The Nouveau Podcast
The Nouveau Podcast: Your guide to building a thriving local small business.
Join entrepreneur Meredith Waguespack, owner of Sweet Baton Rouge® for insights, inspiration, and actionable advice with over 14 years in the retail industry. We'll explore data, marketing, community, and more, all with a touch of French charm.
Let's pop the cork on your entrepreneurial success!
The Nouveau Podcast
Episode 15: Local Series: Jordan Basham with Where To Geaux Social
This week, I'm absolutely buzzing to introduce you to my friend, the incredibly dynamic Jordan Basham! Jordan is the driving force behind the hyper-local phenomenon that is Where To Geaux, your ultimate guide to all things Baton Rouge and beyond. If you've ever wondered where to eat, what to do, or how to truly experience our amazing community, you've likely stumbled upon her fantastic content.
But Jordan isn't just about showcasing the best of where to "geaux" for fun – she's also the brains behind Where To Geaux Social, a thriving social media marketing agency dedicated to helping local businesses shine online. As someone who's been navigating the entrepreneurial waters for almost 15 years, I know firsthand the challenges small businesses face when it comes to marketing. That's why I wanted to bring Jordan on. Whether you're just starting out, juggling a side hustle with a full-time job, or you're a seasoned business owner ready to invest in your marketing strategy, this episode is packed with valuable insights.
Jordan shares her journey from building a popular local Instagram account fueled by a genuine love for supporting small businesses, to launching a successful social media agency that's now helping over 30 diverse clients – from restaurants to doctors – navigate the ever-evolving digital landscape. We dive into the questions every business owner grapples with: How do you know where to invest your marketing dollars? How do you cut through the noise and truly connect with your audience? And is TikTok the answer to everything (spoiler alert: maybe not for everyone!).
Jordan's approach is refreshingly honest and grounded. She emphasizes the power of building a real community, the importance of consistent effort over chasing viral trends, and the freedom that comes from outsourcing your social media when you're already wearing too many hats. We even touch on the rollercoaster of emotions that comes with social media success and the crucial reminder to celebrate the small wins.
If you're a local business owner looking to level up your marketing game, gain practical advice from someone deeply rooted in our community, and maybe even find the courage to take that leap of faith in your own entrepreneurial journey, then get ready to geaux listen!
You can follow her at @wheretogeaux225 & @wheretogeauxsocial
Connect with Meredith:
I am a mom to three, big maw maw to seven. I've been married for 18+ years, counting the days down to the BIG 20 so we can open up a great bottle of wine.
My husband and I also own a wine bar in our town we live in, called Library Wine & Provisions.
I am the founder of Sweet Baton Rouge®, a local Louisiana business I created from scratch with no marketing plan, just a little grit and lots of geaux! This business will hit 15 years in October and by far has been my most professional career doing what I love, marketing. I have built systems and habits to stay consistent and vision focused on our goals at hand. In 2024 I started a second business, Petey’s Press, to bring all of our production in-house to screen print as our business has always been centered around locally designed & printed t-shirts.
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SPEAKER_02:Hi, I'm Meredith Wagaspak, host of the Nouveau Podcast. I've been an entrepreneur for almost 15 years, and I'm here to share my hard-won lessons with you. On this show, we'll explore the power of data, the magic of marketing, and the importance of building a strong community. Join me for insightful conversations that are as refreshing as a vanilla latte and as sparkling as the champagne we'll be toasting to your success. Welcome back to the Nuvo podcast. I am so excited to share with you my friend Jordan Basham with where to go and where to go social. So welcome, Jordan.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you. I'm so excited to be here. I've been so excited for you and all your podcasting that you have going on. We're just two gals. I like to talk. So I feel like this is the perfect opportunity.
SPEAKER_02:You may just get a lot of yapping from us, but we also are going to bring you some great marketing nuggets because the reason why I'm bringing Jordan on for you guys for our audience is because I understand the hardships that come with I'm looking at two different types of people here in the small business community one that have just getting started they're working maybe a full-time job and this is like a side hustle and you're trying to figure out okay I've been doing these outdoor markets I've been showing up online and on social media all Now, how do I start investing into my business with marketing? And then I'll also have the other person who's been thriving. They have a brick and mortar. They've been building and growing their business for the last few years, and they're ready to invest in their business. So we're talking to our small business community, and Jordan has just done such a phenomenal job with, one, just her personal Instagram account, which is where to go. And that's kind of how I feel like we connected was similar even though your account was really geared towards food but you would come and really support local business and you would come and into my store tag Sweet Baton Rouge and and that's how I feel like we began to start conversating and then we served on the board for Fort Cancer and that's when I feel like we really got to become friends yeah and that was a couple years ago and then for me I've really been able to see you like hone in on your skills which which is marketing from an Instagram, social media, just that whole bucket, and begin your own business.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's been super exciting. So obviously, yeah, we met doing the influencing side, but as I was doing influencing, my whole goal was always to get eyes on smaller businesses. The smaller businesses are the ones that often their marketing budgets are not big. So starting from the influencer side, one of the biggest issues, which whenever I started my influencing account, I never went after it for money or anything like that. I didn't even know that content creation for money was a thing really. But then, you know, my biggest thing was working with local businesses and making posts. So we'd go to a restaurant, take a photo, and just get the word out there, oh, there's this kind of food in Baton Rouge. Or, hey, like, yeah, we have seven Mexican restaurants, but here's why eight is different than the other seven. And kind of things like that. But over time, more and more of these smaller businesses were like, oh, I can see where social media, like, I don't have to spend$1,000 on a paid ad on Facebook to get people to come into our restaurant. So it's super interesting the way that the world's changed, especially Instagram. And you've seen how Instagram, the filters have changed. 10 years ago, we were using bad filters. So much has
SPEAKER_02:changed
SPEAKER_00:in the digital footprint. It's crazy. It's absolutely crazy. But now social media is so powerful. And I think a lot of small business owners are asking, how can I get the most bang for my buck? How can I make this$200 dollar stretch you know should I be bringing in influencers should I be running paid ads should I hire a social media manager like what should I be doing and you probably running it to the questions yourself as a business owner it's like how do I know it's right and how do I know it's paying off
SPEAKER_02:yeah so I mean if you guys listen to me talk about I think it's episode 7 maybe where I talk about meta a little bit and my reason why I went a little deeper with a company that has a full dashboard integrated into meta But I had to seriously invest a lot of my money going into ads. And I feel like it's been very well received on my platform. But not all businesses can start at that level of where I'm at. And I've been in business for almost 15 years. So I definitely think for the small business community, there is a huge opportunity to work in meta on a small level to grow your platform and not just feel like you're gambling your money away, but you're actually investing the money and you're seeing the benefits coming from it. Because this is where the digital age is where people are. I mean, you just got to know where your audience is. Is it Facebook? Is it Instagram? I mean, TikTok has like a huge explosion. And from my understanding, I read something and I don't know if you know anything about this or you may have some tea or I don't know. Maybe, maybe. But Instagram is trying, I mean, TikTok is trying to create a platform that's going to really, really hit home competing against Instagram from a standpoint of being more of a place of putting, like I think you can upload up to like 34, so it's going to be more photo related.
SPEAKER_00:You're giving me tea. I feel like I haven't even heard of this. That's probably the
SPEAKER_02:hardest thing. I just read about it and I think it's, I don't know when it's coming out, but it's also, is TikTok going to still be around? So I don't really know what's going to be happening with TikTok, but I do feel like once you know who your audience is, like you're able to really grow and expand your audience from a small scale to a large scale. if you work with somebody that knows all those metrics and how to be involved in all of that.
SPEAKER_00:Well, it's so interesting you bring up TikTok because, you know, so we are social media. So now because of my influencing, I was working with all the small businesses and we were able to actually launch in October our very own social media business because so many people were like, I mean, you know, as a business owner, you wear all the hats. Yeah. And so so many people were like, I know we need to be on social media, but I just don't have another hand to give to do social media. The last thing I want to do at the end of the day is take a photo of something and then post it and then have to engage online so so many business owners are hiring social media managers to just have that taken off their plate because like sometimes that's just people's not their bread and butter or they just can't it's just not another thing that they can add to their list yeah so October we've you know fully launched starting our own social media business and now we're all the way up to 30 clients and we have everywhere between you know restaurants to doctors and so many different things in between estheticians and I I think that the most interesting thing is out of our 30 clients, zero are on TikTok. And it's not saying they're not interested in it or anything like that, but I always tell people whenever they're starting, they're like, how do I know what platform is right for me? And how do I know where I should spend all my time? And obviously meta is super important, but you don't have to be everywhere at once. The biggest thing is starting and putting something out there.
SPEAKER_02:Building a community with the target audience of who your customer is Yes. So depending on their demographics, they may live mostly in Facebook and you want to engage with them on Facebook.
SPEAKER_00:And with Facebook and Instagram being tied together, it's so easy. It's so easy. But yeah, so 30 clients, zero on TikTok.
SPEAKER_02:I'm not really on TikTok. I mean, we have a TikTok, but we don't utilize TikTok because I'm like you. I don't have time. And that's not my audience. Even though I know my age demo lives in TikTok too. But I know, like, I don't have the capacity to be able to be over there in the TikTok world. And especially knowing the unsecured, if you know if it's going to still be up or not.
SPEAKER_00:Well, it's another thing of, okay, what if I go to TikTok and I make 20 videos and I, how do I know what comes from TikTok, right?
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Spoiler alert, you don't. It's so hard to tell. That's probably the number one question that in discovery meetings with business owners and in monthly meetings that we have with clients, they're like, how do I know that you're working? How do I know that social media is working? And the truth is you don't because it's great whenever people walk into your boutique and they say, hey, I found you on social media. People, I always say this, people are more likely to come to you whenever there's something negative happening instead of positive. So you'll hear the complaints more than and you'll hear the compliments. So people aren't gonna walk into your business, usually, and be like, I saw you on social media, I saw you on social media, oh my gosh, your marketing is so great. Unless you're Gordon McKernan and you have multi-million dollars to do billboards and things like that. people aren't gonna compliment you on your marketing. You just have to know that it's working. And I always tell people, even if you don't have a big budget, even if you have zero budget, you just getting out there and trying is better than
SPEAKER_02:nothing. And I'll just say from building a business from scratch 15 years ago, it just takes a lot of time and consistency and understanding of who your audience is and really fine tuning that community and making sure like you don't walk away from knowing like how to interact with them and how to conversate with them and how to give them the right type of tools and product direction if you don't have your community or audience surrounding you.
SPEAKER_00:Well, and I always tell people, like, I, at the end of the day, am always of, you know, I want to give everybody the tools that they can have. So, because, you know, again, small business, you can't afford a social media manager that might be somewhere between$600 and$4,000 a month. And so that's really hard. But there's so many free tools available to people online. And, you know, I always tell people is people are curious. So even if you think, like, you know, you have a product and, you know, a People just want to see you packaging orders sometimes. And so sometimes the easiest thing is you could, you know, set up a time lapse and just show people a day in your life. But then I, you know, I as an influencer, I was anonymous for four years. I never put my face to my page. I never put my voice to my page. I'm barely putting my voice to my page now. I know. I
SPEAKER_02:recently saw a video of you with your face. Oh, I hate it. At the bottom of the screen. I hate it. And doing a little thing. But you did so good.
SPEAKER_00:That's also where I tell people, you know, you have to push yourself out of your comfort level. Yeah. Because you just don't know what's going to stick and what's not because people are curious, but people also latch on. I hate my voice, and all of us are self-conscious about the way that we look, but people grab onto that. And
SPEAKER_02:your
SPEAKER_00:voice
SPEAKER_02:is your brand. Your voice is your brand. It is. Your face is your brand. And yeah, I gravitate to a lot of different Instagram accounts on my personal page where I'll just prop up the phone while they're showing me what products they're trying on what food they're cooking, or just whatever stories they're sharing. And I try to remind myself to do that and I still struggle with getting into my stories and it's just me rambling and yapping.
SPEAKER_00:Here's the spoiler alert that I think nobody expects is that we're all struggling in the fact of like we're always all turning our way, like how do you reinvent the wheel? How do you create something new? How do you do all these things? And we're always trying to brainstorm how do you do the next thing? Right. And then we all go through these rollercoaster of emotions. Like you feel like you get this high on social media when you're like stuff's, when you get like, like the last 38, no, 40 hours now, we did a post for a client and they have already hit 1 million views. And it's been insane. And it's a local business here in Baton Rouge. I don't want to go too far into it, but they, um, you know, it's been incredible. And all of a sudden, like yesterday, they got 800 new followers and all this stuff. And it's incredible. It's incredible, but it's, it's overwhelming. because what people don't tell you is like whenever you start doing these social media ideas and something finally works and then oh something's taken off sometimes you attract the wrong people and like we're learning right now so like we said we have a client that has a viral video going on right now and it's a video about food but the thing is is the food is now reaching it's crawfish I can say that and the crawfish is now going into like Ohio and New Jersey and so all of a sudden all these people are coming into the comments and they're like look at those cockroaches and they're eating the heads and like what are they doing in Louisiana and like for us here in Louisiana we're like crawfish is an everyday meal and so it's you know people always think on social media you have to go viral but I'm of the opinion when and we tell this to all of our clients if you want to go viral then we're not the company for you yeah we want people that are gonna we would rather you get 200 views 50 likes and then those 50 likes turn into purchases versus 18 million views, you get torn apart in the comments because people don't understand what crawfish are and then it hurts you even more and then nobody buys crawfish. Yeah,
SPEAKER_02:because the biggest thing is really rallying around again, I'm gonna talk on that community, like really rallying in there and supporting the ones that are following you. So if you get like, look, I have over 30,000 followers on Instagram. I could have one video do very well, and then I could have one just get a few likes, but those people that are liking my post, I want to just enjoy that because those are true customers that want to support and shop with me in my store or online. And so to me, I want to rather not focus on the numbers, focus on the community. And I think that's what you're talking about.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it is. Because again, as a human, we get so wrapped up in the numbers. And if it affects me, I mean, I can sit here and give all the advice in the world. But at the end of the day, if I make a put, it's kind of funny. You probably feel this way too. I'll spend all this time editing a video, and I'm like, oh, this is going to do so good. And then it gets like 10 likes or something like that. And you're like, I spent so many hours on that. And then the next week I'll post something that I put like 30 seconds of effort into. And then all of a sudden it has like 500 likes. And I'm like, man, what is the perfect recipe for a good video? And how do I know? And it's honestly... There's not. There's not. There's not. That's a spoiler. There's no recipe for how you get it right. And there's no recipe for knowing the algorithm. Anybody that says they know the algorithm is lying to you because it's... I don't know that we'll ever... ever understand the algorithm but I think it's you truly just have to listen to your fan base and see what your people like so like for me a lot of our restaurants that we have we have 18 restaurants on our roster and you know when are people scrolling on their phones thinking about food it's usually like that 10 o'clock 10 a.m. people are starting to think about lunch okay well then 3 o'clock they're probably you know at bored at work and they're kind of probably browsing taking a break from all the work what am I going
SPEAKER_02:to do for dinner what am I going to pick up for
SPEAKER_00:dinner what can be causing me to break my diet kind of thing and so you really just have to realize who is your audience and when are they when are they online but then also like you know you might you might post on a day that you think is a regular day but then if there's 20 events going on in the city nobody's on their phone yeah so you know yes you have to be aware
SPEAKER_02:yeah you just got to be aware of what's going on in your city or just within your community of what's happening
SPEAKER_00:well that's a that's a really good community is really important important word that you said because so many people are now collaborating with each other and you do a great job of collaborating because I think of Sweet Baton Rouge who's a cute boutique that has all these clothes and items but then like you reached out to Zippy's a food a restaurant that you know is probably it's kind of your demographic but it also isn't you know there's college students and everything around it and you guys did a shirt together we've done two in the last two years and they're awesome and like that is you know sometimes you might not think to do those kind of collaborations but like that's how you expand your audience even further, but then that's how you stay relevant, is collaboration.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I completely agree. So tell me a little, like, you going from just, you know, you were working different full-time jobs over the years while you were just having fun with Where To Go, how did you transition from realizing that you were onto something with Where To Go, and then, pushed forward to open in October with where to go social
SPEAKER_00:spoiler alert very scary and still I have such bad imposter syndrome because I feel like we all do because I you know I've always been in marketing in some aspect and I you know I've worked in the agencies and I've worked in traditional marketing I was in a law firm for three years I was at Raising Cane's for eight years and I know it's it all started with Cane's and this is not a sponsored podcast but it could be yeah but so I I really learned the value of strong marketing and knowing your brand and brand standards with working at Canes when I was a kid. And then from there, I've worked in different aspects of marketing. But the story of me is that whenever I graduated college, I was Baton Rouge's number one hater. I was born and raised here, and I was like, I gotta get out of this city. There's nothing here for me. So my husband and I moved away for two and a half years, and then we ended up moving back because a family member got sick. we were coming back we're like if we're gonna live here we need to we need to try we need to try to love the city we need to try to understand like you know we don't have to go to the same three restaurants all the time and so we made it kind of our mission to get out of our comfort zone and try again um and so that kind of is what sparked also we were in Houston and Dallas where we were on Instagram all the time because that's where people post it um so whenever we came back to Baton Rouge nobody was really do they were doing it but it wasn't
SPEAKER_02:take us back to a date of like kind of when you moved back to Baton Rouge what your was that
SPEAKER_00:oh man 16 18 2018 yeah so that kind of gives you the instagram it was kind of still in the bad filter stage but kind of not so like people were really Instagram was truly just a platform where you posted photos with bad filters and no hashtags and all the things. So, yeah, so I saw other people in bigger cities doing the Instagram thing. So when we moved back, we were like, okay, we're going to remember, we're going to learn all these new places. We probably need a memory album, right? And so we just started posting photos on this platform. what we thought was just cheeky of like where to go. And so we just created an Instagram page just to have it for selfish reasons, but then also just be able to have a quick reference of like, oh, that Pad Thai spot, what was it? Oh, here it is. So long story short, you know, we started posting more and more and then people started picking it up on it and then COVID happened. And then we still really wanted to help restaurants because nobody was supporting, you know, nobody was eating in restaurants, but they were doing to go. So we kept posting posting and that's really where it took off was COVID. I was going to
SPEAKER_02:say that's where I remember really starting to see your Instagram account because I was sharing a lot of stuff of how to support local businesses during that time and I would see you really out there sharing a lot of all the restaurants that you could still go and do the curbside pickup or they
SPEAKER_00:drop it in your trunk and like you can keep going and you didn't have to you know. And I've seen
SPEAKER_02:like the restaurants got overly creative of how to keep their doors open. So fun. And you definitely played a major your role in helping keep in some of those businesses.
SPEAKER_00:Well, thank you. Well, and that was, you know, again, I was still using, you know, pushing, using my funds and I still to this day about, you know, spending my money, putting my money where my mouth is. Um, but now it's opened the doors for me to have collaborations with bigger brands, obviously. But, um, so start, you know, COVID that kind of help take off more. And so between COVID and now we just started working more and more businesses and that kind of opened the door to people being like, how do did you get so good at this? And I'm like, well, I do marketing for a living. It's my nine to five. And my nine to five then became, I would work my nine to five and then I'd clock out and then work a five to 10 during the Instagram. And so many people just started being like, Jordan, why are you working a hundred hours, you know, doing two jobs basically. Why don't you just do it for yourself? And I was like, cause that's scary. Who's going to pay my health insurance? Who's going to, who's going to pay the bills? Cause like this isn't sustainable. Right. Right. Um, and then Finally, after two years, it kept being pushed and kept being pushed and so many people were asking me. I finally just realized, maybe I should. I don't know. I kept going back with myself, just trying to figure out what I should do. The truth is, I still don't know. I don't think any of us have it figured out. I make mistakes every day. I learn lessons every day. Finally, I think the biggest thing was I just had to put the two weeks in and figure out, let's just do it. I honestly and you kind of know this story is I, I put my two weeks in, and I was like, I'm gonna have a month or two, and I'm gonna build my website, and I'm gonna take a breath. I have my savings saved up, and I'm just gonna take this easy. I'm gonna go easy into this. And then I launched on a Wednesday, and then Business Report, 225 Magazine, and all these places did articles on me by Thursday, Friday. And then Monday, I came into my office, which was my home office then, and now we have a physical office. I went in, and my inbox box was just blown up and people were like let's talk about social media let's talk about how can we hire you and all this stuff and I was like oh my god what did I do yeah how how do I do this now and so it's been super interesting and it's something that you know I wasn't prepared for it but I'm so grateful to be in the position I am in now but I think everybody thinks you have to have it figured out and you have to have a game plan and you have to have this marketing plan and you're going to hit all these check boxes you're not
SPEAKER_02:no I would say if you've listened to my previous podcast in the very beginning you know like I just started this business because I wanted to create a t-shirt. Selfish reasons, right? Yeah, and sometimes that makes the best way of starting a business by just going all the way in. And I've been able to witness just the growth overnight for you. Not that it was really overnight, because you've been digging deep since 2018, but I've been able to really see you... kind of go from working a nine to five, running your Instagram account, to now being a business owner. And being a business owner is the scariest thing because now you have so many things that lay on your shoulders and keep you up at night. So what are some of the hard things, just kind of, because I mean you're still kind of, I don't know, what, six or eight months in, nine months?
SPEAKER_00:Six months this month. Six months, okay.
SPEAKER_02:So you're six months in and you had such, growth, like extreme growth, that most businesses, it doesn't happen like that. It's a lot slower, it's a slow and steady growth. So maybe just kind of share with our audience if that was to happen to their business, just how you kind of worked through just some challenging things as you were trying to figure out where you were gonna move to to actually grow this agency, the hiring side of that, And just being able to just now step in as not just an influencer, but becoming a business owner. That was a mouthful.
SPEAKER_00:The first thing that I made sure is I had a bottle of wine or a margarita close by. Because I honestly, I'm telling you, every single day, you know, you think that you have everything figured out. You say that you're going to do these things. And I'll tell you, my business plan, whenever I... kind of business plan loosely, right? Because I was like, I want to do this social media business. I'm going to work Monday through Thursday. Fridays are going to be half days. We're really like, if I'm going to do this, I'm going to do it right where I have a healthy work life. And you've heard this quote before. I quit my 9 to 5 to work 24-7. Yeah, and that is, honest to God, the truth. I thought, I, naive Jordan six months ago, thought she was quitting her 9 to 5 to ease up my life, and somehow my life became even more cake. chaotic but I you know I think that you know whenever so I launched the business within one week we had all these inquiries and all my hopes and dreams of wanting to slow roll this thing I realized was not a reality because I'm really great friends with a lot of agency owners in town and I pick their brains all the time we go to lunch and you know I try to make sure I'm not the crazy one and so many of them were like Jordan you are in a unique situation where this is not normal and so it's it's almost like when you have a water faucet that's turned on, how do you know when to slow it down and kind of put it to a drip and how do you stop it? But for me, most business owners, they run into the, we have to go get a deal. We have to put out ads. We have to pitch ourselves. I'm not doing any of that. I think the thing that has helped me the most was I made great relationships with people. I truly put, you know, it's not transactional for me. I always tell people, whenever we're working together, we are family. And I used to hate that term whenever you go to a corporate office and they're like, we're a family. I could not stand that. But for me, I this is probably my downfall is the lines blur because I, you know, I say we promise 12 posts a month. Well then sometimes we do 15 posts and like, it's that over delivering, but also it's good. Also
SPEAKER_02:putting some boundaries there.
SPEAKER_00:The boundaries are the hardest things because like also how do you, you know, we constantly get texts from people at 10 o'clock at night and different things like that. But they also are like, Hey Jordan, I know you're busy. Text me tomorrow. I'm just going to text you whenever this thing is going on. But as a small business owner, an idea pops into your head at 10 o'clock at night. You want somebody to rattle off with, or you need to get the idea written down so you know to follow up with it. And so for us, we welcome that. And so we're like, all of our clients have our cell phone numbers. They have our email. We're like, whenever something comes to your head, text it to us, but also be understanding. It's 10 o'clock at night. I would like to sleep at some point. But so to your question of how do we handle it and how did we how do we do it we're truly learning day by day like every single day a situation changes um especially like today it's you know we're in april and a lot of businesses are dealing with the tariffs right now and they're panicking like i mean you as a boutique owner are trying to how do you cost of goods like you know is a shirt going to be 75 next week um and so i social media and also owning your own business you have to be understanding that things are fluid yeah so we um have just become trying to become support systems for our other businesses, but then who helps me at the end of the day? A bottle of wine or a margarita.
SPEAKER_02:My motto here at the Nouveau podcast is cheers to your success. and really talking about the wins as small as they are or as big as they are. And I think that's that part of being able to celebrate that you've made it through the week or through the day sometimes. People
SPEAKER_00:want to see people winning, and that's another thing is brag about yourself sometimes. You and I, we were speakers for a local women's retreat, and even though it was just us speaking, it's such an honor to be able to ask to be at those things or to be in the room like to be in the room where it happened is such a good quote that Hamilton if you're any Hamilton fans out there the office is haunted our phone just fell from the wall but you know celebrate the small wins and don't focus on comparing yourself one of my favorite quotes is comparison comparison is a thief so whenever you're sitting there comparing yourself to like if you are comparing yourself to skims yeah why would you do that like it's you're never you know not that you're never going to make that money but like why would you put yourself in that headspace of oh my gosh I'm not making millions of dollars today like you can't do that and you never
SPEAKER_02:know like what's on the flip side of that other business either you know like you don't know what that even skims you don't really know the real story behind this large massive brand you don't know what their work life
SPEAKER_00:balance is like you don't know what people are happy to work there and that's what one thing I will say as a business owner is I've super hyper focused on being the boss that I never had. And like, I've had great bosses in my life, but you know, whenever you've worked in your life and you always like, oh man, I wish I had a manager that did this. Or, you know, if your manager fusses at you, you're like, oh man, I wish, I wish I would have not got fussed at in this way. I always try to think about, sorry, I don't know if y'all can hear that ambulance driving. I know. I'll be very curious to see if that picks up. But yeah, there's always, You just, I lost my thought with
SPEAKER_02:the ambulance. No, I know. Well, I know where you're going, and I feel like just staying... I'm a repetitive person, so just really staying true to, one, who the person you want to be as a boss. Because I agree with you on that. I look to being a good leader to my employees and being able to set them up for success in their future. Because for me at Sweet Baton Rouge, I have a lot of 20-year-olds that work for me. And I could either... make or break that relationship for the future relationships that they're gonna have with other business owners that they work with. And I wanna teach them, encourage them, Tell them when I feel like they're doing a really great job. Being delicate when I feel like they've made some mistakes but it's a learning season and they've got to work through that thing. My tone of voice and the way I interact with those employees means a lot to me and that's one of my things that I really want to focus in on as a business owner and I think that's where you were going.
SPEAKER_00:Be the manager that you wish you had because you always have to have tough conversations too but I think about what What did 16-year-old Jordan experience? And also, I always tell people and my business owners, customers, employees, Baton Rouge is a small town. Word travels. The way that you treat somebody will always come back to haunt you in a good way or bad way. And so I always think back to 16-year-old Jordan who had no idea about the world working at Raising Cane's. It was so funny. So whenever I moved back to Baton Rouge in 16, no, 18, I worked at a law and I guess I was 20, I may have been 23 or 25, somewhere in there. Time has passed so long it feels like it hurts. It feels. But if I'm showing my age, I'm 31 now. You're just a baby. I'm just a baby, but it also hurts. Everything hurts. So whenever I was 16, obviously it feels like a lifetime ago, but then whenever I was 25, Somebody found out I was applying for the marketing role and they reached out to the person that hired me when I was 16 years old. And you're like, I'm a different, I've been three new humans since then. But the point is that everybody knows everybody in this town. And I know a lot of your audience is going to be Baton Rouge specifically, but also other cities. You just have to be aware that the way that you treat people will travel. And I always, you do good to customers. I think a lot of business owners also struggle with you know cancel culture cancel culture and that probably could be its own podcast right there
SPEAKER_02:18 through 2020 2021 that was a really tough season and that's right when you got in and for me like I can't remember if I've shared this or not but yeah like around 2020 I got so timid and scared to even show up on social media and I stayed like that until 2023 and I was like Meredith you need to be interjecting yourself into this business good or bad like if somebody is gonna disagree with you or agree with you, you gotta be able to know how to handle it and not all disagreements do you even have to agree with because they may not even know who you are and the way your followers have been following you for so many years and they just may have a tiny little glimpse of something. And so I had to be reminded that I needed to show up for my customers because people are buying from people. And I'm not just there to be front and center for purchases, but to truly and authentically be there for my followers, my customers. You see me in the store, I wanna represent the same person if you see me online.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, exactly. very intimidating but I think at the end of the day with the probably the lesson of this podcast is just to show up and start like yeah you never know if you're gonna do it right or wrong you're definitely gonna make mistakes but just starting somewhere is gonna be your starting point and so I think for the question of like how can business owners know what the right plan is or how do they get started I mean it's literally just it's giving it a try and seeing what works and seeing what doesn't work. And then even if it doesn't work, try it two other different ways. It's all scary. And again, we're all trying to figure it out. But, you know.
SPEAKER_02:And it's all metric driven. So anything you're out there trying to do, you're testing it. You're seeing if that worked. You're understanding your audience better. And you're just out there trying. Are there any other just like tips or how people can contact you and maybe they're interested in working with you? Because I know you work with all levels, small, medium, large businesses. So share a little bit about how people can, you know, also be able to run this business on a small marketing budget either it being just Maybe you got some free tools that you can share besides just kind of getting out there. Or again, they're ready to take the next step and they're interested in wanting to work with you.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so I think the biggest thing is like, let's just have a conversation. And I always encourage people, even though I'm running my own social media business, there's tons of people that are running social media businesses and there's a lot of great ones in this town. But there's also, it's okay to get three or four proposals, right? But I think the biggest thing is how let's have a conversation and I am probably a little too honest in my discovery meetings we call them because like I love we have a discovery meeting right after this with a client and we go to their office or people come here and we basically just sit down and say tell me what it is that you think that you want help with and then tell me what it is of what is your capacity because that is the biggest thing is I can give you a game plan either A we can give create game plans for you where you can have a three month social media plan and you go implement minute or it's you have realized okay I am wearing too many hats I really do need to hire a social media manager and we can tell you okay well here's what we can offer you so you know we can kind of break down like what does it mean for us to be involved is it you know are you a local photographer that you take your own photos and you just need somebody to post those photos and then obviously that changes for us like we can make it a lot better of a deal for you to just post the content but then if it's something where we have to be at your restaurant or your boutique or wherever we're at, 20 to 40 hours a month getting photos, getting content, helping get organized. It's a little bit different, obviously. But I think the biggest misconception is that hiring a social media manager has to be really expensive. But there's no standard rate for charging. And so that's where there's some social media people who are helping businesses, and they charge$300 a month, but it's usually a kid out of college who they've done influencing. So they're like, I understand marketing, but they only have that one part of the puzzle. They only know what influencing can do for you. They don't know how it aligns with all your other marketing efforts. And I think the biggest thing with marketing that people probably miss out on is, is your marketing cohesive? So just Instagram and social media is one piece of the puzzle. Do you have your Google set up? Are you getting Google reviews? Is your website updated? Is it functional? Do people know how to contact you? We had a customer recently come on board with us who didn't even realize that their website was offline. They didn't realize that customers couldn't place orders online. And we were like, how have you, they were like, we didn't realize that sales were down for three months because our website wasn't online. I was like, how did you not realize you didn't have an online order?
SPEAKER_02:They need my small business audit. Oh my gosh. I mean, you said something that made me just want to throw out there is organization. Yes. You need to be organized and you can do that for free because you as the business owner is going to know your business the most. and so you need to organize your thoughts in some format and and i don't mean to just keep plowing back to other episodes but in the early uh second and third episode i really hone in on small business audit and the importance of knowing your numbers But also like knowing your metrics and the sales data and all of that kind of stuff. So if you're not getting sales, that is a really big deal. And you don't even realize that that's happening.
SPEAKER_00:And it's happened more than, you know. Well, I
SPEAKER_02:see it. I mean, I scout the internet and looking at other websites and different things. And I see websites a lot of times, they still have Christmas on their website as like their main homepage. Yeah. And I'm like, what are y'all doing? Yeah. Like it's, April and and I find like people just think that they're just gonna put it out online and and it's done and you never have to go back to it and so website is also super important if you're an e-commerce business that that is like if you had a brick-and-mortar store you have to merchandise your store and move things around on a weekly basis so if you're not doing the same thing on your website things get static and you know just customers can see the exact same thing from a month ago for some of y'all who still have Christmas on your websites six months ago eight months ago whatever long that was and so I know
SPEAKER_00:it feels like a lifetime but anyway you
SPEAKER_02:get my point you've got to be organized in your thoughts organized and building a strategy of what what it is that you feel like you may need, and then having an agency to bounce those ideas off with, and being able to communicate effectively.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, well, and that's, so if you asked how people can contact me, we have wheretogo225.com. That is probably the best way where people can fill out a form to reach us, but we, you know, I think the thing that has put us in our niche is that we're, yes, we're a social media agency, but we are also trying to help everybody, like, get a game plan for the bigger picture. So if we see like website needs to be edited or whatever depending on how we can help because we do have knowledge to help on those certain items but we're not afraid to be like hey like this is actually here's another business that you should go to for your website and all that so we truly believe in working together with other businesses um and so i always tell people don't be afraid to find your community and ask other people like for you your boutique owner where are the other boutique owners and like how can y'all form an alliance together and like Like, go get dinner, like, once a month with other boutique owners and, like, just have heart-to-hearts and be like, girl, are you going to do the same thing that I am? And, like...
SPEAKER_02:I know. I need to do that because I'm struggling right now with... So, us being primarily, we're 90% a t-shirt business. We have solely always relied on... Not solely relied on. I mean, it's a small portion of who our business is, but... being able to sell to retailers. And I mean, it's just, I feel like I'm like dead in the water with why retailers are not buying like they used to. I mean, but there's so many other things that are at stake, but I want to be able to talk to these retailers and be like, what's truly going on? How can I help you? And so thank you for saying that. That's almost like a mental reminder. I need to do that.
SPEAKER_00:Well, even even because it could be a blurry line, like, should I meet with other boutique owners? And, you know, what if I'm telling them my secret sauce? Yeah, there's no secret sauce. Like, you know, I think people are always afraid of that. And for me, I really, really value having other social media business owners. And like, I keep them very close because like they at the the end of the day, we can help each other. And so I always will, if something's not right for me or if I just truly don't have the time, I pitch to other people. But then also it's just nice to have somebody that understands at the end of the day, oh, Instagram changed the algorithm and blah, blah, blah. You have to have community. And even if it's somebody, if you don't want to be in a community where it's with other boutique owners, go find the women. Go find the men. Wherever you have to find that community at, You just have to have somebody that understands what you're going through.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Don't isolate yourself as a business owner and don't feel like you have someone you can talk to. We talked about that with Lee, with BWN, just a couple of weeks ago about the importance of being able to have community and being able to share those hard conversations. And it's fruitful because it's not only just a way to network with other women or men, but it's just a way to be able to communicate and share the really good stuff or also the really tough stuff. Okay, well let's wrap this up because I know that you're a busy lady and you've got a meeting to get to, as you mentioned. So let's just go through the rundown, which I will also put this in the show notes for you guys, but Tell everybody where they can find you. And you like that where?
SPEAKER_00:See, no pun intended.
SPEAKER_02:Where they can find you and how they can connect with you. And I'll put all of that in the show notes for you guys to click on. But if you want to, you know, you're directly from her.
SPEAKER_00:If you're looking for, obviously, food recs, we always, you know, my influencing account is where to go 225. But if you're looking for social media help, it's where to go 225 social. So both of those are on Instagram. And also we have a website. So where to go 225.com. Um, and like I said, we don't, we don't charge for consults. We don't charge for a phone call. Like let's just get on the phone and talk and see what it is that you need help with. And I feel like you, you know this, I'm a pretty honest person and I, you know, I'm like a pretty, pretty honest person. I'm very, I'm a straight shooter. I'm always going to tell you, like if you have a budget of$500, I'm going to tell you what you should be spending your money on, what you shouldn't be spending your money on, but also like who could be a fit for you and who might not be a fit. Um, You know, I always value my Baton Rouge businesses in our city. You know, people talk a lot of negative talk about our city, unfortunately, but we're only going to make Baton Rouge better by helping each other. Yeah. So if you are looking just to kind of get a step forward and seeing like, I'm struggling, I don't know where to start. Let's just have that conversation and then let's get you going from there. Because the goal could always be, you know, we give you tips for, you know, three to five months and then you see a big change. Well, then maybe in four or five months you might have the budget to start talking and then from there like the goal is to always grow but what does growth mean you know it's it's hard to tell
SPEAKER_02:like yeah
SPEAKER_00:what you're
SPEAKER_02:gonna do yeah each business is definitely going to be different in in their growing season for sure
SPEAKER_00:yeah but awesome yeah we're here to help so um i'm so excited to be here and you are killing it so keep doing that
SPEAKER_02:well thank you well thank you jordan i know you're so busy and i but i knew because we're friends i wanted my audience to be able to hear from you directly and to get to know you if they don't already know who you are and because I know that Jordan can help your business from a small business level to begin to see growth because sometimes just taking that leap of faith of moving in the direction of working with somebody sharing ideas just brainstorming is just invaluable. Invaluable? Valuable.
SPEAKER_00:It's valuable. We keep a whiteboard in the office and we literally just whiteboard ideas. Build your community, have the whiteboard ideas, dream big, and also just know that it is possible. It might take a few times to get there, but no dream is
SPEAKER_02:too big. Absolutely. I'm going to the moon. I'm
SPEAKER_00:going to the moon, I'm just going slowly. Or maybe fast, depends on who asks.
SPEAKER_02:Well, Well that's all we have for today's episode. Thank you so much Jordan for being here today. Until next time I want to say cheers to a successful and fulfilling week. If you enjoyed this episode please don't forget to download and subscribe to the Nouveau podcast and you can find us on all major podcast platforms. Thanks so much. Have a great day. Bye.
