CONNECT WITH MARESA:
Tanner:
This week on the show, I have Maresa Friedman and she is a business and marketing strategist. Maresa and I talk about some insights she’s learned in her career as well as some opportunities that a lot of business owners are missing out on with state funding. You won’t want to miss this episode. So stick around.
Welcome to the show Maresa! I am super excited to have you. Go ahead and introduce yourself to the audience.
Maresa:
Hey guys, mindset. My name is Marissa Friedman. I am a business and marketing strategist and I’m based in San Diego, California.
Tanner:
Awesome. Well, thanks for joining me today. Can you give us an idea of how your career got started and how you got to where you are today?
I think, like a lot of people, I’m an accidental entrepreneur.
Maresa:
Yeah, absolutely. I think I’m like a lot of people that’s like, I’m an accidental entrepreneur, right? So I was a corporate girl that loved corporate – make no mistake about that. So my background is actually in engineering and operations and I worked for a business intelligence software company. So we did a lot of like data aggregation and what’s interesting is, and my pivot to kind of looking at marketing and applying data throughout the company. My background has helped me a lot, but it’s almost unrelated, right? Like I don’t do any high level engineering or coding or programming now, but what was interesting is I feel like most marketers stay away from talking about KPIs and metrics because they focus on creative and I don’t like, I’m a big data nerd. So I think like I kind of transitioned into this being on my own about six years ago.
And it was really hard because when you’re in corporate, you have minions, you have people that work with you. And it was actually kind of fun to go off on my own and see what I could do with like little to no resources and just the brain. And I think it worked really well, but I mean, I think most entrepreneurs can agree that it can be a little lonely sometimes and you miss things like getting donuts with the office or like talking in the morning over coffee. And so I definitely hadn’t planned on this path, but I’m happy about it. I mean, I get a chance to teach four times a year as a special instructor at the university of San Diego. So I get to kind of teach an up and coming generation of marketers how to learn skills that are kind of active in the industry. And that’s what I feel like is missing. Right? A lot of people are learning principles of marketing network, maybe in the eighties and nineties and they’re good principles, but they don’t have anyone that’s speaking to them about how marketing works today. So I get like the best of both worlds. I get a little bit of academia, I get a little bit, bit business and then I sprinkle a little data on top.
Tanner:
Yeah. I love that you’re paying it forward because as someone that majored in marketing, I can tell you that I was not prepared at all to enter the industry. I mean, literally I knew marketing principles, like you said, but if you asked me to do anything digital marketing. In fact, there was only one digital marketing class offered at my university, which is pretty insane. And actually that professor is actually a CEO of one of my major competitors now, which is interesting. It’s kind of this way of recruiting employees, I guess.
Maresa:
There’s, there’s a lot of us that do that. I mean, one of the reasons that I do teach as an intensive, a couple of times a year, is that the people that typically come into the classes are already in-house marketers at companies, or they’re interns or they’re small business owners. And so even though I get to help everybody, it’s at like a digestible price point. But I usually get some clients out of that, you know, it ends up happening. I never asked by the way, but it’s a good way to do it for sure.
I kind of joke everyone should have a job in service early on in life.
Tanner:
Yeah. And you know, thinking back to my days in college, my favorite professors were adjunct professors that were working in the real world is like, you know, the full-time professors that are teaching all this theory and philosophy and stuff, they aren’t in the trenches. They don’t know what’s working.
Maresa:
Yeah. I think that there’s like so many services and disservices to education the way it’s positioned. So I think the traditional path of education is always going to be there. But what I think is almost more experienced than like, what I did is, you work in a company and then you take classes according to the skillset that you want. And it took me forever to finish college because of that. Because I started off like hardcore computer engineering. I was going to be working at Pixar. That was like my dream. And then you get into it and you realize no one’s talking, no one’s collaborating. Each year that you go up in school, there’s less and less women in your classes. I think at one point in my sophomore year there was like two women in the entire program.
And yeah. And so it kind of took me a while to figure out what I liked, but I think everything that I did led up to this point, right? Like I worked in operations for a bank and I remember just needing a job. Right? And then really quickly I was innovating. I mean, to this day, that same institution still has all the things that I implemented. Right. They used to give us gift cards when we came up with ideas and it’s not surprising that a lot of my stuff was like marketing or operations or whatever. And so I think, and I learned how to deal with people when they were angry. There is nothing harder than telling someone at a bank that they can’t have their money. So those things, when I went off on my own, I’ve had to have really tough conversations with clients or collect money or whatever. Those things serve you well through, I kind of joke everyone should have a job in service early on in life. It would make you a better human, I think.
Tanner:
Yeah. You know, it’s funny, one of my first jobs was actually at K-Mart just stocking shelves and that’s where I feel like I really gained that customer service feel. Even though it was K-Mart and it wasn’t actually like forced or anything. That’s kind how I got my experience there.
Maresa:
Yeah. I mean, you learn how people treat you that’s for sure.
Tanner:
Yeah. Yeah. And I’ve noticed that as long as you’re respectful to anyone, they’re always going – well, most of the time they’re going to just match whatever enthusiasm you’re giving them.
Maresa:
Absolutely. For sure.
You have to get really clear with money.
Tanner:
So what were some obstacles that you faced while going out on your own?
Maresa:
I think I didn’t have a really clear understanding of how much funding it would take to finance this dream. And I think that I did try to approach it pretty pragmatically though. So I think a lot of people have a misconception that you should go start a business and then raise capital. It’s one of those things, right? I happen to be in that clubhouse app, and I’ve been there since September and you hear people talk about, Oh, I just started my business and I need to get funding. And it’s like, you probably shouldn’t have quit your full-time job because your business is going to require finance. I was fortunate though that like I had been kind of moonlighting when I was working full-time so I had an understanding of what certain things cost.
What I found overall is that you have to get really clear with money. You have to get really okay with not signing up for courses. I call it like course control, because what happens is you can go down like a course rabbit hole really, really quickly, right? You can go down this rabbit hole and the suddenly you’ve spent $5,000 in programs and you haven’t done anything to grow your business or you buy the coolest automation. I mean, retargeting works for a reason. So once you opt in to something and so if you can get clear about things that you need to go lean, like when people ask me, Oh, what’s the best scheduling for Facebook and Instagram, I’m like, use the native one until you make some money. And then there’s tons of other tools, right?
There becomes a point where like, you can go down the tool rabbit hole as well, right. You’re going to get like upgrades to all this stuff. And then you realize you spent five or 600 bucks, you could’ve saved towards ads. So getting clear about money. Obstacles. I knew a lot of people, but they only knew me in a particular way. So it was like rebranding myself. So kind of adding this marketing component to what I was already doing, because I was overseeing that globally was kind of hard because nobody knew that. And so just kind of like – if I changed my LinkedIn first it probably would have made it a lot easier, but it was like the last thing I changed. So, you know, like little things like that. But I think every entrepreneur can relate, there’s never enough money, at least in the beginning. And you want everything. You want to go to every conference you want to buy every class you think every class is going to gain change. And then, you know, if I was going to say like, what would I do differently? I would have invested in copywriting first. That would have been the first thing that I would have done differently because then I could have done everything a little bit more intentionally, everything comes from that. Everything comes from the copy, your website, your landing pages, whatever you’re doing. So, you know, if I had the opportunity yeah. That’s where I would start.
Tanner:
Awesome. So now you’ve talked about some of the challenges that you’ve faced and you know, that’s the hard part of it, but there’s also been some good things, right? What would you attribute your success to?
I can sit here and I can cry and be mad or I can just get up and channel that.
Maresa:
I kind of always assume positive intent. So even I think you get really jaded working in this industry because everybody’s an expert, I try to be open to any possibilities. And that’s really hard because theoretically, like you will come to a point where you have a bad experience and that can really shape how you view people or a segment or a group. So I think being positive in allowing myself to be resilient. Resiliency is not a skill that we typically teach. Right? And it’s really helpful if you’re in a community like a faith based community or cultural communities that encourage, there’s statistics on resilience on the offset of that, like even a duck can drown, right? So there’s biomimicry and stuff that tells us ducks are actually taught to swim by their moms. So I feel like I had to learn how to swim when I was on my own. And that was my greatest skill because a lot of times stuff doesn’t go your way. I call it like the ice cream on the floor moment. Where you’re just like, dude, what am I doing? Like, what am I, but it’s just like at some point you gotta get up and put away the ice cream and keep going. And no matter what, I just keep going. Even when I don’t want to, even when I don’t feel like it, even when it’s really hard, even when it’s the stuff that I don’t enjoy doing. And I think just that persistence and resiliency are the two biggest assets and I had to develop them. It wasn’t embedded within me. It wasn’t like, I just knew that to bounce back. I just had a feeling, it would be more productive if I did.
I was like, well, I can sit here and I can cry and be mad or I can just get up and channel that. And I don’t think that we talk about that enough as entrepreneurs. I don’t think we talk about the failure or the learning or what, you know, the mistake is. Oh, I made that mistake. I won’t repeat it again. That’s actually not true. It’s going to happen to you over and over again. And so all you can do is better prep yourself to, to bounce back a little bit quicker. I think that’s my biggest skill set is just that resiliency.
Tanner:
Awesome. And yeah, I think resiliency is probably the most important thing about being an entrepreneur because simply if you’re not resilient, you will never make it. I mean, ups and downs of entrepreneurship are just insane. The highs are highs. The lows are very low. You may find yourself contemplating if you should move forward or if you should give up and go get a job. And for those that that’s not an option, those are the ones that are successful. Right?
Maresa:
Yeah. And I think it’s also about understanding different ways to set up your business. Like in the beginning, I white labeled for a lot of agencies that didn’t have a strategist. So they didn’t have anybody with my data background and my ops background and executives really liked that because I wasn’t just in this marketing lane, I knew how it related to sales and the overarching goals of an organization. That skillset to be able to apply it to everything is what will make you successful, I think in this industry. Because there’s a lot of people that only do this or only do that, but they have no context of how to, like I always bring sales of whatever company that I’m working with into the organization, if even if they’re not supposed to be. And part of that is I can come up with the best strategy in the world, but the head sales guy or the VP of sales can put the brakes on it in any moment. So I need him on my side, same thing with the CFO, right? Like I get friendly with all the finance people, so they know what’s coming and they understand what’s going with that. And when you have those people on your side, it makes it really easy to do a project because no one’s going to come in at the last minute on the one yard line and tell you no.
We love working with small business owners. We also know that marketing is the first thing they’re going to cut.
Tanner:
Yeah. Yeah. And I think that’s really powerful. So, the topic for today is how can anyone take advantage of small business state funding? I know we’ve talked before and you’ve been able to secure some funding and really apply it to help your business. Can you kind of walk us through that and what the process is like?
Maresa:
Yeah, so I think that the biggest thing in order to prepare to get any of this money is really making sure I call it like, you know, your business health check. And your business health check is making sure you have all of the documentation you need to go after getting some of this funding. Because what people find out is you didn’t keep good books. You didn’t like get your business incorporated, or you don’t have your fictitious name statement, or you don’t have the tax city. And unfortunately like that is part of the game. And there’s so many small business development centers around the country that this is their job to help business owners. So the first thing is kind of like business health check. Do you have a business license in the state you’re in, usually it’s pretty expected to get, right? Do you have at least a fictitious name, statement, your DBA stuff, you don’t necessarily have to have an LLC or an EIN. You can just do it with your social as a sole prop. And do you have like financials? Do you have something, do you have like I want to say, I think it’s like QuickBooks self-employed is like nine bucks a month or something. Do you have something that shows that you keep track of money?
Because that’s really like when you get this type of money, they just want to know that you can account for it. Right? So once you have all that, you can go to sam.gov and you can apply to be in that vendor system. During the process of that application, there’s going to be a ton of things that you’re going to hear an acronym. So right. You’re going to hear like cage code and you’re going to hear all these different types of code for your business. But if you go through that process, there’s little question marks and they’ve got like paragraphs to help walk you through it.
The biggest thing is to understand, are; do you own your company a hundred percent? Or is there another owner? If it’s just you, it’s going to be way easier to do, right? If you’ve got another owner you might need to them there. The other thing you’re going to have to assess is do you have any of those extra qualifications that could give you set aside? So set aside, it would be, you know, are you a veteran? Are you disabled? Are you maybe a small business? Do you have the designation? Are you a minority owned business? I mean, there’s any number of designations that you can get for your business. Once you’ve registered for that Sam account, you can also register for you know, a DUNS number, some projects do need a DNB number, and you can get that for free. It doesn’t cost you anything. So I hear all the time people talking about I’ve got to pay for my DNB number. No, you don’t have to, it’s free. You can get it for free. And when you do that, what you start to do is then you can go to your state’s website. And so from your state’s website, typically I tell people, if you’re in a big city, you can look for your city name and then workforce partnership or workforce development. That’s going to give you a list of all of the different types of programs that are going on in your city or region. So for example, in San Diego, we have the San Diego workforce partnership. Now that workforce partnership does a lot of work and receives a lot of funding for career training services, you know, job prep, small business prep. They connect resources to small business owners in the city. And that’s pretty much where you’re going to really want to focus your time if you’re on the services side or marketing, right? Even if you’re on coaching, right? There’s some opportunities on either side of that.
The process to going for funding is there’s either RFPs or there’s already plug-in programming, that’s there. So in my instance last year, what we noticed is we love working with small business owners. We also know that marketing is the first thing they’re going to cut. Right? They’re already strapped. So whatever that they’re starting off at, as they’re small, and retainers for us, our retainers start at like 1500 bucks. So there’s nothing that we do that’s less than that. Well, that’s the first thing to go for a small business owner and you and I both know, that’s like, that’s really bootstrapping a project.
Right. so, you know, they get through the first 30 days and it’s okay. And month two, they start freaking out and then maybe they don’t pay or whatever. So we noticed that they were trying to figure out how to help brick and mortar business owners market a little bit more digitally, organically, or at least show up better. Right? And we saw that there was a process for that. And we said, okay, we’re going to apply to be a vendor for this. And, you know, we had competition on the project, of course, but I had spent a couple of years working with small business owners. And so our biggest asset was giving them like the data, right? Like these are the things we know about small business owners. We’re going to design a program that allows them to come to the workshop and actually do things in the workshop, like they learn it and they do it in the workshop because we know if they’re going to give us half a day, we can’t give them half a day’s worth of content and send them back to their businesses. So you had lawyers, you had bakers, you had coffee shop owners, you had restaurants, you had retail establishments. And once they go back to that business, they’re behind the register, right? Someone doesn’t show up, whatever they had planned for the day is not happening. And so that program was funded and it was a really high five figure program that we were able to work on. And then we added an element of like coaching to that.
So that process, once you’ve done it for one city or one County, now I can go to different counties. Even if the funding hasn’t been made available yet and say, Hey, this is what we did in San Diego with the help of the Walmart foundation to help small business owners. Is there any interest, do you have any interest in helping small business owners, brick and mortar retail?
So right now it was like the perfect timing, right? Because then that program kind of ended, I want to say in May, June of last year, but the instruction ended in February and then COVID hit, right? So the program adoption was really high because people couldn’t do like farmer’s markets. We had a lot of small businesses that usually make money in farmer’s markets. So things like live shopping and so we just made that available. So now we have this program and we go pitch it to different cities and counties and states. And it’s really easy because that’s all we did. So it’s actually just doing what you do in your business. Just really getting into that mindset of a small business owner.
Pick the job you want be the person that does that job.
Maresa:
There’s also other ways to do like grant funding. So there’s very designated grant funding. Pretty much every state has a workforce allotment as well for people that are returning to work after they’ve been incarcerated. So what we try to do is just give them some of the tools to make sure that they’re successful as well. And, and what’s really interesting is those tools don’t necessarily, like to do marketing. You don’t have to have a degree, right? So if you maybe made a mistake, I mean, we all know people that have made dumb mistakes when they were young, maybe they’re getting out of juvenile detention or whatever. Marketing is a very forgiving industry. They can learn graphic design, they can learn lots of things. So same thing there. So if you have the ability to teach something and you can help a segmented group of people, there’s also some opportunities there.
So none of this information by the way is hidden. It’s totally publicly available, but you know, anything worth having is not going to be like the easiest thing to find. It does require an intense amount of Googling. It does require an intense amount of just kind of looking through the programs and figuring it out. And the hardest thing that I would tell you is an RFP by design is meant to make people intimidated. But I just look at it as like, this is a workshop, you know, this is a worksheet to get my money. This is how, like, if you look at it like, okay, so I have to, yeah. Or they use eight or nine pages of questions, but once you’ve actually done it, if you keep a copy of it, the next time you go to do it, you already have it. So I just looked at everything was like cool. I would’ve never done it. I would’ve never gotten hyper granular about the types of services we do. I never would have put together certain types of programming, but now I have it and it’s built and now we just go and pitch this to different cities and counties and people love it. And any person right now today can do this. Right? It’s not limited. That’s the great thing about, you know, America, it’s like pick the job you want be the person that does that job.
Tanner:
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And that’s honestly, the first time I ever heard about it is when you were telling me about it. So it’s definitely a really low profile, like anyone that goes out and does this will probably get the funding. Right?
Maresa:
Yeah. I mean, yeah. And I think you can also focus on states that you don’t live in as well, you know, where maybe they don’t have their resources. I mean, everyone likes to focus on the fancy states, but there are plenty of areas that you can go to that are not as mature. And I would use like trends with Google to Google social media marketing classes, and then just pull out and look at the states and see maybe not the top five markets or the top 10, I would look at like the bottom 10 markets. I would look at, you know, what’s up with Wyoming? Do they need marketing for their small businesses? Look at areas that maybe aren’t as higher ranking, because there’s probably going to be a better opportunity and less competition. Right?
Everyone wants LA San Francisco, New York, Austin, Florida. Right. But there’s plenty of other places you can go to that, that have this. And some of that funding is state funding and some of it is allocated by region. So, you know, you can check county websites and there’s regional websites as well. So, but it kind of starts if you look for workforce development you’ll be able to find a lot of information there. And on the same token, there’s a ton of intern programs as well, where people that have been let go of from work, maybe they got fired from their job because they were downsizing. There are programs that would actually give you potentially like paid interns. Like they cover the pay for the interns and they get new jobs, skills and experience. That’s great too. Right. So, you know, if you’re struggling because you can’t scale, but you can take the time to document a project that you need done within your company, then you can use that, and the benefit is it gets it out of your head as the business owner and it preps you for scale. And then you can get that project done and funded, which I think is awesome.
Not only are you giving back to the community and you’re helping these businesses survive, but it’s also going to benefit you as well.
Tanner:
Yeah. Yeah. I completely agree with that. So, Maresa, can you speak to the benefit that this has had on your business in terms of leads or just revenue?
Maresa:
Well, I think, you know, from a lead perspective, being able to just say that I got to partner with the city of San Diego and San Diego gas and electric and the Walmart foundation has been incredible for my business. Just the power of those entities is phenomenal, right? I mean, that’s, everybody knows who those people are, even outside of our city. The other thing is in that phase, I created like an opportunity program within my business for some of these companies that maybe just, you know, you could tell that if you pulled the right levers, they were going to make money. They just couldn’t get there fast enough.
So, you know, I took a board advisor seat at one of the companies. What he’s doing is hiring a bunch of chefs that were all laid off due to the pandemic. And they’re doing private chefs in people’s homes. So it’s kind of like Uber, but with private chefs and people can come and cook for you outside. So I was like, that’s going to be perfect because we actually in California right now, you can’t even go out to a restaurant. Everything’s still shut down. So this was a great, I was like, this is a great win-win story. He’s a diverse founder. This is solving a problem with a group of population that’s unemployed. And also it’s just cool, right? Like that’s a tool it’s like, when you think of like how Uber was created in the last recession, you kind of go like, this is where innovation happens. So it gives you insights. And then the learning from those insights you can use as case studies, which is what we did. So we did case studies and it was great because every person was coming from like either they were ground zero, they were a brand new idea, or they’d been in business for 10 to 15 years and never gone online.
And so just the idea that a retail boutique can now do, there’s this thing called comments sold, right? That you use with Facebook to make live shopping, or you can put your products on Amazon and you can do the Amazon live program. I mean, it’s right there in front of them and it was free to do, and they’d never thought about it because they didn’t need to. And I think that’s pretty much every business, right? Like you don’t really, if you had a good referral source or you have your walk-in traffic, you don’t actually invest in those things and by the time you do, it’s usually too late. So just kind of making those opportunities, like, that’s kind of what I’m known for, right? Like I’m very scrappy with my strategies. I try not to have too much fluff, but the opportunities that come out of it are insane. You know, I have people that reach out, I have like senators or congressmen from other states that reach out to ask me about this programming. And that’s what I think is really cool because it’s really impactful. And very rarely, at least recently, have you seen, you know, again, every politician wants to talk about jobs and everything else. So this is a program that works for both sides of the fence and it’s a win. No one is against this type of programming. It’s a win-win for everybody, I think.
Tanner:
Right. Yeah. And so I think it’s really amazing that, you know, not only are you giving back to the community and you’re helping these businesses survive and I can tell that’s the reason why you’re doing it, but it’s also going to benefit you as well.
Maresa:
It’s strategically altruistic, right? Like I get to help myself while helping others. And that’s kind of, that was my biggest problem. A couple of years ago. My passion is really with small brands and small business, but the majority of my clients are enterprise companies. So it’s like, I can make the money here. And then I thought, well, I’m just giving it all away. There’s gotta be a way and just reverse engineer the problem.
Tanner:
Yeah. And you know, when I started my agency, I wanted to work with small businesses, but I quickly found out that small businesses don’t have any money. So yeah. So it is a, win-win you’re able to work with them without having to empty their pockets. Right.
Maresa: Yeah. Yeah and you don’t feel bad because you know that you’re going to get compensated for your
Out of that frustration comes really cool stuff.
Tanner:
Maresa, is there anything that I have not asked you that you think might benefit the audience?
Maresa:
I think the only thing that I would say you know, for anyone that’s listening that might be a solopreneur starting out on their journey, or maybe they’re in the middle of their journey is get an accountability buddy, you know, or get into a mastermind quickly. I do a couple of masterminds a year and I think it’s really, really important to have other people to be accountable to because as founders we’ll quickly take that thing that was so important and deprioritize it immediately. And there’s no one to actually like look to, to hold you to it. And that’s where I think like an accountability group or a mastermind accountability group, just grab some other entrepreneurs. There’s a tool that’s called commit to three and it’s free. And basically you put in three things you’re going to do every day and everybody puts in their commits and as people do them, other people get notified.
So that’s a helpful accountability tool, right? Because if you don’t and you’re really on this island by yourself, you know, no one’s going to know if you did or didn’t do whatever you said you were gonna do. And then it’s Friday. And you’re like, Oh, I should probably do this. And then you don’t. Right? So that’s kind of something that, that discipline is not natural. Like I am not naturally a morning person. I became one. When I became an entrepreneur, I was definitely the person that rolled into the office at like quarter to 10, but I’d stay late, but I was like not, and now I’m up like every day at 5:30. I can’t not get up at that time. Now my body just knows to wake up. So that, that’s kind of something that I would say accountability early on is really helpful. There’s tons of tools and resources for that.
And the other thing is, make sure, almost like you had a job on Fridays to recap your week. I have recap emails that go back six years and I can look back at all the things that I’ve done. And a lot of times we’re so focused on forward moving progress that we don’t take a time or a moment to celebrate like Holy moly, look at all the stuff I did this week. And it’s almost like to me sometimes, like when my tank is empty that time that’s on my calendar from like three to four on Fridays where I just recap my week is really meaningful because can step back and see like, did I use my time? Well, this week, did I not? Like, and when you start to look back at two months of these emails to yourself, you can go like, Oh, okay, I did move the needle because sometimes I think we get stuck in this cycle of like, it’s not happening fast enough, or I’m not doing what I need to be doing. But just those two things I think are really beneficial accountability to somebody else and accountability yourself. And that to me is like how you really celebrate the wins because you can probably trace some of the most tumultuous times in my business to those emails where I just felt like how many more times could I hear no? And then I remember thinking, all right, like next week I’m going to try to get 50 nos. Right. Like I just kind of made it a game. I was like, all right, I’m going to try and get 50 nos. And I couldn’t get 50 nos. And it was just out of that frustration comes really cool stuff. Like it just happens.
Tanner:
Awesome. Well, Marissa, I really appreciate you taking the time to do this with me today. What is a good way for anyone listening to get in contact with you?
Maresa:
Yeah. So I have a free Facebook group called strategy solved. You can join us there. We do office hours a couple of times a month where we just do like ask me anythings, it’s super low structure. I made it really easy. And we do like free classes in there. Or you can check me out at meetmaresa.com and learn a little bit more about what I do.
Tanner:
Awesome. Well, thanks again.