When Entrepreneurship Feels Like Your Only Choice with Lori Jo Vest Ep 97

Listen in to this candid chat about the rollercoaster ride of entrepreneurship on our latest podcast. This episode provides an abundance of insights, as Lori Jo of Popspeed Digital Marketingtakes us through the dance of partnership in both life and business.

We tackle head-on the reality that sometimes, life after an unexpected job loss isn't just about finding a new job—it's about crafting a new identity as a solopreneur, complete with the empowerment and the daunting challenge of health insurance navigation.

Imagine being part of an Accountability Lab group that gives you momentum. That's part of our shared story, where Lori Jo and I give you an insider look at how embracing a structured remote work setup can catapult personal and professional growth.

We also celebrate the courage it takes to swap the corporate safety net for the invigorating uncertainties of self-employment, and how passion projects can lead to the creation of a meaningful family legacy.

This episode doesn't skim over the nitty-gritty of entrepreneurship. We share the significance of networking and public speaking as tools not just for personal growth, but for broadening business horizons.

From library chats to LinkedIn strategies, we explore the necessity of pivoting and persistence. We're here to share our journey and encourage you to 'just keep swimming' through the unpredictable tides of self-employment.

Join us for this invigorating discussion and don't forget to connect on LinkedIn for more behind-the-scenes stories.

Connect with Lori Jo on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/lorijovest/

Watch the video interview on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98rPfJzqKmQ

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• LinkedIn consulting / coaching, personalized to your needs and focusing on your questions.
• Review of LinkedIn profile / company page to provide guidance / advice / recommendations

https://www.mellermarketing.com/powerhour 

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My name is Brenda Meller. I'm a LinkedIn coach, consultant, speaker, and author. My company is Meller Marketing and I help business professionals get a bigger slice of the LinkedIn pie.

Visit mellermarketing.com

Let's connect on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/brendameller
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Transcript

Brenda Meller: 0:48

Hey, good afternoon and welcome, and you might've been poking around my LinkedIn going. Wait a minute. I thought Brenda was gonna be live with Lori Jo Vest today at 12.05, it's 12.22 and they're just coming on now. What happened? If that sounds like you, my friend, you were correct, we were supposed to go live earlier. But, as sometimes happens, you get up in the morning and your car's making a funny sound and gosh, you gotta get it to the garage. And your car's making a funny sound and dash, you got to get it to the garage and it's in the middle of a winter snowstorm here in Michigan. It's a few minutes to get back to the house after and I was texting Lori Jo saying, hey, we're going to be a few minutes late, but we are on.

Brenda Meller: 1:24

So if you are watching this on LinkedIn, could you please do us a favor? Could you please drop us a comment below and let us know that the stream is live. It's picking up, lori Jo. I always do always my mic tap moment, because if we were at a in-person event, when we tap our microphone and we say, is this thing on, can people in the back hear us? So it lets us know that the live stream is picking up and right now we're going live on three networks on LinkedIn, on YouTube and we're testing this out on Instagram as well. So I'll be looking for your comments.

Brenda Meller: 1:55

Don't be shy. If you are watching, just say hi or hello, if you could. That lets us know that the live stream is picking up and that we are good to go. While we are waiting for your comments to come in, I want to take a moment and introduce you to my very dear friend, lori Jo Vest. And Lori Jo, you and I have known each other since gosh. It was in our BE days, our before entrepreneurship days, when we were both corporate employees and I actually worked with your company. You were a service provider for my company and thought the world of you then, and now we're on the other side of the track, so to speak. We're both solopreneurs and I'm delighted to see you. So how are you doing today?

Lori Jo Vest: 2:35

Good, I've actually. I think I met you when you were pregnant with your daughter, so that tells you how long it's been.

Brenda Meller: 2:42

So my daughter's 12 coming up on 13. So that's 13 plus years. Wow, that's amazing Good memory.

Lori Jo Vest: 2:49

It's been a while and you were a really cute pregnant person, so it's not hard to forget.

Brenda Meller: 2:54

Thank you for saying that. You always feel like you're really large, and especially for me, it was my second pregnancy and you start to show a little earlier and the clothes are a little more snug than you were. It's so sweet of you to remember, so glad to have you here. So, lord, I know a bit about you and your business, but why don't you take a minute and tell us, for those folks that are just getting to know you for the very first time today, a little bit about you and what the work is that you do today?

Lori Jo Vest: 3:20

I am the co-founder and partner at Popspeed Digital Marketing LLC, and we are a digital marketing shop that helps busy leaders create and execute effective digital marketing initiatives on social media with SEO content, blog articles, email marketing and website development and maintenance. So we have a team of four of us. My husband is my business partner, which that's a whole nother round of stories we could talk about there. Oh, it's yeah, but it's good, it's really good. We make it work. Yeah, that's awesome.

Brenda Meller: 4:00

I'm delighted to be here and I remember back to I want to say it was like 2018, if this sounds familiar, we were in a room at I want to say it was Northwood University, over on Big Beaver, and I think you had just started your business. I don't know if I was presenting or if it was an event. I think I was in the audience because we were sitting near each other that day and we were both like sharing notes on being self-employed and it was kind of like we're looking at. I never would have thought that we'd be over here and here we are and we're loving it.

Brenda Meller: 4:35

Laurie Jo, there might be people that are watching us today and I call this show enthusiastically self-employed, which I think is perfect, because our topic today is when entrepreneurship feels like your only choice, which there'll be a nice segue into that topic of being enthusiastically self-employed. But so tell us, there might be people that are watching that are like, yeah, maybe this is the only path for me. So what advice do you have and what would you like to share with us today?

Lori Jo Vest: 5:01

Big sigh. I have a really interesting origin story for our company, or at least I think it's interesting because I lived it. I was 54 years old. Here I am aging myself, but I think we should be proud of our years of experience on the planet, absolutely. And I was 54 years old and I got let go from my position as a social media copywriter for an ad agency and I was called into a room with about 12 other people Everybody was over 40, except for one guy that I think just went by on a skateboard and they pulled him in to make the age go down a little bit in the room.

Lori Jo Vest: 5:36

And here I am, 54 years old, unemployed, and I had seen it happen to a lot of people in the video industry when I used to be in video and people in their 50s that then decide to try to find a job, 50s that then decide to try to find a job, and I thought, 54 in the ad and marketing business, I don't know how easy it's going to be to find that job. So I decided to make the jump. Honestly, it was something I thought I would never do. I always thought you need benefits, you need health insurance, you need health insurance is one of those things that's very difficult as an entrepreneur. I think if you're not married to someone who has a job, the health insurance quandary can stop you.

Lori Jo Vest: 6:19

And I decided at 54, I'm like, if I'm going to do it, I'm going to do it now. And I jumped and I put a call out on LinkedIn, our favorite social media platform, brenda. Linkedin, our favorite social media platform, brenda, and it is really my favorite platform. And I just said I'm hanging out my shingle. Guys, I'm going to do this. And I already had a couple of clients that I picked up as a freelancer and one of my former co-workers called me and said we need your help over at ArtVan, a private equity firm has just bought them and they need strategy, they need this, they need that, and I bounced right into some pretty good revenue to get us started.

Lori Jo Vest: 7:00

And I would say, brenda, one of the most important aspects of my initial ability to actually support our family with our entrepreneurial income because my husband doesn't have a regular job is that I was able to do that because of all the connected, positive relationships I'd created in my career. Every single person you meet is a potential client, referral, business friend, regular friend and if you continually prioritize that positive relationship it will pay off in the long run. Cause here I was, 54 years old, been in sales and communications and advertising since I was in my twenties and it worked. And now I can't say it's been easy. It was really hard. About eight months after I started the company I got cancer.

Lori Jo Vest: 7:51

I got breast cancer and it was, and I was able to work through it because I was freelance at home. It was expensive because most of us entrepreneurs have to have really high deductibles to be able to afford our health insurance, but it really knocked me off my feet and, at the same time, having your mortality right in your face is life-changing.

Brenda Meller: 8:17

And if you're fortunate.

Lori Jo Vest: 8:18

yeah, if you're fortunate like me, I came out of it. It's five years out. I got kicked out of the oncology program at Henry Ford Health. Thank you, Got kicked out five years later.

Brenda Meller: 8:29

That's a good thing. Yeah, that's a good program to get kicked out of right.

Lori Jo Vest: 8:33

It really is, and I had so much support from clients and from my husband and my family and just kept moving. And then here we go Pandemic, right yeah.

Brenda Meller: 8:43

Like another one, Like you survive cancer, you move on. You're like okay, here we are.

Lori Jo Vest: 8:56

And then you get hit with this pandemic and we're all in the same place, Right? And let's not forget the part that my son was in was going to school at University of Michigan.

Lori Jo Vest: 9:00

And I was on the hook for all of his living expenses which it's not typical college living expenses in Ann Arbor and we made it through. We just kept going. So I guess before we logged on here, I was thinking okay, what would I tell other people that were in my shoes, where you just you don't feel like you have a choice, you don't know where to go. It's hard, it's a huge emotional lift to try to do it yourself if you never have. And I wrote a little list here because that's what I do, and the biggest part of it was finding and creating a community for myself that would support me. That was around success, accountability, entrepreneurship, and I did that with a couple of different communities, and one of them was the accountability lab, which I need to thank you for. Accountability lab, yeah.

Brenda Meller: 9:53

You heard about that from me.

Lori Jo Vest: 9:54

From you. I saw you and you gave it immediate credibility, because as soon as I saw your name on that list to be on the actual event that it was introduced on, you had already been doing it and you were on that and I thought, oh, that's credibility. If Brenda's doing it, then I want to see what it is.

Brenda Meller: 10:10

I don't think. I knew that I remember. All'll admit, laurie Jo, as I'm getting older, sometimes I forget things and I'm like I remembered it at the time but then I forgot that I remembered it.

Lori Jo Vest: 10:18

I know how that works.

Brenda Meller: 10:19

Now was your group. We were meeting like 6.30 to7 am. Was yours an early group too? Or when were you guys meeting?

Lori Jo Vest: 10:26

We're a 7.07 and we're still going. Oh, wow, yeah, I think this morning we decided I'd been on it for three years. It was October, after about six months in to the pandemic when I started. And what that is? If you aren't familiar, it's called Accountability Lab. Jan Griffiths started it. She's local to Detroit as well and she basically runs a group that you pop on at 7007, bedhead, nightgown, runny mascara, whatever you got.

Lori Jo Vest: 10:58

You show up at 7.07 and you make a commitment personal, professional, and then a mindset for the day, and I decided I was going to be on that all the time and I've been on it a lot. Like I'd say I have the, the. I have the best attendance record of anybody besides Jan, but it's a group of people that are a little bit crazy to get up and set accountability. You come back the next day and you tell people what you did or didn't do. If you didn't do it, why didn't you do it? And basically it got me off the sofa. I took one of our spare bedrooms it was just store and junk cleaned it all out, set up a beautiful desk, painted my walls and my colors that I love, that light me up, and created this really cool space and since then we have now hired. We have two full-time employees, myself and my husband. We just became an S-Corp last year. This year we put everybody on payroll and we're growing. I thought I was going to be a solopreneur.

Brenda Meller: 11:55

So it's you, your husband plus two employees, so there's four total people working for your company. That's awesome, yeah two full timers.

Lori Jo Vest: 12:02

We actually do a Hot Take Tuesday LinkedIn Live now at 10 am on Tuesdays. So look up Pop Speed Digital Marketing LLC. We do like a hot take on whatever's being talked about. This week we talked about work from home, because that's such a thing. Having done the entrepreneur venture for six years, I would never trade it for the world Never.

Lori Jo Vest: 12:22

I absolutely am very enthusiastically unemployed, and what's the cool thing about it too, brenda, is being able to run your organization the way you want to, with your values, your mission. We do all kinds of crazy things at Pop Speed. My employees love us because we're remote. We do slow Fridays where we don't set any unnecessary meetings, try to avoid any client meetings. So Friday's slow, you can catch up, get your work done. We huddle every day, monday through Thursday, at 9.30, not 9 o'clock, 9.30. Get in, get your email, get your copy, then we'll talk, and it's just been a lot of fun and my passion.

Lori Jo Vest: 13:02

I'm 60 now and seriously I'm looking around going. How did I get here? Because I am full bore ahead and have big goals. We want to open a speed shop, eventually called Pop Speed, and Pop Speed is basically the guy that makes your car go too fast. So we decided we'd open the agency and then we'll get that going for a bit, sell it to the employees or stay, I don't know, and open a speed shop as a legacy with my son which is basically putting in tuning cars so that they go faster and make fun noise and stuff like that. So, yeah, I got big goals and if you would have known when you were 54 and all this was happening.

Brenda Meller: 13:36

I think back to and there's probably people on the show that can relate to this I think back to those moments when you're in that room and you have no idea and it's scary because you're going from being a corporate employee and getting a paycheck and having a benefits to what's next. And I like to call the category people were referring to here experience rich.

Brenda Meller: 13:57

So if you're age 40 plus, 50 plus, 60 plus. The further up you go in your experience level, the more daunting it can seem to go into working for yourself. But Laurie Jo is here today talking to us about when entrepreneurship feels like your only choice and I want to back up into that for a second. So you were starting to say, gosh, I don't know if I can find another agency job. How quickly did you come to that conclusion? And did you ever think about, as a corporate employee, like starting a side hustle to have it as a safety net? Or was it really only in response to the situation you were in?

Lori Jo Vest: 14:34

I had a side hustle, oh, probably about 15 years earlier. I decided I always have passion projects. I find if you feel, if you're feeling down, you're depressed, you're not, you're just feeling blah.

Lori Jo Vest: 14:49

Yeah, A lot of times you really yeah, dig into your passions, and I used to. I had a passion for customer service and really creating good relationships with customers and I was the person at the company I worked for where. Give me the angry customer, give them to me. I want them, bring them along, let me see what we can do, how we can make friends and solve their problem. So I wrote a book with a coauthor, marilyn Suttle. She is still doing the customer service training work. She's great and we wrote a book together and we were doing customer service training. Then I got into social media and when I lost my position at the agency I had already had a couple of social media clients. I knew it might be coming and one of the first things I did believe it or not, was do a couple speaking engagements at the Troy Public Library and people showed up and I got work out of that because people that are interested.

Brenda Meller: 15:40

Yeah. So let's go in, let's go into that a little bit, because I did the same thing and I feel like sometimes when I hear patterns of things that we all did and it's actually very strategic to do that, and it's actually very strategic to do that. So I'm going to ask on behalf of our audience, who's maybe wondering did you get paid for doing those and what were the topics? And maybe also, how did you get into the library.

Lori Jo Vest: 16:02

We had already gotten into the library through customer service. Most of the time libraries have people who manage their programs. And no, I didn't get paid. It was a new business venture. I was very comfortable using it as a promotional tool and not having to pay for it was good and I actually.

Lori Jo Vest: 16:23

It forced me to look at what I knew that I could teach and go out there and say, not only I can tell you how I can tell you what to do, but I can't tell you how to do it. So I would tell them what to do. And then they would ask me how to do it. And I said that's what I do, can I help you? And it did give me the opportunity to promote myself a little bit more outside of just here I am. Here's what I'm doing. I could say I'm speaking at the library and that got me a couple of gigs and it's it's good for you personally to do it and it's also good to promote for your confidence right, so you cause you get up and you're now like without the corporate safety net underneath you and I remember being those days too Like you start to doubt yourself Am I as good as I thought I was?

Brenda Meller: 17:11

Am I do? I know these things, Am I not? And then you get in front of a group of people and they're raising their hand and they're asking questions and you're it's like you're playing tennis, you're firing back, you're answering the questions, you're helping in them and they're appreciative, so they think it helps. Because you do take a hit to your confidence when you are asked to leave an organization, not by choice and then you're out on your own and you're like can I do this, Can I not?

Lori Jo Vest: 17:36

Yep. And so not only does it do that, it gives you the confidence, but it just forces you to decide who you are and what you're doing in order to promote something like that. And I also looked at it as a service. And one of the things that I also use to circumvent the blahs or the entrepreneurial blues which inevitably happen is to do service for someone else. The entrepreneurial blues which inevitably happen is to do service for someone else. Do something free, for a nonprofit. It feeds your soul and I think it creates energy. That energy has to go somewhere. When you give energy out, you get something back. Yes, I'm a woo-woo person. I believe in energy, and when you're in a service mindset, it changes how people think about you and you will meet people who will come back and say, hey, I know somebody who needs your service and you'll get referrals from that. So sounds self-serving, but it's a little bit of both.

Brenda Meller: 18:27

Totally. And you and I are like we're vibing right now and like, if people are watching, they're like that's what Brenda does. Yes, that's what I totally do. I'm a big believer that we should always be paying it forward and helping other people. And I'm not. I'm, I'm, we're self-employed. We have to have money coming in. We can't spend all of our time giving away our time, because I would joke with people and I say eventually I have to make money, otherwise I'm going to have to go find a job and then I won't be able to do this free stuff anymore. So you have to know when to say when.

Brenda Meller: 18:54

But I think it does build a little bit of that social media karma. You're paying it forward, You're helping others in society who can benefit from your work. Sometimes, like speaking for free at the library, it could lead to paid clients. Other times you're just helping other people out and that's okay. And I think, probably for you, you went in thinking I'm just doing this for the experience and the exposure, really not having any intention, a hope to get business, probably, but not like I'm only doing this to get business. Is that fair to say?

Lori Jo Vest: 19:23

Yeah, and I wouldn't really think, in the kind of business I did, that I would get anything out of it besides help some small business owners and help solidify what I was capable of. So that was part of it is solidifying my own internal dialogue about what I did. Yeah, that's very good.

Brenda Meller: 19:39

So I know you said you had the tips that you had jotted down. Did we get through your list? I want to make sure we got through yours. I have some other questions for you and then we'll go to audience Q&A a little bit, but is there anything else you want to just share with us? Sorry?

Lori Jo Vest: 19:51

Jo, I want to acknowledge I did a program through the US Small Business Association and what I discovered is a lot of us think I just started this business. I don't really know what I'm doing. Guess what? Nobody really knows what they're doing. I would be everybody's making it up as they go along, so don't be afraid to do that.

Lori Jo Vest: 20:10

I was in the USSBA Thrive program and there were entrepreneurs that were a lot bigger than we were. We just barely got over the threshold to get into the program and all I felt what I found out was companies that were 10 times bigger than ours. Their CEOs worried about the exact same things. I am. They're learning the same things.

Lori Jo Vest: 20:28

There's things that I don't know, that they know and things that I know that even somebody with a company 10 times bigger than mine doesn't know. So it's don't be intimidated. Also, the other thing is don't be intimidated to ask for help, because a lot of people I have a couple people, john Reed is one of them. I don't know if John. He's local in Metro Detroit. He's an attorney, has a law firm that does marketing for attorneys and every once in a while I just call him and say John, because he's five years ahead of me, did you ever do this? And he'll go sure and he'll tell me all the stories about how he did it, why he did it, and just give me good advice. So if you're an entrepreneur just getting started, other entrepreneurs will be available and willing to help you. It's kind of a little family thing, don't you think, brenda? Have you found that to be true?

Brenda Meller: 21:14

I'm trying to tag John Reed right now, is it?

Lori Jo Vest: 21:16

R-E-D. Yeah, yeah, yeah, what's his last name r-e-d.

Brenda Meller: 21:22

I'm going to try to give him a shout out in here. Uh, big thinker, consultant, coach, content creator, podcaster does that sound like the right john reed?

Lori Jo Vest: 21:28

that's him. That's john reed. Okay, I'm going to tag him in here, so your question yeah, he's amazing sorry I was half listening.

Brenda Meller: 21:34

Could you ask that question again? I'll be honest, I always tell people, but make mistakes on these shows. I'm like I was half listening. Laurie Jane.

Lori Jo Vest: 21:41

Yeah, his agency is called Rain BDM and he is just. He's just one of those people that I found I could call and ask him questions and to me, I think a lot of entrepreneurs are like that If you're behind, if you're if somebody's starting a digital marketing shop and they want to talk to me about how they did, how to do it, I'm there for it. So what I had asked earlier was don't you feel like there's a lot of entrepreneurs that are like that, that it's community and people like to help each other?

Brenda Meller: 22:09

I found I think you might have said even this like one big family. I feel like it is. I feel, in some aspects, you're like a sister to me, like we've yeah, we've been through things together, we've seen things. And there's people in my network that I will reach out to and say I have a question about X topic, which you're an expert in, and they'll reach back out to me and they'll say I have a question about Y topic, something that I'm an expert in, or even things like.

Brenda Meller: 22:32

I'm going to go back to the example of the accountability lab. I was talking about that just because I had a great experience, not because Jan asked me to promote it or I'm not an affiliate, or it was just more. I had a great experience with it. And someone might reach out to you and say hey, I heard you were talking about this accountability lab. Can you tell me more about that? But yeah, I think, going back to one of your earlier points, finding and creating a supportive community I'm a big believer that if you're going to be successful as a solopreneur, as an entrepreneur, as a small business, you've got to surround yourself with supporters, so you get from them. But I think you also need to give, and I think that reciprocal element is for both of us very similar right.

Lori Jo Vest: 23:15

Yeah, absolutely. And there are days when people somebody gets on the call and they are just having a hard time and everybody circles around and helps them, and that frees you to, when you're having a hard time, to ask for help. I can say, oh God, you your own masterminds, you can join existing groups. But I really encourage anybody who's considering an entrepreneurial journey, whether willingly or unwillingly, to find that community and become the enthusiastically unemployed people that you should be, that you're capable of becoming.

Brenda Meller: 23:57

I used to use the phrase enthusiastically unemployable and people are like wait, you're not working. I'm like no, enthusiastic unemployable, I don't want to work for anyone else, because I love working for myself. So then I renamed it because that was coming up. It was confusing Unemployable sounds like unemployment, so people are getting confused. So now I call it enthusiastically self-employed and they're like oh, okay, now I get it.

Brenda Meller: 24:22

But yeah, I think if you're going to be successful as self-employed, you definitely have to surround yourself with other people and be open. But I think a really important point you made too was don't be afraid to reach out and ask for help, and you have to know when you've reached the limit of what you know and you need somebody else to help to guide you through that process. Like for me in the beginning accounting and finances I'm like I don't know how to manage the money for my business and I had heard so many horror stories about people not making it past the five-year mark because they couldn't be profitable. So I reached out to a couple of people I knew and I said, like how did you make it happen? And someone recommended to me this book it's called Profit First, mike Michalowicz.

Brenda Meller: 25:02

I'm reading it right now Are you and I still to this day use his system In the book. You might think this is crazy, but if you're applying it you won't, laurie Jo. But in the book he says basically you use an envelope system for your business checking. So I found a local bank, pnc, that would allow me to set up multiple accounts. I originally had seven accounts and I'm now using five accounts for my business. So basically money flows into one and then you split it out into others based on taxes and expenses and profits. And it taught me like now I'm looking at, what I actually have is only what I have in my owner's comp account. It's not like what I have across my business. Any thoughts on that for you?

Lori Jo Vest: 25:42

It's huge. The money part of it is tough for a lot of us. I am definitely a creative type and a lot of us have our like emotional issues around money. That's me too, where I'm like, oh, I don't want to deal with that. Oh, people who have a lot of money are yicky, they're not good people. And I had to really work through a lot of my money blocks emotionally and the fact that I could grow a company my goal is 1.6 million that I could grow a company that big and I didn't know that I could. And now I know I can because I've gotten the support around me. I've got a great bookkeeper, I've got a great accountant. I'm reading Profit First because I had a financial coach and part of it too.

Lori Jo Vest: 26:27

The last thing I had on my list, brenda, was just keep going. When it gets hard, keep going. It's not always hard, it will be hard, but just keep going. When the money stuff gets hard, just keep going, get help and don't give up because it is easy. I think one of the reasons a lot of businesses close is because it's not easy. It's really hard. Sometimes it feels like a lot of, especially once you get employees. I've got like I gotta feed the baby birds. We always have to feed the baby birds. Every two weeks is payroll.

Brenda Meller: 27:00

Yeah, once they're on the payroll. Because I'm more in a, I have interns that I hire and that help me out and I've decided I don't want to go the agency route. So I want to make sure that my business is manageable with me plus an intern and maybe I outsource more in the future. But even to my intern I'm like I can't not pay my intern. I got to save some money to pay her along the way, but I love that thought of just keep going. It reminds me a little of was it Finding Nemo or Finding Dory? One of those.

Lori Jo Vest: 27:24

Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming.

Brenda Meller: 27:32

Totally. What I'd like to do, laurie Jo, is change gears, and I want to invite our audience, if you have any comments or questions for Laurie Jo, or as we're talking about the topic today and I'm going to pull it back up on screen again for all of you. We're talking today about when entrepreneurship feels like your only choice. Maybe you're on this side of it with Lori Jo and I right now. Maybe you are self-employed and you made it over the break waves, so to speak. You're on the other side of that ocean now, where you're are self-employed. Maybe you're still on the beach and you're wondering can you make it over? Can you get over to that side of it? Wherever you're at in the process? If you have any reflections you'd like to share with us or if you'd like to join in the conversation, please do.

Brenda Meller: 28:07

And I do see we had a couple comments coming in on here, and first of all, agal, who said hey, having issues with the event, will there be a recording available? Yes, absolutely, and this actually is live streamed on YouTube. If you want to pop over to YouTube, you can get. Sometimes, if you're having some issues with LinkedIn, you can go over to YouTube and get a better experience. But yes, there'll be a playback afterwards. If you want to message me or just post in the event comments, like you just did, I will send you the YouTube stream and sell it there. And another comment coming in from Annette hey, annette, how are you doing? Annette says she's found that shifting her business to something that excites me has made promoting my business so much easier. And, laurie, I'm curious for you, now it's been, has it been seven years for you? Six years?

Lori Jo Vest: 28:54

How long has it been? Six years in February, yeah, so we made it past that five-year mark.

Brenda Meller: 28:58

We made it past right, so has your business shifted or evolved? What are you doing today? Is it the same as what you were doing in the beginning, when you first launched, or does it change a little over time?

Lori Jo Vest: 29:10

It's pretty much the same as it was and it's based on the fact that I'm a writer, my husband is a website designer, I am passionately addicted to social media designer. I am passionately addicted to social media and social media marketing, so we're primarily focused on social media as a company and I'm very passionate about it, so it makes it anything that has me talking to a lot of people. I love connecting and communicating with audiences, so that's my passion and that's where our focus is because of that. But it's evolved in processes and things like that, but not in services.

Brenda Meller: 29:43

It's a core business and I'm going to share a slightly different perspective. When I first started, I didn't want to put all my eggs into the LinkedIn basket and that might seem crazy because you know I'm known for LinkedIn. Now it's what I do, is what I specialize in. But in the beginning I was like I don't want to put everything on LinkedIn. So in the beginning I was doing social media management, I was doing marketing strategy and I had LinkedIn as, like a specialized offering and I was doing that for a while and I realized social media management. I was pretty much doing the social postings on behalf of my clients and I got to the point, laurie Jo, where it was like time to make the donuts Remember that commercial with Dunkin' Donuts Like time to create the social media postings, and I could do it with my eyes closed, but I wasn't getting away from it. So at the beginning of 2020, I decided this was like pre-pandemic. I'm like this is the year for LinkedIn. I'm doing social media management.

Brenda Meller: 30:30

I'm just going to double down on LinkedIn, and that was in January. And then the pandemic was like knocking on our door at that point and things happened. But I did decide to shift a bit of what I was doing for my business into a single focus on LinkedIn. Now, coming into 2024, I'm still focused on LinkedIn, but I'm also starting to dip my toe back into marketing. So I've launched a program that's called Marketing with Meller as an extension of my business. But I just am sharing that with you because there's a couple different paths that you can take. One is do what you're doing and keep getting better and better at it and refine your processes, like Laurie Jo is doing and mine is was. You might start with a menu of services and then change that a bit as time goes on. Anything else you wanted to add to that, laurie Jo?

Lori Jo Vest: 31:14

No, I think I will tell you. I guess I did change my side hustle from customer service to social media marketing before we started the company, because it just wasn't selling, it just wasn't working and I felt like we were beating a dead horse. So if you're in a venture, you've created a venture and it's not working it's not selling, people are not responding the first thing you need to do when you find yourself riding a dead horse is dismount. So if it's not working, don't be afraid to move on and do something new that lights you up, Because sometimes you'll try something that just doesn't generate any revenue and you need to know when to stop too.

Brenda Meller: 31:58

So I think yeah that's a really good point. I almost want to put the comment on the screen, but I'm like riding a dead horse. I'm getting a really weird visual.

Lori Jo Vest: 32:06

When you find yourself riding a dead horse.

Brenda Meller: 32:08

If you're riding a dead horse, get off of it. I think the point here is you have to know when to say when. Sometimes I feel like I'll launch a program and I'm getting a lot of questions and commentary and people reaching out with interest. They're not signing up and paying for it yet, and then other times it's. You announce it and you get a bunch of I like to call them pity likes right, Because there are people that are liking but they're not commenting on it. There's nobody reaching out to you, there's nobody emailing you about it, and I'm like they're just they're pitying me, they're liking it. They're not pitying me, but they're liking it because they like me, but they're not liking it to indicate they're interested in the program. And the challenge sometimes is figuring out when is there a viability with a product or a service? When is it worth staying on that horse Because it's not dead? He was just tired and he needed some water and a break. When is the horse really dead and you need to go and find another?

Lori Jo Vest: 32:59

Yeah, I think there's a couple of things If you've been doing it, for what I've found and I've seen this in a lot of different types of businesses is anything really worth doing takes two years. So I'll give you an example from somebody that I know out in the business world who was introducing a brand new company from Germany to the US. Two years. She's getting all kinds of client calls and things now, but she was ready to give it up. When I wrote our customer service book with my partner, it took us two years. Anything worth doing well, you really got to give it enough time, but past that two-year mark it's really not years. Anything worth doing well, you really got to give it enough time, but past that two-year mark it's really not working and it's not paying your bills. You may want to just back away slowly.

Brenda Meller: 33:42

Yeah, really good point. Thanks for sharing that. So Compler Media, our friend Christopher Johnson, is in the audience watching us on YouTube right now and he shares that. A key he's found is staying curious and leaning into it, and I would probably agree with that. What are your thoughts on that, laura Jo?

Lori Jo Vest: 33:59

Oh, absolutely. And find things that you're passionate about. Because my son is 25 and he just said Mom, aren't you going to get sick of working pretty soon? And I was like why, what else am I going to do? Watch TV. Find something you're passionate about and get into it. Dig in and figure out where you can make a difference and also get paid.

Brenda Meller: 34:19

Absolutely, and I'll leave with this comment, bill McLean. Hey, bill, thanks so much for watching today. Bill says while entrepreneurship may feel like the only choice, not everyone is an entrepreneur. Lori Jo, what are your thoughts on that?

Lori Jo Vest: 34:32

Oh, are you talking about my husband? My husband is a web developer and he's absolutely amazing. He's so good. He started an entrepreneurial venture about oh like I think 13 years before we started this company together and he wasn't a sales guy and he's an introvert and, yes, he did get some business. He got business. He kept repeatedly getting business because he kept on going, kept plugging along, but it wasn't until we joined up and I have an extensive sales background. Let's add that to it and the personality extroversion that us working together was a lot better than him working alone. So you may need to partner up with someone. If entrepreneurship and sales and the extroversion part of it isn't for you, consider partnering with somebody else who loves to do the same thing and look around and see where you can partner with someone instead of doing it all by yourself.

Brenda Meller: 35:27

Yeah, that's a really good point. Yeah, it definitely is not for the faint of heart, working for yourself, being self-employed, and some people do need that support. So maybe it's not an entrepreneurial venture, maybe it's a small business or a partnership or whatnot. So I want to be respectful of your time, laurie Jo, and I'm going to start to move us to close, and first thing I want to do is on screen. I've just shared your LinkedIn profile. So, for those individuals who are watching or interested in connecting with you, are you open to those connections and, if so, any instructions we should be aware of?

Lori Jo Vest: 35:59

Oh, absolutely not. I'm an open, 100% open networker on LinkedIn, so just connect with me there. I know Brenda would advise you to leave me a note in the connection to recommend to let me know who you are so that I can connect with you then and know that you're not going to spam me immediately after I accept. That would be a thumbs down, but feel free to reach out to me. I really do love to connect with people on LinkedIn. I've made so many friends and I'm very open to meeting new people and learning new things.

Brenda Meller: 36:30

That's awesome. And as I'm pulling Laurie Jo's profile up on screen, one thing I want to point out to you is that she does have creator mode turned on, and I know that because if I look really closely I'm going to highlight it on screen I can see she's got the talks about hashtags on her profile. Now what that means for the audience that are watching or listening in on the podcast later is if you visit her profile and you want to connect with her, default button it's going to be follow instead of connect. So if you do want to connect with her, you can, but you have to click on the more button and underneath the more button there'll be an option that will either say personalized invite or connect. That's where you get that option to add a note.

Brenda Meller: 37:06

So you could just say hey, I saw you on the podcast with Brenda Miller. She'll know where you came from there, and I also wanted to show folks your website. And as I'm doing that, laurie Jo, tell us a little bit about if there's someone who's watching or listening and is interested in doing business with you. Tell us a bit about those services that you offer.

Lori Jo Vest: 37:28

We like to say we're extremely collaborative and we know there are a lot of people out there that have ideas that they want to implement on social. They really want to have a great digital marketing presence, but they don't have the manpower to ideate, create and execute. So that's who we are. We work directly with leaders. We have some CEO types that we do LinkedIn for. We also have several larger organizations. We have a client in Brussels that promotes the benefits of steel to automotive engineers.

Lori Jo Vest: 38:04

So we have a wide range of experiences from nonprofits to automotive-related industries and we like to come in, do the social, do your blog, maintain your website and send out your monthly e-news or email marketing that you'd like to send to your people. But we also do individual pieces and parts. Some people we just do social for, some people we just write articles for. So we have a wide range of clients and we're very enthusiastic. I would tell everybody we're always the most enthusiastic people in the room. So when we work with you, you get 100% of our attention, and we've got some really great writers on our team that are staff, so there's four of us. We have room on the client roster. If you're interested, get a hold of me through LinkedIn or through the contact form on our website, and I would love to tell you more about us.

Brenda Meller: 38:56

So that's great, and actually I just learned a little bit more about the services that you're offering too, and I'm thinking in the top of my head. I've had some clients in the past that have been looking for website design and website management. Now that I know that you do that in conjunction with some of the other marketing and social media services.

Brenda Meller: 39:12

I'm going to be sending some referrals your way as well, so that's good to know and good to hear. So, lori Jo, this has been such a great conversation, and we were talking today about when entrepreneurship feels like your only choice. Do you have any final comments for our audience on the topic before we wrap?

Lori Jo Vest: 39:28

Having made the jump, made the leap and learned so many crazy, crazy important lessons, I highly recommend, if you're in your fifties and you get, let go become a consultant, learn how to create your own job, because there really we think there's stability in corporate America. There really isn't. So there's no more stability in corporate America than there is in entrepreneurship, so you might as well do it yourself.

Brenda Meller: 39:53

So I love it, and actually I feel like when you're self-employed too and you are your own boss, you will always get the best performance reviews. You will never fire yourself. You will never get to a point in your business where you're like we're going to have to let you go.

Lori Jo Vest: 40:09

Yeah, coffee's always good.

Brenda Meller: 40:11

Coffee's always good. You have a snowstorm in the middle of the day, you can make a snowman.

Lori Jo Vest: 40:16

Yeah, exactly.

Brenda Meller: 40:17

But, all kidding aside, I just want to say thank you. It was great hearing a little bit more of your backstory and the inspiration is so real and, I think, needed for many people who might be facing a layoff, and we are here to let you know it is possible to get on the other side, to be enthusiastic, to be self-employed, and I just want to thank you, laurie Jo, for sharing your story and for being with us here today.

Lori Jo Vest: 40:40

Thank you, Brenda, it was a pleasure always.

Brenda Meller: 40:43

Great and for our audience. I want to thank all of you for watching and, by the way, laurie Jo and I, we do not get performance reviews anymore. It's one of the things I miss the least about corporate. But also we love to hear feedback and if you enjoyed the discussion, do us a favor. Maybe you could just leave a quick comment before you leave the chat today. Let us know if you found this conversation valuable. Or, even better, you could one up that and look at the comment I have on screen. If you enjoyed the discussion, we'd love it If you could share this video.

Brenda Meller: 41:10

As soon as the video is done playing here on LinkedIn, you'll see a little share button at the bottom. Click on that share and then share it as a LinkedIn post. This is a really great technique. If you've not yet posted on LinkedIn this week, this month or even this year, it's a really great opportunity for you to build some presence and visibility with LinkedIn. So please consider sharing that forward. Tell people something that you learned when you do share that forward. We went a little bit over, so Laurie Jo might have had a client appointment she had to pop off on. So I just want to thank all of you for watching. I was just saying Laurie, jo, you might have had a client appointment to pop off on, because we were. I was like have us done by one? And then I realized it's 1.05. I don't know what happened. I think like let's have us done by one, and then I realized it's 1.05.

Lori Jo Vest: 41:54

I don't know what happened. I think I just had a little hiccup in my technology. So sorry about that.

Brenda Meller: 41:59

That's okay. I always tell people we don't have mistakes. We have learning experiences, sometimes our tech hiccups, and the good thing is when we are enthusiastically self-employed we know how to roll the punches and we just go with it. Oh yeah, oh yeah, just keep on going, brush it off, keep on swimming, right.

Lori Jo Vest: 42:19

That's right.

Brenda Meller: 42:19

All right, awesome. So thank you all so much for watching again. Please consider sharing it forward. Tag Lori, jo and I when you do, and we will comment back and thank you for that. With that said, keep in mind I'm here every Tuesday at 12 or 5 pm Eastern time and I look forward to seeing you all on LinkedIn. Stay safe and.