Service Based Business Society Podcast

Season: 2
Episode: 18

Title: Back to My Roots

This episode is brought to you by Bottcher Business Management Agency. If you're like most business owners, bookkeeping probably isn't your favorite thing to do. It's probably pretty far down the list of things you love or even like, that's where we come in. At Bottcher Business Management Agency, we produce monthly financial statements that help business owners make informed decisions about their businesses. No more guesswork, no more bank balance bookkeeping, we're here to take the hassle out of bookkeeping and help you focus on what you're good at running your business. With packages starting at just $150 per month, this is the very first thing you should outsource in your business. For information go to Bottcher.io that's B o t t c h e r.io.

Hello, and welcome to the service-based business society podcast. I'm your host to Tiffany-Ann-Bottcher. In our weekly episodes, we will dig into everything you need to know about scaling your service-based business without losing sleep. With my experience in creating over seven figures per month, and a passion for marketing, finance, and automation, this show provides tangible tips and techniques for scaling your business. Let's get started.

Hey guys, welcome back to another episode.

Today we're diving in, and I'm gonna share how my thought process on a few things has changed most recently, and so you know, I just sometimes you can't be overly committed to any one idea. And so I thought I would share why I've changed my thoughts on a few things lately. I also want to chat about mascara gate, which if you haven't heard, why are you not on Tiktok? And if you have heard and you haven't thought about it from a business perspective, that's what we're going to be talking about today. No, I have not changed my mind. And you know, and in becoming a makeup influencer, that's definitely not it. Two very unrelated things.

However, I do want to talk about the business marketing side of mascara gate, and we're gonna dive in and talk about what it is and everything else there. And we're also going to talk about a different kind of focus coming up here shortly. So anyways, let's dive right in. So welcome back to another week. You know, It always surprises me. So each week, you know, we go through the podcast, recording, editing, and everything else. And this week is season two, Episode Episode 18 in season two. We had twenty-five episodes in season one. So you know, we're coming up to the conclusion of season two, it's been such a wild ride, and I just always want to be so appreciative to everyone who tunes in every week. You know, it is crazy. When I see how far our podcast reaches across the globe, and where the downloads are, I love seeing new reviews. So if you have not left us a review, it would mean the absolute world to me, if you would go to Spotify or the Apple podcast app, you used to only be able to leave reviews on Apple podcasts. But now you can leave them on Spotify too. So if you have left them in one place, it would be amazing if you would leave them in the other. You know, it always helps the show reach further places and more listeners, and it is ever so appreciated.

So first, let's dive in and talk a little bit about mascara gate. Now. You know, it's interesting, because if you ever thought I would be talking about makeup, you would know that this is definitely not my area of expertise. And you would think that's not really what I thought This podcast was about. But you know what, I want to talk about it from a business perspective. So if you don't know who Michaela is, d is on the dock. She is a makeup influencer. And she is incredible. She has this great following for the second time this year. She has broken Tiktok so the first time this year was sad. And yeah, I'm not getting all into that. But today we're going to talk about mascara gait.

So basically, about well, I can look at the 24th of January. So today is currently you know beginning of February, the sixth of February, and so in that length of time, Michaela recorded a Tiktok video and it's an ad for this specific mascara. The type of mascara is irrelevant. The quality of the mascara is irrelevant. Michaela recorded this ad for this mascara and I'm Michaela has a pretty good sized following. She has 14.4 million followers on TikTok. She is probably one of the most legendary makeup influencers on Tik Tok. So she was hired to do this ad. And this ad currently has 55.3 million views. Okay, now to put that in perspective, 99 million people viewed the Superbowl in 2022. So you've got 99 million viewers of the Superbowl. And you have got 55 million views on this Tiktok. One would say that that has been an incredible, incredible ad for this mascara company. Now. It wasn't all bubblegum and roses. Let me tell you, there was some extreme controversy now, you know, for a long time, always known that like mascara, ads in magazines, all sorts of ads and magazines are not always truthful. And a lot of times the after pictures have false lashes. Again, we're not diving into the makeup here, but just so that you bear with me, if you have not been following this along, or if you were following it along, but not thinking about it from a business perspective.

So anyway, but when it comes to being, you know, more truthful, open influencer type marketing that is more common in the Tiktok space. You know, people really pushed back when they determined that although Michaela said she wasn't wearing false lashes in the after video that she really was, this is the whole premise of the thing. She did this video, she promoted this mascara, and she got paid to promote this mascara. And in the after-application shot, it looks like she's wearing false lashes. I don't know if she's wearing false lashes or not. As I said, I'm not a makeup expert. However, you know, because of the style of marketing that Tiktok is, basically people like tore this girl apart and that she's lying and this is inappropriate and blah, blah, blah. But everyone went out to buy the mascara to see if it really did make it look like you're wearing false lashes.

From a business marketing perspective. The mascara company is laughing all the way to the bank. I don't know what they paid Michaela for the ad. But when 55 million people watched the first video, and when thousands of videos responding to this video have been made tagging the mascara, tagging Michaela, tagging all these people, it basically took this mascara and not even just went viral, but this became a major topic of conversation in the online space. So when it comes back to that comment, you know, there's no such thing as bad press, I want to come back to the fact that you know if you go back many, many years while there is the Kardashian empire now, and I mean, we are diving here into all sorts of girly topics I don't know a lot about except for the business aspect. So like, don't ask me which Kardashian is which. But let's go back to the fact that you know, the mama Kardashian there, Kris Jenner, I believe her name is, released the sex tape of her daughter, there is no such thing as bad press. Sure, it can be difficult to navigate bad press, it can be difficult to deal with and respond to, and whatever else. But you know, at the end of the day, when people are responding to your social media posts, when people are, you know, responding to your email marketing campaigns, anytime that someone hits reply to anything that you're putting out in the world, or shares or responds or talks about to their friend or anything, all of that just helps your message get a little further. And so I think oftentimes we shy away from bad press because it's uncomfortable. I would imagine that at one point, Kim Kardashian was not super pleased to have a sex tape out. But I would say if we look now at her empire, you know, I would love to have a candid conversation with her and ask if anybody knows Kim Kardashian, I'd love the answer to that question. But, you know, sometimes we have to grin and bear it and get through these tough times.

I actually, you know, several years ago, it feels like several years ago, it was probably about two and a half years ago, I actually started a subscription box company with a friend of mine, and I don't talk about it often. That wasn't something that lasted too long. We ended up deciding that it wasn't something we wanted to continue with. But one of the things we did at the very beginning was we did a bunch of photos and we had some great photos we found this person online he came out and did some super kind of edgy shots that kind of went with the branding, and some of them were taken on the train tracks turns out it's super illegal to take pictures on train tracks, who knew and you know there were no trains in the area it was totally safe, but apparently, it's illegal in Canada anyway to take pictures on the train tracks so on We posted these pictures for marketing people went crazy. Oh my goodness, this is why people get hit by trains because we're glamourizing taking pictures on the train tracks, and yadda yadda, yadda. And people like this, this picture and it's just me and my business partner slash friend, we're just sitting one on each of the tracks, it went wild. And she was like, Oh, my goodness, you have to take it down. This is terrible. And I just was like, No, every single person that comments helps our content get further. So I'm sure we didn't continue to use those posts. And I'm not saying go out and try and collect bad press. But what I am saying is when you get into these situations where you're like, hey, this is uncomfortable, just keep going. That's me that's really my mom's draw for the beginning of 2023. Keep going. When things get uncomfortable, keep going when things get challenging, and you're not sure if you can keep going. Definitely keep going.

So you know, if we go back to this mascara gate incident, you know, and I wondered how Michaela was going to handle this situation. Because earlier in the year, she had already had kind of a TikTok blooper, if you will, some very old content was found by someone and cropped, or chopped up to say something that she didn't really say anyway. So at that point, she was really, really attacked online. And she took a month off. She just said, "Hey, I'm gonna take some time away from this, this is super negative. So then, you know, only a few months later, now I thought, Oh, well, you are getting well paid for this post. But you are being, you know, eaten alive again. What is she going to do? And so I kept checking back into her account wondering how she was going to deal with this. And I thought, Well, you probably from this amazing marketing campaign. I'm sure you are well paid. Maybe you hired someone in PR. And so you know, but I kept going back to her account, wondering what she was going to say. And so sure enough, up comes the next post, and she handled it beautifully. So I don't know if she hired someone in PR or if she mastered all of this herself. If she did Master herself, Michaela girl, you are incredible. You are a marketing genius, even if that's not what you intended it to be. So she comes out on the next post. And she says, I know why you're all here. I know what we need to talk about. And then she pauses and like an extended pause, and you're like, Yeah, we need to talk about this mascara incident. And she says we need to do some makeup for the month of love. So then she's gonna roll into her valentine's day makeup looks. I didn't even know Valentine's Day had makeup looks. But here we go. We're here for it. So now she's chatting away. And she's doing this makeup look and whatnot. And so now people are down in the comments. And they're like, are we even talking about the elephant in the room? To which she responds, I talk about an elephant in my next video. So here we are. We've created this pause for the associates, it took about a week she didn't post anything. And don't keep me up to date. It was around a week. Then she posted this next video that obviously draws people back in that says, Hey, I know why, why No, we're all why we're all back here. And then she jumps right into Valentine's Day. No, that's not why anyone was there. No one was waiting on Valentine's day makeup. That's not even a thing. But she made it a thing. And then in her next video, she goes on to basically do this weird elephant thing with her makeup. Oh, this is how you get rid of loose powder on your razor like an elephant, ha ha ha it was so acknowledging the situation without acknowledging the situation. And sometimes in business and marketing and when things have gone astray, like astray. That's what we have to do. We have to acknowledge that we know that there was a problem, or we acknowledge that there is an elephant, but we don't talk about the real elephant. You know, it was a brilliant, brilliant recovery. I don't know how much money she got paid, but obviously, this was one of those risky types of situations. And overall, she handled it beautifully. I'm all here for it.

I love the game of business and marketing and whatnot. So you know, the big huge mascara company wins the most here. They've sold the mascara. Everyone I know has gone out and bought this mascara if you haven't bought it yet. You know, good luck. It's been sold out everywhere. Here's Michaela, she's gone out, she's made her money, and has recovered beautifully. And really, that's what it's all about. So I'm going to jump into other topics because mascara, makeup, and all of these things are not my topics. However, when we take these situations that are going on in real life, and we look and we say you know Makayla decided to take her millions of people in her audience and say do this or whether or not you know she evaluated risk versus benefit. And she determined Hey, you know what, I can do this. I can make the money whether or not she had falsies on or not. I don't know. To be honest, I don't really care. What I do now is that it was a brilliant marketing campaign and a brilliant recovery. So good on you, Michaela. I am here for it.

You know, moving on talking about some of the things that in the last almost two years I have been pretty passionate about not niching down, niching, depending on where you're from, you know, I've always said, Hey, I have chosen not to niche down. And I think for a while it was because I didn't really know what I wanted to do, I have all of these different things, I know about all of these different topics. And I really wanted to determine how to tie it all together, and how to offer the most value and whatnot. So you know, I've always said, I'm going, to be honest, and share about my business journey. And so well, up until now, I have really said, I don't want to niche down and you know, my way of niching down is just by the, you know, the group of people that I work with, and whatnot, it turns out, you know, there is some merit to niching down. And here's why. You know, and because obviously I've spoken to not niching down, and so now I'm going to speak a little bit to why I am choosing now at this time in my business to niche down, I'm sharing this part of my journey, because I think it's relevant to anyone who's had a similar thought or a similar mindset shift, or has wondered, hey, after saying, you know, outwardly I don't, I don't believe in this, can I really change my mind. And here's why I've decided to go in this direction.

Number one, well, you may be really able to spread and do lots of different things. In my case, you know, I have all of these different areas in business that I have been able to provide great value, I have education and experience at all of these things, what it comes down to is to be able to create repeatable, scalable business processes. And as you scale your team, you will soon realize, as I did, that it's actually very difficult to implement, and train on so many different things effectively and efficiently. So I've actually decided to take a step back from certain parts of the business world, not so much from the business world as a wider piece. But I want to deep dive into something very specific.

So you know, I will continue to talk and share and teach and coach on the podcast and the Facebook community about all sorts of different things. But on our agency spot side, specifically, you know, we're leaning into, you know, really data focusing. So obviously, I, you know, I wrote the book, the data-driven method, and have, you know, the templates and the calculations. And all of these have taught the data-driven method for quite some time. And so this is, this is a key part of my business. But what it always comes back to, when every single person comes into the agency, whether we're looking at things from a marketing perspective, whether we're looking at things from an operational optimization piece, it all comes back to the data and the availability of the data. And really, who is the team that creates the data? For the most part, when it comes to financial data? It's the bookkeepers. And so, you know, oftentimes we come into a business, and the data is either inaccurate or it's out of date, or it's, you know, this part of the data is in this system. And this part of the data is in that system and all of these different things. And so step one is often before we can even start to optimize is to round up all the data and make sure it's accurate. This is a key area of the business and is also something that I have years and years and years of experience in so bookkeepers play a key role in sorting out the paperwork.

Now, I don't know why. But bookkeeping is often an area where someone's partner, friend, you know, even yourself often think, oh, yeah, I can figure this out. I've sat into so many consults, or someone says, oh, yeah, my wife or my husband, they do my bookkeeping for me, but it's not really working. And I say, Oh, does your wife or husband or partner if they have any bookkeeping experience? I say no, and I don't you know, I there's this strange thing and I always try not to laugh because it's bookkeeping, the difficulty of bookkeeping depends on your business. If you're simply tracking revenue, and expenses from you know, one type of revenue, one, you know, a couple of different types of expenses. It can be fairly straightforward, but when you start to add in things like multiple invoices for customers, you know, whether it's a deposit or a final invoice when you are providing an estimate and perhaps billing in a couple of different increments. So like for a contractor, they you know, your quote, you know, you've put it in a quote for $10,000 for a bathroom, and you're gonna send an invoice for $2,000 in month one and $3,000 in month two and yada yada. Or if you're carrying inventory or you're submitting, you are collecting and remitting tax, you know anything like this payroll, all of these immediately start to add additional complexity. And if you don't have any bookkeeping experience, oftentimes things go astray.

So this is an area that we're really going to be leaning into in 2023. You know you'll start to hear some additional things about our bookkeeping services and whatnot, and the podcast will continue to talk about several different topics. But on our agency side, we're going to be leaning into bookkeeping and continuing to offer those bookkeeping services to anyone who needs it, small businesses, people who are just starting, but we're also supporting bigger businesses who are looking to find ways to do their bookkeeping more efficiently at a lower price point. And with you know, it's becoming harder and harder in a lot of areas for people to hire good team members. And so you know, being able to outsource your bookkeeping is a great way to ensure that your bookkeeping continues to get done. Even when you're busy. In your business. Oftentimes, we see when someone's like, oh, well, you know, this person who does part-time, bookkeeping and part-time work in the field or they work in, you know, the office and administration and whatnot, the business starts to get busy, and then the bookkeeping falls behind. And then you need to make a business decision. And the bookkeeping is behind, you're like, oh, I don't have those numbers yet. And so or, Oh, I didn't send out that customer invoice yet, while the customer can't pay me invoice if you haven't sent the invoice. And so now you're carrying these expenses for longer. So all of that is to say bookkeeping is going to be a big thing. And we are niching down a little in this area. So we're focusing on data and bringing data into the business. So whether that's marketing data, financial data, optimization type data, all of these things, data, bookkeeping, and business strategy, these will be the three areas of focus. And I'm excited to go this direction, I always said I didn't want to niche down, if you've listened to the podcast, I've pushed back, I've talked to many of our guests, we've had some great conversations about the pros and cons to niching down. And I think I didn't, you know, I didn't want to limit, I didn't want to limit what we could do and the value we could bring. But as we've grown, we've grown our team. And we've brought on more and more of these specialties, amazing people, and realizing that it's very hard for us to be amazing at all these different things. So something is rooted in data.
So we're going to continue to offer SEO Services because that increases your business visibility. And that is a key data metric, SEO, while it is based on text, is still very data focused. So we're gonna continue to offer SEO Services, we have done some amazing things for our clients and have some great packages, we're gonna, you know, go all in on bookkeeping and business strategy and continue to talk about the data-driven method coming up very soon, we're also going to be offering some beautiful custom dashboards that help give that visual representation of data that I think a lot of entrepreneurs want to see, you know, not everyone is super passionate about spreadsheets and graphs and all of these things and calculations. And so, you know, we've really noticed a deficiency in the ability to create live up to date dashboards that demonstrate this data for people. So this is an area that is coming soon. And so I actually was speaking to someone about it recently and realized I hadn't shared this information on the podcast. And so this actually goes back to the first few years of my undergraduate degree. So when I started going to university I wanted to do my CMA which is a Certified Management Accountant. This was an area that interested me this is not tax accounting people always ask me tax questions if you've heard me talk about it before you know, I often talk about it on social media as well like what is the difference between an accountant and a bookkeeper, bookkeepers do not deal with your taxes at all? You know, taxes are such a specific area that is personal to you and your family's tax situation. In your geographic area. It's always best to have someone who deals with taxes in your area that you know, I knew when I started university, I had zero interest in tax accounting. I've always been interested in the why. The reason behind the numbers, reading the numbers, analyzing them, using them to optimize the business to increase profits, increase efficiency, these types of things. So the third year of my business degree, four years they changed it had been talked about for about six months after I started school, but it was just heading into my fourth year of university when the change went through, and they canceled the CMA the Certified Management Accounting designation and they rolled it all into one called the CPA. And so this was going to be a combination of this management, accounting, tax accounting, everything kind of all rolled into one and I knew immediately I had zero interest, zero interest in tax accounting and I did not want to go to school for that.

So right away, I knew that I wanted to know the “why” I wanted to understand the data and these different methods and use data to better and improve businesses. This was something a passion of mine from the very, very beginning. So it's, it's the reason why I don't have my CPA, or my accounting designation because I didn't want to do the tax part. And so I dove deeper into the business management side. And so combined my undergraduate degree, with a major in accounting with this Master of Business Administration. And so I've combined it all to round out educationally, you know, this management, data points, optimization, efficiency, all of these things. And so, you know, it's interesting, because people often say, Oh, hey, how come you don't do your accounting designation? And I think Tax Accounting has got to be the driest topic on the planet, everybody's into their own thing. But I knew from very early on before I even started my first class at university that I didn't want to do tax accounting, I've always been passionate about the why. And so this is what ties all of this niche together the bookkeeping, with you know, optimizing business, using the data to increase the efficiency, the profitability, sustainability, all these things in your business. And so I feel so excited about this new direction. And this passion for bringing this into businesses big and small. You know, if I go back to my corporate days, when I finished there, we had scaled that business to over $1 million per month, across multiple locations, and many different departments. And so the amount of, you know, specific reporting that is required to understand what's going on in every part of the business as it scaling is, is one of my favorite parts of the business. So creating that, you know, appropriate chart of accounts and reporting procedures, bookkeeping procedures. And so this is how it really all ties together. So we're going back to my roots and going and leaning into data, bookkeeping, optimization, and efficiency. And so I really hope that we can continue these discussions regarding these topics anywhere inside the Facebook group. If this is an interest to you for your business. Specifically, please go to our website Bottcher, B O T T, C H. E R.io and book a consultation. The first one is always free, and we can chat about how we can help you in your business.

Unknown Speaker 27:31
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