Listen to the full episode on Apple, Spotify, and Amazon.

Okay, today’s topic is all about where to invest in your business when you’re several years in. 

Let me give a peek into my own life and business. 

The Cheetah Company is my third business. I was a photographer for about a decade and enjoyed a referral-steady business, loved creating and photographing for intimate weddings, families, and creative photoshoots just for creativity’s sake. I continued that business while I influenced and acted as a brand partner for several brands. I started TCC while still working within the previous two businesses and I felt solid in the usual areas we all need a little TLC. 

Alongside my business, I spent time in and leading teams in startups, a marketing agency, higher education managing million dollar budgets, hospitality, events, retail, and sales. I’ve been a busy bee and working since I was 15. 

In turn, when I started The Cheetah Company…

I felt comfortable building a service suite through research, development, ideation, and production.

I felt comfortable with customer service, leadership, marketing, sales, and PR and I felt comfortable teaching a team how to deepen their efforts within those departments.

My husband has been on my team since day one and supported me with technology and financial support, alongside website development and funnel automations.

You’re essentially in operations until you hire a COO and even then you’ll be stepping back into operations regularly as a CEO. 

I bring this episode to you not from a place of research and ChatGPTing it up, but elbow grease, grit, and lived experience. When you’re comfortable with the ways you run your businesses it can be easy to look around and say “what’s next?”

You might not even see your blindspots because things are going pretty well. 

That’s where this perspective shifting conversation comes in.

Invest in Marketing Because It’s Always Evolving

This is just the truth. Even though we teach timeless practices and principles, there are still trends that we watch constantly to see if they’re going to become a near expectation and essentially a timeless practice and principle that is sought out within someone’s marketing campaigns and maintenance marketing.

An example of this is ManyChat funnels. These are becoming near synchronous and synonymous with call-to-actions because so many folks began using ManyChat, promoting ManyChat, and teaching ManyChat funnels as a way to engage social media followers into exclusive conversation beyond social media – usually into an email funnel of sorts or even into a secondary space for support like sending a niche list of podcast episodes in reference to one topic.

Jenna Kutcher has been mass promoting ManyChat and has shared how it’s helped her bring in millions of dollars, while supporting thousands and thousands of followers.

Will ManyChat become a timeless addition to marketing tech stacks? Perhaps.

We’re noticing some internet chatter about how annoying the funnels are for customers in a conscious-consumer world that has an interest in hyper-personalization, so, we shall see.

Working alongside a marketing mentor just hits different because we keep in touch with timeless practices, trends, and must-integrations to continue to help your business thrive.

This is what we’re doing within The Harmonious Business Mini-Mind which is currently enrolling and won’t be open again until 2025 once this cohort is full. HBMM is a place where you can re-evaluate, reposition, and renegotiate your true value in the marketplace to what your products, services, and energy are truly worth.

If you’ve been steadily in the same place revenue wise, with similar clientele, and have noticed that you’re ready to expand into new offerings, more potent marketing, less heavy sales efforts, a space to grow in your leadership skills and PR skills… all while designing a lifestyle that matches your true vision then HBMM is for you. We have the application and brochure in the shownotes for you. We’re closing applications in early March and start at the end of March for 9 months of support to birth the evolved version of your life and business. 

Invest in Sales Because Your Skills Always Need Sharpening

Similarly I could easily say the same about sales as I have for marketing, but with a few kickers…

Sales skills in business are the skills that outlast beyond anything else. If you can walk into a physical or digital room, elevator pitch yourself, work out questions and objections, and serve and sell to your ideal clients and customers on the spot… then you’re able to outlast marketing trends, social media platform shifts and changes, services and products performing well or needing tweaks.

If you have capital, you’re able to hire out the pieces of a business that bring joy to someone else to do and joy to you to delegate. Think operations, administration in general, finances (while still keeping your skills sharpened so you can step in and review from a high and low level), and the like. 

I teach sales psychology and sales psychology has been a main point that has allowed for us to constantly move the business forward even if the algorithms weren’t algorithm-ing. It’s the key to our success because I know how to speak in ways that support a person with a distinct buyer type to listen, engage, and have their questions answered along the way in our messaging, sales collateral, or sales calls. 

Sales experts are able to see your blindspots, the spaces where you’re undercharging and over-producing (which does go hand-in-hand with an advisor that’s comfortable with service suite tweaking and updating), and where you’d be able to insert upsells, downsells, and cross-sell opportunities.

Invest in Leadership Because Your Company Culture is Everything

The final piece to this puzzle is leadership.

Our team commenting on our company culture is my most favorite and yet most humbling compliment. I truly blush when they comment on the culture because I would lead teams of 2 to 30 and hear complaints constantly about the company culture and I was only able to do so much throughout my career as a leader and manager. 

At The Cheetah Company, I’m able to craft the culture, mold it and shape it alongside our team, our clients, our community, and our partnerships. If there’s something that’s not sitting well, we can easily discuss it. If there’s room for growth and improvement, we can discuss it. If there’s a need for an energetic shift and change, we can discuss it.

I hired and continue to hire people that are smart, savvy, and well spoken to shift this company forward again and again, but I created the atmosphere where they feel safe, comfortable, and ready to explore their ideas, their own edges of creativity, and their safety.

I didn’t always feel safe in my past positions to say that I wasn’t feeling well and I needed space to revive. At TCC, that’s a top priority. Work is secondary to health and I know our team… we’re all evolved hustlers that know when to push, when to pull, and when to pause fully. 

With that, your leadership skills are a constant space and place to evaluate and elevate. Leadership skills aren’t just delegation, decision-making, and problem solving… they’re self-awareness, conflict management, active listening, creativity, team building, reliability, flexibility, and empathy. 

I can’t wait to work with you in The Harmonious Business Mini-Mind to sharpen the skills we’ve talked about here. If you’re ready for your most harmonious year yet, now is the time to inquire, apply, and receive your acceptance email into the mini-mind. We start at the end of March and again, we’re not opening for enrollment again until 2025. 

Resources:

Listen to the full episode on Apple, Spotify, and Amazon.

Bio:

Ashleigh Henry has been in marketing, sales, and leadership positions for the last decade and it was exhilarating for Ashleigh to climb the retail, corporate, higher education, and start-up ladder holding positions such as Marketing Strategist, Copywriter, Social Media Strategist, Manager, Editor, Co-Editor…until it wasn’t. Alongside her degree, Ashleigh decided to bring all of her experience into the freelancing world until it became clear that she didn’t just want to pay the bills – she wanted to create a company that was foundationally built on cheetah print, legacy-minded marketing, and sexy sales structures that could stand the test of trend and time. The Cheetah Company, founded by Ashleigh, does this for female entrepreneurs through their education, coaching, and consulting services. Learn more about Ashleigh here.