And people are like, well, that's not like thousands. I don't care. I started adopting the I don't care attitude as long as I can get my message out. And there's some people that listen to it. I reach some people. I don't need to reach thousands of people, you know? Yeah. If you were standing in front of 400 people talking, I probably would be like sweating. I'd be a little bit nervous.

The cool part about social media is like you can record it and then just put it out there and then it's done and you're not actually in front of all those people. But you're getting out there and you're getting your name out there and you're allowing your customers and your potential clients to realize that you can solve the problem that they have. just getting out there, I think is super important. Yeah, for sure. I really appreciate you saying that because it's extremely important. Like just have fun. Do what you do best. Teach people what you want to teach.

Get your name out there because you never know. We don't do it. You never know what's going to happen. Thank you so much, Bonnie. I loved our conversation a lot and I think you gave great value to our listeners, especially when starting out. We need to have these types of conversations all the time to let people know that like when you started business, you're going to start messy. It's going to be tough, but you got this and everybody that you come in contact with.

If you create your own little support network, you can meet a couple of people and then just have those people in your corner. Yeah, it took me like three weeks just to open a business account at our bank. Nothing happens overnight. Exactly. It's messy. I had no idea what I was doing when I'm putting it in LLC and all this paperwork. I'm like, I'm going to Google it. I'll figure it out. But just doing it, I think is so important. So, yes, there I loved this conversation. I absolutely had a blast talking to you. So thank you so much. Now, Bonnie, working

Everybody finds you on social media, wherever you are. Absolutely. So you can find me on social media, on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn. For LinkedIn, it's Bonnie Conrad. On Instagram, it's innately. So it's I-N-N, the number eight, and then L-Y. And it's also our website. So innately.com if you want to come.

Check us out and you can see our latest podcast episodes on there. You can see our awesome website services and anything else that we can help you with in your digital marketing realm. We are there. Awesome. Well, as always, all of our information will be in our show notes. Until next time. Bye.