Today we’d like to introduce you to Nedra Rezinas

Hi Nedra, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?

For over fifteen years, I ran a web design agency where my team and I worked with small businesses and nonprofits to build and launch their websites. I loved interacting and learning more about my client’s business, but something was missing. Many times, I would offer my clients business and marketing advice, beyond just building a website.

In 2017, I began offered strategy sessions with my web design clients. In these sessions, I offered insight into where their current marketing was and where they wanted to be. It included most of the their digital marketing and much more. These sessions were received eagerly, my clients were craving help and guidance with marketing. I began to notice when I went to networking events and conferences, when I tried to talk to folks about websites, they quickly changed the conversation to marketing and I realized, I need to pay attention and listen.

In 2020, I offered marketing focused strategy sessions for small business owners. My focus began to help them review current marketing strategies such as social media and if it’s actually helping their business.
I noticed that after spending time with me, my clients felt safe to share what they are doing in their business that makes them unique. This allows me to help make suggestions and recommendations on the types of marketing activities that can be customized to their values and business.

Another piece of insight, I’ve organized, led and facilitated different types of communities such as a women’s networking group, a freelancer meetup, taught multiple workshops and classes and worked with a number of clients. I began to realize they all had something in common. They were seeking someone that could relate with them and give them permission to be themselves in their business and marketing. The communities that I built up made up of business owners who identified as introverted, highly sensitive (HSP) and empathy driven. They wanted someone who could open their mind up to different possibilities and ways to be themselves.

I really enjoy the focus of being a marketing strategist and coach who helps service based businesses create a 90 day custom marketing roadmap. What makes me unique is that I coach my clients on how to build confidence, consistently market their business and also gives them permission to market authentically and connecting to their values. There’s a lot of marketing programs and books that want to force business owners to follow a path and do things the “right” way. That doesn’t work for everyone, especially if “the way” is meant for a more extroverted, outgoing person.

In the past two years, I’ve been teaching marketing and business classes at different universities and colleges in my city. I think this is a wonderful compliment to what I do because I’m learning about the latest marketing trends and challenges as well as being able to bring real world experience into the classroom for my students. I’m a natural teacher and my teaching comes out when working with clients, not only do they breakthrough with their marketing when working with me, but I teach them HOW to apply and grow when I work with them which I think it’s a bit unusual.

I also bring a variety of business experience (I’ve owned over three different businesses) so when someone works with me, it’s not just marketing insight they receive. I can give advice to operations, financial, hiring freelancers and other aspects of business and help them hire freelancers to help them solve problems – for example I helped one client find a bookkeeper. They had never hired a freelancer besides me for their business so I vetted two different accounting businesses, made introductions and helped my client prepare to interview the candidates. Once he chose a business, I taught him how to onboard the business so it would be a smoother and easier to work together. I’ve done this for many of my clients and it’s led to a lot of success.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?

About 10 years ago, I started realizing I had a yearning to teach and be more of an educator to my clients. I was seeing a surge of teaching and course work in the business world and wanted to be part of it. I was doing some workshops in my web design business and showing folks how to use WordPress. However, I wasn’t feeling confident and I felt like I had some gaps in my teaching process. I gave workshops on the weekends in a free space at a local bank, with a decent turnout, but knew that I could level up and wanted to explore how to do that. I felt so underqualified and wondered how could I ever teach if I didn’t have a teaching degree or other experience?

During that time, I expressed how I wanted to take on more teaching to my mentor, She surprised me! She told me she needed someone to teach a Web Marketing class for a three hour session. I had never done anything like this in my entire life and was terrified when she told me. I also wanted the opportunity to do it and learn from the experience. Luckily my mentor she suggested how to put together the material and do a testing class BEFORE teaching the real class. She suggested I teach a workshop through my business and get some feedback and see what I needed to do to improve.

Wow, I sure did I learn a lot doing that first workshop. I practiced my material and storytelling for hours, mostly practicing in front of my dog a lot. I was so afraid that if I didn’t give value people, they wouldn’t want to take classes from me so I jampacked tons of information into this one workshop. When the day came to give my practice workshop, I was shaking and so nervous I couldn’t eat anything. However, once I started my workshop and presented my material, I calmed down a bit.

I think people were a little stunned when they walked out that practice session, I gave them so much material, it made their heads spin. It did help me prepare to teach this the class though. Getting up in front of people for three hours to speak is a long time! The longest time I’d ever spoke in front of class before that was 10 minutes! I’m remember how scared it was when I taught that first real class, in a classroom. I was shaking, my throat was dry and my heart was pounding in my chest. At the end of it, I realized that people are pretty forgiving if you make mistakes and it’s OK to admit you don’t know something.

I was able to teach that same class 3-4 times to get the hang of it and luckily, the class gave me feedback each time to help me improve. In this process, I became much better at receiving constructive criticism. A few times, I was told I was a fire hose and gave too much information and was too little technical. With the help of my mentor and the feedback, I was able to adjust and simplify my teaching.

Within a year, I felt more confident and had more of the teaching skill set I was seeking. I know through teaching, it has made me be a better marketing coach. I have more patience to walk someone through an explanation and have the right tools to explain things simpler. I know tactics and the experience of being in a classroom and how to adapt to different student’s needs. I’ve learned that it’s really important to listen to people and it’s OK to make mistakes as long as you are transparent and correct them. I still teach a lot today and still get a little nervous and (very sweaty), but I feel 100% more confident and enjoy the reward being able to teach a concept or idea and being in the present moment. All it takes is one person to believe you can do it.

Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?

We all start our businesses wanting to focus on the work we truly enjoy – however there’s a lot of pressure to be “visible”. Be on all of the social media platforms. Be an influencer.
There can be a lot of feelings and resistance to doing this. Being visible can cause feelings of shame or overwhelm.
I can help a business owner if :

*they don’t have a strategy or know what kind of marketing will help their business.
*doing a lot of random marketing activities including social media.
*have decision fatigue and be doing no marketing at all and feel frozen.

There are marketing strategies that can help shine a light on a business and attract clients in an authentic way. These options don’t need to cause shame and don’t have to exhaust or drain someone’s energy either.

One service I offer that has been very successful for my clients is my 90 Day Custom Marketing Roadmap.
A Roadmap Session looks like this: I spend some time with my clients, getting to know why they started their business, what their values are and their challenges around marketing their ideal client, their services, and what marketing activities they have done. In the end, they get a 10-14 page document outlining who they are, details about their business and services, an organized step by step guide that details ideal client(s), benefits, pain points they solve, and marketing activities that will help them achieve their goals, and breakdown of what they can do in the next 3 months!

I find that it’s a very magical way to work with a client and really help kick-start and re-energize them to see the potential types of marketing activities and opens their mind up to things they never even considered or thought about! I also offer an practical way to provide accountability and support to my clients so they can hire folks to help them implement their marketing and how to be consistent with it.

Marketing Sprints is another service I offer. They are hyper focused session where I’ve helped business owners accomplish marketing tasks such as rewriting copy, brainstorming and planning their social media, create a referral partner plan, create a customized plan to use LinkedIn in their business to generate more leads and more. Here’s specific ways I’ve recently helped clients:

*Helped them rewrite their case studies into more approachable, engaging storytelling of how they helped their client solve a problem
*Helped a client rewrite their home page copy using the Storytelling framework
*Develop their target market, generate content ideas, hire a web designer and be prepared to work with a web designer to hit the ground running.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.nedrarezinas.com/