5 Money-Saving Tips for Startup Marketing on a Budget with Karla Singson

In this episode, host Eric Dickmann interviews Karla Singson. Karla is an entrepreneur and business coach who has built multiple businesses from the ground up since she started her career when she was just 19 years old. Now, in addition to running her multiple businesses,  she helps coach other business owners to grow their own businesses with practical advice and strategies to be profitable from day one.

Karla's ScaleWind is an umbrella company that offers multiple services including:

• Virtual Assistants for real estate and property management professionals: https://realestateassistant.com
• WordPress and technical support services: https://techstack.com
• Live customer support services: https://wowsupport.com
  
  

Eric Dickmann can be found on Twitter @EDickmann and LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/edickmann and my website https://ericdickmann.com

Karla Singson can be found online at https://karlasingson.com/ on Facebook @karlasingson.official, and Instagram @karlastefan

Episode Summary: The episode summary can be found at https://fiveechelon.com/money-tips-startup-marketing-on-a-budget-s3e8

If you'd like to contact us with feedback or guest inquiries, please visit:
https://fiveechelon.com/podcast

For more information about Virtual CMO strategic marketing consulting services, visit The Five Echelon Group at https://fiveechelon.com
 
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Transcript

Carla: 0:01

The Virtual CMO podcast is sponsored by the strategic marketing consulting services of The Five Echelon Group. If you’d like to work directly with The Five Echelon Group and receive personal coaching and support to optimize your business, enhance your marketing effectiveness and grow your revenue, visit Five Echelon.com to learn more and schedule a free consultation.

Eric Dickmann: 0:24

Welcome to The Virtual CMO podcast. I'm your host, Eric Dickmann. In this podcast, we have conversations with marketing professionals who share the strategies, tactics, and mindset you can use to improve the effectiveness of your marketing activities and grow your business. This week, I'm excited to welcome Karla Singson to the program. Karla is an award-winning writer, public speaker and entrepreneur. Her entrepreneurial journey started when she graduated college at 19 thinking companies would fight over her, turns out nobody wanted to hire a teenager. So she got a job at an ad agency, started doing freelance writing work and eventually opened up several businesses. She found her strengths lie in sales, marketing, and growth, and she started doing business coaching to help dozens of stay-at-home moms become first time millionaires. Now with over a decade of experience in physical and online businesses, she splits her time among the Philippines, Thailand, and the us, where she runs her ventures hands-free and continues to help small and medium enterprises grow their bottom lines. Please help me welcome Karla to the program. karla welcome to The Virtual CMO podcast. I'm so glad you could join us today.

Karla Singson: 1:36

Hey, Eric. Thanks for having me here. And I'm excited to be a great resource for your community. I'm happy to serve your community for today.

Eric Dickmann: 1:44

Oh, that's great. I appreciate your time. And I think we're going to cover a lot of very interesting things for the audience here. And I know right now you're over in the Philippines. You're half a world away. But I'd love to start out today's conversation and just get a little bit of your backstory, because I think it's very interesting. Tell us a little bit how you got started in business.

Karla Singson: 2:01

Yeah. So I grew up in the Philippines and I learned how to read at a very early age. So I learned how to read a two. And so that's why I was always advanced in school and I entered college at 15. I finished college at 19. So when I finished college, I thought that all of these companies will be fighting all over me. Cause that was his genius. And I had these awards and stuff. And turns out, I kept getting rejected and rejected by my dream companies. I remember I actually cried when I got the call back from P and G from Proctor and gamble that I didn't even pass it. The first screening. And. My classmates, some of them who I thought, Oh, I'm smarter than her. Why did she pass the screening? something like that. So it really broke my heart. And so because of that, I was forced to be an entrepreneur. Really, at a very early age. So I did have a job how probably the only place that accepted my craziness, what's an ad agency. And I started writing ads. that was 2009. And back here in the Philippines, we still did radio ads. Newspaper advertorials. So those were the things that I did a TV ads as well. Translation. That was my job. eight months into it, I quit and I started my business. my first business was a flower shop and, I grew up, I grew that to six figures and now it's a franchise. We have 12 locations all over the country and, in one in Canada actually, but the owner is a Filipino. I knew him. So he started a flower shop in Edmundson. So that's fine. And then I started an events and PR company, and then after that, a few online businesses, that was just it

Eric Dickmann: 3:45

so when you had the job and you were writing, ads and you lasted eight months in it, was it because you just felt at that time, this isn't for me, this isn't the direction I want to go. Was it a burning desire to be an entrepreneur?

Karla Singson: 3:59

Yeah. I always wanted freedom, Actually and being in an office, we had, like a dress code. It's pretty shallow enough to quit a job over a dress code. And then, and then I had, I also, I actually also started when I turned 21, I had a brief stint of playing professional poker. So I had late nights. I know it's pretty crazy. So I had late nights and so I couldn't come to work at 8:00 AM, which is all what time works starts here in the Philippines. it just you know what, I want more freedom. I want to do other things than just be in an office for eight hours. So that was, I think freedom was really my big motivation.

Eric Dickmann: 4:39

So many people who want to be entrepreneurs, they start up a business and then realize there's a lot that they don't know. did you experience that as well? When you opened up that first shop?

Karla Singson: 4:49

Oh, yeah, absolutely. I had, I had the advantage of finishing a bachelor's degree in business. So there's that? I wouldn't say that it was all me, that I'm a genius. I had four years of study and I think that was a, that was an advantage. And that's why, when I talked to these entrepreneurs is that the college is useless. It's not, if you make good use of it, It is just like any other mastermind or any other coaching programs, the same thing. If you will make good use of it, then it's useful. If you don't, then it's not. my, I had a formula for starting a business without capital. my formula was number one, you had to be a profit first, this nest, as in eat. No, you can take your profit on your first transaction. number two, it has to have a high margin so that you can have a buffer. And number three, it has to be something that kind of everybody wants. So that was a very rudimentary formula, what fits into all those categories, flowers. Everyone wants flowers, maybe not to receive, but they will always give someone like, even you, you give your mom's hours, your wife, your girlfriend, your daughter. it's profit first because you have to pay a flower shop before they deliver it. So I take my profit right away. And, most of all, it has a huge margin. Like my, I hope my customers don't hear this. but my profit margin is somewhere between 300 to 400%. on each item. and the more they add, like a Teddy bear here, chocolate here, balloons there, the more that margin grows. So it just I don't have any flower arrangement experience. I'm not, I like flowers as a girl, but I'm not, it's not, I'm not skilled in it. So I just really picked it out of my formula. I still follow that formula actually to this day, whenever I start a new business.

Eric Dickmann: 6:39

I'd love to drill down more on it, because I think you're hitting on something that is so important for so many businesses, many business owners, whether you're running a restaurant or you sell software or whatever your product or service may be. Many owners get so caught up in the product or service that they don't think about the business. And what you're talking about here is it doesn't really matter if you're an expert in flowers you saw an opportunity for a high margin business that could create profits quickly. So I know you consult with a lot of businesses today. Do you see this happening over and over again in the businesses that you work with?

Karla Singson: 7:17

I do. I do. a lot of people are very, They're very attached to their idea and they feel like their idea is who they are and that if it fails that they are a failure. So those are two different conversations, right? So if something fails, it's not because you're a failure. It's because the idea. Is a failure. It's not, failure is an event. It's not your identity. And so I have been in so many difficult conversations with my clients where they would buy our service, any service, I still events I saw. VR. I sell customer support. I sell tech any, and then they would get frustrated if the offer doesn't work. But for me, the offer doesn't work. Like we were able to. To get to our KPIs. And sometimes, sometimes it's very hard to have those conversations cause you don't want to hurt their feelings, for lack of a better term, but you don't want to be the bringer of bad news on that note, you're absolutely right about trying to detach yourself from the idea and. And limiting yourself to just one idea, because I have also seen businesses, especially during this pandemic, Meet go pivot. specifically based on their skills. on their strengths, one of the, one of the pivots we did, I had a really big, events company here in the Philippines, like really big. And we were doing events all over the country. We were doing events in, Thailand and last year we actually expanded to Las Vegas, Nevada. so I was there, and I actually keep a home in Las Vegas, the airport's closed right now. and, but then depending on what happened and just like that. I don't know. I think our last bill was$600 from like March. those like six months ago. we had to make a quick pivot and I just asked myself, what are our top skills? And all of my, all of my top employees are really good at project management because we're event planners. in fact, I was training some of them to be some of the industry's very first scrum certified event planners. And however, obviously the world had other plans. So I just shifted into using my team to help push the projects and our online businesses. And so far, they still got to keep their jobs somehow and we were able to put that event to sleep. So I guess even with people, it's the same principle, nothing is really definitely, you just have to adjust and maybe don't get attached to one thing too much.

Eric Dickmann: 9:46

Yeah, that emotional attachment kills so many businesses because they can literally run a business into the ground and I think the example you gave is great. So you have staff, they're trained, they do things well, but the current circumstances don't allow them to do that. So how could you apply those skills then? To something else. and not be emotionally attached to what you were doing, which really doesn't exist during this pandemic.

Karla Singson: 10:08

Exactly. And the other thing that I find people also get very sensitive with is this thing. They call legacy a lot of family owned businesses have been doing this thing forever, and now they're forced to pivot or something. I'm a member of a lot of Asian groups in any US Asian Facebook groups, and a lot of restaurants in Chinatown close. And it's very heartbreaking, but I don't believe that these people don't have. Any other skills or that it's really all they know how to do. I don't, I really don't believe that because these people, especially immigrants are very hardworking. They're smart. And I just want them to see that, like more than going for the emotional, personal, emotional attachment. Your legacy doesn't mean that it's also tied to our business, but your legacy is actually how much you thrive, throughout different waves. And I would say the economy.

Eric Dickmann: 11:05

Now, you've got a couple different kinds of businesses here. You've got physical businesses where you actually have to have people at a location, customer service and your businesses that can be more virtual, right? People can be working from home how are you seeing things change, obviously with more acceptance, to remote work, more acceptance of outsourcing to whether it's a VA or a technical support. How are you seeing things change?

Karla Singson: 11:30

Yeah. We were very nervous, my partner and I, because we launched a scale wind at end of February. And then as someone else was actually leading it, and then I replaced him and then, I was very optimistic about it. Oh my gosh, let's do this. I was doing. 12 to 16 hour days and then the pandemy happen. And we were getting very nervous. Cause most of the companies in our main markets in us, Canada, Australia, they were cutting back. So we expected to lose a lot of clients. And then, but at the same time, I don't want to. I don't want to tell my employees, that they're laid off or something. So it's really, it was a very hard, time for us. And then surprisingly, we realized that because of the lay offs that are happening on ground. more and more businesses are more, are got forced to be open, to hiring a global workforce. 10 years ago, 15 years ago, I admit that there was a baggage with, hiring someone from the Philippines, hiring someone from India, Nigeria, whatever. But I have met so many people in countries, in developing countries who had like way better English than me were very intelligent, very organized. And because of the leverage of, the U S dollar the Be and Be can give a certain level of standards, a certain standard of work. That is a par with someone from in house, but also. But at the same time the company gets to save and and it might initially it also, it might sound like, Oh, they're, there they go again and taking our jobs, but you know what else I found. It actually encouraged because it's now, they're more open to it. It also encouraged people who were laid off the finally started their own business because they can hire their first virtual assistant. Who can pitch for them who can do a customer support for them who can source our products for e-commerce for them. And they didn't even know that these things existed before as low as so let's say$9 an hour, or like our customer support, offer a dollar an hour customer support, they were now open to these possibilities.

Eric Dickmann: 13:44

that sort of brings up another great point. And you hear this a lot from many of the big business coaches out there, but you want to be an owner of your business, right? Not an operator of it. So you want to figure out ways to leverage talent so that a lot of the day to day tasks and can be taken on by others. So you are not such an operator of your business, and you certainly have to do that with you. If you're managing multiple companies, you can't be doing it all yourself.

Karla Singson: 14:11

Yeah, absolutely. I actually have assistance 24 hours for both times zones. So I can have someone, reply to something right away. Or I even actually did them, the authority to even wake me up in my sleep, if something is really urgent, I want people, I want more people to be more open to that and to see the ad too. Also appreciate that the leverage of how much they could make and how much the global workforce allows them to give high quality service, at a more inexpensive, price is, it's almost. illogical to not take advantage of it.

Eric Dickmann: 14:51

Hey, it's Eric here and we'll be right back to the podcast. But first, are you ready to grow, scale, and take your marketing to the next level? If so, The Five Echelon Group's Virtual CMO onsulting service may be a great fit for you. We can help build a strategic marketing plan for your business and manage its execution, step-by-step. We'll focus on areas like how to attract more leads. How to create compelling messaging that resonates with your ideal customers. How to strategically package and position your products and services. How to increase lead conversion, improve your margins, and scale your business. To find out more about our consulting offerings and schedule a consultation, go to fiveechelon.com and click on Services. Now back to the podcast. Well, you know, you started your career writing ad copy, and obviously this is a marketing podcast. So I'd be interested to hear a little bit more about how you coach your clients and how you've deal with some marketing challenges in your own businesses. Certainly getting the right message, understanding your target customer is so important. And it's a topic we discuss here on the podcast all the time. But when you're working with clients, do you find that this is still such a huge problem, that they don't even know who they're marketing to?

Karla Singson: 16:08

Oh, yeah, absolutely. You know what? It's so not sexy, but a lot of clients still resist market research. it's the same thing as having an idea and, Oh, this is who I want to serve, and this is what I want to do. And this is the offer that I have in my mind. even this dollar an hour offer my partner and I. This cost it for hours and hours, several meetings. We were disagreeing on a lot of things, and in their other offers, these conversations have to be done. So I would say. Market research is still, no, still one of the things that a lot of business owners really resist with because it's not sexy, it's tiring. And I don't know, it's made, maybe it's something that nerds like me only, But even a very, you can do very simple things so I can share our. Some of our, the things that we've been doing. of course there's competitor research, you can use Google for that. And then, my favorite is really going to. Reddit, subreddits, Cora. Facebook groups and really seeing how they talk. another good strategy is going to Amazon and reading the Amazon reviews of certain products that, that, that are selling, the same thing as you. And even if you're not selling the same thing, if you're solving the same problems. So if you see how these customers talk or how they praise, like the five star reviews, how they praise these. Products basically, you get two, you get more insight on, what's really important to, your customer. and so yeah, four ohms, Amazon reviews. Competitor research, obviously, you can go underground, from, for Facebook groups as well. And I would also encourage you to have one on one conversations with some people. of course you have to dangle a carrot and maybe give them like an Amazon gift card or something, but. These deep conversations really give you a different kind of, insight. And for housekeeping purposes, these cautery, this data also helps you and your business partners to not fight. Because there's like a. It's like a third party, right? It's like a third party saying, Hey, this is what they said, so this doesn't come from me. It is not my ego. So this kind of data, Actually also helps you and your partners to detach from your egos and your own ideas and your own opinions on how to market. your products and services.

Eric Dickmann: 18:36

once again, it's detaching that emotion from the decision making and saying, let's look at the market, let's see where there's an opening in the market and where we could be effective selling is there something that really comes to mind that you think has been the biggest game changer for some of these companies in terms of what's allowed them to grow.

Karla Singson: 18:55

Yeah. yeah, I actually recently discovered that and honestly, I admit, I realized that we haven't been doing this thing enough. And that is, just really talking to your clients more. when we launched our$1 per hour customer support on while support, initially people were curious, they were like, Oh wow, that's crazy. You know what, let me try that. And there's no hidden charges. And, and it's it is what it is. we don't even charge for onboarding and integration. We really want to create an offer that would sell itself, as they say. And then, we launched it in end of June and then our first 10 clients who onboarded in July. And I have been talking to them how it's been. And, they said that surprisingly, they initially wanted to get the service because they wanted to give them support. they wanted to be more available to have that semblance of being available 24 seven. So they're clients. But what they found was the more that they talk to their customers, they also were able to find out what else they wanted and it helped them create. really good upsells and improve their offers that at the end of the day it was, it became one of the biggest, Game changers. probably during this season, I would say not all time. I can't say that people only been serving now for a month or two. So we tend, I tend to really say that or even take credit for it. But they say that the initially the initial benefit that they thought that they would get is actually not. Not the main benefit. So the best thing was really getting to just find these conversations and even educating their customers, that they can now talk to them, that they can tell us what they think or give us more feedback more often. I would say that was a really big realization. And now that my, that was, that's another great thing about being in business now. we think that the. The companies hire us because we have all the answers. But actually, we also get to learn a lot from our customers, So I had, yeah, I had that insight and I was like, Oh, you know what? I talked to these people for the purpose of a case study so I can use it for my marketing. But more than that information. They also gave me like a huge breakthrough and reminding me, Oh, we already know this at the back of our heads, but it really reminded me to talk to my customers more. And now, it's the pandemic and people. Are, I guess emotionally people are just looking to be heard as well, to be listened to, I guess we need more of that right now.

Eric Dickmann: 21:40

I just signed up for this new piece of software last week, actually. And it's a fairly young company, very young co-founders who run this company, but every weekend they do a livestream. Facebook live YouTube live. And their customers get on the live stream and they asked them questions about the product. And they say, Oh, that's a good idea. We'll have to put that on our list of enhancements or, Oh yeah. We've already thought about that. That should be coming in two weeks as a, as an enhancement. But here are the two founders of the company. And they're listening to their users for an hour every week on a live stream. And you get to see all of the customer requests. And so here you have people being heard, just like you said, feeling valued because they're being heard. And also as the owners of the business, The customers are laying out the roadmap for where the product needs to go to increase their levels of satisfaction. They're getting market research. And at the same time, they're allowing customers to ask question, get their questions answered. Be heard. Now, obviously that's not necessarily a scalable model as the companies get bigger and bigger. But just to contrast that I had a customer service issue with a very big technology company here and I sent them on email. It's been a week and I haven't heard back yet. So I don't feel heard. I don't feel cared for, and yet this is a huge company, so I'm completely on board with what you're saying there.

Karla Singson: 23:11

Yeah. And do you know another thing without live stream? I do a lot of selling on social media and my boyfriend actually teach us specifically selling and marketing on social media organically. And that's what. What they call a dramatic demonstration. So I'm doing a live stream with your customers. It's more like who the fudge does that. these guys are doing it and it's a conversation starter. it's such a great thing to celebrate, to talk about. That's definitely. that's definitely pretty interesting.

Eric Dickmann: 23:43

And it shows that they're passionate about their product, that passion then translates into how customers feel about using the product. They start to feel that same passion. And when they suggest something in that feature shows up in the product a few weeks or months later, they'll say, I had an impact. that was part of my feedback. And yeah, again, it's a small company, so you can do that sort of thing. But I think even as you grow larger, you have to keep those lines of communication open and be responsive. Karla, I know you do so much with your own businesses and with your own consulting. Talk to us a little bit about the services that you offer businesses and how people can engage with you.

Karla Singson: 24:20

We started skill wind last February, and it's a lot of different kinds of solutions for small businesses looking to scale. there's four services under our umbrella. Oh, first brand is realestateassistant.com. It's real estate VAs. We serve realtors, property managers, blockage, brokers, and, and people in that arena. And then there's WP expert, which is WordPress support. WordPress management and our flagship offer is we'll fix any WordPress issue for$49 in 24 hours, or you get your money back. Yeah. So if you all, if you have one small box, one thing that has been bugging you, and you really need to fix that, we can fix that fast for you. And if you want someone to manage your WordPress, on a month to month basis, you can hire your own word, press manager for as low as two 95 a month. any changes that you want, that it's certain brackets. So two 95 is 10 hours. So if you don't have a lot of needs, that's a good, that's actually what most small businesses get. So we have clients that are like solo preneurs, sorry, selling makeup. we also have flower shop clients. We have an auto detailing clients. So we serve a lot of small businesses because it's such a affordable offer as well. and then there's a fixed creative agency. Which is a unlimited graphics and video editing for 1895 a month. So the concurrency is three projects at a time, but that's still a lot of projects. So you can, you can white label us if you have an agency or if you're very content heavy. Cause we also serve, coaches and course creators. So that's, I think that's a very good solution for you. And are, are the star of a show. Which is whilesupport.com a dollar an hour chat, email, or phone support. yeah, just, these, the B solutions are very, I believe that the solutions are very, fairly competitively price and are the quality I would say is really, we really spent a lot of time building it to certain standards and almost all of our, clients are, are in the States and Canada and Australia. So I know some people will still have something at the back of their heads, a little how's their English or, something like that. yeah, we definitely have that covered.

Eric Dickmann: 26:45

I will make sure that we link up all those in the show notes so that people can find those because I can tell you that I've been a big believer in hiring some outsource resources. They can do some tremendous work at a very reasonable cost. Karla. Thank you so much for being a guest on the show. I really enjoyed our conversation today.

Karla Singson: 27:02

Oh, likewise. Oh, thank you so much, Eric. I had fun as well, and it's I also learned during these things, so thank you. I'm really grateful to be here.

Eric Dickmann: 27:13

Thank you for joining us on this episode of The Virtual CMO podcast. For more episodes, go to fiveechelon.com/podcast to subscribe through your podcast player of choice. And if you'd like to develop consistent lead flow and a highly effective marketing strategy, visit fiveechelon.com to learn more about our Virtual CMO consulting services.