Written by: Kate Greunke, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
You might be familiar with the term “glow up” when it comes to personal appearance and lifestyle, but have you ever applied that same concept to your business? Our businesses get any leftover energy we have after working with clients. Our businesses take the brunt of our experiments, and after a while, things tend to start looking a little haphazard and neglected.
My 7-step glow-up routine for your business involves a few one-time actions and several ongoing habits that will further your business and make it more attractive to the right clients and partners.
1. Stop showing up like a freelancer
Are you still using a gmail.com account for your business email address? It’s time to get a professional email address that matches your website domain. Small details like this speak to your credibility. You aren’t a freelancer any more. You are a passionate and serious business owner who is going beyond getting new clients and delving into the CEO mindset that will scale your business, and CEOs have professional email addresses.
While you’re at it, check your website and client portals for any freemium tools that still bear a “powered by” logo. When you run your business using free accounts, you are telling your clients that you don’t take your business seriously enough to fully invest in it.
If you want people to trust your business enough to pay you, you have to trust and invest in your business first. Paying to remove those things is just the cost of doing business. If you need to use a specific tool or platform, make sure you can remove that platform’s branding, even if that means upgrading from a free account.
2. Show your face – all over the place
A brand photoshoot might feel intimidating, but it’s pretty simple. It will require a few days of preparation, a day of photography, and will result in 1-3 years’ worth of images to use in your business. While a standalone headshot is somewhat useful, these photos don’t do much to elaborate on your services or create connections with potential clients who visit your website, read your emails, or follow you on social media.
To present yourself and your business strategically, you’ll need to work with a brand photographer who can capture you and your team and show you all “in action.” (Imagine how hard this is for someone like me who runs a virtual agency and doesn’t have much action to show… This is when I rely on the photographer to capture the essence of ME, because that’s really what people are looking for, anyway.)
Regardless of your business type and regardless of how new your business is, professional photos will make you look like you know what you’re doing…even if you feel unsure.”
3. Brand your business based on your customer
If you’re wondering whether you should rebrand your business, ask yourself these qualifying questions:
Do you currently have an established color palette, font pairing, and multiple versions of your logo for various use-cases?
If you do currently have all of this, does it still accurately represent your ideal client?
Has it been a decade since your current brand was created or refreshed?
The funny thing about being in business for more than a few years is that you get to know your own brand on a deeper, more developed level as the years proceed. It isn’t wise to rebrand frequently or “just because” the latest branding trend looks so attractive, but it is wise to assess whether your visual presentation matches what your business is doing and the clients you want to attract.
4. Delete the business tasks that aren’t serving you
Deleting your tasks? Sounds amazing! When I find myself in a tizzy, unable to get everything done for my business’s internal needs, I’ve learned to take a breather and assess WHY I need to do all those things.
Everything I’m struggling to get done is then dumped into one of these three categories:
Stuff that has to be done that only I, personally, can do — consulting with clients, podcasting, providing creative and practical direction for my team, coordinating with my CFO and board of advisors, and other CEO “stuff”
Stuff that has to be done, but not necessarily by me — answering support emails, preparing projects, implementing client feedback, creating content
Stuff that doesn’t have to be done at all but is still being done (and taking up a lot of time) due to old habits or misguided thinking — such as posting on social media or guest speaking at webinars
Once I’ve sorted out what I need to do, what my team needs to do, and what can be deleted from the list entirely, I am able to be far more productive. And so will you — even if you don’t have a team.
5. Avoid entrepreneurial slow lanes and traffic circles.
Sometimes, things take a long time in business and that’s just the nature of it, such as a big client project, blogging, or learning how to manage your revenue. However, most drawn out situations in business can be improved by using a better system and adjusting your process.
Here are a few lags your business might be facing:
You want to blog but you keep spinning your wheels when you try to write a post, therefore nothing gets published.
You don’t really understand how your business revenue is being spent and therefore you aren’t sure how much you can pay yourself or when you can afford to hire someone to help you — because managing your money feels weird and a little scary.
You offer a service that is time-intensive and you never seem to allow for enough time, or the project often goes overtime due to client delays.
If any of these lags sound familiar to you, you probably already know what you need to do: Outsource or hire some help. That hired help will either do the work for you or simply help you create a system so that you can accomplish more in less time with a higher rate of accuracy.
6. Quit trying to compete based on pricing
Losing a project or client to your lower-priced competitor can feel like a punch in the gut. Once you’ve caught your breath, consider your next steps:
You could reduce your prices to “remain competitive” and continue playing this game, which always ends with all parties making as little money as possible.
Or, you could just change the rules of the game.
What if your ideal client was so specific and your services were so attuned to their needs that your competitors simply couldn’t compete? Businesses and brands who create a niche, or a speciality, can charge whatever they want as long as the perceived value of their offer exceeds the price they set. Did you catch that – you eliminate your competition and charge whatever you want. Sounds a little crazy, doesn’t it? It’s only crazy because it works.
The companies who market themselves based on being “affordable” are also generalized. They have no specific ideal client. They are just throwing offers into the wind, announcing “I’m cheap” into the megaphone of their brand, and thus attracting the cheapskates who hire them, not because they are good, but because they are good “enough”…and mostly because they are cheap.
Do you want your business to be known for being cheap? There will always be a market for that, think Walmart. But there is also a huge market for Chanel and Gucci. You get to decide where you want to land.
Using my own business as an example, you know as well as I do that marketing agencies are a dime a dozen. So are podcasts.
So…why do people listen to my podcast? And why are so many of you actively working with my agency? Based on what you have told me, you do it because you like the fact that my messaging and our services are tailored to your specific needs as an entrepreneur in the home industry.
Your clients feel the same way about you. They want you to be so focused on them that your competitors simply don’t matter anymore. Do I have competitors? Sure, technically, but it’s difficult to name even one of them. In fact, my agency often “shares” clients with my so-called competitors, with both of us working with the client simultaneously, because my agency has a unique way of offering a specific service…even though that competitor also offers an overlapping service.
Your key takeaway: Make your services centered on your ideal client, and make the client experience centered on tailoring those services to the way that your client needs to receive the service. Do this, and you’ll find that your competitors start stumbling by the wayside.
7. Respect your own prices, policies, and procedures
If you’ve ever sent an estimate to a client and felt pressured to justify your pricing, it’s too late. Your pricing should be justified before the client approaches you, because the perceived value of what you offer should outweigh the price you put on it.
You don’t need to explain why your hourly rate is $150. Doing so will make you appear unconfident. Your rate is your rate, and that is that. If you believe that your pricing is non-negotiable, so will your client.
Stop giving allowances — or making excuses — for clients who were aware of your mutual deadlines or appointments and disregarded them. If they don’t show up, they need to reschedule based on your normal availability. If they don’t provide the information or feedback you have clearly communicated that you need by a reasonable and specific date that you shared with them, their project gets put on hold until your schedule allows for it, or they incur additional fees to rush the project.
If a client feels they are an exception to your well-honed process by which you would conduct their project, push back firmly and professionally. They are not the exception. There are no exceptions.
Your processes are in place for a reason, and while you can be a little flexible, you can’t be so flexible that your own system falls apart. That would create havoc for your team and their project while also distracting you from the other aspects of your business.
Showing people that you respect your own pricing, timeline, and process will teach them to respect those things, too, and holding yourself and your clients accountable will encourage everyone to rise to the occasion.
The best part about the “glow up” mindset is that it rarely requires big changes. As we all know, it’s these small details that make the overall design of our businesses destined for success and help us thrive as entrepreneurs.
You aren’t an employee anymore. And you aren’t a freelancer. Put on your CEO pants and let’s go.
Need more advice like this?
Listen to the The Kate Show Podcast anywhere you get your podcasts.
Kate Greunke, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Kate Greunke founded Socialite in 2014 as a virtual agency of professional marketing specialists exclusively for the home industry. Kate hosts a marketing podcast, The Kate Show, which is ranked in the top 1.5% of all podcasts globally and available on all podcasting apps. In 2021, Kate was named 20 Under 40 by Window Fashion Vision Magazine. She currently resides in Wisconsin with her husband and two children while managing an international team and extensive client roster.
