Nicole Smith
Welcome to Take Control with Nicole. As business owners we experience first hand the fine line between our personal and business lives. During our conversations, we will look at simple hints and tips to create time, reduce overwhelm, and help you to navigate through your journey to where you want to be. If you’re looking for smarter ways to work, and create space and time freedom in your day, then you’re in the right place. All right, let’s go.

Nicole Smith
Hello, hello and welcome back for another episode of Take Control with Nicole. Today we have a special episode for you. And I am joined by the fabulous Sarina Lowe and we are excited to share with you something that is coming this September 2022. But first, I would love to introduce you to Sarina. With a keen passion for creating partnerships with purpose, Sarina has mastered the ability to link an organization’s partnership strategy with their business values and objectives. She loves training people in the art of shifting sponsorships into partnerships to deliver significant return on investment and objectives for her clients. She has over 13 years experience in sponsorship, creative marketing, major events, digital strategy and customer experience across the UK, EU, USA and Australia. Sarina is a partnership strategist and the founder of the Androsia Connection and on the side, she loves to connect with new people, she is a mentor to women in business, an endearing storyteller, a yoga and pilates lover and a soy cappuccino drinker. Well, hello, Sarina, welcome. I’m so excited to have you on the podcast again and to share with our fabulous humans what we have been working on over here.

Sarina Lowe
Ah, thanks for having me, Nicole, that was the best introduction. I absolutely loved it. I just need to record your voice and put it on all of my social channels.

Nicole Smith
Well, we’ll share the recording. You can take it. That’s the one thing I love when I have guests on here. And we do these introductions because it’s so exciting. Listening to what people have done in their past worlds and leading up to this moment, it’s just yeah, I love it.

Sarina Lowe
Really fun to hear it read back as well to me like, wow, I sound amazing, this is awesome.

Nicole Smith
Cuz you are amazing.

Sarina Lowe
So good.

Nicole Smith
Well, partnerships is something that you’re world is all about and something that we are doing at the moment, aren’t we, together. So exciting. Well, should we talk about that, shall we? +

Sarina Lowe
Yeah,

Nicole Smith
Should we jump straight in?

Sarina Lowe
So I mean, I love partnerships. You’ve obviously just said that in the introduction. And I think the joy of partnerships is when two or even sometimes more businesses come together to collaborate on something that really delivers value for their audience. And yes, as you said, Nicole, we have something really exciting coming up and it’s been so fun to work with you in a partnership capacity. It’s awesome.

Nicole Smith
It’s so, yeah, I’m the same. I’ve been really excited. And this idea sort of popped into my brain as a result of your recent masterclass, you came and hosted inside the members lounge and I thought we can make this a thing.

Sarina Lowe
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And it was so good, like hosting the masterclass inside the members lounge. It’s such a beautiful community, we’re all quite connected, and we catch up with each other on a weekly basis. And to be able to host a workshop there for that group to be able to deliver to them some of my strategies around really what does make marketing easier. It’s just so fun to see everyone’s face light up and everything. So when you came to move the idea of doing something together, like how awesome the opportunity to connect, to collaborate, and to start seeing people in real life again,

Nicole Smith
I know what let’s do it, let’s tell them. I can’t wait any longer.

Sarina Lowe
I’m holding my breath. Trying not to say too much, you know.

Nicole Smith
So if you haven’t picked up what we’re putting down yet, we’re so excited to introduce the first Take Action Workshop. This is going to be a series of in-person events. And our first one which I’m so excited to collaborate with you on is all about making marketing easy. So, let’s chat marketing. Let’s do it.

Sarina Lowe
Let’s do it. I love it, one of my favourite topics

Nicole Smith
Over to you, handball. Look at me using footy terms.

Sarina Lowe
Definitely. I know oh my god. That’s funny. That’s part of marketing, right. Yeah, so I think when we started talking about this, Nicole, it really evolved out of, recently I’ve been doing my own marketing plan. And I’ve been leaning on you quite heavily with all of your experience in ClickUp and how I can make things more efficient in my own business, I suppose talking marketing, talking strategy, design, all that sort of stuff. I get asked this a lot, both in my business life and my personal life, I actually just put in the members lounge community recently that I had two phone calls one after the other, one from a really good old friend, and then one from my dad. It’s like so I got this really cool business idea, like how can I make it happen? And of course, strategy, Sarina, dives straight into talking about, oh, you need to know this, you need to know this and dah dah dah dah. But really like the key points of strategy are around thinking about your audience, where they’re hanging out, what is your purpose of your business? What’s your why, like, really, you know, and I shared with the members lounge, leaning on what Simon Sinek says around or not just asking what you do, but why you actually do it? What’s the purpose of what you’re doing? What are you actually trying to sell, don’t just sell running shoes sell an active lifestyle, as Nike does, you know, and that’s really important. And they’re they’re really key areas to start with your strategy. And then really bringing all of that together to put it in a plan and explore creative ideas and Nicole, you know, me, I love getting creative. Like that is my sweet spot. I love talking to a business owner and going tell me all your things. Tell me all your strategy, tell me audience, tell me what you’re looking to achieve. And let’s get some creative ideas. Let’s get creative content ideas, and not just marketing in the sense of social media channels, but also looking outside of that, like, where’s your audience hanging out? What communities are they in what, you know, what blogs are they reading? Are they reading broadsheet? Are they reading the guardian? Like, where are they actually hanging out? Where can you talk to your audience and thinking about all those sorts of things to bring together your overarching marketing strategy?

Nicole Smith
And what podcasts are listening to? Right here today, listening to our podcast.

Sarina Lowe
All that stuff, you know,

Nicole Smith
I had a conversation yesterday, actually, there’s a local fabulous Play Centre that we frequent. And when they first opened, I connected up with these fabulous owners. And we just booked Sebbie’s birthday party there, coming up in September, we were talking about marketing and how her background is tech. Right? So she knows all the tech stuff. But words are not her strong points, she can do graphics, but words are not her strong point. Yeah. And so it’s halted her.

Sarina Lowe
Yeah, it does. It really does. Oh, my gosh, I have this conversation all the time, Nicole, like, it’s funny, I met, I always I love using this example, because I met this amazing lady who’s become very good friend of mine. Way back when I started my this iteration of my business in 2020. Actually, I met her in 2019. And you know, how we became friends is because we met at a yoga class, sorry, I missed that important part. And we became friends similar to what you were saying is that we started talking, she has an amazing business in Northcote here in Melbourne. And we started talking about ways that she can market her business, but really aligning it in with her business vision, her business mission, what she’s looking to achieve, how she wants to connect with her audience, how she wants to be seen. And we just started brainstorming all these amazing creative ideas of what she could do. And now two, three years later, we’re really good friends. And every time I’m in her shop, someone walks in and she goes, oh, this is Sarina. She’s such a marketing expert. And I’m like, really? Am I okay, cool. But it is I think that what she was finding challenging is that, like you said, about the lady of the place, she knows what her business goals are. But the creative ideas around how to share that with her audience was where the challenge really was, you know, it’s the stuff I love,

Nicole Smith
Sometimes is you do it like I know in the masterclass that you hosted for us and you were sharing some of your brainstorming ideas. I was like oh I’d never thought about that, or I don’t talk about my past Nicole world very much at all. Every moment in time is is a stepping stone to where we are now and so being able to share if that’s aligned with the way that your business is set up. People love stories.

Sarina Lowe
100%. And I think that that’s what we’re seeing in marketing, and particularly if we do focus on social media, but I think really most forms of marketing. We’re really seeing people want relationships, they want connections, they want storytelling. Storytelling enables that relationship and that connection development. And the other thing like we, you and I have talked about this, a lot of this offline is like the video the rise of video, right? You can’t run away from it. But the beauty with the rise of video is it gives you that opportunity to tell a story about who you are, where you’ve come from, again, as you said, if that aligns with what your business priorities are and what you’re trying to sell and how you’re trying to connect with your audience, but even if it’s not it might be about your product and why your product came to be. People want that background information. I think we’re seeing that more and more now, with the progression of marketing into more of a social media space, you know.

Nicole Smith
We’re talking to humans.

Sarina Lowe
Yeah, exactly, exactly and we’re connecting with humans. That’s what we all want you know.

Nicole Smith
And I think if you think about how individually we absorb information, and what we’re attracted to keep that in mind, when you’re looking at the strategy for your business, you know, and taking into consideration who your audience are, where they’re hanging out how they like to consume the information as well, can really start to flow in together with and create this plan

Sarina Lowe
100%. And that’s the thing when it comes to audience is all those little questions around thinking, where are they hanging out? How do they consume everything that you just touched on there, it’s so important, I think you and I have talked previously about you know, and it’s an age old thing in marketing, but it is really important to have an idea of your avatars, like have those three clients that you are talking to, and you don’t have to spend weeks to create it, you can literally brainstorm it in an hour, if you’ve been doing the pre work to know that because it allows you to create your marketing strategy tailored to them. There’s no point hanging out on Facebook, if your audience are on LinkedIn, you know, just a little example. But that’s the stuff that you learned from your avatar, and you learn how to talk to them and what they’re going to engage in,

Nicole Smith
And you won’t have so many why, why aren’t I get any clients? Why aren’t people buying my things? Because you’re not hanging out where they’re hanging out.

Sarina Lowe
Exactly. Or you’re not talking to them the way they need to be talked to like, the example that I’m going through at the moment is, how do I talk to corporate vs how do I talk to small business? Is it the same way? Is it different? No. For me, it is different. I use Instagram more for my small business audience and LinkedIn more for my corporate audience, you know. So it’s starting to identify those things, also, knowing that a marketing strategy, and plan is always evolving. But once you get that initial foundation created, it makes it so much easier to reiterate it over and over again, you know, and keep developing it, keep building on it, all that sort of stuff.

Nicole Smith
And you’re leading us perfectly. So what I’ve experienced working with my fabulous humans is they may have done all this work on the strategy, right? They know where their audience are, they’ve, they understand the purpose, they they’re starting to get comfortable with creating content out there. But what they’re finding is it’s stressful, and they’re not consistently doing it. And they have this plan of what they’d love to achieve, but it’s hard. And so that’s where building a system, and you know, whatever how you’re going to manage it, basically, where you’re going to manage it. If it’s in, ClickUp over here we love ClickUp, Asana, Trello, whatever your process is, really understanding that and make it so it’s easily repeatable. Because if it’s not easy, we’re more likely not going to fall into those old habits and end up feeling a little bit, you know, crappy about it, because we’re not achieving what we want to do.

Sarina Lowe
Yeah, yeah, I couldn’t agree with you more Nicole, in the sense that I see this all the time with my clients as well, you spend all this time doing the design coming up with the strategy coming up with all these amazing creative ideas. And then they go nowhere, because you don’t actually have a system. And you don’t actually have it sort of somewhere that exactly as you said, that’s easy to execute, easy to bring it all together, easy to repeat every month or every quarter, however often you decide to do it. And, you know, something we speak about as well is if you’ve got a team around you is it’s got to be easy for that team to be able to pick it up as well, you know, and that’s what having the system really helps with. And certainly I’ve seen that in my business recently.

Nicole Smith
It’s that missing step, that implementation phase that you know, so many people we sign up to courses, programmes, workshops, like one that we’re doing, you will be taking action and keep listening in you’ll what that’s all about a minute. But that implementation section is something that I see missed all the time and we just choir all the knowledge and still ended up in that same zone. So whatever you are doing in your business right now if it’s marketing if it’s you know, something new you’re working on, if you’ve invested all this time at the start creating the plan, let’s support you to execute the plan. Yeah, build that structure so that you’re supported. It’s easy you just floating down the you know the river with direction, on one of those lilos or

Sarina Lowe
What are they, the flamingos.

Nicole Smith
I remember the Wet and Wild on the Gold Coast, they had that lazy lagoon thing.

Sarina Lowe
Oh so good.

Nicole Smith
There’s always time for that. But we’ve gone intentional

Sarina Lowe
I think that that’s a big thing. You know, one of the challenging things about starting is you start and this came up in a conversation recently, you start with a white blank page. And sometimes starting with the white blank page is the hardest part or the most challenging part to get through. Because it’s like, okay, I’ve got this white blank page, now I need to create a process, I need to make this work for all the things that are going around in my head, I need to get that all out of my head. And I need to make this a process that I can easily execute. And I think that that’s what you and I really came to this idea of the workshop is helping people to get beyond the white blank page, right? And have that process that they can use on repeat all the time. And put the ease into it really, well Marketing Made Easy, right?

Nicole Smith
We have busy lives, right? Everything’s going on we’re, we were just talking before we press record about the life of an entrepreneur how, you know, our priorities do change. It could be we’ve discovered something new and we’ve realised that that thing we’ve been focusing on isn’t what we should be focusing on right now. So all of these ongoing systems and processes in our business that are key to growing and just maintaining and being that consistent voice in the world, we need to make them so easy that as we shift and move, that’s the constant, that foundation is there ready for us to easily come in and out of.

Sarina Lowe
100%. And that’s where you know, where I’m at, at the moment in my business. Is having just gone through that, looking at my marketing plan, starting with the white blank page and developing out working with you actually, to develop out how I can make that consistent, how I can make that a really easy process. And now, you know, we were just saying before we recorded this, I feel so excited about the fact that I have a system in place that brings me back to my focus every month or every week I check in on it every week, brings me back to my focus, but I also have it in my diary and in my business plan that at the end of the quarter in the last two weeks of the quarter I reassess. What marketing efforts have I done, what’s worked, what hasn’t worked? What do I want to do next quarter? Now, it took a little bit of time for me to set that up and this is part of the reason we’re putting this workshop together to help people be able to set that up in a much speedier way. But it means that now like you said we’re so busy I can do that in a few hours. I can literally sit down and go here’s all my ideas for this quarter, pop it into my system that’s created and then amazing away we go like how good is that?

Nicole Smith
I know it’s connecting it in. Right so you’ve got the strategy, you’ve created the space to let yourself be creative those explore those creative ideas those content pillars I did what the things all the things. But now it’s actually making it a thing, an actual thing that we’ll be able to create your captions, do your images, do you videos. As we said videos are big thing when I say big, but a thing at the moment.

Sarina Lowe
An exciting thing.

Nicole Smith
Actually, like if you are maybe finding video a little bit daunting right now, I have shared this story before but when I first started with stories on Instagram, you know it would take me three or four times to record it and press go. But that consistent practice of that and now it becomes easy because I just know that it’s going to be a thing. Whatever comes out comes out.

Sarina Lowe
Yeah. And it becomes part of your daily routine right that’s all part of it. I think something else we talked about as well is just being aware of yeah, how busy we are and putting that into your plan of what is realistic for you. That’s really important as well.

Nicole Smith
Yeah, like some people love to bulk create.

Sarina Lowe
Yes.

Nicole Smith
Some people don’t like that doesn’t work for them. Yeah, and more spontaneous. And I think that our fabulous human Kathy Rast and what and her journey what she’s going on, you know the daily posts on LinkedIn. If you’re not following Kathy, go over to LinkedIn and go and follow her Kathy Rast. You will love her posts..

Sarina Lowe
Thought provoking

Nicole Smith
Beautiful and like and it’s that, you know that daily post that she goes through her process, where I like to plan surprise, surprise. When I know crazy, right? So when things aren’t organised, it makes me feel ughh so it’s really interesting. There’s so many different amazing humans out there and being able to uniquely design the way that you and your processes run is just such a fabulous experience to go through.

Sarina Lowe
Yeah, and I think that you just nailed it Nicole, is that unique design is what brought us together to create this workshop to be able to work with all the attendees to create it. So that is unique to them and to their business and takes into account their system, their process, and really their ability to be able to create what they want to create you know, and give them some great ideas along the way as well.

Nicole Smith
Hello, fabulous humans just interrupting this episode to let you all know about an exciting new in person workshop series that is coming soon. Right now, you know you’re ready to move your business to the next level. You know marketing is a priority but have found that the lack of structure in this area creates the day to day business and feeling just that little bit clunky. Introducing the Take Action workshops with our first in a fabulous series Making Marketing Easy. Nicole Smith, which is me, your business operations specialist along with the fabulous Sarina Lowe, a specialist in marketing and partnerships are here to smooth out your marketing process so you can be excited to share with your communities easily from this point onwards. During our workshop, we will help you to design your marketing strategy. Explore creative content ideas, build clickup to align with your new marketing strategy and make it so easy to repeat each and every month. And you will walk away with the next 30 days populated and ready for you to connect with your communities. We know you know it’s possible. This is your time to enhance your systems and learn how to connect these with your fabulous business goals. We have designed this experience with you in mind as we know you are serious about taking the next step and discovering what can be possible. Does this sound like it’s made for you? How fabulous! Join us for this amazing in person event on Friday, 9th of September at the stunning spaces at Creative Cubes in Carlton. To secure your spot pop on over to theartisans.com.au\workshops and select Making Marketing Easy. We look forward to welcoming you into the room on the 9th of September.

Nicole Smith
Anything else you want to sort of touch on now today we are keeping this nice and short because I don’t want to give away too much of the gold. Is there anything else you want to share before we really tell them about all the things.

Sarina Lowe
I feel like there’s so many things that we could talk about, I think one of the things that did just come up for me then as well is around with the system that we’re creating, the whole idea is that you can have all the creative ideas around how you want to market yourself. And then by creating the system and having it all sitting there. As you said, Nicole, if you’re spontaneous, or if you’re a bulk creator, you can go in at a time that suits you. And you know, if it’s if we’re thinking social media, you can go in and go right, Wednesday afternoons as my social media day, I’ve got all the ideas already there, the idea part is taken out of it, you know, because we’ve already done that we’ve done that together. And then it’s just about creating the content, whether it’s video, whether it’s writing it out, all that sort of stuff. That’s something that I have found amazing in my business since I started putting this plan together and using the systems, using clickup, as you’ve, you know, held my hand with. And it’s just been it’s been amazing. Because I can literally sit in there. I’ve got half an hour, an hour, two hours this afternoon to go through it. And I just create. I don’t have to come up with the creative ideas anymore, cuz they’re all in there already. They’re all connected.

Nicole Smith
It’s the prompting, isn’t it? That prompted, you know today I’m going to talk about clickup, let’s say that, but in particular, I’m going to talk about a functionality of clickup that’s amazing. Great. Okay. One we’re going to share in a minute, whiteboards for instance, in this particular process. But then the thinking has gone.

Sarina Lowe
Yeah,

Nicole Smith
Broad scope of potential of talk about it. Yeah, yeah, I’m like, there it is, pick it off the shelf.

Sarina Lowe
Exactly. And it still allows flex. So if something comes in, that’s the whole point of this system and still allows that flexibility. If something does come in for that spontaneous marketing opportunity or post or, you know, I had created my marketing plan before we’d even come up with all of this workshop. So you know, there is flexing there to be able to bring that in. And that’s really important as well, but you can absolutely as you just said, it takes away this sitting in front of a computer going, oh my gosh, I need to figure out how I’m going to market my business today. And I’ve got two hours to do it in and it is it can be overwhelming, you know? And that’s the whole idea coming up with all the creative ideas, making marketing easy.

Nicole Smith
Exactly. So we are basically, we’re here to help you smooth out your marketing processes, so that you can be really excited about talking about your business and sharing your business and jumping on that video and putting up that reel or posting on LinkedIn, so that you can connect with communities. And it’s going to be really easy. Really, really easy,

Sarina Lowe
Really easy. Absolutely.

Nicole Smith
So exciting. Well, as you can hear from our conversation, we are a little bit excited.

Sarina Lowe
Just a little bit, a little bit about bringing our two loves of marketing and process design together.

Nicole Smith
I think both of us have experienced first hand how beneficial this can be, because marketing our businesses are in whatever format, right, but it’s important. Now, we are going to go into the different areas of that, but one of them is, you know, community and connecting in with community and, you know, being able to easily talk about your business and share that information is just I know when I when it connected in for me so much just celebrate.

Sarina Lowe
Yeah, absolutely. And I think one thing that you know, a lot of people that I know, I’ve been through this as a business owner, you really are selling your products and services, right? And it can be quite overwhelming to think about sales in the terms of cold sales, contacting people directly do you want to buy this, do you want to buy that, that’s where marketing comes in. And it’s this beautiful space where you can connect with your audience, you can tell them what you do, can put it out into the world. And the people that need to hear what you’re saying and want to work with you and need your services can then come in. Marketing and having an amazing marketing plan is a way to essentially put that effort into sales without it being that icky sales type of way of doing it. You know, so like you said, it’s connecting with community, it’s offering your products and services, it’s helping the people that you set out to help when you started your business right, at end of the day. So yeah,

Nicole Smith
Connection is the key word that always pops in with all of these things and every conversation and every piece of content that I put out. Connecting that back in. Well, let’s talk a little bit about the workshop.

Sarina Lowe
Yeah, sounds good.

Nicole Smith
Okay, so the plan is that in our workshop together, we will help you to design your marketing strategy. So looking at all those parts that Serena was just sharing before your audience, your purpose, where they’re hanging out, putting it into a plan, and also really helping you to start to explore some different creative content ideas. Also, during the session, we will help you to set up your clickup. Now this is specifically for clickup users this time around. If you are in another platform, you’re more than welcome to join us and we can help you to adapt it. But we will be focusing on clickup in this session. And you will walk away with a marketing folder in clickup with our social media planner, you’ll even have a podcast plan, if you’re in the future, you may be using that. And also being able to teach you some of the buttons to press so you can start to build that out for any other specific areas that are focusing in on marketing. You’re going to walk away as well having a process that’s developed so that you can repeat it each and every month or whatever frequency you decide, unique design, but also your next 30 days are going to be planned. And they’re going to be ready for you to jump on into bulk out that content, do your videos, creatives, and actually start to connect with the world?

Sarina Lowe
Yeah,

Nicole Smith
Have I missed anything?

Sarina Lowe
No, amazing I love it. Love it. Love it. And I think yeah, exactly that I think what we’ve talked about Nicole is wanting to be able to help people and make this unique to them so they can walk away with those awesome creative ideas and just get sharing with their community about what they do and how awesome they are and all the rest of it, you know,

Nicole Smith
And you get to share a whole day with us.

Sarina Lowe
Yeah. Exactly, and we’ll have some fun stuff in there. It’s a great space, we’ll have some food as well lot’s of coffees.

Nicole Smith
Lot’s of coffee. I love how we both went for coffee there

Sarina Lowe
Because we’re obviously in Melbourne. And as you said really that opportunity to connect with other other people in business. You know, I think that that’s one of the best things that comes out of these days is those connections that you make, the access you get to the different minds in the room. Yeah, it’s awesome. I love it. Love it, love it. I can’t wait to learn about all of the different businesses that we’ll be working with.

Nicole Smith
That’s right imagine a a beautiful room with a lovely table. All of us around with our laptops and just really ready to come in and take action in and make our marketing really nice and easy connection as we keep saying is key. So being able to in this space, learn about each other as well is you know, just so I love meeting, going, we went to a coworking the other day. Walking out with new connections. It’s just amazing.

Sarina Lowe
Yeah. And it’s just I don’t know, after two years of COVID it’s just so good to be able to do in-person events. How wonderful. I love it.

Nicole Smith
Well, all the finer details, so when is it? It is Friday, the 9th of September, in the beautiful space over there in Carlton, at Creative Cubes there’s a stunning boardroom meeting rooms/I think it’s called a Ritz

Sarina Lowe
The Ritz, yeah it’s great.

Nicole Smith
Yeah. So all that jazz, we’re not going to sing, well I may sing it. Yeah. So if you want to find all of the other details, pop on over to theartisans.com.au\workshops, and there’ll be a link in there that will take you to all the things and how you can secure your place.

Sarina Lowe
So good.

Nicole Smith
Easy, cool. Well, is there anything else? Or should we jump into our three questions?

Sarina Lowe
I think we’re ready to jump into the three questions, we’ve covered it all.

Nicole Smith
Yay, so, keeping on theme because we like a theme. We’re gonna focus these on marketing this time in particular, in your business, Sarina. So, with your marketing strategy and plan, what is the go-to app that creates ease in that process for you?

Sarina Lowe
Oh, my gosh, well, I feel like we’ve given it away with the app that we’re using in the workshop. So my go to app very much thanks to your help Nicole is clickup. I love it. I am yes, very obsessed with it. The more I learn about it, the more I just see it becoming, it already is part of my everyday life. But you know, even thinking about it today, I was in the car and I was like, oh partnerships, gosh, there’s so much stuff you could do with clickup with partnerships it’s so good. It’s a great collaboration tool. Yes, it’s my go-to I’ll stop, I could go on about it forever.

Nicole Smith
Another one that I find is really, really big part of my marketing efforts is Canva.

Sarina Lowe
Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Canva. And I think there’s a lot of love for Canva, particularly in our communities. But yeah, it’s unreal. And it just makes life so much easier for a small business owner. I’m actually working with my designer at the moment to create some templates in Canva. Just to get because I think you mentioned your client earlier is a designer, but not so strong on the words and the marketing. And that’s sometimes how I feel I’m really good on the marketing and the creative ideas, but like, the visualisation I’m like I’ll get my designer to do that, and then great, awesome. That’s like, you know, that’s her expertise. So yeah, love it.

Nicole Smith
But that’s it when you create those structures. Right. And that is a template is the structure and you just customise it.

Sarina Lowe
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And it takes out that time and effort. You know, like, maybe that’s yeah, somewhere where so much time is spent in, in getting creative, but the design side of things.

Nicole Smith
That’s exactly right. I love it. Perfect. ClickIup and Canva the double C’s amazing. Okay, online, paper or hybrid, marketing, planning lover, I’m just going on a journey trying to change it up.

Sarina Lowe
I am definitely a hybrid. But again, after working with you recently on this marketing plan, so I very much started on paper, I started with my post it notes up on the wall and you know, love writing it out and getting those creative ideas out. But recently, Nicole, you showed me the whiteboard feature on clickup. And I am in love, I absolutely love it. It’s so easy, straightforward to use. Because I’m already clickup, it means that everything from my marketing brainstorming, to my marketing list, to the calendar, everything is in the one space. So that’s what I really love about it. So yes, I am a hybrid. But always shifting more towards using online. I like being paperless where I can, but sometimes it’s nice to just write it down. But then I’ll do the double up and put it all in clickup.

Nicole Smith
It supports like, especially if you know as a business owner and one of your aims is to be able to work from anywhere, right? You pick your laptop up, or even if you forget your laptop, you can log into clickup and you’ve got your information there.

Sarina Lowe
Yeah. And that’s why I did it. Recent part of what pushed me to that is that I went and spent two weeks at my mum’s house in northern New South Wales. And I didn’t have my big wall behind me that I could do all my post it notes and you had just showed me the whiteboard. I was like actually, this is unreal. And then even as we’ve been collaborating on this workshop, we’ve been able to use that whiteboard to come up with all our ideas, all our marketing plan, everything and then we can pop it into the calendar which is great.

Nicole Smith
Yeah, exactly. And we will be spending a little bit of time inside the whiteboard clickup feature during our workshop as well which is so exciting. Well now that you have created and connected your marketing plan and process into clickup? How do you think that has, you know, I guess created a little bit more space for you? And what are you now doing with that space or planning to do with that?

Sarina Lowe
Yeah. So I think it’s really what we’ve touched on in throughout this conversation is that I think even though I’m a marketer, and marketing expert, and I have all these wonderful ideas of what to put out into the world, the actual putting out into the world has been the bit that I’ve stopped on, because I’ve got all these ideas, but I didn’t necessarily have the process down pat before and having worked with you now have that process. So I am so excited to start recording content, sharing my knowledge with my followers, with my audience, with my community, whichever word you want to use, and really starting to connect, coming back to that word, connecting with more people and show them what I love about marketing, show them what I love about partnerships, and how I can help because really, that’s why I started my business. So how fun, all this has created space for me to be able to do that?

Nicole Smith
I love I love love, love, love, love that. Because, you know, I’ve been in those situations as well, in my business where you feel a little bit stuck and stagnant. You can’t quite take that step over the line to the next phase. And then when you discover the thing, it does that for you.

Sarina Lowe
Yeah,

Nicole Smith
It’s just like a breath of fresh air. Yeah, it is. And it’s funny, isn’t it? Because we do it for other people time, like I said, a marketing specialist. I do it for businesses all the time, always working with clients, but then when it comes to doing it for yourself, it’s like, ah, but like, where’s the time? What do I do, and now having those systems in place, having that time to have been able to spend on the systems creates the space to do the doing, you know, that’s right. And I think on a note co-working session we were on on Friday, I had this conversation with a couple of people about in our business journeys, we come across a moment in time where something’s feeling a little bit clunky. And we can either sit in it for a little bit, sometimes we do and we allow ourselves to explore and press the buttons and it’s still clunky, it’s still stopping us moving to the next stage. So that’s when we bring somebody in or peoples in for a moment in time to help smooth things out to just make it look so easy. So that going forward. That’s not a stopping point, not clunky anymore. It’s beautiful and easy. And so that’s what our workshop ultimately is doing for you if you are sitting there and listening and going. Yes, yes, my marketing just feels I know it’s a thing. I know how important it is. And I’m putting all my pressure on myself. I’m just not getting anywhere. We’re here for you.

Sarina Lowe
Yep, come and join us. That’s exactly what we’re here for. So you can go out to your audience more with all the fun stuff that you have to share.

Nicole Smith
Exactly. Ah, yeah. Well, we are so excited. You can tell but let’s wrap this up because we’re making it easy and super efficient for people. Where can we find you?

Sarina Lowe
So if you just look for Sarina Lowe on all of the socials, mostly I hang out on LinkedIn and Instagram, then you’ll find me there.

Nicole Smith
Amazing. And if you are ready to join us on the 9th of September over in the Ritz Creative Cubes in Carlton, pop on over to theartisans.com.au\workshops, and select Making Marketing Easy. And we are so excited to welcome you into the room on that beautiful Friday day.

Sarina Lowe
Love it. Thanks for having me.

Nicole Smith
Fantastic. For everybody who’s listening out there. Have a wonderful rest of your day and enjoy creating space and time freedom bye now.

Nicole Smith
Well, there we go. Thank you so much for joining me today. It’s been such a pleasure having you on board. Have we connected on the socials yet? If not, please come on over say hi, I’m on all the platforms @theartisanssolutions. So I’d really look forward to seeing you over there. And if you enjoy today’s episode, don’t forget to tag me and I’d love it if you could leave a review. And of course share this with others so others can come and join us next time. All right, then everyone have a fabulous rest of the week. And until next time see you then