Joy Abdullah: Don’t Sell, Build Relationships

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Joy Abdullah. Thanks for jumping on learning from others. How are you? Good Damon. Pleasure to be on learning from others. Thank you for having me. Yeah, it’s good to finally chat kind of virtually face to face you and I have engaged on LinkedIn for probably a couple of years now, at least a year. That’s right.

That’s right. As we were talking before we hit the record button, I like to ask the guests two questions in question. Number one is what’s your background? What are you good at? And what are we going to learn from you today? What I’m good at is marketing. Now, when I say I’m good at marketing, there are including yourself more than a, I don’t know, a couple of million people around the globe who are really, really great at it.

So the difference that I bring is that I flipped marketing to make it the business strategy, not work separately on what’s the business plan and the business financials, and then come to marketing. I’ve done that for nine to 21 years now across nine industries. So that’s my four date. I flipped marketing.

I built it from inside out. I hope to share some tips on how this marketing inside out process works. That’s what I’m doing now in my own startup. That’s that’s me at this point in time. Cool. So I’ve got a couple directions. I want to take that, but first have to ask the question. Number two, what do you not so good at?

Ah, I’m glad you asked that was I love marketing and I’m very good at that. I suck when it comes to writing and the graphics. So I’m still, I have to say I’ve been a prolific writer during the time. You and I know each other, which is about a couple of years, but I always feel that, you know, when I read other people and I especially read you.

I always feel this tinge in my heart and track. I wish I could write it like that. So writing is one, one area. Uh, I love the tone that you bring them and you, you bring a very, very lighthearted yet extra and especially your Forbes council. Write-ups, you know, you bring a very light-hearted yet extremely.

Relevant, insightful points. I love the way you make your points. And that’s what I mean, crafting the writing. I wish I could be more busy. The second part is graphics. I mean, I do a lot of my own work myself. So over the last two years, um, I’ve gone. I’ve gotten pretty good at video in terms of editing. But I think I’m at an intermediate stage.

I’ve got miles to go. So these are the two that I’m really, really bad at. And, um, these are the areas that I’m focusing to be better because a lot of my work involves content marketing. So working with people who are good writers is helping. Isn’t it crazy how video editing takes two to three times longer than just actually recording the video itself.

Oh, my God. You tell me, tell me about it. You know what I mean? Recording a video is, uh, is a blast and I’ll, I’ll share, I’ll share this for our viewers and people who think that jumping onto video is hard. Just jump onto the video and record. But before you click that red dot, please check what’s behind, behind you.

I mean, I’ve had so many goof ups, uh, I’ve actually recorded mine. Yep. And normally I do my recording on a, on a Sunday. I make about an hour’s time and I’ll record four or five episodes together. And all of a sudden, when I’m sitting down for editing a week later, I realized dread I had a, I have a bras stand, a sort of a hack rack.

Stand behind me over here. And it’ll always creep into the frame if I am not correct on premise. So yeah. Uh, recording, not a problem, but please always take care of what’s behind you. Uh, my favorite is this blank wall because I use both sides to do my titling and my points for those. Who’ve seen my videos on LinkedIn or YouTube.

Um, so yeah, be careful of that. Absolutely an agreement sitting down to edit, no matter what app or what facility you’re using, even a bed facility. Jeez. I mean, if you’re a nitpicky and I am, I don’t like, uh, the auto subtitles because they really goof it up at times. Uh, it just stick. You have to, you have to have patience and you have to put in that little detail before we get into kind of your area of expertise.

Let me ask you one more thing about writing. So as you say, you want to get better at it. What kind of process are you going through or what experience of, uh, have you gone through where you’re learning, how to improve that skill set? Because it’s a very unique skillset. True. Um, I’m lucky my partner in, uh, our startup three-minute marketing.

Is a journalist by profession and he’s a, he’s an extremely Nick Banjul shout out to Nick is a great writer. Uh, he writes, he runs a couple of stuff on LinkedIn himself, including a journey is doing called hashtag 500 lunches. So I take a, I take Nick’s help and sort of trying to understand how to crystallize the message first.

That’s the first stage, get, get to the main essence of the message. Second. What’s the engagement headline that you can create then how can you weave that into your message and how can you leave the reader with a summary or an insight or a key point that would be valuable. These are literally the three broad steps that I follow, uh, from Nick’s, uh, help and using this it’s really helped me.

I’ve in the last couple of months, I’ve actually stopped writing articles. I was writing articles a lot. Purposely so that my short posts, the LinkedIn posts and my Twitter posts, uh, I get a little better owner. Those are the three steps they’ve helped me crystallize. The key message you want to say, drop into how you can have a headline on that message, which catches the attention of the reader, your target audience.

You’re not talking to everybody out there. Um, and I don’t talk about, sorry, cats and dogs and birds and fishers. I talk about marketing and marketing strategy with all due respect. Yeah. I mean, everybody has their likes and dislikes. Um, and when you bought those two, then summit off, make sure when you ride your summation, you summit off with a very.

Actionable or educated insight or a point that helps the reader take something away because that’s the recall value. Somebody will click the follow button or somebody would engage with you based on that last bit. So those are my three steps, Damon. Yeah. All right. So now you’ve got this, this new startup three minute marketing.

What let’s, let’s talk about your background that got you to the position and. The knowledge to be able to have a company like this. What, what were your previous jobs and skills and walk us through that journey. I started my corporate career in well, 1986, summer of 1986. And I started in advertising. I came out on B school in India and I joined a global ad agency called J Walter Thompson.

And from 1986, all the way through till 2007, 19 odd years. I spent in PR advertising on the strategic planning side, on the suit side, which is a compliant management, uh, handling a host of accounts across India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Southeast Asia Oscion region. And I went up the ladder.

I mean, as I, as the years went by, I headed up agency offices, managed teams. That’s where the core. Learning about marketing and strategic planning actually came from, so in 2007, I stopped, I felt I had something in me and I wanted to go solo. And that was my first venture. Um, just when you started SEO national, surprisingly when in 2000.

It was an eight. I went into, uh, well doing something solo. I became a freelance consultant in a very niche industry, which is for the global Muslim community. Um, I wasn’t militia then, but I relocated back to UK. I’m originally British from UK. I’ve spent 13 years in UK and about 24 years in India across the sub-continent and the last, uh, 19, 20 years now in militia, I’m settled.

My wife is Malaysian. My kids are militia. So I went back to UK to look at that, that global Muslim community and work in that community. And I realized after about a year that going solo, wasn’t a great idea. I had a lot of, uh, yeah, I had a, I had a tremendous amount of learning. I had a family, I had kids and of course those.

Reprioritized what I wanted to do. So I came back, I came back to militia. I took up a job and I went into, uh, the central bank of Malaysia into one of their subsidiary units, which is a higher education unit. And I spent seven years, which is where I finished in 2018. So I went in, uh, marketing, created the corporate planning unit.

Created business development. Part of executive education did all of that over seven years. And when my contract ran out, I said, okay, now this is the best time I really, really want to do something. And I came out and I sat down and I said, what is it that we can do? So with a dear friend, first, who you also know and are connected, uh, shout out to Joseph Sahib, we pulled together a small little stock art up in sales and marketing strategy.

And to promote that we created a video blog called hashtag create the edge, which by God’s grace is still doing very good. We’ve just completed the second season a couple of weeks ago. And as we started that blog, we started putting out ourselves in the market for developing sales and marketing strategies for startups and entrepreneurs.

That was our target audience. The world that started coming around, started going into business strategy and process reinforced. Uh re-engineering that’s literally what use of an I started getting, because he comes from a sales background. I come from a marketing background. Companies started calling us in to say, this isn’t working.

How do you think we could do this? Here’s my brand. How do you think the brand can do better? What’s my market entry. Where should I take? Uh, and focus, all of those stuff started coming. So we spent the whole of 2019 doing those projects. And I still had that little bug in me saying it’s good to do those, but we were doing projects which had between three to eight weeks kind of rollover.

It was a build and operate, transfer out to the client. Of your goal, you know, next client. Uh, so I was wondering to do something a little bit more annualized and a little bit focused on marketing. When Nick and I had a conversation and last October, we brought out three minute marketing and the name actually the company named came from our original intent of simply having a marketing blog.

And we started our marketing blog. And earlier this year, just as COVID was coming out of China into. Our site in Asia. Uh, we put out a shingle, we put out a company called three minute marketing, focusing on content, marketing, marketing strategy, digital marketing, and the various aspects of digital marketing game.

And as you know, from website development and website content and all of that, and, uh, by God’s grace. Partly thanks to COVID. Uh, two things happen. One is we got a few. Yeah. I mean, I was, I was doing some door to door sales. If I may use that term, I was literally going through my little Rolodex, calling old clients and network people and saying, Hey, I’m doing this.

Can I come and have a cup of coffee with you and see, and explore. And then COVID hit. And by March Malaysia and Singapore went into a lockdown, everything went online. So when it went online, I just opened up to talk to people and that started bringing in a lot of content marketing work. And then the content marketing work went into web revamp.

And then that led into how do I talk to my team and what can we do in marketing? Which is where I came in. Nick was handling the content and the web revamp. And one thing has led to another thing. And today we have three clients who are annual clients. We have an annual retainer fee. Working their marketing strategy, working their marketing in the brand, in the market and delivering the numbers.

So that’s where it’s at. I’m having fun. I must say that, like this week I’ve been pulling 12 hour weeks. Not because I’m on the podcast with you, which is close to midnight my time. But, uh, the date that we’re just coming out of the COVID and a lot of the business that we handled between entrepreneurs and the startups.

Have two things, one guys, what is it that we can do with our clients right now, so that, you know, Salesforce, the next quarter comes in that’s one question. Second is sales. The way we used to do sales, isn’t working. We can’t talk price. We can’t give up, you know, a proposal. We’ve got our talk relationship.

So that’s been in the last six to eight weeks. The work that I’ve been doing has been purely how to build relationships with your clients. With your employees and with your other stakeholders, that’s connected to the brand. That’s one area. The second area is how can a brand actually get into social selling?

So the three clients, as I told you, our contract with them, 60% of the contract is all about creating social selling programs for their teams. And 40% of the contract. And I talk financially in terms of split is to do with the pure content and the website management. That’s it. That’s what I’m doing. I’m having fun.

Uh, I have, I must share, received a couple of things from a couple of recruiters. This month, specifically in July to say, Hey joy, are you interested in this? So I do have a couple of dialogues happening because one of them I’m really addressed here. Um, it’s in the middle East and, uh, it’s in different tech area.

And I think the, the brand, the company has a huge. Uh, opportunities. So, yeah. That’s so that’s what I’m doing. Are you considering with those other opportunities with recruiters, are you considering balancing entrepreneurship with a day job or would you kind of stop what you’re doing in entrepreneurship land and go to the traditional job?

No balancing, yes, but let me be very clear when, I mean, by balancing, it’s not going to be possible to do a nine to five and a six to midnight. I I’m not, uh, I’m not a young punk. I can’t go out to bat, you know, uh, sorry. I’m using cricket. Uh, I can’t go out to rock every day. I can go out to run three days a week.

So I’ve already spoken with my co partners and have the, if the discussions on the job front does pick up to a point where it’s full-time and it’s taken on, right. I’m going to take a back seat and I’m going to work more in an advisory capacity then. Being end as I’m doing right now. So right now I frontend for eight to nine hours a day in my region.

I carry over from the Australia time zone because we have a, I have two our time advantage and I carry the work. It’s totally with the company. The company agrees to give me that 10 so far in our part of the world. And I talk, uh, middle East all the way to Japan. Uh, it’s not, it doesn’t exist. It’s not like us, or even in Europe where companies do agree with certain confidentiality clauses to make sure that you can balance it out.

So my balance is going to be that I’m not going to let the entrepreneurial venture Gore, because that’s what I’m going to be doing at this stage. I don’t know if the contract is annual or two years, or is it just six months or whatever? I don’t know. All I know is the discussion is. I’m in a couple of short lists and a couple of video chats are happening.

So I don’t have to take that particular role if I’m offered. But my focus is still on the entrepreneur side. Yeah. Yeah. Earlier you said 12 hour weeks. Did you mean 12 hour days?

Sorry, 12 hour days. My opponent. Yeah. I was like,

I love it too. I love it too. Sorry. Pardon me? It’s midnight. So I’m a little, that’s a slip on the target. It’s 12 hour days. Yeah. Very good. So, you know, it’s interesting, as you said, that sales aren’t the same as they used to be, and it’s not so much about proposals, but more about building relationships.

And, and as you may have seen, that was essentially my topic this morning on LinkedIn was about, you know, you don’t have to, um, You don’t have to come on LinkedIn or Facebook or your email list or wherever your audience is and say, you know, you have a pain point, buy my thing. You can actually come in there and say, you have a pain point.

Here’s the answer. And no call to action. And so for me, what I’ve, and it’s really interesting because I agree with you that it, it seems like the, this is. Catching on lately and becoming more common. And it’s because of COVID, it’s becoming a, more of a necessity because people are basing their transactions more on trust because either they just need that comfort or they need to stretch their dollar further.

But it’s kind of been a concept that I’ve always taken because I don’t like the sales process. I don’t like coming into having those awkward discussion, you know, when it comes time to talk business and that’s fine, but when you reach out to somebody and, and it’s just. Adjust to gross sells discussion and there’s nothing behind it.

So it’s, for me, it’s, I’m actually excited to see people basing decisions, more on, you know, comfort and relationships and trust and, and well, you know, long-term possibility. Right? Can I share one? One story or sort of an example with one of our first clients on three-minute marketing? Um, this was, uh, back in February.

Yeah. Uh, just as COVID was, you know, we didn’t know it was going to be a pandemic or something. So what happened was that I was prospecting. And then as you mentioned, my prospecting style as always across the years has not been, we can give you value because we can do AB to Z. For $90 in place of a hundred dollars.

So by us, it’s not that it’s always been halo. What’s your issue. And look, I know this guy and that guy can do this for you or that lady can do this for you. I’ve always been a connector. I won’t call networker, but a connector I’d always bring expertise to clients. Okay. So this gentlemen and I, we were talking and he said joy.

I’d like to know with two of you, what’s going to be the fees. So I said, I’d like to know what. Do you want from us? What’s your expectation? What do you think we can deliver to you? Because this is what we do. And he said, I want a brand that people want to talk to. I don’t have that brand so fine. And I asked him, I said, can you give me three of your employees for three to four weeks?

He said done, what are you going to do? So I walked him through my process and he said, okay, so February, March and April, we worked on a contract fee. We did the work that was required. The employees went out, they spoke on their personal brand. They had some content marketing work done by then. I may came around.

The three employees were writing their own tweets and their LinkedIn posts and doing everything to, because of confidentiality. I can’t divulge the name because we’ve got that as a contract. Um, June this client, we sit down and we are done. We have, we are done for the quarter. We’re looking at the numbers.

We fell about 6% short of the targeted numbers, right? So I said, fine, fair enough. We felt short, done. No worries. He said, no, no, I’m very happy. 6% is like, I’m not bothered about the 6% would be recovered in the rest of the year. Now I want to ask you. Tell me, can you carry this change forward? Because I love the change that you’ve done.

And I said, I’ve done nothing. I’ve made you as a business owner, make sure that the guys you’re working with feel at home. And I’m sorry, I’m going to have to bring up this example, demon. I think it was earlier today or was it yesterday? I saw your post about the time you went to Philippines pre COVID and you connect it to the Philippines team of SEO and then the everybody.

Data shout out for your birthday. So I’m going, just connecting that. That’s exactly what happened with this client. This client suddenly realized the people who we base our salary to our people are human beings, and that was the first point of trust or together. And as the employees realize. The efforts they put in benefits them because the company makes money.

When the company makes money, they aren’t the 13th month as we call it the bonus at the end of this year. So that, you know, when I spoke to them, everybody said, I want X amount extra. And I said, tell me, what are you going to do when you have that X amount extra? And everybody’s got it mapped what it’s going to go into whatever.

And I said, good, let’s go and achieve it when we’ve done this. After that you come back and you tell me what you feel as a personal brand. And that suddenly got there. I don’t want to use the word motivation, but that’s sort of got there and , and their curiosity, the fact that they can be a personal brand.

And that’s how this company today has started working with their sales team who are calling their clients. And that was my post earlier today, which is just call your old clients and ask them. Hey, excuse me. We did business in February. I just wanted to know how are you coming out of COVID we are working.

We are doing this. Is there anything I can help you with that? That’s that’s all that you gotta do or tell them we did work. Here’s something that we have developed new. We’re sending it across. Please use it and see if it’s helpful. No commitment done deal. You know, if you’ve got a competitive vendor, that’s fine.

That. Is it relationship. And I have to use this word though, it’s cliche. But when you, when you get into a transaction, right, you don’t leave yourself or your client an opportunity to do anything more than the experience of that transaction. But if you take and I’ll use 30 days figuratively speaking, if you take that 30 days to talk, hold and build an half, that patients seven out of 10 times has been my strike rate thus far.

You land up with that client? My third client is somebody that I had started speaking and engaging in 2018. And why I remember it was December, 2018 is that’s when I started doing my video use first and our engagement engagements have been over me and my video content. And I’ve done a sum total of maybe 50, 60 video contents on my hashtag and then an engagement on create the edge still.

June when this gentleman actually drops an email, sets up a zoom call, we get into a 30 minute call to say, could you do this work for 6,000? And that’s 6,000 us. So now share the figure. Yeah. And I said, are you, is that for like four weeks, six weeks? What are you talking about? He said, 6,000 a month. I need you for four months.

And I, I, I mean, look. Sorry, but 24,000 us is big box for me. It’s big bucks, right? It scares me also because the deliverables are high and it’s a business that has, I wouldn’t have known in December, 2018 that I’m going to get this business today. The point I’m making is we have to give up the notion that take a set of numbers, make a set of goals, and you know, you’re going to get your sale.

No. Take a set of numbers, but they’re not numbers that people get to that people get to the interest, figure out if that interest aligns with your interest and especially your company brand. Does it have a purpose that aligns with that interest? Give them something that adds value. I’ll use that cliche again, that adds something to their daily life.

So the client I just got is a B2B client. And you know what the guy just wanted me to do for the first two right now for the next two and a half weeks, three weeks we are going to be doing is talking to a sales people to just make them shift out of numerical targets, understand relationship building.

I’m not a damn coach, but the guy’s not going to ha I gave him, I gave him two beautiful references of sales coaches basis. I want you because of, and it’s all because of what I write and what I say. That’s the best way I can describe where sales is today. I mean, It just has to, you have to learn relationship building, which means you have to learn leadership leadership first level, learn how to lead yourself.

And I admire you. I’m going to say this openly so that it’s shared out. I admire the way you lead yourself. It shows in your persona and your New York communication, the way you share about family, about STO national about your team and about yourself. These are the prongs I get from you. If an individual takes self-leadership, you are going to go into automatically building relationship with your team.

When you build relationships with your team, that’s your behavior. You’re going to carry it out to your clients. You can’t go wrong. Yeah, I appreciate the kind words. And you’re totally right, because the, the thing that people don’t realize is, is like you were talking about with a numbers game is they think, well, I need to do more numbers, more numbers.

And it’s just like, it’s just like social media vanity metrics. You don’t need more likes, you need, you need the right likes and the right engagement and the right content. And it’s the same thing. When you, when you give away content and answers and solutions for free, then you attract. Better customers, uh, that you will have a better engagement and better relationship.

And that also makes sales easier because as you said, the, the guy reached out to you and just said, here’s my money. Because he already knows you to some extent, knows your authority knows your expertise. And, and though you may have never talked before he’s established, psychologically has already established a relationship with you.

So they’re going to convert easier and they’re going to stick around longer. Absolutely. Absolutely. And the best part is diminish. My fees are nowhere out there in public. ’cause I, I, I do best pokes. So I cut it according to the clients, ares and budget. So if I have to do work for somebody who can only spend a thousand dollars, I’ll do it.

I love the work. This gentleman just blew me out of the water and it it’s the proof of work act. I mean, building up a small band really happens a B the other client. I mentioned for whom I developed the employee advocacy and the employee personal brand, you know, here’s my earning. That the program I’m, I’m starting on Monday on my own, came out of that whole exercise came out of running with that company, helping those guys do their personal brand.

I suddenly sat down a couple of weeks ago and I realized that in my content, in my material, I’ve got this three step process ready. And I said, okay, Let’s everybody’s asking me here there or something. Can you do, can you mentor, can you talk? And I shy away from it to be very honest because you know, I’ve got a limiting belief, probably that I’m not a good mentor and I got to work on that, but that’s, besides the point I brought out this program called try simply to help people understand if I can do it, I at my age and I’ll share it.

I’m 58. I started my LinkedIn journey in 2009. But to be very honest, I started my LinkedIn journey in 2018 December. Literally, if I can do it, anybody can do it. And that’s all I’m bringing out there. Yes, it’s called the real, you that’s it it’s it’s, there’s so many coincidences between the dates that you mentioned.

Cause like you said, 2007 and then I started as soon national in 2007. I don’t know when I started my LinkedIn, but it was probably around 2009, but I do know. That I didn’t take it serious until November, December, 2018, either, you know, before then I would make a post every once in a while, but it was, it was just the same generic stuff that you always do.

Like, Hey, I’m doing a thing. And it was either like a brag or whatever. And so then I then. I went through the process of like, I don’t, you know, I already knew I didn’t like the sales processes and I was okay with that on the phone and in real life. But I didn’t really connect that with social media where I could come in and say, Hey, I can do the same thing on social media and just give advice and still be the nice guy.

And I don’t have to be the salesy guy. So these, these dates are, are interesting. And I want to go back to two things before we wrap up. One thing is just a comment. And then. One is a question. So for our listeners, when you mentioned 13th month, what, what some of the listeners may not be familiar with is in the Philippines.

And does this apply in other places too? In Asia? I’m just familiar with it in the Philippines. Okay. Yep. Yep. It’s it’s across this region. Okay. So what 13 is my region from Philippines? Yeah. Okay. So like Southeast Asia area. Yeah. Okay. So what, what 13th month is, is when you work for an employer, then, um, at the end of the year, you pay an entire extra month.

So that’s why it’s called 13 phonics. There’s 12 months in the year, but you pay a 13th month. So that’s, that’s interesting. Um, You know, hearing other people talk about that just because I laughed because I know what it is. So, yeah. So I must also put a caveat out there depending on the country, depending on the region.

Sometimes the money is not literally paid out in January or February. It’s paid out, uh, depending, you know, sometime it’s tied to a very major festival, uh, sort of a place. So for example, in India, uh, that. 13th months so-called bonus is actually paid out during the Valley, you know, out here in Malaysia and Indonesia, it’s paid out when we have our, uh, Eve festival, the main needs festival that happens around middle to, uh, July, June, July, August is when the calendar happened.

So, but it’s the concept is after 12 months of earning there’s a month full for the employees. Yeah. You know, what’s, you know, what’s crazy is how many freaking holidays there are in the Philippines. And there may be more across other places too. But so years ago I asked my team, I said, Hey, what can I do to show you guys more appreciation?

And they said, um, you know, can we start recognizing Filipino holidays? And I said, sure, why not? I didn’t know. There was like two holidays a week. It’s just like never ending. Yeah. All right. So the last week on 18 in a year, Yeah. 18. Yeah, no, it’s sorry. Malaysia. We’ve got 18 yet. And what’s crazy is they have different types of holidays.

They have what they call a special holidays and regular holidays. And so one of them pays 30% and the other pays a full 100%. So I finally just had to tell my team. I had to say, I can’t keep track of these. Can you just tell me when I owe you? Best way. Yeah, I know. I know. Shoot the question. The last question I wanted to come back to is, is you had talked at the beginning of our conversation, how you said when you went so low, you realized that was not a good idea.

Um, can you share some of the stories or some of the events that you went through, where you said, Holy cow, this is, you know, different than I expected or more than I expected? Or what, what, why was it not a good idea? All right. Uh, I’ll start with, uh, with a phrase, a catch phrase, sometimes a cliche. It’s not what you know, it’s who, you know, so in 2007, when I finished and I, I knew a lot of stuff, I was eager to take it to the market.

You go to take it to businesses. I felt I would be welcomed with the knowledge that I had in management and making their marketing be more efficient. Uh, nobody knew me. So because nobody knew me. And I went back to UK, I went back to a market that I hadn’t lived in for years. Uh, the network was literally, uh, X knows joy and joy goes to meet Y because X knows an extra for the person who’s meeting me, doesn’t know me from Adam or anything.

There’s no trust. Right. And I, I slowly realized that that was main reason. Number one, it’s not what you know, but it’s who, you know, and the, who, you know, becomes very much critical because. Going into an entrepreneurial adventure. You’ve got to build that who, you know, so over the last three years that I’ve been talking with entrepreneurs and people who are mid career, trying to look and go out into a entrepreneurial career, I’ve always told them to spend six to eight months prior to taking into the departure area, build.

Your people from where you can get your ankle client, build people who can mentor slash provide you referrals for business. That’s very key because the moment you come out of a paid job, a paycheck, you don’t feel the stress till the first 30 days hits. And then on the 30th day you hit because there’s no paycheck.

So if you haven’t been paid in those four weeks, it’s going to eat into your savings. And however much float that you have. Uh, I had a float about nine, 10 months, and I ran out on my floor. I just, um, I was stone cold broke. I manage that 10 months in London, South out, not in city, proper, uh, 10 months later, my wife and I, and we said, ah, this is not going to go on.

I mean, we had a flight ticket back is all we had and if we had to continue, but literally would have to beg and borrow to be able to keep the bed and breakfast over our head. So we got on back to where we had some support and that’s the learning, the learning that I took. And I went back and got the job.

And as I went through that job, I started creating these little pools of people that I could reach out to. And even then I will say that 2018, when I started, it took me all of 2018 to get to a point where I could source business. I could talk to people and sourced the business. And, uh, so 2019 was the year that we really sort of started getting, you know, freelance projects rolled into slightly bigger projects.

Finally, now we’ve come into a retainer client area and, uh, that’s healthy. That’s nice, but education where the clients are concerned, any form of business. I mean, the client that has given come up, come to us on retainer is an a B2B area. And he feels the pain. That’s why I could share on the sales because of the world.

Please prepare at least a year is what I would say. Now, post COVID, I would say a year is a minimum. You must have the bandwidth to be able to live. Without financial stress for a year, which means Walmart gage and, you know, household expenses eating out everything. So if your budget’s X, make sure you have enough to have X over 12 months.

That’s number one, number two, within that you need to put out. At least I w I’ve done 15%. That’s as much as I could manage from my earnings on. Self investment and self-development, you need to put it into various equipment, various learnings, various courses and stuff so that your skillset is up to date.

These are the two criticals and then go out, build your personal brand. You need to build your personal brand in today’s day and age, no personal brand. Not nobody knows you. So build it and personal brand. Don’t expect it to be built in nine months. It’s not a baby. Sometimes it can be done in 30 days. My experience one year plus really good strong trust in that personal brand from your network one year plus that’s all.

Yeah. Well, Joy, I appreciate your time today. I want to say thanks for jumping on learning from others. Wish you good luck on your new venture. Um, I want to give you the last moment to tell listeners how they can find out more about you. Oh, find out more about me on LinkedIn. Just right next to Damon. If you’re following Damon, you’re going to get joy.

Don’t worry because I love his content, but on LinkedIn and you can otherwise go to three-minute marketing dot base. That’s it. Okay. Then we’ll have joys three-minute marketing.biz link as well as Lee as his LinkedIn profile in the show notes. So, Joy, thanks so much for your time. Pleasure. Take care.