Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Shanté Roddy. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Shanté , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Do you manage your own social media?

I’ve been a full-time business owner for nine years, and when I started my first company, I managed my own social media. I didn’t even know it was a gift for me. I knew social media would be necessary for my business for brand awareness and visibility. Social media would also be vital to expand my reach, grow my audience, and build up my clientele. However, at that time, I always knew I wanted to have a team because I did not want the main focus of my efforts to be solely on social media. We’re constantly juggling hats, but I got to the point where it was time to hire a team. Before I started my second company, I decided to bring on some interns.

People typically feel like they don’t have the budget or know where to find help. However, you can bring on interns and develop them. They can be a great resource for helping with social media. They definitely were for me. I also utilized the skillsets of VAs (virtual assistants).

You can hire them individually or through a virtual assistant agency. Using virtual assistants provides flexibility both for you and them. And there is a guarantee that you can get these services within your budget. It’s not like you have to hire them full-time. You may hire them a few hours a week or a few hours a day. They can grow with you as you continue to grow your company.

So, once I started utilizing the interns and developed them, they went on to do great things. I started reaching out to freelancers and virtual assistants who had the right skill set and were well-versed in digital marketing, social media marketing, data analytics, and graphic design.

The ability to tell a story through digital marketing was important to me. It was also important for me to have someone who could communicate in my language or the company’s voice. Initially, that can be a challenge, but that’s something that you can work through over time.

Understanding data analytics is also important when it comes to social media. So you’re always performance-driven and goal-driven. We could look across the board at our performance metrics that all the social media platforms have and see how we’re measuring up against those performance metrics and see who it is that we’re targeting. Are we targeting the right audience? We’ll then find out new information. For example, sometimes we think we have more women, and actually, we have more men in our audience. Or maybe we catered to a specific age group, and then we find that there are younger or even older people who are part of our target market that we can assess and evaluate. So, bringing on a team to help oversee the performance part of it really helped.
Having someone manage the paid ad aspect was also a real help.

Hiring help helped free up my time to better manage my business and work on the strategic aspects of my business and not always on social media.

However, while I do have a team, I still do play a role in the process.

I manage the team. I approve everything that goes out as far as content. I also am a content creator, so I share content myself. I do and produce the live shows for She Boss Talk. I also create content if I think it’s essential for the community to have access to it. I create content if it’s important for my community to know or want to inspire or empower them.

In my company, everybody knows what everyone else is doing. Everybody understands everyone’s role and responsibility. Everyone is working at a point where they have transparency and visibility into everything happening within the company. Nobody is working in isolation where they don’t know what’s happening and where they can’t communicate our message to our community, which is so crucial for us to not only sustain our community but for us to grow.

By doing this, we grew our YouTube channel to almost 70,000 subscribers and our Facebook page to nearly 24,000 followers. So, it helps to have a team to support you.

Shanté , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

She Boss Talk is a media marketing company primarily serving women entrepreneurs and business owners. We provide programs, products, and services that help women entrepreneurs and business owners build their confidence, brand awareness, and brand equity to grow their businesses to a seven-figure plus business.

We provide a broadcast media platform through our live show. We also have a podcast where we bring guests on, interview them, and allow them to show up as an expert and talk about something important for our audience that they have expertise in. In return, our guests get heavy promotion for their business or their brand. Therefore, it can help fill their pipeline and give them leads and clients.

We’ve had that happen for many of our guests. That’s the importance of having a platform and showing up as the expert as a business owner.
We also have a blog allowing women to share their voice, expertise, and wisdom with our community for free. It’s another way for them to spotlight their expertise, their business, and their brand.

Regarding programs and services, we also host several networking events tailored to women. We host many pitch competitions, contests, and grant programs where we give money to women business owners so that they can start, grow, or expand their businesses. This is free money; they do not have to pay back or give up equity in their business.

In addition, we have a lot of digital products that provide self-paced learning for the business owner as they go through any stage of their business journey. So whether they’re at the startup phase or growing or maturing in their business, we have classes on how to get grants, how to get funding, and working capital lines of credit for their business. We have classes on how to become successful as affiliate marketers.

We have classes on how to get certified in their business as either a minority business, woman-owned business, or veteran business and how those certifications can open the doors of opportunity to get corporate and government contracts and grants that are available and accessible to them.

So we have so many programs that are targeted to women’s business that is going to help them overcome barriers that exist in the funding space and obstacles that exist in the marketing space so that not only they get seen and heard by those that want to do business with them and invest in them, but they also get access to the capital that needs to be able to thrive.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

So, I’m approaching my fourth anniversary in the new year. When I was pivoting from my other business, COVID-19 was just hitting. So I started my business in January of 2020, and we became aware of COVID-19, I believe, in February, and that’s when things started to shut down. So, I was pivoting. I was in a challenging place coming into the pandemic, but I was open and ready to seize every available opportunity.

I was knowledgeable about funding, but I only became as knowledgeable once COVID-19 hit. I then became aware of many available programs because of the shutdown.

All the businesses except for essential businesses were forced to shut down and could, therefore, not do business. So I was one of those people, right?

I was trying to put on an event that I had to cancel that cost money. I was teaching, and all those classes were canceled for months and months and months. Meanwhile, I was trying to pivot into and start this business.

I saw the opportunity to get access to Covid Relief. That’s where it started. Never in history has funding at this level ever been made available to small businesses, especially for-profit businesses. So that’s where I started. I engaged in what was going on. Not just the news with the public officials both here and federally, to know what COVID relief options were available.

I became well-versed in it. That means I educated myself on all the programs, and I started applying. Now, what benefited me is that my business was already well positioned. What does that mean? It was well structured. It was legally structured and registered with my state. I had my EIN and my business bank accounts in order. I also had all of my tax returns filed and owed no money to the IRS or the state. Those are important, and they became important in the process, even when trying to get Covid relief that I could get and others were not. So, not only was I able to get Covid relief, but they started rolling out grant programs across the country and also locally, which I was able to take advantage of as well. I just stayed tuned in to what was going on.

Therefore, I was one of the first to know. It is so important to get involved and get connected to not only local officials but business associations. Get in touch with business centers, like the Small Business Development Center, the Chamber of Commerce, your local Women’s Business Center, and the Urban League, to name a few. Getting in touch with them means when they are giving resources like money, they give it to the small business owners that are in their network. So it’s so important to have that network available to you and then tap into that network.

I’m on their email list. So anytime they’re sending emails to their constituents about grants or funding, I become aware.

I was also positioned for funding because I had already completed the strenuous certification process.

Not only did I go after grants, I started applying for lines of credit. As the business aged, I qualify for more. I’m patient, and while I’m patient, I’m still building up my business and making sure we’re financially healthy in my business. Therefore, when the opportunity comes and I apply for that line of credit, I get it. I go to either my bank or partner with other financial institutions. It’s essential to build relationships with financial institutions. So then, when I apply, I get approved. I recently applied with Navy Federal Credit Union and immediately applied for a business credit card and was approved for $9,000. I never didn’t know that that would happen.

I didn’t assume I would get it. I know I’ve put in the work. It’s nice to know you’re building that relationship, working in your business, and doing the right things, which paid off.

I ensure I’m consistent in building those relationships and those connections and then making the ask. You can’t get what you don’t ask for. So many times, we are fearful to ask, or we don’t think we’re qualified enough for this or that. I knew I was qualified. I just went in with a mindset that I am qualified for whatever I’m going after. I’m applying for this, and this is mine. So, with that mentality, I just kept getting it and getting it and getting it. Even when I didn’t, I learned the lesson from that to take into the next application, whether it was a grant or applying for a loan, a line of credit, or a business credit card.

Those lessons have value if you learn the lessons and you apply them. And so that’s my story about how I’ve been able to fund my business, how capital has helped me start my business, and how it has helped me to grow each year. Since the second year, we have maintained six figures, and we are growing to seven figures. We knew that to grow, we would need access to working capital. It is a must when you’re trying to scale your business. I’m so proud of the fact that we were able to tap into all of these various types of capital for our business because we know that we need it to grow.

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

Let me start with the fact that when I first started in business almost ten years ago, I was not visible on social media. I was on social media. I was just like a lot of others who are on social media, feeling like they’re wasting their time or had no strategy behind what they’re doing. We may think that clients will line up at your door for you to provide them with products and services. And I found out relatively quickly that that is not how it works. I did not like social media.

I was ready to get off of social media before I started my business, but I knew I needed a social media presence. So I said, oh, no, I need to stay here on social media, and I need to make sure that I have a strategy. So, really, I just got serious about why I was there.

Understanding my reason for being on social media and what I hoped to accomplish on social media is what really helped me take off. I was leveraging social media throughout COVID. I keep coming back to Covid because it is one of those things that once in a lifetime and the most tragic worldwide event that has happened since I’ve been alive. And that’s over 47 years.

I think it was 2018 when I got the idea to start some type of show where I’m interviewing entrepreneurs. Every entrepreneur has a story, and there’s power in all of our stories. And I wanted to spotlight them. I wanted to be one of those people like Oprah interviewing these amazing entrepreneurs and talking about the challenges that they’ve overcome and their success stories. At first, it was a hobby, but I did it.

I stepped out on faith. I was hosting an event, and I said, I’m going to start this. I didn’t know how long it would last. And so I did it. I started the show, and at the end of 2019, I said I wanted to get more serious. I really wanted to turn this into a business.

So that’s how it turned out for me, pivoting from one business to this business, She Boss Talk, and our talk show. So, I rebranded the talk show to focus on women in business. I called it She Boss Talk, and I turned it into a media marketing company. And so, what did that mean for social media? I became an even better content creator. During that time, I became even more visible. I also had a platform not only to build up my own brand but also to give other people a platform to build up their brands. And it was there just the right time. That’s how powerful social media is. So when Covid hit and everybody was forced to go home and everything shut down, everybody was in front of their laptops and online.

So if you were going to be seen, that was the time to get noticed because people were buying online more now than at any time, again, in history, right?

Online shopping was being getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And no one, no one had any place else to shop but from their laptops. Small businesses were struggling. They were also struggling to get into the online space. I had the platform for them. So that’s really what really catapulted me and my audience, and my community was being a safe place for small businesses and entrepreneurs to get information and facts regarding the Covid 19 pandemic as it related to them and their business and the impacts.

We spoke about available COVID programs, home ownership, and any relief type available that would meet the entrepreneur’s needs, whether it was them or their family. We were able to point them in the right direction regarding the complexity of the programs and filling out the applications at a time when people felt overwhelmed, defeated, or were ready to give up. We were that voice for them of empowerment to say, keep going.

We broke down information and put it in layperson’s terms so that people understood and could take action and get the relief that they needed when they weren’t getting it before. We continued to do this, and businesses kept continuing to get results. And to my surprise, I kept seeing our following grow and grow. I mean, at the thousands, 5,000 here, 10,000 there. And it was really amazing to see what showing up would do. And I simply just talked about what I wanted to talk about. I already had the platform, the knowledge, and the education. I’m well-informed. Let me take this opportunity to share with others that are not as informed. Let me be a mentor for them. Let me be a champion for them where they have, there, there’s no one else that they have.

And making sure that, you know, my face is seen because they can see themselves in me and know that they could do it. If they saw that I could do it, they knew they could do it. So that’s really what helped me build my audience. And, then I gained the understanding of knowing my audience is my community. They’re my family. So we want to help each other succeed. And the more you can engage a community, especially by being live and through video, the more you can interact with them. I think that is the biggest thing that a business can do. If you build an audience or grow your community, just post content. Create your own content, something you feel comfortable with, figure out what you are an expert in, and start with that.

Or what are you passionate about? What do you like doing? What do you like talking about that you could talk about with your girlfriend or your family for hours? What things would you like to change? So, don’t feel like you have to go outside of your comfort zone. Start with what it is that you know that you can already talk about. Start talking about it, and then your audience will be attracted to you. The key is to show up and show out for your audience consistently. That means putting together a schedule that works best for you. So if that’s one day a week, if it’s two days a week or three days a week, or every day of the week, you decide based on your schedule. But stay consistent in that schedule, and you will see that people will be attracted to you. Your community will start growing; you will start getting more followers. Then, it is a matter of leveraging your content to help fill a pipeline, to help you grow your business, and to provide solutions to your audience where they will pay you to solve their problems. And then you keep filling the pipeline with your content.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://shebosstalk.com/
• Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/shebosstalk
• Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/shebosstalk
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/shebosstalk/
• Youtube: http://bit.ly/SheBossTalkYouTube
• Other: Blog: https://shespeakshermindblog.com/