We were lucky to catch up with B. Johnson-Gray recently and have shared our conversation below.

B. Johnson-Gray, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. I’m sure there have been days where the challenges of being a business owner force you to think about what it would be like to just have a regular job. When’s the last time you felt that way? Did you have any insights from the experience?

As I look back over the 10 years of being an agency owner, there are SEVERAL thoughts that come to mind around this topic. 2021 was an explosive year of growth for me and felt pretty proud of what I had accomplished with the business owners I worked with. As an almost 1 woman show, the agency generated a total of 1.7 million dollars in revenue across several industries. However, it did not come with its own set of challenges. I joined a very expensive mentoring program with the hopes of scaling my business further only for the mentor to deliver some news I didn’t expect or want to hear. That news was that I needed to FIRE all of my current clients and find new ones.

I couldn’t really understand because I was truly passionate about helping the clients who had reached out to me to grow their businesses. Even at my own expense, I would work until I delivered results and if I didn’t I would not bill my clients. My mentor would go on to explain “Bernadette, what your are describing to me that you deliver has a ton of value and the price point just does not match” At the time I was delivering market research, content creation, business development, competitive analysis, and of course, ad buying. To my surprise, my mentor explained that my rate did not support a scalable nor a sustainable business. Even with him being a part of one of the largest digital marketing agencies in the industry, I couldn’t allow his advice to break relationships from clients that I had grown closest too. I believed that if I could just get them over the hurdles of financing their marketing, expose their product to raving audience, then that for sure would bring them to the place that my value in their business would supersede the price. His observations proved true as one by one, each client began to fall off for various reasons. Some even called my integrity into question which stunned and frustrated me. It got to the point where I begin to contemplate rather or not to even move forward or simply go work for someone else’s agency. I even considered exiting the industry altogether!

One thing about me as an individual is that I never quit. I have invested 10 years of my blood, sweat and tears into my agency and while I truly felt defeated for a bit, I wasn’t going to take this laying down! The start of the year 2022 validated my self worth and skillsets when I partnered with the very digital platforms that my agency worked to generate business for. I signed one of the largest contracts in my agency’s history at well over 6 figures spread out over 2 years. Despite not having a full book of business and most of my clients leaving the agency, I raised my prices. To my surprise, people onboarded at the new price point with no objections and actually paid me my worth and then some for the things that I was doing virtually for free.

This was one of the most pivotal points in my business and it taught me a several lessons. As a look a back at this stage of my business, I realized that I had been coasting. For years I had avoided experiencing challenges that most business owners face in my position. This gave me a false sense of security thus lowering my self worth and the de-valuing what I was delivering. I learned that people will find a budget to pay you when they see the value in what you deliver. If the perceived value is distorted in anyway, the business relationship breaks down in the long run.

I am grateful for this experience and for what it taught me. I will never turn my back on the very business that has brought me through good and bad times. Solving business challenges are the nature of the game, and from the words of John Witherspoon on the hit movie Friday, “You win some, you lose some, but you live to fight another day.”

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

The Socialite Hive was birthed while I anticipated giving birth the fall of 2012. At the time, my young family was enduring some pretty tough times and had to take up semi-permanent residence in an extended stay hotel. After making several unsuccessful attempts finding a steady career in the Houston area, I became determined that to find unconventional opportunities that would allow me to make a decent living and find a home as I awaited my upcoming delivery. Armed with a laptop and the hotel’s high-speed internet, I embarked on a self-taught quest to master online marketing. I visited blogs, bought courses and spent countless hours understanding the intricate details of the digital marketing that would soon take the business world by force. Initially, I began taking freelance jobs on platforms like Odesk, and Elance (now Upwork) but later found myself partnering with established marketing agencies working as their principal consultant on various digital marketing projects.

Today, I now successfully run my own digital marketing advertising agency while passionately teaching aspiring digital marketing professionals the tools of the trade across the globe on a training platform which is partnered with Purdue University. The platform recently named me as #2 out of 2000 instructors throughout the world.

What I am most proud of is my tenacity to forge forward despite the challenges to do so!

What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?

The most effective strategy for me to grow a steady clientele was my free consultations and delivering value on those calls. I have found that by not gatekeeping information, this intrigues my potential clients to explore the potential that my agency can create!

What’s been the best source of new clients for you?

The best source of new clients for me are co-hosting Instagram lives, podcasts, and speaking at live events. This allows me to showcase the vast wealth of knowledge that I bring to the table which effectively builds my pipeline.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.hivemediamarketing.agency.
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beethesocialite/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hivemediamarketing/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bernadettechambers/

Image Credits
All images where photographed by Hive Media Marketing Agency for the purpose of self promotion.