We recently connected with Carolyn Zick and have shared our conversation below.

Carolyn, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Often outsiders look at a successful business and think it became a success overnight. Even media and especially movies love to gloss over nitty, gritty details that went into that middle phase of your business – after you started but before you got to where you are today. In our experience, overnight success is usually the result of years of hard work laying the foundation for success, but unfortunately, it’s exactly this part of the story that most of the media ignores. Can you talk to us about your scaling up story – what are some of the nitty, gritty details folks should know about?

“It would be so cool if my business income could pay for our wifi bill.” -Me in 2015 immediately after filing to form my LLC

Now, my financial goals are a lot more lofty for Bad Axe Enterprises. I attribute a lot of my success in business to the very lean model I started with. My team was just me. My equipment was my refurbished laptop. No office space, no business cards. Just me serving one client. I was exclusively managing their social media. Doing a little content design, scheduling posts, replying to comments, that’s it.

I embraced slow growth in that first year. I actively pretended I didn’t have a business (which was a missed opportunity but oh well) and I didn’t promote my services. I was at home, loving my time with our two infant kids, and not feeling pressure to build the business up at all. I had my client. I paid our wifi. I was learning a ton and loving it.

Then that client asked if I’d build them a website. Sure. Why not? I can learn how to do that.

Then a couple friends learned I was building a website. Next I was building theirs.

Scaling for Bad Axe Enterprises was a game of saying yes to opportunities to learn and level up my skills. It took until 2017, but I finally made myself a website. I was promoting my services sporadically and getting involved in the local business community where I was living.

I also co-owned a brick-and-mortar yarn shop for a year in 2017 and did a lot of the event planning, marketing, and vendor coordination. Simultaneously, I got the opportunity to be hired as the director of marketing at a local bank. When I got the initial job offer, I laughed. Me? A self-taught college drop out marketing nerd? A director of marketing at a financial institution?

Eventually, I took that job. Working there was a huge learning experience that eventually led me to realize exactly how badly most business owners needed to outsource their marketing efforts. I was turning clients away because I didn’t have time since I had a “real job.” In early 2018, I realized how silly that was.

I finally started actively and intentionally pursuing Bad Axe as a major portion of our income that year. By 2020, it was my full time job and our major source of income.

The pandemic didn’t slow business down for me at all. I continued to say yes to experiences that pushed the limit of my skills and started refining the exact type of folks I wanted to work with. I no longer needed to say yes to everything, I could be selective and curate a list of clients that I loved to work with.

Now, the way I’m scaling is by seeking opportunities to be a speaker, consultant, and educator in my areas of expertise, instead of solely focusing on active projects like running social media accounts or building websites. I’ve added Community Building to my roster of skills in the last year, in order to really dig into where my passion is: helping brands develop meaningful relationships in online spaces.

Looking back, the things that let me scale well have been being willing to take things slow at the start, diving in a bit above my depth to push myself to keep learning, and keeping my investments small. I started incredibly frugally when it comes to tools and equipment, valuing instead opportunities to learn.

Carolyn, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I’m Carolyn Zick, a self defined social marketing nerd and community builder. I have my own marketing company, Bad Axe Enterprises, under which I offer digital marketing services and consultations. My focus is to provide brands with relationship driven organic strategies that are mental health positive. No posting a million times a week, no addictive technology behaviors, no paid ads. This is a bit different of a route than many marketers take, but it’s important to me to work with clients who understand that digital marketing is a long game, and that going viral is never the goal.

I founded Bad Axe Enterprises in 2015 with little to no preconceived anticipation of where I was heading. I’m self taught, and wildly passionate about the “Well, why not?” mentality. I’m curious to a fault and I love to experiment. It has served me well as I’ve worked to grow Bad Axe since its founding.

Additionally (because I’m a Portfolio Career type of woman), I am Cofounder of AMIDST Magazine and AMIDST Creatives of the Midwest, a publication and community for Midwest-based creatives.

And I work at Comunify, a Software as a Service (SaaS) startup that is building a reporting tool to help community managers better understand their online communities.

AND I’m a fiber artist who designs knit and crochet patterns under the handle @CouleeCraft.

Multipassionate, here!

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

I built Bad Axe’s social presence by being weird and providing value. I have tried to be more “buttoned up” and “professional” online at times, but it just never suits me. If I’m resonating with people when I’m being an inauthentic version of myself, those are not the type of people I want to work with.

If you are just starting out working on building up your social presence, I advise you start from a place of love and passion. Talk about what you adore about your brand. Talk about it often! Get cringy, get goofy, and connect with people. And thing of your audience as a community more than an audience. A community has multi-way communication. They talk back to you and to each other. An audience sits and gets indoctrinated and falls asleep in the lecture hall. Involve them. Ask them questions. Send them messages, and shower them with love and attention if you really want to grow online.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

Showing up. 100%. There are so many people who offer really great marketing services. But by showing up online and being my true goofy self, I’ve been able to differentiate myself. Talking about my somewhat controversial views on marketing (the ideal time to post is when you are available to reply, paid ads are mostly garbage, etcetc) often and in various formats has also helped my reputation as a social marketing nerd who wants folks to not wreck their brains.

As I’m becoming more active in the community building space, I’m constantly seeking opportunities to speak my mind about my unique community building experiences. It’s a small niche industry, and everyone knows everyone. You keep showing up and you’re bound to get recognized.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.badaxeenterprises.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/badaxe.enterprises/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carolyn-zick/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCc2HiDbqTWAcDpFT42vowMw
• Other: Bad Axe Biz Club: https://bad-axe-biz-club.mn.co/ Comunify: https://comunifyllc.com/ AMIDST Magazine: https://www.amidstmagazine.com/