Flourish 2019 has come and gone. As the recordings of the presentations are being prepped for The Curate Marketplace, here are a few actionable takeaways from the conference that attendees said were most important for them.
You have some sort of life goal that drives you. That may be selling your company and moving to Florida. Or it may be making just enough money to support your family while doing what you love.
As you grow your business, you have to keep that big picture in mind. Sure, you may have a spouse with a terrific 401 K, but is that going to be enough to live on after retirement?
Chat with your financial advisor about what moves you need to make to be sustainable long-term and make the necessary adjustments to your markups to make your dream come true.
Hiring employees and freelancers can be tough. You may want to hire the best designer in your city and can even afford to pay them really well. But what happens if they consistently have a bad attitude, internally or even with a client? Are you willing to risk your brand reputation to have the most creative and talented person around?
You need to hire new employees and freelancers, because they fit your company culture and can present your brand well. When you conduct interviews, ask questions that will help you get to know their personality and work ethic, rather than prioritizing their talent in the hiring process.
As Roses and Mint so eloquently put it, "When you hire for heart, they will have integrity, they will work hard, and you can teach the rest."
The team aspect is crucial, and should be the utmost priority of a company regardless of the size. Having a few employees that are excellent at a task could potentially be beneficial, but Roses and Mint suggests, "[you can do that], or you can hire a team that is holistically invested in your business."
Roses and Mint has an incredible Freelancer Contract Template available for download that walks through the expectations you should set for your freelancers. Download it now!
It's so easy to think that just because you're getting new inquiries that your marketing efforts are working. A spray and pray method of marketing can be okay for when you're just starting up, but in order for you to make smart business decisions, you absolutely have to know where people are coming from.
So set up Google Analytics on your page and dive in to see what type of traffic is coming in very generally. Is it direct traffic? Word of mouth is probably helping to drive that.
Is it organic search? Your SEO is on point!
Social? Your Instagram marketing is doing its job.
Once you've established a baseline for where your traffic is generally coming from, start using UTM tagging to dig into where exactly traffic is coming from and start attaching that source to every person that actually inquires on your form.
Once you know where your website traffic and leads are coming from, you can work to optimize your strong points and shore up your weak ones.