Small Business Growth Strategies with Madison Paige

 

Today on The Legalpreneur Podcast, I welcome social media expert Madison Paige to discuss the best strategies to find your niche and increase sales. Creator of The Small Business Growth Podcast, Madison helps business owners stand out and sell out!  As a lifelong entrepreneur, Madison discovered that the quickest way to increase sales was to simply be authentic. You don’t need the whole world to love you if you’ve built a community of dedicated fans that want every product you have to offer.

With Madison’s approach to relationship marketing you can actually increase profits with a smaller targeted audience instead of trying to sell to the whole world. In this episode, she will help you build  a genuine brand so you can foster a community that supports your values and loves  your products.

 

To learn more about Madison, click on the links below:

Small Business Growth Podcast

Product to Profit Masterclass

IG: @thisismadisonpaige

 

Key Takeaways:

[2:40] Changing the narrative with community building and relationship marketing 

[7:30] Become an influencer for your own product instead of forcing your product on everyone

[8:40] If you’re trying to talk to everybody you’re actually not talking to anybody

[12:40] Service based business need to be connected to your personal brand 

[17:40] Instagram is the best social media to build and connect with your audience

[20:20] Don’t be afraid to be unique because that will set you apart and attract your community

 

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Links: 

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Disclaimer: 

The Legalpreneur Podcast is advertising/marketing material. It is not legal advice. Please consult with your attorney on these topics. Copyright Legalpreneur Inc 2022

 

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Legalprenuer transcript:

Andrea Sager  00:03

Welcome to the Legalprenuer podcast. I’m your host Andrea Sager founder and CEO of Legalprenuer Inc. As a serial entrepreneur and someone that works exclusively with small business owners legally protecting their business. I’m dedicated to covering common legal issues faced by business owners, providing you with the business knowledge you need to catapult your business’s growth and showing you just how some of the world’s most elite entrepreneurs have handled these legal and business issues themselves. In true attorney fashion. The information in this episode is not legal advice. This is for informational purposes only and you should always consult with your attorney before implementing any of the information in the show. Hey, hey, welcome back to another episode. I am really excited to have Madison Paige on the show today she is a small business growth specialists best friend with her genuine attitude and highly expressive energy. She helped small businesses leverage her community centered system to grow small businesses that stand out and sell out by building a rockin online community that is obsessed with your business host of the Small Business Growth podcast keynote speaker and personal mentor. Maddy will turn your small business into a brand and get you selling on repeat Maddy, thank you so much for joining me today.

 

Madison Paige  01:20

Hello. I’m so excited to be here.

 

Andrea Sager  01:22

I’m excited to have you so can you get us started? Tell us all about you. How did you get to where you are today?

 

Madison Paige  01:28

Yeah, totally. So I’ve kind of always had like an entrepreneurial spirit. I was like the weird kid that always was like selling bracelets online or like having a lemonade stand when I was like five years old. I had dog walking businesses. I made like slideshows for events when I was like 12 like I was born and bred and entrepreneur. And when I was 12 years old, my parents actually bought into an adventure resort, which was just like wild. So we do whitewater rafting. ziplining Yeah, so much fun. And we have campgrounds campsite, and I like fell in love with it. It was funny, like we my parents, like we would go camping maybe once a year, but like we were the camping family that like rented a camper, and like we didn’t like sleep in tents. We weren’t really that outdoorsy. But boy did that change pretty quickly. I don’t really know, like were that they were like, Yeah, let’s do this. This would be fun for you guys. And so I was answering like phone call reservations by 14 I was guiding class for whitewater rafting trips by 16. And I was the operations manager of a team of 35 managing people that were twice my age when I was 1718. And I did that for like five years through that. I just fell in love with the business elements of it. And it was so much fun. I went to I was doing their social media, you know, like when I was 1617 Probably horribly, but I was doing it. And it was like starting the whole journey. I went to college, I went to college for business management and marketing. I was like yep, born and bred. I’m here I’m doing it went to business school. And when I was in business school, I started a blog because I always need a project. So I was getting two degrees, had a full time blog and was managing my family’s company that was five hours away from my college all at the same time. And so I started this blog, it was sustainability, outdoor living all of this stuff. And like nobody was buying from me. And I was like, How can I be doing this? Like, I’m in college, I’m doing this, like I got this down. And it was just like, nope. And so I dove into the small business side of things. And when I really like changed the narrative was when I read something that was all about relationship marketing and building communities. And when you actually stop selling, you start selling more. And when you stopped like pushing and shoving you actually kind of build this community of people that love you. And this was before, like the mainstream influencer like era. And so I like dove into being kind of an influencer for my blog and started to sell products that way and my blog blew up. But what I really fell in love with was the actual community side of things. When it started working for me, I was like, oh, gosh, I found something like this is fun. And I started doing it for local businesses in my college town like yoga studios, hair salons, financial advisors like these like Etsy shops, whatever I was doing their social, and I fell in love with that. So I pivoted away from the blog, even though it was successful, quote, unquote, where you could I had people sending me stuff, I had sales every day I had all of that going. And I started doing social media management, people started asking me like, Hey, can you just teach me what you’re doing? Otherwise, I have to pay you for eternity to be able to do what you’re doing because it’s clearly working. Can you just teach it to me? Or can I hire somebody and you teach it to them. And I fell in love with the consulting side of growing people’s businesses. So it’s been multifaceted from like adventure resort on owner to Blogger to all of these things. But now I’ve been in it for almost seven years. I’ve coached over 150 people and different small businesses across a ton of different industries. And we’re rockin and rollin there.

 

Andrea Sager  04:59

Oh my gosh. That’s incredible. So many places I want to dive into but still have the adventures or

 

Madison Paige  05:05

we do so this past summer was actually my first summer since I was 12 years old, not being there full time and I live like when I’m there. I live on property in a tent. Or the last two or three years, I lived in a camper that had AC and Abed big time upgrade. But yeah, like I’ve literally lived in tents for four months of my life. Since I was 1314. With a group of 50 kids, it was literally like, it’s so much fun. Like, it’s, it’s like college on steroids. Because I was there before I went into college, everybody, because you’re just playing like during the day, we’re still whitewater rafting, and like ziplining. We’re like, Oh, this is we’re not doing schoolwork. And it was just so much fun. You’re hanging out with people that are on vacation and having a blast. So they do still own it. It’s like three hours north of the Milwaukee area. It’s called Wild Man adventure resort. And yeah, this last summer was the first summer I wasn’t there just because I kind of like I always felt like I had to take a step back from my own business to be able to continue to be the operations manager there. And we have like two locations. We put like 700 people down activities on a Saturday. Like it’s a multifaceted, we have like seven cabins. 10 campsites like we got a lot going on. So it’s just like, it’s all encompassing, from like, April to October. So I was kind of like, you know, I gotta take a step back, because I can’t keep like putting my business on the back burner, either for those months. Wow. That’s

 

Andrea Sager  06:23

incredible. That is really cool. I, I may have to go check that out next summer. Because

 

Madison Paige  06:28

that sounds really, yes, it’s a blast. It’s literally incredible. And it was an awesome way to grow up. And I still love the whitewater and all of it. And I go up there all the time. It’s definitely my happy place. But yeah, definitely check it out.

 

Andrea Sager  06:42

That’s awesome. Okay, so one area that I want to dive into is actually community building. Can you please explain? I feel like everybody has a different answer. But I want to hear from your point of view, like, what does it mean to build a community?

 

Madison Paige  06:56

Totally, I would say my definition of a community is when people are especially when you have like an E commerce business, or like a small business, you’re looking for those, like Ride or Die fans, the people that are like posting your stuff and tagging you being like, oh my gosh, I can’t get enough. The people that are setting alarms for your new product releases, the people that are so excited about your products and everything that you have out there. I have clients that started off selling earrings. And then we built them a community and now they sell clothing, they sell journals, they sell cute like keychains they sell ornaments, like all of a sudden, they just like open themselves up to be able to sell whatever they want. Because their community just loves everything that they do. And they’re like, Yep, no matter what happens, I’m here throwing my credit cards at you. You could be selling a paperclip and I’ll give you my credit card. And that’s really what I tried to grow for people is that like expressive, loving, dying community around businesses.

 

Andrea Sager  07:55

I love that. Okay, so are you able to give us some tips on how to build that community?

 

Madison Paige  08:00

Totally. So first things first, a lot of people like I was saying through my blog, and I was right there with you. I was pushing product pushing products being like, this is great, this is awesome. I love it. This is all the things that is doing for me. And as in a totally different mindset. You have to really a be almost like an influencer for your product, even when you are a business owner is like showing how they use it, why it’s going to benefit them really turning the focus away from why they need something to like, hey, you need this, you need this because my stuff is so awesome. It’s like no, no, no, this is going to be great for you, it’s going to solve your problems, it’s going to have these things. So really First things first is you need to know who your product is actually really going to solve before you can build a community you need a community before you even build like you need a community in mind of types of people before you really start building that community. And this is like that ideal customer era where people are like, No, anybody can buy my stuff like women 20. Everybody deserves to have my stuff in their hands. That’s awesome. And yeah, probably like women, probably all could use your item. But we need to segment that down to be able to really grow that community better. Because if you’re trying to talk to everybody, you’re actually not talking to anybody. So first things first is building a ideal customer and like really figuring out who that person is where they can like repeat like a repeatable type of person that has a community that’s like down for it. And then build a brand around that person. Build a brand that feels good for you that is authentic to who you are, and really allows you to show up really easily and just naturally as who you are and like I’ve had brands and this is a big part of why I decided to move away from my blog is because the community that I attracted there wasn’t my like home like wasn’t my best friends like where I have my community now in my business world. People are in my DMs all the time being like oh my god, girl, did you see this? And I’m like, No way like we are aren’t great friends, just chatting back and forth with each other. And that’s because I picked the type of person. And my branding is me embodied into it. And it embodies into my ideal customer. So it kind of all builds. So first ideal customer. Second, build a brand with values and visuals, and messaging that that that type of person would like. And then it’s all about collaboration in your content, we’re really making a variety of different types of content, the average business owner really only posts like two types of content, and we need to be posting my seven types of content is my content framework is we need to be posting more than that we need education, we need benefits, we need personality, we need authority out there. And a lot of business owners are missing that element where people can’t actually like latch on and love it and obsess about it. And that is really kind of where it starts ideal customer building your brand, having content with variety that people can connect to and be like, oh, like I’m obsessed with this. And that’s really where that kind of obsessed factor comes in. When we all have that business that we like popped onto their social and we’re like, oh, my gosh, how have I never seen this before. This is gorgeous. You could buy anything here from me. And I would love it. And that’s really what that’s what I try to kind of create in the community as well.

 

Andrea Sager  11:14

Oh, my gosh, I’m loving every single bit of this. I love how you really just like break it down with like, I’m a firm believer as well as if you try to reach everyone, you reach no one Yeah. And it really does come down to just me really figuring out who is your ideal customer and getting as granular as possible. Because I I’ve been there, I know, we’ve all been there where it’s like, well, I don’t want to get too specific, because then I won’t reach enough people. But it’s actually the complete opposite. When you get super super specific, you actually attract more people

 

Madison Paige  11:48

totally because you can speak to them. And an example that I use all the time is if I were to be talking about confidence, like if I told anybody out there, hey, you need to do a like a speech on confidence. And you were giving that speech to kindergarteners or teachers or people in the military or just your average, like a big group of people, your message would be different. So why do we talk about marketing in a different sense we need in order for people to really resonate with that confidence message and like how to really embody that people like you need to you need to know who you’re speaking to, like, that’s always the first question when someone’s like, Hey, I’m giving a presentation, who’s gonna be in the audience. And that’s the same way as we have to think of marketing is who do we want to attract? Because you can’t speak to everybody in one way of messaging. It needs to be we’re so different and I’m not going to be for everybody. People might find me and be like, nope, Midwest accent annoying. Like, absolutely not. And that’s totally okay. Like, some people aren’t going to, like feel connected to my story, and that’s okay. But the people that do really connect and really have fun with it.

 

Andrea Sager  12:51

Yes, I love that. Okay, and as far as like building the community, what do you say for service providers? Because we have ecommerce businesses, we have service providers listening and you touched on E commerce, what do you have for service based businesses totally, it’s

 

Madison Paige  13:09

all in the personal brand was services. And sometimes people are like already rolling their eyes and they’re like, Maddie, don’t don’t tell me that I need to know my face and be who I am online. But that is like we especially when you are providing a service for people, they’re connecting to you, it’s really two things, it’s being different, like having something that is proprietary and you and like this is really what you are driving towards taking a stance on some things, and having a strong personal brand of like picking your three to five personal pillars that you just like dive into for people over and whether that is like for me, I have the worst sweet tooth in the entire world worst or best however, you might want to say that but I eat sweets, I need to literally need dessert after snacks. And it is pitiful, but I talk about it and people think it’s funny. I lit a black pepper too spicy for me can’t do it. I am the weakest. And that’s part of my personal brand. Like people see that and it’s hilarious and I’m like nope, had ketchup and was like literally sweating. And I talked about travel and I talk about like outdoor adventures. And when I started like really leaning into that side that is where people like my people really came out to I live like a very natural lifestyle like I had that blog so I tried to like cut out a lot of toxins and like all this stuff and I and so now I attract people that also live that way do I have people in my audience that don’t want to like live out of a tent for four months and don’t live all natural and like whatever Absolutely. And I love them and like they still love me but because I am more of myself and being a little bit more like authentic real genuine like that is really where and maybe that’s not who you are. Maybe you’re sassy. Like be sassy be really who you are and your people will attract to it so much.

 

Andrea Sager  14:58

Oh my gosh, I Love this. This is so good. So, when I’m curious if you have tips for troubleshooting, as far as building that community, let’s say it well, maybe not so much troubleshooting. But if somebody’s there listening, they’re like, yes, I’ve been trying to build a community really trying to get these super fans. What do you say to those? They’re like, I just don’t know what to do. I just don’t know, like, how to like, do I literally just ask them to like, Hey, do you mind sharing this? Or what? Like, what do they do? Yep. So

 

Madison Paige  15:33

you train your audience the way that you want them to engage with you as well. And this is something that’s really hard in the beginning, when you feel like you have no engagement. When you feel like you’re like, you’re like Maddie, I’m putting these stickers out on my Instagram stories, but no one’s clicking it. It’s just me and my mom, like going back and forth. But it’s the hardest thing to do is that first, that first little bit of engagement. And so you are really training your audience to do that, telling them what you want them to do no one setting alarms for your collection releases, unless you say, set your alarm, unless you show like the little alarm thing be like hey, being like, I know, it’s so cheesy. And we all hate that all the influencers are like everybody’s in my DMs saying this and like nobody’s in the DMS asking them those questions. But they’re doing that because they want you to be in their DMS. And so it’s the same thing with business, whether it’s service providers, it whether it’s ecommerce, no matter what you are training your audience to engage with you, if you are not showing the engagement that you want to see, if you are not prompting that engagement, you aren’t going to get that like for step one is like collaboration, put it out there and prompt that engagement is start with just like if you’re no one’s engaging with your stories, just put the story sticker out there and be like, Are you drinking tea or coffee this morning literally has nothing to do with the easiest question, no pressure at all. But the more little connections you can get with people, the more little engagement, whether it has anything to do with your business or not, the more they’re starting to connect, and they’re more they’re getting used to connecting with you. And that’s really where it starts. So you have to you have to understand like right up, how do I What is my dream community look like? What does that look like? What are people doing? Like? Are they Am I selling out launches, tell people like this launch. Like I only have limited availability, if you only make three things. And you still say I only have three of these left, you’re not lying. You are in good telling people that you have like you do have limited availability. You’re trying to get that out there to train your audience to do those things. It’s the same way that like this Stanley water bottle. You cannot tell me that Stanley can’t make four times the amount of those water bottles but they made it scarce by saying oh shoot, we sold out for like 12 launches in a row and now people can’t wait to get that water bottle. And now all miraculously its mass, its mass produced and they can you can buy them in Walmart and like whatever Rei and all over the place. They were training us to feel like it was such a scarce product that we needed it.

 

Andrea Sager  18:03

I love that. Oh my gosh. Okay. What is your favorite platform right now your favorite social media platform? Well, I love

 

Madison Paige  18:11

Instagram for social media. I love Instagram just because I do think it’s really easy to connect with people and really easy to just consume. Also, I do have a podcast my small business growth podcast is like people just you can really get the energy get the inflection, you can just like chat about random things. So I love podcasting. But from a social media standpoint, I love Instagram. I think Instagram is just and they are still making big changes to continue to grow younger people are on Instagram, older people are joining Instagram. It just has the most potential. I do think tick tock has huge potential, but it is still a smaller segment of people on tick tock than Instagram.

 

Andrea Sager  18:49

Yeah, and I think tick tock. I’ve heard this and I see this. It’s a great way for new people to find you. But it is harder to build that community on tick tock, totally, especially

 

Madison Paige  19:03

service based businesses, product based businesses, I have plenty of clients that we do tick tock strategies, and they blow up and they wake up to 100 new orders in the morning. But first of all, you have to be so ready to just like automatically, like somehow just blow up and be ready to take on that. I’ve also had clients come to me and before like they blew up the night before and they’re like Maddie, I need you like what do I do now? And so Tik Tok is great to like, go viral build an audience, but you’re still funneling them to Instagram. That’s why tick tock has the Instagram feature on the profile is because they know like I have I’m like I’m interviewing someone later today from my podcast that has a million followers on Tiktok but they were their community is his communities on Instagram with 50,000 followers because you follow it like the engagement rate on Tik Tok is wild. You can have a million followers but like there’s a lot of people with a million followers on Tiktok that don’t actually even have a community people are just following them. I know and right now the past like month tic tock engagement has been absolute shit. I like I have 67,000 followers on Tiktok. And it’s like engagement is crazy. And I, I’m trying to actually dig more into the strategy, dig more into the data to improve the engagement. And everything I’m trying I’m still

 

Andrea Sager  20:21

just like, blew

 

Madison Paige  20:24

152 views?

 

Andrea Sager  20:27

Yes, exactly. And I’m like, Oh, great, wonderful. But it’s all good. Well, Maddie, this has been incredible. So jam packed with so much good stuff. But before I let you go, I asked everybody the same question. And that is, what is your number one business tip? Yes,

 

Madison Paige  20:44

my number one business tip is to not be afraid to be different than that. Don’t be afraid to be like a little unique. Like, if you’re like, Ah, this really could be great for this type of person, like, do it lean so far into that uniqueness? Because that uniqueness is what’s going to set you apart. We’re all in this huge comparison bubble, because social is so easy to consume information. But what makes our businesses unique, the businesses that stand out are the businesses that are doing things differently. And the businesses that aren’t just posting Instagram trends that aren’t just posting, like the content that everybody else is posting out there, because they see other businesses doing it and being successful. If you see a bunch of other businesses doing it and being successful at it, you are behind the curve, and you won’t be able to get ahead of that curve ever if you’re chasing that model. So really, don’t be afraid to like if you have this weird, reals, like series that you want to do in your head or this weird thing. And you’re like, maybe I could do this, like really lean in to that uniqueness. Because that is a again, where community comes from and love that. Okay,

 

Andrea Sager  21:45

and how do you work with clients? I know people listening probably like many I need you in my life, like how exactly do you work?

 

Madison Paige  21:52

Yeah, I have a bunch of different stuff. I have a content course that if you’re just like, teach me how to do social media content, it’s called the breakthrough content lab. And you can come hang out with me on Instagram and I have a bunch of details there. My Instagram is at this is Madison that page and I work with clients one on one I have a mastermind that’s coming out in January that is my bread and butter it’s called product to profit where we really build this community we really get your your ideal customer your branding, your content and your community rockin and rollin but I have a bunch of different stuff coming out in 2023 as well I’m still not used to but yeah, I work with people one on one I have my podcast if you want to just binge my stuff there. I have courses I have all sorts of stuff. So come on over otherwise we can do just like a one time strategy call and we’ll brainstorm and get some get some energy going and kind of reignite that fire a

 

Andrea Sager  22:41

little bit. Nice. I love it. Well, Maddy, thank you so, so much. This has been wonderful.

 

Madison Paige  22:45

Yes, thanks so much for having me.

 

Andrea Sager  22:49

Here at Legalprenuer, we’re committed to providing a supportive legal community. For all business owners. I know how scary the legal stuff can be. If you found this information helpful, I would be so grateful if you could share it with a fellow business owner. And quite frankly, it doesn’t cost anything to rate review or subscribe to the show. Your support helps me reach more listeners, which allows me to support more business owners in their entrepreneurial journey. Have any questions or comments about the show? Feel free to drop me a line on Instagram. I promise I read all of the messages and comments. And if you want to be a guest on the show or know someone that would make a great guest simply fill out our application form and a team member will reach out if we think it’s a good fit. I’ll see you in the next episode.