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TIANA Gustafson is the owner and creator of Freedom Planner and Firefly Media. With her undergrad from Berkeley College of Music and her Master’s Degree in New Media Marketing from Full Sail University, Tiana is passionate about creating online marketing funnels that work.
She teaches Online Marketing Courses and works with a handful of clients one on one. Setting up a gorgeous online presence and marketing daily are two of Tiana’s areas of expertise that she is passionate about sharing with other Entrepreneurs. To learn more, visit www.tianagustafson.com/
Tiana shares with us how she started
Tiana started as an entrepreneur at the very young age of 16. She was in the music business and she decided that she wanted to perform and make more money than minimum wage.
She started booking her own paid gigs and submitted her music to festivals. This helped launch her into the entrepreneurial world.
At the time, Tiana did not consider herself as an entrepreneur but that’s what she was doing. She has the W9, she has her own business name and all the things that entrepreneurs do.
For years, she worked in the music business. She interned and worked at Sony records, she started her own record label and she had graduated from Berkeley College of Music.
However, she had a hard time creating abundant wealth for her and her family because she was living month to month. She was stuck in the mentality of the poor starving artist, which is an accepted mentality in the music world.
Tiana knew that there was more to life and I did not want to keep waiting for a big deal to push through. She wanted to take control and she realized that what she was lacking in her skills was marketing.
She then enrolled in Full Sail University’s Master’s Degree Program and graduated salutatorian in her class. This was a huge change for her business because right away, she started to get it. She finally understood blogging and social media marketing, and how it all worked together.
Through all that, Tiana realized that if somebody’s going to succeed at something, you number one, must master your craft. At first for Tiana, it was music and then she also mastered marketing. She had marketed now for several celebrities and she also had grown her business to multi six figures.
At the end of all that, she says that you must master your craft and you must master marketing. If you can’t hold those two things together, it’s gonna be difficult to make a good income.
Marketing is really about spreading your message and spreading the value of what you are providing to people. If you do not like the word marketing, look at it in the perspective of – how do you let people know about what it is that you’re providing.
Tiana talks about the myths she hears about starting a business and crushes them
- Number one is that people feel like they are posting too much on Social Media.
- It depends on what you are posting. If you are asking for a sale daily, then that’s annoying.
- You need to be posting 3 times daily minimum on Facebook so that you will be in their algorithm.
- You need to understand that if you want more people to hear your name and see your company name, so that when it comes the time for them to hire somebody in your field, you are who they think of first.
- The other myth is that people are just posting about their business. You would want to throw a little bit of personality into your post. It should not be just calls to action.
- Tiana loves Gary Vaynerchuck’s Jab, Jab, Jab Right Hook. The boxing analogy, it’s like give, give, give and then ask for a sale. Stop posting only things for sale, you need to provide value for your audience.
- You need to remember that you’re in business. You need to look at your social media profiles and remember that it is a storefront. You have to get rid of your cat pictures and family pictures.
- Find another way to send pictures of your family, text them, call them. Tiana also has no problem in deleting and blocking any negative comments.
- You must find a way to monetize your passion. You must also listen to the marketplace.
- Look for a niche in the marketplace within your passion. If you’re a photographer, maybe you can leverage your time in making courses. Then you can niche it out like how to make a kid laugh and how to capture the right moments with the family.
Find a way to monetize your passion. That may mean that you need to hire a business strategist, you might need to invest some money and get your online presence looking amazing, because without that, nobody’s going to take you seriously.
What are the steps that Tiana took that you can also do for your business
There are 5 things that Tiana talks about, that every entrepreneur needs. This is your foundation. You also need to make sure that they are branded and look as beautiful as that multi six and seven figure earners who are your competition. You must be able to compare at least the simplicity and classic and beauty of their online presences with your online presence.
Each part of these has its own specific system that have to be set out.
- You must have a website.
- It should be branded, beautiful and you should have a logo. Your website is your home base. That is your place for control, and your place to collect leads, to provide value.
- You must take control of your own financial security.
- When people come to your website, you must have a way to collect leads – opt-in, list building.
- You need to create something of value so that people would want to share it with their friends.
- You must look the same everywhere in social media.
- You are a brand. When you think of a company, Mc Donald’s, Coca Cola, Pepsi, you know what their image looks like in your brain.
- Your name and your colors, should be the same from your website, to your newsletter header, to your social media, across all platforms.
- If you create a true brand for yourself, you put your time, energy and intention. You have ownership. You tell yourself, “This is my brand, and I’m a rock star and I’m amazing. And I deserve to be paid well.”
- You must have a blog.
- You must have a blog and it needs to be through WordPress. WordPress has the best SEO.
- If you are providing amazing value in your blog – you don’t need to write a thousand word essay, you can do a short video and embed it or a podcast.
- When your blog is integrated in your website, it increases your rankings in Google.
- Stop the poverty mindset.
- There comes a certain point, if you need something done you gotta hire help. Be creative, be resourceful and support each other.
- Go make money in your specialty and pay for the things you don’t know how to do.
We cannot be an expert for everything. We need to hire help from the experts who really knows what they do.
Tiana tells us about her program, who is it for and what you can get from it
Tiana had taken all the courses in Marketing but the thing that she had found was missing was that we are all getting told what to do and not how you can do it. Her specialty is showing you exactly how to do it.
Her program, Bull’s Eye Funnels, will show you step by step, how you can create a beautiful brand and your logo. She will then show you how to install WordPress, how to buil it, how to SEO optimize you blog, how to brand it so that it’s all related to each other. You can find out more about it at her website: www.tianagustafson.com/
Tiana’s parting words
Tiana wants to thank all our listeners because your time is the most valuable thing that you can give.
To thank you all, she created a one page gorgeous printable. A marketing sheet that has three things you can do each day to improve your business marketing. You can download it from – fireflymarketingtips.com
