Boost Your Visibility | Grow Your Business with Brenda Eckhardt
Resource for creative entrepreneurs seeking to grow their product or service-based businesses while prioritizing family and well-being. Hosted by Brenda Eckhardt, a successful photographer and brand strategist, this podcast offers the latest strategies and how-to's to increase online visibility, work smarter, avoid burnout, and find inspiration for both professional and personal growth.
Boost Your Visibility | Grow Your Business with Brenda Eckhardt
Starting a Creative Business? Here’s What I’d Do Differently
Starting or restarting your creative business in 2025?
Here are the 5 things I’d do completely differently—and the 2 things I accidentally nailed from the start. If you feel like you’ve built your business backwards or wasted too much time on the wrong things, this is for you.
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If I were to start my creative business over in 2025, I would do things very differently. I would put my energy in much more useful places. I definitely gave a lot of brain space to things that I should not have been worrying about. We're all very guilty of it. I do find that every five or so years I kind of fall back into those habits and then I catch myself really quickly because I've developed much better thought processes to keep myself on track. So here are five things that I would do differently if I were to start business over in 2025, and two things that I nailed right from the beginning. You're going to want to stick around for those, so the first thing that I would do is focus only on my ideal customer.
Brenda Eckhardt:I gave a lot of time and energy to thinking about what my peers and competitors were. I don't even like to say the word competitors, because there truly is room for everyone, no matter what it is that you're doing. I had to learn that, but I would spend a lot less time and energy looking at what other people are doing Now. I started out as a photographer and became a visual marketer, so my work is very visual and I got lost in the scroll. I definitely got lost in the headspace of the comparison game and I just would not let myself fall into that trap. Put the blinders on that's what I would do and focus only on my ideal customer and keep in my mind that I am here to serve a purpose greater than myself. There's people out there that need what I have. I'm here to change lives and to help people up level their small business, and that would be my sole focus. I would not be thinking about what anybody else is doing. If you ask me right now what other people charge for what I do, I honestly don't know. I know the value of what I bring and what people are willing to pay for it. I know my policies, what works, what doesn't work, and that's all I focus on. So I would stop impressing strangers and I would keep in mind that my purpose is what grows the dreams. Your purpose grows your dreams.
Brenda Eckhardt:Number two, I would grow my email list alongside my social accounts. I know everybody says you have to grow an email list and we're all sick of it. We've all heard it so many times and it's a lot of work in the beginning to get the right system set up, but it's so worth it because you need to build on your own land, not borrowed land. And social media as we've learned from what's gone on recently with TikTok, different times that Facebook and Instagram have gone down that is borrowed land and it's not anything that we can control. So I would definitely focus on creating a string of communication, meaning a string of trust, where my posts would have some sort of opt-in mentions here and there. Obviously, I would give a lot of value, as I do. I would give a lot of value and then have lead magnets in place so that I can capture email addresses. It's not a part that any of us like to do in business, especially when you work alone. We're such authentic people as creators Not that bigger businesses aren't, but we're truly the face, the name, the everything, and it feels awkward to have people in a funnel, but that is what it takes to grow and scale your business. So I would definitely be growing my email list.
Brenda Eckhardt:So the next thing would be spending less time on worrying about what people that I have been in my life in the past or in the present, even feeling bad when they didn't share my posts or like my Instagram posts. I in the past had very high expectations that I would have a lot of support online and I did in the beginning because that was the culture of social media. But now it's just not how it is and it's really quite hard on the heart to create from nothing on social media and not really have cheerleaders online or support unless you have that. That's amazing if you do, but it's just not as common as it used to be. So I would stop thinking about what other people think and I would start focusing on connection with my customers. That would be a huge one for me and it is currently so. I would put boundaries up from day one, meaning I would have boundaries in place for my business hours.
Brenda Eckhardt:That was a huge mistake that I made in the beginning. I worked myself literally to injury and practical death. I have had some very scary accidents on the job in photography and it was always because I was overworked, exhausted and trying to people please. It was always because I was overworked, exhausted and trying to people please. You would think that that would not be a dangerous industry. It can be and it was for me, and I had a very big wake-up call when I was taking hockey pictures for a high school senior guy. I slipped, even though I had cleats on my shoes slipped hit, the back of my head was out for several minutes. Shoes slipped hit, the back of my head was out for several minutes. And let me tell you that summer was the summer of an awakening. No more weekends for me, ever. Weekends are my off limits place.
Brenda Eckhardt:And what I learned from that was when I tried to deter people from certain nights or weekends, I wasn't confident in the way that I presented it, so they would try to negotiate that. The more confident I got that that was a hard line for me, the more people were like oh, no problem, we'll figure out another time. So it is confidently presenting your boundaries and just being non-negotiating about it. It is what it is and that's it. That's how I do business. People respect that. So I would say it with confidence. People will accept it. It is what it is and that's it. That's how I do business. People respect that. So I would say it with confidence. People will accept it and they will respect it.
Brenda Eckhardt:So what I did right from the beginning, there were two things. Number one was, on the human side, obviously critical. It's a part of my personality. Some people. It takes time to learn, to hone the skill, but I have a way of making people feel like they're the only client that I have. That's just who I am. I hope you feel like that right now. I hope you feel like you're the only person in all of YouTube that I'm talking to. That's important to me and that's how I like to feel. So I try to make everyone feel that way and just that skill and that sincerity because I do mean it that I want people to feel that way. That's how I create amazing work for people and can really connect and coach and teach in a way that's going to move the needle for them. That is something that I got right from the beginning and will continue to do On the technical side from the very beginning, and I'm finding that it matters again big time is SEO for my website Optimizing blog posts, optimizing my photos, my photos, the metadata, the alt tags, and using somewhat of storytelling and article-like posts that are basically answering questions on my WordPress website, which is like the main land that I own Now.
Brenda Eckhardt:There was a good period of time where people thought blogs were dead. Blogs are coming back in a big way because there's not only search engine optimization. Now there's answer and intent optimization where, because of AI, these platforms Google, believe it or not Bing, because Bing connects to chat, gpt these platforms are not only trying to help people get answers to the questions that they naturally type in or use voice to ask. They're listening to all of our devices and knowing what the intention is. So, let's say, someone wants to buy a car and they're talking about it in their home, or maybe they've been searching for it on Facebook Marketplace. Well, it's important that if I were a car salesperson or had a car dealership, that on my website I already have questions answered about how do I go about it. Here are the most commonly asked questions, and every single blog post would be answering all of the not only the questions, but the hesitations and why maybe someone would go somewhere else, but why they should come to me. So those are the two things that I got right and I'm going to continue to do those too.
Brenda Eckhardt:I hope this has really given you food for thought. So if you're starting out new or you're feeling like maybe it's time for a refresh, maybe you feel like you've built things a little backwards and it's too late and you have a shaky foundation. It's definitely not too late. You're in an amazing time online and we can always reinvent ourselves. You're not behind, you're just getting clear, and that's why I'm here to stop overthinking and you want to move the needle forward on your business and really start to grow.
Brenda Eckhardt:I have an AI for small business cheat sheet in the notes. If you want to grab that, it's free. Basically, what it does is it helps you to understand all the different types of AI that are out there, what their different uses are, and let me give you an example. Perplexity is really great at wording things beautifully. That's a great place to use for captions, articles, blog posts and that kind of thing, and it's really great and easy to train to sound like you and not a robot. Chatgpt is pretty awesome, too, for that. But perplexity is really great at more of a storytelling, journalistic style of wording. Chat GPT is more like a Google catch-all, and there are several others that I mentioned in this cheat sheet that you can look at and you can start to figure out.
Brenda Eckhardt:Okay, for this task, I'm going to use this option and for this task, I'm going to use this option. You don't want to put all your eggs in one basket because they're each very good at different tasks. So grab the AI cheat sheet and, if you're looking to just glow up your marketing, that it's time to freshen things up and really get serious about not only up leveling your marketing and your brand, but also doing it in a way that you're putting in strategies and systems so that you can save time. This should not take up your life. I know how easy it is as a small business owner to feel like you're spending a day at a time, like a day a week, just on Facebook, instagram, posting and updating your website. It shouldn't be like that.
Brenda Eckhardt:I have an academy called Boost your Visibility Academy and I'll have that in the notes also where you can take mini courses. You can just take little mini courses to start getting ahead on certain apps or certain tasks that you know that you're kind of letting slip or that you haven't just paid much attention to until now. It's meant to help you to get clear and to get your time back so that you can make money in your sleep. Let me know if you have questions. Thanks so much for spending the time today and I look forward to seeing you again.
