As I was leading workshops and teaching business owners the principles of marketing and brand strategy, I was seeing that often their biggest obstacle had nothing to do with marketing. It was them.
As a business owner, you are virtually every problem your business has. However, you are also most of the solutions. One of the biggest problems I encountered, was that business owners weren’t acting like business owners. They were treating their business like a hobby, but expecting it to operate like a business. They were self-sabotaging themselves with their lack of self-confidence, their lack of time and financial commitment, and their frustration with not magically knowing everything they needed to know.
And if this sounds harsh- I am in that camp too. The game changer for me in my business was recognizing that brand strategy was just one role- and I had a bunch of others to learn. I needed to learn how to be the CEO of my company. I needed to learn how to make decisions, hold a vision, delegate, and actually grow a company. I also needed to become my own CFO. I needed to know my numbers, set up an accounting system, understand my taxes, create a revenue strategy and some recurring revenue models. I needed to be the CMO, and creatively strategize a marketing campaign for each service and product I was offering. And I needed to be COO. I couldn’t just work when I had work, and binge Netflix the rest of the time. I needed to determine how my business was going to operate. What systems did I have in place? How were clients going to engage with me?
This led to the ‘How to Think Like a CEO’ workshop. I partnered with my creative friend, Mary Damm, and we shared our stories of how we became CEOs in our businesses. Then we each painted a CEO coffee mug as a reminder that we are the CEO of our companies. (This is also the first time I used the world successful(ish), and the first time a participant asked me to please share this message with a larger group. And thus, my speaking career and the successful(ish) brand were born. By accident. As the best things are.)
The personal skills of being a one-man (or few-men if there’s multiple keyholders in a small business) C-Suite, are imperative to business success. But what I found, was that most entrepreneurs had never even heard of a C-Suite. They had no idea they needed to be a CEO, CFO, CMO, and COO.
This concept of working multiple full time leadership roles, and also implementing many of the employee positions within those roles, can be game changing in our businesses. In corporate culture, the group of decision makers is known as the C-Suite. Each person in those roles makes between 70-250k+/year. Most small business owners by comparison, are not even making that in their gross revenue. And they are doing all four jobs.
I needed to create a place for business owners to get the personal training and encouragement needed to complement and accelerate the business and marketing training. I decided to launch a membership community called C-Sweet, where I could house business materials, as well as the more personal notes about things we need to talk about. I wanted to have a place for all of the branding, content planning, marketing worksheets, workbooks, best practices, etc. But I also wanted to talk about how hard it is to date when you are trying to run a business. And what it looks like to struggle with depression while you are the only one responsible for earning your paycheck. Or breathing through a panic attack as you are about to make a keynote speech. Or learning how to completely rethink finances because you don’t have a monthly income.
I housed C-Sweet (Sweet like honey) within HoneyMAP. The mission is in line with HoneyMAP, to eradicate identity crisis in business and brand messaging so that business leaders know who they are and how to tell people. This starts with the heart of the business- the leader(s).
The visual identity uses the secondary color scheme from HoneyMAP, and the logo was sketched by our designer, Kellie. Very similar to the HoneyMAP logo, this hive has a ‘C’ as the entrance. The content is housed on Patreon and offers three price options based on the business owners needs and budget.
Becoming my own C-Suite was truly the first step in becoming a real, profitable business. After I put some more formalized structure to this role, I knew it was time to revisit my HoneyMAP. So I took a few days away and dedicated time to work, rest, and play. I came back rested, rejuvenated, and 72 pages deep in HoneyMAP strategy and implementation timelines. So many friends asked me how I did this, and to help them do this, that this inspired C-Sweet Retreats. A quick weekend getaway, self-guided or facilitated, that helps you structure your C-Suite, and sets you up to begin creating your HoneyMAP.
This brand has been fun to create, and close to my heart. I am so excited to see it launch this month, and cannot wait to see the business growth that these retreats and the membership platform inspire.
Check out the HoneyMAP sample below, and then join the community or book a retreat!
