How Organic Marketing Was The Secret Weapon To Growing A 7-Figure Business with Ceata Lash, founder PuffCuff
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"Diversify your marketing portfolio because you're not in control. Own as much data as you can. Period!" - Ceata Lash
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What you'll find in this traction briefing:
How to build your community of customers and engage with them.
How to build a company with social media marketing and how to find the right balance between paid promotion and organic growth.
How to own 100% of a company that's successfully scaling after nine years that only raised $200k.
What would you do with $120 Million - Here are some ways not to spend it!
Founder: Ceata Lash| Company: PuffCuff| Location: Marietta, Georgia
Where was she before PuffCuff?
Ceata considers herself an "independent hustler". She's a graphic designer, who's worked as a freelancer off and on in her career.
Problem
How do you grow and scale a multimillion dollar beauty business with just an idea?
As Ceata transitioned her hair from chemically straightened to all-natural, she identified a gap. There were no products in the market that could hold her natural hair without causing pain and/or damage.
That realization began her PuffCuff journey. With little information to rely on, she networked and collaborated with her peers to engineer her dream product and successfully brought it to market.
Your Target Market Might Not Be Your Actual Market
Although Puffcuff was originally created to help women of color hold their hair without breakage and pain, she quickly realized that there was a need from a different audience.
Lesson - Test out your product to see where it fits best - you might just realize there is a greater need than you anticipated.
Own Your Data
It seems like, with every new year, there is a new regulation when it comes to privacy and data. These changes have made marketing on social platforms not only more expensive but so much more difficult to convert your target market.
Lesson - Own your data and diversify your marketing portfolio! Learn more here.
All Money Is Not Good Money
Ceata has been able to bootstrap her company with little to no funding. Along the way, she's realized that all money is not good money. With each new funding comes added pressure and an increased risk of losing ownership of your company.
Lesson - Even as you accept investment, have a strategy in place of how you are going to pay it back.
Where women business owners get stuck.
"Women are creating jobs for themselves in their businesses." The biggest barrier for women entrepreneurs is revenue. Kara finds that women are struggling from Moving from creating a job for themselves to small business owner to scale. Kara breaks this down into 3 phases: Phase One: Making yourself a job where you don’t have employees. Phase Two: Putting together a small team and starting to put processes in place. Phase Three: Scale. Getting into the millions with multiple employees. Learn how you can get unstuck to get on a path to scale.
Pick Your Specific Box
"One of the things that helped us go from $250k to we’re looking towards $10M now is that we have chosen a very specific box." Y’all have heard me say it before and I’m got’ say it again, and again, and…. Niche is SEXY! Early-stage founders get stuck in the clouds by failing to get focused on one segement that creates iniital momentum early on that leads you to the big vision. One way to conquer this is by getting focused on what we call your "Hell Yes" customer. You don’t need to convince them of your value and they’re willing to pay a premium for what you offer. Speaking to everyone means you're solving for no one. Learn how to refine your box to grow.
Your #1 Job as CEO - Finding Your $10k Hour
"My job as CEO is to set strategy and keep cash in the bank. There are 4 types of hours: You have a $10, $100, $1000, and $10,000 hour. It’s your responsibility as the owner of the business to free yourself up for the $10,000 hour. If I’m spending my time on a $10 task, I’m literally stealing $9,990 from my business" Figure out your $10k hour here.
Here's Your Weekly Tea
The $120M Failure.
Fast failed as quickly as its name. Despite raising $120M, the company only generated $600,000 last year.
Here’s where the founders & funders f**ked up:
Pressure: Pushing companies to grow faster than they’re able to in order to achieve a mythical unicorn title vs. building a solid business.
Reactivity: The pressure VC’s put on founders to "beat competitors" creates an internal pressure cooker where founders are reacting instead of building out the core business model. Stripe didn't force Fast to do anything. Stripe is in its own league, which Fast was nowhere near despite the capital raised. Fast could have benefited from taking a page from the Netflix playbook - allow other players trying to come for ya neck tire themselves out while you stay focused and keep delivering value. #RIPBlockBuster
Stupid Spending: Startups start spending money on stupid acquisition strategies to saturate the market vs fulfilling customer needs, spend all their coins, then need more capital but have no progress to show for.
Hot Take: Charismatic storytelling doesn't build good businesses. We gotta stop treating startups as saviors of the universe wrapped up in speeches from "charismatic" founder's. Startups will NOT save the world. Startups can solve problems we face in the world. The moment we shift from problem-solving to savior-ism, we've already failed.
How to Get & Stay Focused
"People are trying to solve problems they know nothing about." Some of the BEST companies are started by people solving problems that A. They’ve experienced and found the solution or B. They have industry-specific expertise. Kara mentions that in order to make this happen you need to first figure out what you are the best to solve for. More importantly, she mentions that it does NOT need to be sexy. So many founders are chasing trends instead of solutions. Some of the most lucrative businesses don’t mention AI, VR, Crypto, or whatever the hell is the buzzword today. They tap into a feeling by telling you what solution they’ll solve for their customer. Get the playbook on how to get and stay focused here.
What if You’re a Solo Entrepreneur or Have a Small Team?
"I will sacrifice almost anything to sell. I will not show up for meetings. I will ditch one-on-ones. The highest priority and the highest best use of my time is selling" Das it. That’s Kara’s advice. However, she acknowledges that this is super hard for women because we’re natural nurturers. We want to touch every employee, be at every game for the kids, etc and she says there’s no shame in that. However, Kara mentions that you have to decide whether you want to have a job or build an empire. Neither is wrong but it is a choice. Figure out what choice is best for you here.
Scale Major Keys - Pricing & Confidence.
"Sir, I think we’re too sophisticated for you at this point." This is exactly what Kara said to a lead who tried to nickel and dime her on price. Major BVE (big vagina energy) It’s key to nail your pricing and have confidence that what you’re offering is worthy AF. Once you get pricing down - scale happens in retention. Therefore, figuring out what in your business can generate recurring revenue is critical to creating your flywheel. Learn how to nail pricing & be confident in asking for what you deserve.
Prioritizing Your Time
"It takes me just as long to close a project-based client at $20k vs. a $120k retainer client." You’ll hear a lot about sales but what I love about Kara’s breakdown is she gives you the run-through of how she utilizes her time. From who she hires, to what sacrifices she makes, to her content planning frameworks. For example, they closed a $25,000/mo deal just from 1 LinkedIn post that she worked with a ghostwriter on while batching content. Learn how you can better prioritize your time.
Where You Can Support Kara?
If you're a company using Hubspot and want to level up your leads and sales funnel, connect with Kara.
TRACTION TOOLS: How to get it done...
Here are some tools that will help you get to your $10,000 hour, get pricing right, and prioritize your time<3
Get the Breakdown on the math behind getting to your $10k hour here.
Have you mastered the 80/20 rule? If not, get the guide on high leverage time management.
Maybe you never learned pricing? That's ok! We hear this often with founders. It's never too late to get started. Check it out Startup Pricing 101.
Check out the 7 different pricing strategies startups use here
Ready to develop your pricing hypothesis? Learn how to map it out here.
How Pricing Drives 20-30% of Top Line Growth: Get Sh!t Done Growth Ally & Founder of Pricing Tool, Accrue lays it out below.
TRACTION TOOLS: How to get it done...
Here are some tools that will help non-profits scale<3
If you understand your customers, it's the ONLY marketing you'll need.
The BEST companies have mastered Organic Marketing and you can too here.
Paid ads will NEVER be as powerful as person-to-person connection. Master guerilla marketing.
Your customers can help with Customer Acquisition. Find out how here.
Learn how to turn your customers into a marketing machine here.
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