This transcription is a powerful and practical excerpt from a training with Rustic Cuff founder and business coach Jill Donovan and US Small Business Administration Entrepreneur of the Year and Business Coach, Clay Clark on Thrive15.com, one of the best business schools in Florida.
Clay Clark: Can we give some tools real quick here for a business coach?
Jill Donovan: Yeah.
Clay Clark: If somebody’s trying to make a shopping cart without a business coach and they can’t find a good one, Shopify?
Jill Donovan: Shopify.
Clay Clark: Shopify.com?
Jill Donovan: Yup, Shopify.com. Great.
Clay Clark: If I’m trying to just find a basic …
Jill Donovan: Business card. Let me tell you business cards for a business coach. My first business card I bought on Etsy.com, from people who are at home trying to make a living and who do a really great job with business cards. You don’t have to go to some big printing company to find the best quality.
I’ve found some really, really well done cards and some even insert cards that you put into packages just from from Etsy which I know you would think crafts, you associate that with crafts but there are people that do things really, really well that are stay-at-home moms or entrepreneurs that choose to go through Etsy.
Clay Clark: That’s great. I’m writing down here. I’m writing the business cards, the website, the packaging. Anything else for a business coach?
Jill Donovan: Yes. I absolutely think that there’s a very huge part of branding in social media. You’re logo which I think is huge. Having a great logo that people identify you with is very, very important. For me that’s the number one thing. If I’m starting a company, the very first thing that I’m thinking about investing in is my logo and colors of that logo.
Clay Clark: If I’m the cheap kind of business coach?
Jill Donovan: If you’re on the cheap, again, Etsy.
Clay Clark: How get an Etsy?
Jill Donovan: Etsy. I’ll telling you when I first started off. This is crazy. I mean, I know a lot of people have paid a lot of money and I may now that if it’s evolved and I start another company but when I first started Rustic Cuff, I spent $300 and hired a girl on Etsy because I studied Etsy and found out who I thought was the closest quality to what I wanted. Hired her. She was a three-month waiting period and I never wait for anything.
Naturally I would go find somebody else. I said, “You know what? She’s that good. I want to wait for her.” I waited three months. She came back. She gave me three choices for a logo. It was original and we picked that one and that is the one … for $300.
Clay Clark: $300. And you didn’t have a business coach?
Jill Donovan: $300. That’s right, no business coach.
Jill Donovan: That’s worth a boom right here.
Jill Donovan: Yeah, boom.
Clay Clark: Awesome.
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Jill Donovan: There are a lot of ways that you can do it but social media, I think your branding in that … I think that the content … I mean you’re not talking about actual like packaging but the content that you put out on social media be it Facebook, Instagram, Twitter also goes along with your branding. That’s part of who you are … A big part of who you are.
Clay Clark: I’m just going to review these here again. We’re going to have a logo is huge.
Jill Donovan: Huge.
Clay Clark: Business card is huge.
Jill Donovan: Yeah.
Clay Clark: Website, social media.
Jill Donovan: Yeah.
Clay Clark: Anything else that’s like a must in your mind, just kind of off the, you know …
Jill Donovan: You obviously because if you’re but …
Clay Clark: I wouldn’t want to harp on that though because we know we’re helping somebody out right now …
Jill Donovan: Yeah.
Clay Clark: … there is a young man that I feel bad for but he came into our office about three years ago. He looked like hell. Like he had been through hell. Not that he’s a bad person. Not that there’s anything … We’re not talking about anything other than just like he looked like he wasn’t taking care of himself.
Jill Donovan: Yeah.
Clay Clark: … And crazy, crazy like he was going through this ZZ Top meets Lynyrd Skynyrd not showering phase. A couple years later, a totally different view. One person I would have invested in and one person I wouldn’t. Same person.
Jill Donovan: Yeah.
Clay Clark: I think how you take care of yourself is important.
Jill Donovan: Absolutely.
Clay Clark: Making sure you at least clean up well.
Jill Donovan: If you are the owner of the company, you’re the entrepreneur and you know that you’re part of that brand then it really does require a little bit more … Okay, when I go out into public, you never know who you’re going to run into. You never know what opportunity will arise when you are out, whether it’s grocery store or wherever. I’m not saying … I certainly don’t go out dressed up all the time but I try not to go out in my Mickey Mouse sweatpants.
Clay Clark: You’re busting me because what I did a while back … I say a while back … like …
Jill Donovan: Last week?
Clay Clark: Yeah. It was a while back but it might have been like in the last couple months. I always wear … I always every day I wear sports apparel underneath my suit. I always wear jerseys. I’m wearing Oklahoma State today.
Jill Donovan: I love it. I think you should be interviewing me in that jersey.
Clay Clark: What happens is I go out and I’m just wearing the jersey, you know, wearing some basketball shorts just out with my kids and somebody who I was talking to about a really serious subject was like … just that face …
Jill Donovan: They didn’t recognize you?
Clay Clark: Yeah … didn’t recognize me and we never talked because I was on the other side of the store but I know and he knows. I saw him again recently and he goes, “Did I see you?” I’m like, “Yup.” I’ve started to question whether I can ever do that again. Only in my house where I wear my jerseys now.
Jill Donovan: No, I absolutely think you can. I think though if you are wearing something like that if you just take pride in it and so if you’re going to wear clothes like that, just make sure that they are presentable clothes instead of like holes in it.
Clay Clark: Yeah, I was doing the Hip Opera.
Jill Donovan: Well, I still kind of like that look too.
Clay Clark: I was keeping it too real.
Jill Donovan: Yeah.
Clay Clark: That’s what I was doing. I was keeping it like …
Jill Donovan: I like when you’re real.