ep. 050 • Marketing Your Business Outside of Social Media

Chelsea: Last week, global outages across the Facebook network left people all over the world without access to our primary social media platforms for hours and hours on end. In response, I sent out a question to those hennapreneurs over on our email list and I asked what would happen if it were to stay down.

I sent out the email wanting to know the answer to one very specific question: how would you keep your business going if social media weren't an option? 

In response, I got a ton of feedback from the Hennapreneur community with all different types of ideas on how they would continue to market their businesses without social media platforms, and in response to that, I decided that I'd host a little one-on-one private chat via Zoom, of course, so that we could discuss some lessons, some key takeaways of what the outage really should have highlighted for each of us as business owners. 

If you weren't there live for the session, I want to let you know that you're not going to find a replay on social, but I am going to treat you to the replay of that private session here on today's podcast and I hope that you enjoy it. 

If last week's incidences made you wonder: hmm, how would I market my business outside of social? Well, you're really going to enjoy this episode. 

Welcome to the Hennapreneur podcast – the exclusive podcast of its kind dedicated to giving you an honest look at the realities of making a living as a henna professional. I'm your host, Chelsea Stevenson, a tea-loving, shoe-collecting mother of three in constant search for the most popping pair of earrings and the perfect shade of red lipstick.

I'm also a professional henna artist and business strategist who went from barely being able to piece together a fluid design to being the owner of the most celebrated henna boutique in my city. I'm on a mission to help henna professionals to harness their skills and grow vibrant, profitable businesses that they absolutely love.

If you want to make more money with your art, you are definitely in the right place. Let's get to it!

 Hey, hey, hennapreneurs! Welcome back to another episode of the Hennapreneur podcast. On today's episode, I am giving y'all a little, a little tea, a little something. I'm taking you a little bit behind the scenes of what happened for me, or how I approached the outages that took place last week with the Facebook network. 

As we all know, Facebook was down, Instagram was down, WhatsApp was down. All of the, um, different online platforms that are tied to that Facebook network all just went, "Bye!" and they were out for literally an entire workday. 

And while those platforms were out, I connected with the Hennapreneur community by way of email. And I asked the question: what would happen if they stayed down? What would happen if we didn't have social media? What would you do and how would you continue to market your business if social media was not an option? 

And I received a bunch of different replies, um, with all sorts of different ideas, which I will talk to you a little bit inside of this episode. But, the following day, I decided to go live via Zoom and we had a private session. It was just a very small kind of townhall sort of thing. If you missed it live, you missed it-missed it. But we did a little live on Zoom where I, one, shared some of the feedback that I got from that question the day prior. Also, I talked a little bit about the ways in which we should be considering marketing our businesses and the ways that we should approach marketing our businesses outside of social media. And then I took you behind the scenes and I shared a little bit with those attendees around how I managed to pull in an extra thousand dollars worth of revenue from, you know, during the time that outage was happening. 

And so, if you miss the session, uh, I did see a couple of people who, like, tried to get into the room after we'd already finished up. So if you missed the session, I did get, you know, also emails saying, "Hey, is there a replay?" And it's like, no, fam! There's no replay for this. You had to show up live. But, because I know, um, that so many people did want to access that call and were unable, I am giving you all the replay here so you have the opportunity to hear what we discussed while we were in that live session last week. And I'm hopeful that it gives you some context and I hopefully it gets you some things for you to roll around in your mind as it relates to marketing your business outside of social media. 

And I actually do want to point out: we're not just talking about social media. One of the points that was brought up in some of the responses that I received from the Hennapreneur community is, "Oh, well I have their phone numbers. I connect with my clients via WhatsApp. I would just still," you know, "I'd reach out with them," or reach out to them, rather, "using that platform." 

And, y'all! WhatsApp was one of the affected platforms, right? And so, um, this lesson, if you will, this, uh, experience was enough for us to really come to the realization that there are things that we need to do to be better positioning ourselves in terms of being strategic with our marketing methods and how we connect with our clients moving forward. 

But I don't want to give away all the tea here in this intro, so without further ado, here we go. Here is the replay of our call from last week. 

So, yesterday, wowza! Right?

So yesterday, um, actually, I was in a meeting with Team Hennapreneur. We wrapped up just around 12:15/12:30, and, um, I went to grab my phone to go live in PRO, inside of the Inside Circle, and like, I couldn't get on. And so I'm messaging the team and I'm like, "I don't know what's going on. Like, I'm not able to connect on my phone and I'm not even able to connect on, on, uh, on my laptop. Like, what's really happening here?" At first, were like, laughing and joking, like, oh, it's just me. 'Cause you know, Mercury's in retrograde and I also am like, you know, tech, whatever. I shouldn't say that. I'm actually pretty technically inclined, but for whatever reason, I was like, you know, it was not a good day. I'm like, it's just my luck, right? 

And so, um, and then we see, oh my gosh, Maryam, actually – our community manager – Maryam, she did a Google and she's like, "Oh my gosh, it's down. It just crashed, like, a couple of minutes ago." And, wow. 

Then we were out of social entirely for like, the whole day here, my time, the platforms came back up or started to become back, like, starting to become available again around 6:00 PM. So it really was six, almost seven hours worth of not having access to social. 

And I don't know about you, but like, for me, I was going through fullblown withdrawal and I was so sure that they were going to fix the issue quickly and then they didn't. And, I have so many thoughts about that. Like, I have a whole political tinfoil hat conspiracy thing about that and I'll talk about that, like, another time. That's a whole 'nother story. But what I will say is that I was surprised by how long the outage was present. And for the same reason, I was actually kind of like, do we even want to talk about that? And so I was a little bit hesitant, at first, to even discuss it with like my business's audience, uh, but it was something that, immediately, I was like, I need to talk to y'all about though. Like, y'all, hennapreneurs, we need to, we need to have a conversation here. 

So, um, one of the things about the outage that I found to be really, like, a stark reminder is just that fact that we do need to place our intention around the use of marketing methods that belong to us. We need platforms that belong to us. We need to be using communication methods with our clients that belong to us. Um, that are not dependent on, uh, social. 

And this is something that there was a really interesting divide in terms of the, like. The feedback that I got via email from, you know, all the different henna artists. I could tell there was a very stark difference between those who are working with me or have worked with me and those who did not, because those who have worked with me definitely understood this premise and those that did not, like, they immediately started thinking about very, very different methods. 

Some of the suggestions that I got, or some of the answers to the question, 'what would you do to continue your business if social media weren't in play? If that weren't an option for you?' Some of them were really funny. Um, some of them were really creative. Some of them, I probably would not suggest, but here we are. 

So there was everything from putting up local flyers-. 

I got an email that said, you know, "I would look to advertising locally in my city with local magazines and newspapers." 

Actually, quite a few people made the suggestion of, you know, that they would reach out to, like, local newspapers and, like, local paper advertising. Which I'm not going to say there's not a time or place for, but like, I wouldn't spend my money there. Just saying. 

Also, let's see, pushing people towards other platforms on social. 

Someone mentioned Pinterest. 

Someone mentioned TikTok. 

Someone did say that they would move to collecting email and phone number when they're booking their appointments. Uh, which is actually a little bit surprising to me because I thought, well, what are you doing when you book your appointments now? Right? Like, I feel like these are pieces of information that you really should have about your clients, but that, you know, there's that. 

Someone said, "LOL. Flyers, maybe." 

Someone said, "Smoke signals." 

Hey, the smoke signals one really took me out. I appreciated the humor and the honesty there, but you know, this artist was saying that, like, basically her business would be totally behind if this were to happen because she would not be prepared. She does not have the systems in place to continue marketing if social media weren't an option. So she would, she would be reduced to sending smoke signals. I love it so much. 

Let's see, uh, we have some additional suggestions: MailChimp flyer, giving my clients alternative contact details, using a blog feed. 

This one is actually a really good one! Um, the suggestion around blogs. Um, and I'm going to come back to this because I definitely have some feedback there.

There was also, someone said, someone said that in her experience, actually, she doesn't get most of her clients from social media. And this is actually, this is a previous client of mine. She's a graduate of The Accelerator. And so, for her, her primary source of finding clients or clients finding her, rather, is actually Google. Um, she's ranked so high in the Google algorithms that like, it's just, that's how people find her nine times out of ten. And she says when she asks people, "How did you find me?" That's the answer that they give her, uh, which I loved. I thought that was really, really, just, it speaks to good marketing. 

Someone-. Let's see. Let's see what else we've got. Oh my gosh. There's so many good ones. Someone said, "Yeah. I would definitely rely on blogging to help drive traffic to my website and keep customers updated via an email list."

Someone said, "I would go with referrals and word of mouth marketing." 

Someone said, "You know what? I don't have these things, also. I don't have these things in place." Meaning the website, I believe. I actually sent a follow-up question to this artist and I didn't hear back from her just yet, but, uh, what it seemed to me, reading her response, was that she didn't have the systems. Meaning she didn't have the website. She didn't have an email list. She didn't have a system for referrals. And so she actually, also, was someone who said that if she needed to rely on these other avenues to market or advertise her business, she would have to implement and build them first. Which would put her and her business behind. And that was really insightful.

Someone else came up with, you know, an email list. An email list. 

Email lists came up quite frequently. What was interesting, and I'm going to come back to this in a bit, is that there's definitely a knowledge gap as it relates to how to use email marketing for your clients, um, and what that actually means and, like, what implications exist there so I want to- I'm going to touch on that a little bit. 

Um, someone said I'll put up posters at public places.

Go door to door was another one. "I'll go door to door distributing pamphlets. I'd go to schools. I'd go to colleges and universities." That was very interesting to me. 

And so, yeah, these are some of the high level-. There were so many. Oh my gosh, there were so many emails that I got, but the general gist of what was happening is, you know, a lot of people said," I would initially go into panic mode," which is fair. Initially, I would go into panic mode. And then after that I would start either blogging, working on my website presence, leaning into email marketing, or doing some sort of, like, very active outreach inside of their community – be it offering the flyers, offering the door to door service or those lovely smoke signals."

So, um, with this kind of in mind, there are definitely right and wrong ways to market your business, right? There are definitely right and wrong ways to market your business. Those things are fluid. It's going to depend on where you are, what your resources are, where your people hang out. And like. Other, you know, nuance – right – nuance that exists inside of that dynamic. And so I-. Some of the examples were pretty creative. Some of them like, again, were not things that I would do, but that doesn't mean that they wouldn't make sense for that artist. 

And so, I want to kind of, one, just like acknowledge- first of all, thank everyone who responded because it gave me some insight also into how I could like help with that and also, like, release perhaps, any judgment around what you're not doing right now. And that was something that came up often. 

Like, there were, there was a trend in the messages that I got. Many people offered a suggestion, like, 'this is what I would do' and then they would say something like, but I'm not doing it now or they'd put, like, sad emojis that they're not, like, they're not doing this. They're not making that happen now, whatever. 

And I want to encourage that we just, like, release that judgment because it's not necessary and it doesn't serve us. We can't do, like, these are systems. Marketing, uh, marketing and advertisement and sales are all systems that have to be developed over time and so if we know that there's a gap, we can certainly work to fill that gap, but we need to also be gracious with ourselves as it comes to and as it relates to us building our marketing practices, right? Rome didn't build itself overnight and marketing is very much a Rome situation, okay? 

So, um, regardless of what method you choose in building out your marketing strategy, what's most important is keeping these two things in mind: whose attention am I trying to capture and where do I need to be in order to do that? Right? 

And, um, it was interesting, in reviewing the answers that I received, it was interesting how many people, like, immediately went to what was comfortable for them or like, familiar to them or felt like the quote/unquote "right answer", but very few people, in fact, only those people, only those people who I have a history with – like, I've worked with them, they've attended workshops, we've done VIP days, they're inside of my program, whatever – only those people made any mention at all of their ideal client. Like, it seems like everyone else was just kind of, like, grabbing for like, 'what's the easiest? What's the thing that I could do?' Um, I'll take flyers, right? 

Which, you know, kind of poking, poking holes a little bit at the example of taking flyers to, you know, posting flyers around town. There's nothing wrong with posting flyers around town, but does your ideal- like, where does your ideal client hang out around town? Seems like a very, um, wasteful use of our energetic and time resources – and, potentially, financial resources also as you're, like, building out these marketing assets, – but it seems like a, um, quite the heavy misuse of resources to just go out all willy nilly and like, be posting flyers around when you could just as easily only go to those areas that your ideal client frequents. 

And so, as it relates to building out your marketing strategy outside of social media, but this also applies on social, like, to be very clear, you want to be present in those spaces and in the digital space where your ideal client hangs out. Similar to that, outside of social media, we need to be in the spaces where our ideal client hangs out. 

And so, where can you connect with that person? Does it make sense to take the flyers to the university or to the college? Um, does it make sense to hang the flyers in your local grocery store? Does it make sense to hang the flyers on like, the – what are they called? What are the things called? – the electric poles, whatever, as you're, you know, next to the highway? Like, what sense do these things make? 

What's the most effective is going to depend very much on, um, your unique business. And so, it's why we have to know who our ideal client is so we can really understand where and how to, um, to focus and concentrate our efforts. 

I will say that using those things as a baseline, using those things as the premise, right? You know who your people are. You know where they show, and also, that piece of 'we have a way to communicate with them that is our own', that isn't dependent on platforms that don't belong to us. That then, is where I would say absolutely, for me, I would be making very, very strong suggestion that if you're not already doing this, now is the time: build out your web presence. 

We need to have a website. You need to have a booking platform. You need to-. And listen, all of these things don't have to happen all at once. You can totally build one piece out and then move to the next piece. You can totally, you know, start small. That's fine, right? It's okay to have that. But, the premise here is that we do need to have platforms to belong to us. 

The thing about when you are marketing your business on social media is that as soon as you create that content and place it out onto that platform, that content now belongs to that platform. And if that platform does go down or if they decide to shut down your account, or if they decide that they no longer wish to deliver your content to your audience, for whatever reasons of their algorithms, you are out of luck, right? So you need to have a way that you can communicate regularly with your clients and that you continue to build that connection with them and that relationship with them outside of social media. 

And so, I teach my students to, one, to have the web presence. So we definitely want to make sure that you have the website, even if it's a very simple website. Um, even if it's a one pager. Even if it's literally just, like, a web page where they can submit their email address so that you have a means of contacting them later. Like, that is, that's enough. Anything is better than nothing at all, right? But we want to have-. And there is a lot of other strategy behind having a website. There's a lot of strategy that goes on the back end of having a website, everything from, you know, from being able to collect contact info, to being able to collect metadata and other things around who's visiting that gives you demographic information, like, so many ways that having a website is useful to you. Um, but as it relates to marketing, specifically, outside of these platforms, having that website has been, like, the first step that I would certainly recommend. 

The other piece that I would suggest is, um, building the presence for site, right? So, um, again, one of the, one of the ways that I teach my students to be able to be super present in, you know, on Google, to be super present in the search engines when people are looking for henna artists in and around their area is by way of building that, um, the richness around that platform. 

So even if you have to start small, you do want to continue to grow. So having some sort of place where you can host your cornerstone content, be that blogs, be that having a podcast, be that like, whatever, if that's a group, maybe you have some sort of, you know, something that you're hosting on another platform outside of social, right? That could be a – oh gosh what do they call it? – like group chats. Things like this, even if you have something like this happening, so long as it's done ethically and so long as it's done allowing for people to opt in properly, which is something I want to- again, I'm coming back to this, um, that will allow for people to opt in properly and for that to be, like, a legally sound way for you to communicate with them, um, then that's fine, but have something on the site where you can continue to build. 

And so, blogging is a great way to do this. I will be honest, like, blogging is not my favorite thing. I'm not a writer. I enjoy writing, but I tend not to be a writer. I have to really feel it, um, before I will write a long form piece of content, but I talk, right? I talk, I don't mind, I don't mind speaking. And so, for me, having, um, I will, I will, in preparing my own stuff, I will do voice recordings. I will do voice recordings and then from there, take the transcript, convert that into a blog, and those pieces of content have helped establish the, um, the baseline for my website's presence on the internet. 

And so, um, I don't want you to like hear, 'ooh, I should have a blog' and think, like, that's super overwhelming. There are plenty of tactical things that you can do to make that easier. 

The other way that, I guess I can't even say the other way, 'cause we've talked about it a little bit thus far is, um, is having that email list. So, having a means to connect-. 

First of all, I want to kind of highlight, email marketing is intimate, right? That's contact that's coming directly to your phone. It's coming directly to your inbox. That same phone is where you are receiving text messages from your loved ones, from your friends, from those people who are important to you. So when you are email marketing, that's like, that's a very intimate way for you to communicate with your audience and it's outside of those social platforms. 

Now, when it comes to email marketing, there are things that you have to be mindful of. There was someone who made a suggestion and in her reply to me, there was an artist who said, "Well, I would lean into email marketing and what I would do is create a Google form so that people could give me their email so I could collect your email address." 

That's-. I get it. I understand the thought process behind it. Also, that's totally illegal. That's not how, that's not how this works, right? In the US, in the UK, and in many other countries, it's actually an illegal marketing practice for you to just collect emails in that way, um, and then start sending those emails out. Those people need to opt in as subscribers to your email list. And so, um, you know, having access to be able to, um, to reach out to your people via email is super important and it's super valuable if that's a means of communication that you wish to develop, but you have to do that, also, in a way that respects the respects the marketplace, and of course, those legal boundaries that exist around it. 

I will say, because email marketing is something that many people brought up and said, "This is something I feel like I should be doing, but like, I don't know what to do." Uh, a lot of people, when they mentioned email marketing, then followed up with, like, this air of like ambiguity around 'well, maybe it would be a monthly newsletter,' 'maybe I would send them to ponds for the holidays,' 'maybe–.' 

Like, there's this, like, this very insecure, uncertain energy around like, 'okay, I start connecting with my audience via email. What would that look like? I don't really know. But like, that's something I could do.' Which is fine. 

So I would, this is where I want to tell you what I did, yesterday, okay? Every so often I will send an email out to my client list and, uh, yesterday was one of those days and the – actually, I will go ahead and pull it up – the email that I sent was super simple, super simple. The subject line was 'Blink twice, sis'. Blink twice, sis. And, um, the message was very, very short. I want to say it was, like, I dunno, it was under 200 words. 

The subject line: Blink twice, sis. And so, I go on to say-. Okay, I start with this GIF because I love, I love using GIFS. I love using memes. My audience knows that I'm very, I'm funny with them. When they come to visit me at the boutique, I'm funny. When they see me on social media, I'm funny. And so, humor is something that I like to lead with. 

So I start with this, you know, this meme: it's been 84 years. I go on to share, you know, "So, okay, maybe not exactly, but it certainly feels like it. It's been nearly six whole hours since Facebook and Instagram went down and I don't know about you, but I'm now in the throws of full fledged withdrawal. 

I'm desperately missing my healthy stream of inappropriate memes, I've not been able to catch up on any of my friends' daily tea, and I have a serious question: If I cooked a delicious meal from scratch this afternoon (chilaquiles verdes if you've got an inquiring mind!), does it even count if I can't post it to my feed for the people to drool over?! 

Are you all right? Blink twice if you're feeling it, too!

Anyways... This disconnect from social media highlights just how important, valuable, and soul-filling it is to have the pleasure of experiencing real connections with amazing people. 

(Like you, of course!) 

So while Facebook and the 'gram may be down, the self-scheduler over on the website certainly is not, and I'd love to connect with you in person again soon!" 

So I have this, uh, photo here just kind of to entice them, reminding them of the different service types that I've got. And this is-. The photo is a clickable link. Also, there's a link below for them to click to reserve their session. It's a very clear call to action. 

And then I say, you know, "I'd love for my next post over on social to feature your pieces -- just as soon as Beyonce's internet is restored to its proper glory, XO, Chelsea" 

And so, then I go on to say, you know, "P.S. Are you missing the memes, too?" 

And this is where I'm saying, like, this is just personal connection. This is thing, I'm sending it to their inbox, right? I want to connect with them. This is not just some-. Of course, there's a marketing aspect to it, but it's also, "Hey, we're having this shared human experience, let me talk to you about it, and we're going to make it a little bit fun," right? 

And so I said, "P.S. Missing the memes, too? Here are three from my stash, ya know, to help you get through these *unprecedented times*."

So I include three memes: one to uplift, one to make them laugh, and one spicy one that is just to give them a quote/unquote "disrespectful cackle", right? 

And then, I say – here, below these three memes – "And if you're in the mood for a little, um, not suitable for work humor, I'll bury an extra one below, but don't email me back clutching ya pearls, friend," right? 

And so, I kind of teased them a little bit saying, "Hey, don't say I didn't warn you! This is your last chance to bail." And then, boom, I've got this, this risky meme, this risky meme and, you know, we'll see, we'll see how they respond, right/?

And I don't, I didn't know how my audience was going to respond to that; I just thought that this made me laugh. It made me laugh from the depths of my gut and, yeah, it's totally not suitable for work, but also, like, the people who are, you know, wanting to kind of, uh, test out the waters, they're going to scroll, they're going to find out, right? 

So underneath this now risky meme, I say, "Oh, risky, I see. I like your style. Use this coupon code, and when you book, you'll get 15% off your next session." 

So I'm, um, giving them a little bit of incentive for allowing me to play, right? And, yeah. And so this is this email-. I only sent out one email yesterday to my client list. This was it. And I sent it out actually just prior to Facebook and Instagram being restored. And so, the coupon code was only available for a short amount of time. I would say only a handful of hours because, actually, the systems I want to say came back up about an hour, within the hour of me having sent out that email. And then I just left it up. Left the coupon code up through the rest of the evening. 

That email, first of all, I started to receive emails back for my list, from my clients, saying, "Oh my God, this is the best email ever. Like, this is absolutely hilarious. I love that final meme. Thanks for the coupon code," whatever. And so, um, you know, I got really great responses from them. And, um, I was able to book an additional thousand dollars in sales just from having, just from sending that message, right? 

And so, um, I share this with you so that you can have some context of like, ways or give you ideas also, ways that you can be connecting with your people outside of social media that can still feel really authentic. 

And if you don't already have a client list, the ways that you can begin to build that client list, uh, via that email list or otherwise, by just being sure that you're showing up where these people are and doing that in a way that really connects with them and is aligned with your shared values, right? So, knowing who they are, where you can find them, and then showing up there in your fullest self, like I did with my memes, right? And allowing for them to choose you, okay? 

So, um, I hope that this is helpful. I want to-. I feel like there's so much, uh, weight that's placed on being present on social media and I certainly think that there, like, we live in a digital world; we live in a world where social media is super prevalent and it is super important and so this is not by any means me saying: don't pay attention to your social media marketing efforts. Please do. Please do, right? 

And also, as much as possible, as you're making the connections on social media, do what you can to move those relationships over into platforms that you own. Do what you can to move those relationships away from social and into spaces where you don't have to rely on someone else's network, right? 

Um, if you-. It was very, very interesting, actually, hearing from hennapreneurs in their replies who mentioned, "Well, I would just, I would connect with them via text message," and they're using WhatsApp. I'm like, WhatsApp is a part of the Facebook network, friend. Like, that's not how that works. And not only that, if you're wanting to send marketing messages, there are some rules around that, right? There's some regulation around that also. 

So if you're wanting to build like text messaging, uh, marketing via text message into your practice, you certainly can. And there are definitely services out there that you can invest in where you can have a phone number and you can send those blasts, uh, text messages to your people, to your audience, um, and continue to connect with them in that way if you're not a fan of email or whatever, right? There are so many different ways that you can do that. But we want to do that in a way that we own, right? And that would be a way that you own, rather than depending on social media platforms, to include WhatsApp, right? 

One of the things that I do kind of want to highlight before we jump off of here is that none of these things are free. Some of them can be kind of free, right? 'Cause we, like, let's be real, there's also, there's an investment that exists here. 

So, um, depending on the number of-. Uh, with email marketing, for example, depending on the number of subscribers that you have, certain platforms may offer you a free trial or a free period, if you have under a certain number of email subscribers. If you're doing like the text message marketing, you might get a number of months free use, uh, for you to try it out before you actually begin to pay. But in general, once you've actually built, like, a meaningful list, be that on, uh, you know, email or text message or whatever, or even if we're just referring to the website, right. You can have a free website and that's fine if that's where you're just getting started, but if you're going to want that nicely branded website that doesn't have, like, you know, the banners and whatnot from the company that's hosting it, like, you're going to have to make an investment. And so, um, this is something, also, that I kind of want to draw your attention to is that we ha we have to be mindful too of the investment. 

To utilize the social networks is free and it's free for a reason, right? But moving those people onto these platforms that we own, that's a different experience. And if you want to have that more autonomous, uh, experience with your audience and that more autonomous experience in terms of client management and communication management, it's going to require an investment. And it doesn't have to be a, you know, super steep investment either. Um, some of these-. There are text messaging services that I know you can go as low as, like, $20 a month with under a hundred text subscribers, I want to say. With email the same. Like, there's so – oh my gosh – there's so many email providers that will provide you with their email services. Normally it's still has some logo, like, their branding attached to that if you're on the free plan, but like, these are things that exist. 

And so, um, start where you can and build from there, but like,be mindful that there is a shift. And, um, when you make that investment, you also get a lot back in return in the form of that autonomy and of that owning of the, um, of the digital assets or the informational assets related to your clients, okay? 

All right, friends! There you have it. I hope that you were able to walk away from this episode with at least a couple ideas – a couple of things to get the ball rolling in your head around ways that you can market your business outside of social media. And if nothing else, I really hope that you step away with a reminder that in order to market your business effectively, whether that's online or otherwise, you need to have a very, very clear understanding of who your ideal client is, what you're doing to serve them, and how you can show up in those spaces that they occupy so that you guys can make it the, you know, most appropriate connections at the right time, in the right place, in a way that also positions you as the obvious best next choice for them, okay? 

I want to invite you over to the Hennapreneur community where this week I'm asking: What's your takeaway from last week's outages? How are you changing your marketing strategy moving forward? And if you have any tips or tricks that you'd like to share with the group, feel free! You're welcome to drop those in the comments of the community post over in the Facebook Community. All right, I'll talk to y'all soon. Bye for now!

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