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Today's episode of "Chats with Tammy" features a conversation with Stacey Reid, a fractional CMO and owner of Stacey's Ale & Co. She helps brands accelerate their growth through strategic planning and marketing consulting. Stacey emphasizes the importance of resilience in business, acknowledging that there will be ups and downs along the way. She encourages business owners to push through challenges, stay focused on marketing and sales, and not give up. Stacey also discusses the value of trying different paths and pivoting if something no longer serves you. She highlights the importance of taking action and gaining experience to discover what truly fulfills you. The conversation touches on imposter syndrome and the courage required to overcome it. Hello, hello, hello guys! Welcome, welcome, welcome. Good morning, good evening, good afternoon, and good night to you wherever you may be watching me from. My name is Selma Ntiti-Ahamba and I want to welcome you to today's episode of Chats with Tammy. Today, I get to talk to an amazing lady. If you've never heard about Fractional CMO, well, you're going to hear about that today. And she's amazing. I've been following her for a while. She's bad when it comes to ads, okay? But she's a goddess in her space. I see a lot of things. I think she's also doing $1 million plus in revenues. I think I came across that on her stuff. I've been, like, sitting still behind here and watching the stuff she does, right? So, she's amazing, and it's really great to have her on the show to educate us. She's done a lot working with primarily service-based businesses, and she just comes in between. If you're looking to save your time, you don't want to be in the nitty-gritty of your business, of your marketing business, to, like, save up more time and have someone just put some strategic stuff in place to give you guys a roadmap and stuff to drive things in the right direction. She's your go-to. So, today, we're going to be chatting with none other but Madam Stacey Reid, and, of course, we're going to be talking about being resilient in business. All right? You know how we do it. Give me, like, drumroll so I can get my guests on stage. Okay, let's get Madam Stacey on the stage. Welcome, Miss Stacey. Hey, thank you so much for having me. So, would you let us know a little bit more about you? Sure. So, I am the owner of Stacey's Ale & Co., which is a marketing consulting company, and essentially what we do is we help brands who are ready to accelerate their growth take things to the next level. And so, we help them with their strategic planning. We help them by leading their team as a fractional CMO, and we also offer a case-witness education because I have a background in ads. I've been in marketing for 13 years and had the privilege of working at a company called Zappos here in the United States and was able to, like, you know, run social media ads for that company and a lot of other e-commerce brands. And so, I've taken all that knowledge and really distilled it down into a consulting company to help service-based entrepreneurs really figure out how they can take what they're doing to the next level. And so, we really kind of help them and give them the direction and growth plans and things like that. So, that's me. Wow. Guys, you hear about that? She's a fractional CMO. So, if you're looking to save time, CEO, if you do not have all the time to spend, I know a lot of people, they're working, they have a full-time job, but at the same time, they're so awesome, they're running a business all on their own. So, sometimes they're looking for how to, you know, navigate and save some time. So, definitely, if marketing is not your thing, you just want to make the money and bring in the money, and you want someone to take that out for you, definitely reach out to Ms. Stacy Lee. Today, we're talking about being resilient in business. How has that played out in your own life as a business owner? Yeah, great question. And so, I think resilience is something that if you want to be successful, really, in any kind of area, whether you're a business owner or not, it's definitely a part of it because everything – I remember – I'll say this. I remember, you know, when I was about to leave corporate, when I was about to leave Zappos and be full-time in my business, I had this idea in my head that everything was going to go smoothly and it was going to be all up from here and there was going to be no ups and downs. I really was just going to be able to kind of, you know, I left corporate on high, so I was thinking it was just going to go up from there. And what I realized along that journey is that there are a lot of, you know, dips and bumps and, you know, things that you're going to come across in the road of growing a business. And so, when I think about being resilient, it's really about figuring out how to kind of, like, stay in the game, right? Like, so it's facing challenges that come your way. It's overcoming those fears or pushing through those fears that you have to put yourself out there and really being able to understand that you are called to do something greater and that you are called – that there are so many people out there that you can help if you, you know, dedicate to your marketing, your sales, really kind of making sure that your business is able to withstand all the ups and downs that are going to come along this ride. And so, that's really what being resilient is about, is being able to kind of, like, look at the obstacles in your way and be able to push through them and not let them really kind of derail you. So, there's a lot of people that, you know, have challenges that come their way and they give up, right? But as a business owner, you know, that's not something that we can do if, you know, if you want your business to stay around for a long time. And a lot of people that, you know, follow me and, you know, probably follow you, right? Like, they're starting a business and they want it to be, you know, be around for a while, right? Like, rarely are we starting a business and say, hey, I want to be in business for a year and then I'm going to close shop, right? Like, typically, we want to be around for a while, whether that's, you know, using your business to create generational wealth for your family, whether it's using your business to impact people and to help other people, you know, with their lives and to get better and to do the things that they want to do. You know, it's – a part of it is definitely making sure that you stay in the game. And in order to stay in the game, you really have to focus on your marketing. You have to focus on your sales. You have to focus on foundational things in your business that always have to happen to make it so that you can stay, you know, beyond that, you know, one-year, five-year, ten-year, 20-year mark. Definitely. And sometimes when we hear resilience, it's like we should just get up and go. How safe is it for us to, you know, get knocked down by life and, you know, allow ourselves to feel that for a bit? Have you experienced something like that and how did you handle that? Yeah, definitely. I'm someone who is very much a serial, like, pivoter. Like, I will, you know, start – I'm not afraid to start something. And I'm also not afraid to pivot or move or try something different if something is no longer serving me. And so it really is about making sure that, one, you're aligned with what you're doing. And it's okay if you start something and you fall out of alignment with it, right? Like, that's one of the things that we, you know, as business owners, we kind of think that, especially when we're just starting out, you think that the way that you start is how you finish, right? Like, you know, the way that I started my business, like, before I left Zappos, my business was an ad agency. And it was because I knew how to run ads. And so I said, let me start an ad agency. Started running an ad agency, got a bunch of clients, left corporate, realized that I hated it. That I didn't want to be running ads for people anymore, right? Like, because that's what I had done at Zappos. Like, I was, you know, I was building ads. I built, like, you know, 75 ads a month, like, for four years. And so I realized that even in my corporate career, I was trying to get out of that lane of, like, being just the person who built that. I wanted to step more into the strategy role and have a team and, you know, stuff like that. And so when I started my business, I was like, okay, well, I just got to go back to what I know. But then, you know, after leaving and realizing that this really is my path and this really is the journey that I can create for myself, so I don't have to do something that I don't like. I can try something, realize I don't like it, and just pivot and move on to something else. Or to, you know, use those signals of what you don't like to discover what you do like. Because I do believe that there is a bit of that in life. Like, trying things, not everything is going to work out, right? You're not going to enjoy everything that you do. But the beautiful thing about life is that you have these experiences. And until you have these experiences, you won't know what you do like or what you don't like, right? Like, you won't know whether something is worth pursuing or not until you start, right? Like, you can stay in your head as much as you like, and you can say, hey, I want to start this show. I want to start this podcast. I want to start this YouTube channel. I want to run ads or whatever. I want to start a business. Or you can say that in your head all you want to. But until you actually put the action steps in and actually start to do it, you won't actually know whether this thing is going to, you know, fulfill you or not. Maybe it will, or maybe it will put you in the path of something that you do enjoy. And so I think that a lot of times we kind of get stuck in, like, you know, in stillness. And we really have to kind of start to figure out how to push past that. As you just mentioned that, something came to mind. Recently I spoke about failure being your proof for trying. Like you said, you don't know. You'll never know whether it will be successful or it will not be successful. So the thing is, just, you know, that courage. And sometimes it doesn't matter where we are on whatever trajectory we're on. We all struggle with, and just, you know, getting to know more experts and talking to more people who are at some level in their career or their business. I realize that imposter syndrome has no respect for persons. It comes to anyone and everyone. I've heard an expert say, well, I'm not the only person who knows about this topic. But I'm like, you're great at what you do. No matter how much someone knows about a specific topic, their experience makes it top-notch. Nobody in this world has the experience. Nobody in this world has the perspective you got from a particular experience. Nobody has the tactics or the techniques you use to survive a setting encounter you've had in life. So just you being that overall star in whatever experience life chose at you, it just makes it top-notch. So it makes it, when you're talking about resilience, it's coming from a spacey perspective and spacey juice, right? If someone else talks about resilience, it's coming from their perspective. And because we're all uniquely different and we all have our own stories, it's like, okay, I could learn from you, I could hear you talk about resilience in business all day, and I could listen to someone else and get completely different ideas or different inspiration from each of your stories. And I think that's just basically in life, that's what happens. Sometimes we hear resilience and it's like, you know, you got to look life in the eyeball and say, I got this. I'm going to move on. But then sometimes we try to, I was talking to someone, it's like, sometimes we try to skip the pain. We try to skip it. We try to bypass, especially spiritually, bypass. We try to bypass the downtime. We try to bypass, how does this make me feel? Okay, I started this business, I invested a huge amount of money, and it did not work out. I think we should give ourselves grace to be able to feel that failure and then be able to take the lessons from that. I think it's our process of feeling the failure, like the entire nine yards, right, so you experience a bad thing, and then you give yourself grace to feel that, feel frustrated, feel sad, feel mad. If you have to cry about it, you cry about it. If you need to go talk to a coach or a therapist about it, you go talk to them. And then it's in those processes that you pick up those lessons and different perspectives from whatever your healing process looks like. And then when you bounce back alive or as business, it's like, okay, girl, now I see you. Now you're bringing back the fire, even though you were not found so many times. Now my question to you would be, in your personal life, whether it's family, immediate family, relationships you have, friendships, how does the downtime of some of those things, right, how does it affect or impact you as a business owner, being the core of your business? How does that affect you? Yeah, that's a great question. Honestly, like I have such a great support system, I'll say, and I've really kind of started to set my business up in a way or moving in a way that it doesn't revolve all around me, right? Like I believe that it is okay for you to build a business that does not involve you in the day-to-day, right? Like you can absolutely build a business that runs without you. And so that is my, what I'm working towards, right? And so I haven't had, you know, too many personal things that have thrown me off in the sense that, like, I've been in therapy for the last couple of years, and so I always have someone who I can talk to about what's going on, right? I've been very proactive about my mental health and the things that go on in my life. And so because I've worked with a therapist and, you know, for the last couple of years, I've really learned how to move through things and how to feel things and let myself kind of sit in stuff, but then also getting myself up and keeping going. And so I think that it really is like about figuring out what kind of support you need around you to help you to push forward. And like you were saying, like, it's okay for you to feel it, right? Like it's okay to cry or to talk to somebody or to take a day or take a few days or take a long weekend or whatever to kind of process and move through something. That is a part of life, and it's a part of growing as a human being is being able to feel stuff, but then still being able to say, like, okay, I felt this. I've been feeling it. What am I going to do about it, right? And I feel like that's something that comes up in my life a lot in the sense that, like, you know, the goal, right? Like if I'm like, okay, I didn't hit my sales goals this month. Okay, well, what are you going to do about it, right? Like are you going to sit here and try to do the same thing that you've been doing that got you here, or are you going to invest in the training and the coaches and all of the different resources that you need to be able to give you a new skill set, right? Like what are you going to do about what's going on? And so I think that, you know, it's about giving ourselves enough grace that we allow ourselves to feel and allow ourselves to, you know, kind of like be in that world of, like, damn, that really, really sucks. And that's okay, but then it's also making sure that you have people around you who can pull you out of that, right? People who you can talk to about what's going on instead of having it just be in your head. Because I know for me, like, I'll be in my head a lot. Like I'll just be thinking about it. A little apartment up here, I like that. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Because then when I actually say it out loud, when I write it down in my journal, when I, like, you know, get it out of my head and into the world, then I'm able to see it more so as like, okay, this is something that happened. This is one situation out of, you know, millions of other things. How do I move through this one situation? How do I get myself back up and keep going, and who do I need around me to give me that extra boost when I need it or give me that, you know, give me the tools to be able to work through something as I need them? So I think that that's what it's about. It's about knowing that personal stuff is going to happen. Life is going to throw you off. There's going to be things that you need to adjust for, and that's okay, right? So it's like taking the time when things are okay to make it so that your business can start to run without you, right, or get to that place where, you know, you can – stuff can still keep moving without you having to be in the day-to-day. Like, we just hired a marketing associate, our first person to help me out, to be essentially another me, right? Like, so that way I can start to take some of the stuff off my plate and delegate to her. I have, you know, another operations person who's really kind of like, you know, stuck in her role of streamlining things and making sure that the ship can run, whether we're on vacation or whether we are, you know, deep in business. But so it's taking that care and keeping that in mind that personal stuff will come up. And so when you have those moments, figuring out what are the things I can put in place to make it so that I can step away. Like, for me, for example, I'm going on vacation in a week. And so what I made sure I did last week was I took it like a couple of days and I wrote out all my content for the week – I mean, for the month, right? And so now, you know, I have content that's all ready to be scheduled. My team is able to take that and go ahead and start scheduling it out and getting that stuff done. So that way, while I'm on vacation, while I'm on my cruise and not really having access to Wi-Fi, business can still happen, right? People can still book sales calls on my calendar. My calendar is blocked, so they can book a week out. But, you know, they can still book calls on my calendar. They can still reach out to me and ask questions, all that kind of good stuff. So it's about really figuring out, like, how can I be proactive about making sure that my business does not rely solely on needs to run? Because when something does happen, and not if something happens, because when something happens, you'll really start to be able to understand how to navigate that and how to move through it. I'm not sure if I lost you there, but I'm – there we go. Okay, you're back. No, you didn't. I was just trying to attend to my baby. I didn't want to – Oh, okay. So, guys, listen to Miss Stacy share her story. We'll take a very short compression break, and we'll be right back. Welcome back, guys. Thank you so much. So, Miss Stacy, now, I like the fact that you mentioned you going on a trip, right, to say, okay, my business can still be running in the background. And I think for most business owners and CEOs or irrespective of whatever level their business is on right now, I think what they're looking to do is to buy some of their time back. They don't want to work 360 or they don't want to work 24-7 on the clock. I mean, they're not AIs, right? So, before you got to that point of being able to hire, to be able to buy some of your time back, how was it like for you, and how did you manage that? Yeah, great question. So, I'll say this. From the time I started my business, like, really taking it seriously, I hired a virtual assistant. And there was a point where, like, while I was working corporate, I was paying my virtual assistant all the money that I made in my business. Or, like, I was paying her a good chunk of what, you know, because I had her doing some delivery. Like, I was getting clients, working with clients. I had her, like, you know, for who we were doing. We were, like, posting on social media for people. We were, you know, running ads for people and stuff like that. And so, I had someone because I knew that, one, I was working a full-time job. And I don't know if anybody out there works in tech, but working in tech is a lot. Like, it's not, you know, sometimes, like, you have your, you know, I've had jobs where I come in at 9 and I leave at exactly 5 o'clock, right? Like, or, you know, it's not as strenuous of a job. But tech was a different beast. I remember for Cyber Monday when I worked at Zappos, we had to be there at, like, 5 o'clock in the morning. Or it might have even been a little bit before that, right? Like, and we were there from 5 o'clock in the morning until the evening. And so, I always recognized that. And I always, I think I've always felt like I never wanted to do this alone. Like, never in my mind did I want to build a business that only relies on me, that only, you know, me, that only operates around me, right? Like, I've always wanted to kind of build something that's beyond just me. And so, I recognized that, like, whatever money I had, I put that into hiring help. And so, you know, it's about figuring out, like, what kind of, how can you reinvest that in your business for the long run? I knew that, you know, I would lose clients if their social media posts weren't going out and that some of the stuff, you know, some of the marketing that I'm doing, like my podcast. I, it's very much, I am great at recording my podcast and getting it, you know, uploaded. But my assistant is the editor. She helps with the marketing. She helps with all the things because I know my strengths are, I'm the visionary. I'm the person who is, like, you know, inspirational, high-level, you know, visionary. I am not the day-to-day executor. I'm not someone who really enjoys setting up Google folders or, you know, like, you know, editing podcasts. Like, that is, if it's up to me, it's never going to happen, right? Like, fitting out writing content. Like, I love to write the content. I love to create it. But I'm not, I don't want to have to go schedule it, right? Like, I don't want to have to go to my app and schedule it and that kind of stuff. And so, I recognized early in my business that, one, I didn't want to do this alone. So, I took the money that I was making and reinvested it back into the business so that way I could, you know, continue to make more money. I also recognized that my clients still needed to have their work, you know, the client delivery was important because I wanted to keep my clients, right? And so, that was important. So, making sure that even though I didn't have the time, you know, whether that's, for me, it was because of my job, but it could be because of your mom, it could be family, whatever it is, right? Like, maybe your caretaker, right? Maybe you don't really have a whole lot of time. So, if you don't have time, then you have to really figure out how can I use my dollars to create time. And I just finished reading this book called Buy Back Your Time. It's called, his name is Dan. I think his last name is Martel or Marcelli, something like that. But it's called Buy Back Your Time. It has a blue cover if you're looking for it. And it was a really great book in a sense that, like, it helped me to understand how I could use the revenue that I am making to free up my time. And then as I free up my time, I can dedicate more time. I can dedicate more time to the things that are moving the needle. So, really kind of like, you know, it's about understanding what is actually moving the needle in your business. Because a lot of times, especially when it comes to marketing, a lot of people are trying to do too many things. Like, they're on Facebook and they're on Instagram and they're trying to grow their presence there. And then they're like, oh, well, I'm starting to get sales from Instagram and Facebook. Now, let me go create a TikTok account. But really, like, you know, instead of going and creating a new channel that needs a whole lot of effort because it's going to take a lot of time to get a profile off the ground, right? Like, we're not in a time anymore where you can post a reel and it goes viral, you know, all the time, right? Like, the landscape is crowded. You're going to have to put effort into any channel that you're kind of working on. But it's starting to recognize that, you know, if Instagram is working for me, if Facebook is working for me, the next step is for me to start investing in advertising, not to go and get on a completely different channel. Because you're at your organic strategy and your ad strategy can really complement each other. And you can have picked learnings that you've learned from Instagram and learned from posting on Facebook and apply those to your ads. And so they are a bit of different strategies for sure, but you're able to kind of maximize what you're doing on a specific channel rather than going and putting in time and effort into something that's unproven. So I think that, you know, having your time back and buying your time back really is about making sure that you have people who can help you out. So if you're investing the money that you are making into your business and being able to make sure that, you know, you can hire the help that you need, whether it's like a virtual assistant that's working five hours a week, that's very helpful, right? You know, having someone who can take all the administrative stuff off your plate, having someone who can, you know, make sure that invoices go out and make sure that, you know, your emails don't get, you know, you don't lose any important emails, right? That's really important kind of stuff, you know, and it's stuff that we end up taking that we don't realize is taking up a lot of time. But I track my time when I'm doing things. I'll take time out of the month where I track what I'm doing. And I see content creation takes me forever. Checking my email takes me forever. So if I could take that kind of stuff off my plate, I get five hours back in my week that I can dedicate to sales and that I can dedicate to building those relationships with the people that I need to build with to be able to get things to the next level. And so it really is about, like, if you don't have the time, how can you invest, how can you use the money to create time? You know, because there's a virtual assistant at any budget, right? Like, you know, you can find people who you can pay whatever you can afford at the moment to be able to help you out a little bit, even if it's a couple hours a week. That couple hours a week, you just want to make sure you're reallocating that time into things that are making you money, right? Not in that time of reallocating it into just making yourself busy, but, like, putting it into sales, putting it into marketing, putting it into things that move the needle. So it's hiring help. It's recognizing what you're really good at and what takes you a long time to do. You know, I can sit in Canva all day, but that's not the best use of my time. As the CEO, somebody else, I can hire somebody on Fiverr to create, you know, banners and stuff like that. Or I can hire a team and have my team, you know, delegate to my team to do those kinds of things. So it's a lot of different things that you can do, but it's about recognizing, like, where are you at now? What kind of funds do you have available to be able to reinvest in your business? What are some tasks that you can take off of your plate that can help to free up your time so that you can reallocate that into sales activity that's going to make you more money? Because then when you're making more money, then you can hire more team, and then you can hire more staff, and then you can start to really look kind of like invest in ads and different kinds of things that you can do that will accelerate your growth without you having to dedicate a whole lot of time to it. And I just like the way you just ran up to a really cool master class right now because the thing is, staying resilient, you need to be able to rely on a great support system. So whether that's family and friends, whether that's a back-end team that's working in your back office and stuff. And like you said, when you free up more time, my co-host is up, y'all. So I got something to say. You want to join a conversation? So definitely, when you're able to buy back your time, it gives you time to take care of yourself, and then you're in the right mental space, and then you're in the right emotional space. Thank you so much for giving us your time today. I really do appreciate you educating us and inspiring us. And just these tips you share, they're very helpful. And for anyone who's looking to start a business, you know definitely how to save your time. If you have a full-time job and you're looking to build your own empire, whether it's for creating wealth for your family or you just love to solve problems and you want to be the one driving the strategy, definitely this episode is for you. Thank you so much, Ms. Reed, for taking up your time to educate, inspire, and empower us, especially our business. This is definitely for business only. Or if you have a business mind, this is for you. Definitely follow Ms. or check her website out to see what else she's doing. She's great. If you're looking for a way to put some money in your business, definitely have her save your time, and she knows what kind of needles to move to get your mail-in dollars on the table. Thank you so much, and I'll see you guys in the next episode. Bye-bye.
