We recently connected with Elizabeth Kazmierczak and have shared our conversation below.

Elizabeth, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today If you could go back in time do you wish you had started your business sooner or later

I absolutely wish I would’ve started my business sooner but entrepreneurship wasn’t talked about in my family so I didn’t think that it was an option for me when I was younger.

As most I had a job when I turned 16 and never stopped working. I didn’t graduate from college and only finished about a year and a half before dropping out because I needed the money more than the education at the time.

By 20, I had fully invested into my career as retail store manager or a visual manager. I loved to be expressive and creative with the visual displays and I stayed with a company for almost 6 years thinking they’d give me that career opportunity but then 2020 happened and everything halted so I decided to leave the following year.

My new job was pretty great I loved my coworkers and I got to travel a ton and January of 2021 I went to a friends wedding in Hawaii where I met my business coach who helped me start my business a year later!

By January of 2022 I was helping small businesses manage their social media and solely posting on their stories, as a side hustle, wishing I could do that full time and have my own life outside of the mall.

And in July of 2022 things shifted at my retail job, I didn’t get the promotion I was promised when I was hired, so I quite and went full throttle into my business! I might want to mention I had 2 clients at the time and wasn’t even making a quarter of the pay my career was paying me but I didn’t care — I was going to make it happen.

Now, two years later I have helped over a dozen businesses, I am almost to my goal in annual income and now I am a mother and get to stay home with my son and own my own business! And I plan to teach my son, that you don’t have to have a W2 job to be successful and you can start that business whenever you want.

Elizabeth, 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?

Hey! I’m Elizabeth, retail manager turned social media coach and manager two years ago! I started my business because I was tired of working for the big guy and having no work life balance. I saw an opportunity in the small business community in my town, they weren’t marketing to there target audience well and most were overwhelmed so social media was the last thing on their mind, so Desert Sunset Studios was born!

I’ve expanded my packages and offers in the last two years to fit the needs of business owners in my area.

I offer full time done-for-you management, where I handle your strategy, target audience research, content creation, hashtag and geotag research, outbound and inbound engagement, brand recognition and awareness as well as content filming monthly if you’re local to me!

I then crafted a 90 min Strategy Call designed to walk businesses through their current strategy and make tweaks and changes where necessary and give my insights and knowledge to what is successfully working on social media platforms, like Instagram right now!

And that’s when coaching was born, now offering 4 or 6 week hands on coaching, teaching all the fundamentals businesses need and helping them cut through the unnecessary struggles I’ve seen so many businesses put themselves through, coaching also includes weekly 1 hour calls, email communication with me Mon-Fri, content reviews and edits and giving two free guides that are yours to keep!

Designing these offers touches on so many different pain points that businesses struggle with, while giving the opportunities to receive that help in a way that fits their budget.

One of my clients has been with me the full two years. She started with coaching and minimal management and within 2 months of working together she gained 10 new clients from social media! Before her 6 month contract was up, she renewed for the rest of the year! Together we’ve given her a rebrand, booked out every weekend in 2024, booked her 5 events in 6 months, and she’s currently expanding her business to hiring an employee and moving to a bigger location!

Another client of mine is a nonprofit that had a goal of 150K then needed to raise for their huge annual event in 6 months timeline, and had only raised 1.8K when they hired me. We raised 150K plus in 5 months — 110K was raised in the 1.5 month and we had the biggest turn out for their event yet, with over 3K in attendance and 1.5K in signups!

All of this only happens when you have a strategy in place to reach your desired target audience and a clear brand to build recognition and establish trust!

I never would’ve imagined the impact my business would make on so many other businesses within the first two years and to every client who has trusted me with their baby, it is not taken lightly!

I pride myself on honest communication and full transparency with every client. So many times I’ve heard horror stories on how their last SMM burned them or locked them out of their account or wouldn’t give them access and that’s the biggest red flag you’ll never need to worry about working with me. Everything I do is for your business and your businesses benefit alone! I want my small businesses to be successful so they too can have the work life balance they’ve desired.

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

I’ll be honest I feel like even with a coach (who was amazing) it still took me a hot minute to find my groove and voice on social media.

I started my journey with maybe 650-700 followers and most of them were friends or family, reaching audiences outside of that scope took me probably 4-6 months. I had to retrain my algorithm entirely, meaning I did a lot of outbound engagement with accounts that would have audiences that I wanted to be in front of and I networked a lot within my community. I remember hosting my first webinar (completely free to join) and going to 10 local small businesses handing out flyers I had made to encourage sign ups and giving my business card out everywhere!

Now, I have over 1K followers and my reach has been through the roof! I have really found my rhythm online and in my presence and I have a group of 15-20 small businesses that I started a small business stories series (close friends only stories) that I help with weekly tips and strategies on Instagram to help them grow! (You get added when you sign up for my coaching course 😉)

My biggest piece of advice to those growing their social media is you do not need to post 2x a day or 7 days a week to grow, it’s only going to burn you out!
You need to be intentional with your messaging and consistent in your presence however that looks for your business, and do the outbound and inbound engagement at least 30 mins every time you are on the app.

And most importantly be unapologetically YOU and have fun! The best way to gain your kind of people is to show them who you are.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

A hard lesson I had to unlearn in the beginning of my journey and one I constantly remind myself of, you don’t have to work with anyone you know if they’re not a good fit for you business just because you know them.

I took a lot of clients in the beginning because I knew them and thought it’d help build my portfolio and all it did was frustrate me into thinking every client would treat me that way, but that wasn’t the case.

Some of my best clients have been ones I didn’t know personally and have been referred to me by someone I know. They respect what I do and what I offer and they don’t take advantage of what I offer, meaning they don’t ask me to do more than what’s agreed upon.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://stan.store/desertsunsetstudios
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/elizabeth__camille?igsh=emJ1YTJqZTBkcjJl

Image Credits

Elizabeth Kazmierczak