The Invisible Mentor

Posts Tagged ‘Marketing’

Interviewee Name: Tracy Matthewman

Company Name: Tracy Matthewman, Network Marketing Sweetie

Website: http://www.TracyMatthewman.com, http://networkmarketingsweetie.com 

Avil Beckford: Tell me a little bit about yourself.

Tracy Matthewman: I come from a corporate IT background, so I worked in IT for 15 years. After I had my daughter I had an opportunity to stay home and work for myself so I jumped at the chance. I started off doing web and graphic design and within a year or so I quickly moved into the internet marketing realm. Marketing has always been a love of mine, and the fact that it was mixed with internet and technology was right up my alley, so that’s what I’ve been doing ever since.

Avil Beckford: What’s a typical day like for you?

Tracy Matthewman: A typical day would be connecting or meeting with clients, working on client work, doing research for them. I’m also involved in a health and wellness business so I connect with my team. No day is ever the same, so I’m either writing content for my blog or creating products or making videos, responding to customers, things like that. It’s a mix of things.

Avil Beckford: How do you motivate yourself and stay motivated?

Tracy Matthewman:  I have a giant whiteboard on my wall, which not only has lists and to-dos and things like that, but it also has a list of some of my short-term goals – what I want to achieve for the week or the month. But I also have on my wall a large bristol board piece of paper where I have planned out my life map, but it’s really for the current year and it covers a number of areas of life, not just business but relationships, contribution, spirituality, health and so having those things right in front of me every day keeps me motivated. The other thing is that I really love what I do so a lot of times I don’t really need motivation because it’s something that I’m naturally motivated to do, so I’m lucky in that regard.

Avil Beckford: If you had to start over from scratch, knowing what you know now, what would you do differently?

Tracy Matthewman:  I would try to have more focus on fewer things. I’m one of those people who tend to take on multiple projects and although I had had success in them, I would have been more successful if I picked one or two and worked on them as opposed to three or four or sometimes five things. Focus is definitely one thing I would do differently.

Avil Beckford: What’s the most important business or other discovery you’ve made in the past year?

Tracy Matthewman: One of the things I really started to think about, I think I read or heard it somewhere, and it really stuck with me is that happiness is a choice. Everybody is striving to be happy. And in life there is wealth, health and happiness, those are the three aspects of life that I feel are really the only avenues that people need to focus on to have an entirely abundant life. But the happiness part of it is really a choice, in every moment of your day, you choose whether you are happy or not. If you are feeling unhappy it’s because you are choosing to be that way. That was a big wake-up call for me.

Avil Beckford: What are the three threats to your business, your success, and how are you handling them?

Tracy Matthewman:

1. Things are changing so quickly that there is always this fear that you’re going to get left behind, which isn’t the same in a lot of industries. In a lot of industries things are very static or change very slowly but with the internet and technology, things are changing so fast. Although I try to keep up as much as I can, there is always that fear that things move so fast that it’s impossible to keep up.
2. One of the things that I’ve strived to do is to brand myself, and when you brand yourself, your competition almost becomes nil because there is nobody else like you. When you brand your own personality and characteristics into your business there isn’t going to be much competition so I try to keep that at the forefront of what I do so I don’t have some of those common threats that more traditional businesses may have.

Avil Beckford: What’s unique about the service that you provide?

Tracy Matthewman: My background is in IT, and the first year of my business I did web and graphic design, so if you are looking for a web or graphic designer that has online internet marketing skills that in itself is a unique service. And the other way around is if you are looking for someone with internet marketing skills, and they have a wide knowledge of technology, website and design elements, and things like that, those two aspects provide a pretty unique service. It’s not very often you see both of those in one package.

Avil Beckford: Describe a major business or other challenge you had and how you resolved it. What kind of lessons did you learn in the process?

Tracy Matthewman: When I left my corporate job the challenge was starting my business. I had never really done that before even though I had smaller, summer type businesses, but never something I had to create off the ground to generate a full-time income. So the challenge was starting a business. It sounds so simple but it can be scary if it’s your first time. And how did I resolve it? To ensure that I had lots of clients I went to local networking events where I met a few key people who I developed fairly strong relationships with and it turned out that those people referred clients to me and pretty much for the first four years of my business that’s how I got customers.

Another challenge that arose a few years into the business was the marketing aspect. This was when more people were paying attention to internet marketing, and I was developing websites for my clients, and quickly started to realize that these websites were not contributing to the bottom line. I knew that going into the internet marketing realm was going to be beneficial for my clients and also for myself. I invested what was a big chunk of money at the time in some training. I could have struggled and learned it myself kind of way, but I went on a 3-day intensive course. When I left that course I felt like I was years ahead of what was going on at the time in internet marketing. So that put me in a strong position and that was a good lesson because I have continually been investing in myself and my education and it has continued to make me really knowledgeable about my subject and what’s valuable to my clients.

Avil Beckford: Tell me about your big break and who gave you.

Tracy Matthewman: I didn’t really have a big break. But I would say my big break was when I got terminated from my corporate job. It was a negative situation obviously when you get let go or they downsize you. It was a big break for me because I turned it into a positive and I was happy when it happened because I knew it was an opportunity to do what I wanted to do. I look at that as my big break – my past employer gave me my big break.

Avil Beckford: Describe one of your biggest failures. What lessons did you learn, and how did it contribute to a greater success?

Tracy Matthewman:  One of my biggest failures occurred about two or three years ago. I decided to create a product and I partnered up with a girl who had expertise in a certain subject matter to do a launch. I was there as the marketing half of the partnership. We did the launch venture and created the product and were going to launch it as a group coaching program. I had already been watching a lot of product launches, taking lots of notes, and learned enough that I felt comfortable moving ahead with it. We went through the process and it was a complete bomb. We had one person sign up, which I guess is a success, I should have celebrated that but we were hoping for 20 to 30 people.

After the fact, instead of just closing and saying I’m not going to do that again, I went to an online forum where I know a bunch of really successful people hang out who have done these types of launches before and I wrote a post and said, “Hey guys I just did this product launch, it didn’t go very well, here’s the information that I put out there, here’s some of the marketing materials that we used, can I get your feedback on it?” So I literally asked for help from people who I knew would be able to give me some feedback and they gave me some really great feedback. Since then I have continued to do product launches and I have had much better success. So I have learned from looking at my mistakes and saying, “What can I learn from this situation?” and applying what I learned. Every time I do a launch I get better and better results.

Now I can put together a coaching program and get the numbers of people that I want to sign-up. So learn from your mistakes.

Avil Beckford: What’s one of the toughest decisions you’ve had to make and how did it impact your life?

Tracy Matthewman:  A few years ago I was working really long hours, every day into the evening, and a lot of weekend work. A mentor told me that I better stop doing that and it was a hard decision. But what I decided to do, I stopped working weekends, and I talked it over with my husband and we decided that there was a set number of days and evenings that I could work and the rest of days and evenings I wasn’t going to work. It was a big decision because I love what I do and there is always that stress as a solopreneur that you’re not going to make enough money and there is always so much to do. To make a decision to cut your hours by a big chunk of time is scary, but having made that decision I immediately saw a lot less stress in my life, and it forced me to focus better. All the stress I had about not working so many hours subsided because I realized that it really wasn’t necessary.

Avil Beckford: What are three events that helped to shape your life?

Tracy Matthewman:

1. Getting downsized out of my corporate job.
2. The first course that I invested in shaped my life because it was a turning point in my life. When I had been at my corporate job, someone was paying me, when I started to work for myself I basically bought myself a job,  but when I took that course, I started to learn about passive income so that changed the direction of my business.
3. Having a child. It helped me to know why I do what I do, and why I work so hard because I do it for her. It puts life into perspective.

Avil Beckford: What’s an accomplishment that you are proudest of?

Tracy Matthewman:  In terms of business, I would say my clients. I have a really good client base and I know that they trust me and look to me for advice, and we’ve built the relationship over the past five years, that I know that I’m really very solid. I’m very proud of that, and the other thing that I’m quite proud of is one of the courses that I have put out there. I knew there was a need for it, and I put it together targeting the market I knew needed it and that course has been out there for a while and is selling very well. People like it, they get a lot from it, and I get a lot of feedback about it. It’s great to know that you create something that is needed and wanted that people are really happy with.

Avil Beckford: How did mentors influence your life?

Tracy Matthewman:  In a few ways. I already mentioned one about not working weekends. In the last six months or so, another mentor encouraged me to start meditating, doing some sort of regular ritual that is more for me and more for a spiritual and health advantage. I mentioned that I’m a bit of a workaholic and I tend to work a lot even though I have cut back my hours. I didn’t take a lot of time out to learn about who I am and just be with myself. I have started to meditate regularly and have started to do stuff like yoga. I think this has helped to bring more peace and less stress into my life. That never would have happened without mentorship, so I’m really thankful for that.

Avil Beckford: What’s one core message you received from your mentors?

Tracy Matthewman: I think the core message is about balance because both of those things I mentioned in the last question really are about balance, and I was really out of balance for a long time. You can have all the money in the world, and you can work and work and work, but at the end of the day your health could suffer, and your mental, emotional, spiritual elements of your life could suffer as well. Happiness isn’t always about the financial side of life, so the core message is to be truly happy and be my best and have a great life, it’s not going to happen unless I have balance.

Avil Beckford: An invisible mentor is a unique leader you can learn things from by observing them from afar, in the capacity of an Invisible Mentor, what is one piece of advice that you would give to readers?

Tracy Matthewman:  You want to look at all the different environments of your life, and one thing I learned from a mentor is that there are nine elements: Spiritual, relationships, network, financial, physical, nature, memetic (which is more about you, inner thoughts), body and self. All those things that are happening around us all the time, I would suggest looking at them all and making sure that they are strong, finding the ones that are weak and work on those areas because they are going to brings the others up even more. It’s about balance. I’m currently doing a program called The Ultimate Game of Life and it’s been helping me to notice those other areas of my life that I was just too busy to notice before. Look at all the areas of your life and try to make them all strong. Balance is good, but making all the areas strong will give you a truly amazing life.

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With most things in life there are peaks and valleys, ups and downs, and the economy is no different, it expands and contracts and the cycle continues. How can individuals work with the natural order of life to thrive even in a contracted economy?

During a recent interview with Linda Hollander, The Wealthy Bag Lady, I asked her to share five tips for things that individuals can do to thrive in tough times. The Wealthy Bag Lady is qualified to answer this question because she started what turned out to be a successful company during a recession.

Hollander is in great company – Microsoft, Hilton Hotels, FedEx, IHOP, GE, CNN, MTV Networks, and Burger King are a few of the companies that started in tough times. To thrive in tough times she suggests:

1. Be creative
2. Run a lean and mean operation
3. Concentrate on sales and marketing
4. Have an advisory team
5. Practice lifelong learning

Be creative: During tough times you cannot operate as if it is business as usual. Look at ways you can be more effective by doing things differently. Necessity is indeed the mother of invention. When Linda wanted to start her Small Business Expo for Women, she did not have the funds so she got sponsors instead. Onlookers were surprised that a small business could secure large businesses as sponsors, especially during a recession.

Run a lean and mean operation: Look at areas in which you can save and cut costs. Do as many things that you can by yourself so that you do not have to pay to get them done. One of the things that Linda did was buy used furniture instead of investing in new ones.

Concentrate on sales and marketing: It does not matter what type of business you operate, you are in the sales and marketing business so it is imperative that you learn how to market and sell yourself effectively.

Have an advisory team: Have a group of people you can always call on. Always ask for help and never go it alone. Your advisory group should consist of individuals who will assist you in holding fast to your vision. These people are your mentors, so surround yourself with mentors that you can learn from.

Practice lifelong learning: School is always in session so take the time to improve your skill set. Assess yourself to determine your strengths and weaknesses. Build yourself up where you are the weakest. The economy will rebound so prepare yourself, invest in yourself. This puts you in a stronger position than most.

Doing these five things will help you reap the benefits when the economy rebounds. But looking back at the interview which I conducted over a month ago, I realize that all the things that Hollander recommended are things we should be doing all the time, not just when the economy is slow. What are your thoughts? What are you doing to ride through this current economic environment?

Photo credit: Avil Beckford