We were lucky to catch up with Sarah Symonds recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Sarah, thanks for joining us today. Folks often look at a successful business and imagine it was an overnight success, but from what we’ve seen this is often far from the truth. We’d love to hear your scaling up story – walk us through how you grew over time – what were some of the big things you had to do to grow and what was that scaling up journey like?

As a content creator, there are many options to choose from where you can build your brand out. The obvious platforms are the largest social media apps like Instagram and TikTok. However, content creation can go much further than simply posting online. In 2016 I began my business only on Instagram. Once I felt established and able to maintain that platform, I added my blog www.graceinmyspace.com. Once the blog was achieving the metrics I wanted, I added working with brands to create content for sponsored campaigns. Once those relationships were established and successful, I researched the best platform that met my brand goals to move into next, and added YouTube.

The key to scaling up is establishing yourself as an authority in one thing first. Figure out how to maintain that standing. And then slowly add the “next thing” to your portfolio. All the while, not losing momentum in the areas that you began with. All of those areas still need to be maintained and grown even as you add new portions of the business to your plate.

In the process that might mean establishing systems and processes to run different components on auto pilot. Or, it might mean growing your team and hiring reliable employees. I did a combination of both, but have found that systems are essential to scaling up successfully for me. Employees add a layer of complexity to small businesses that need to be weighed on their value v. the time it consumes to manage them.

Some businesses can’t run on systems alone and require extra bodies and minds to grow the business. Others don’t! I found that employees take a lot of my time away from being able to do what I do best in creating content. However, others may find that one reliable employee is more valuable than 100 systems.

When I ran into a road block, I had to take a step back and assess where my time was best spent to meet my brand goals and serve my audience well. There is a lot of give and take, trial and error, in growing small businesses. But the key is to keep going and not become complacent in what you’ve established to the point of rejecting out of the box options that may propel you forward into the next step.

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?

I take great joy in authoring and running a Michigan based home decor, DIY, lifestyle blog focusing on interior design, home styling and budget friendly projects for the everyday home.

My goal is to inspire Haven Makers daily while seeking to inspire women to love themselves and their home with grace.

I came from an education and marketing background. When my second child was one, I decided to retire from my traditional career as the director of digital marketing for a university to stay home and raise my kids.

Once my children were all in school, I decided to start my own business when influencers and content creators didn’t even have a label. Jumping into a brand new industry meant I was able to create my brand on my terms alone, and I’m so grateful I entered on the ground floor.

Now, I focus on helping my audience create their own haven. I would rather they learn how to do it themselves than simply copycat what I share. So a lot of my content is detail oriented and tutorial style so it helps others gain confidence that they can create a home they love on their own.

Author, Designing a Life: From House to Haven
Education: Masters of Business Management

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

As a content creator, you have two distinct reputations. With your audience (followers/subscribers). And with brands. Early on I built my reputation with my audience by following my convictions on faith and committing to “clean” content. I developed trust with them and it is my most treasured reputation.

With brands, I developed a reputation of always meeting goals, timelines and standards of professionalism. They know I am reliable and are happy to repeat partnerships because of their experience working with me.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

Social media noise is very loud. Once content creation became a legitimized industry, all of a sudden there were a lot of “gurus” claiming to have all the answers. For awhile, I used them as part of my research for industry standards and tried to implement their suggestions.

Time after time I would see failure and blamed it on the changing industry. However, I quickly learned that trusting someone else to tell me how to best run my business was dampening my reputation I’d built of trust with my audience.

While I didn’t shift the content of my business, I had shifted how I presented it. And it quickly became off brand. Unlearning those industry trends was a valuable shift back to my personal standard of running Grace In My Space.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.graceinmyspace.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/graceinmyspace
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/graceinmyspace
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/graceinmyspace
• Other: https://www.pinterest.com/graceinmyspace

Image Credits

Sarah Symonds