We were lucky to catch up with Tierra Jones recently and have shared our conversation below.

Tierra, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear about the best advice you’ve ever given to a client?

The best advice that I’ve ever given a client is to always research before starting anything or making a big decision. I had a client come to me and express that when she first started her hair bonnet business online, she was able to sell all of her items, easily by using influencers that she followed on IG. She did this and was successful at it for about 6 months.

Then business started to die down. She couldn’t understand why, because she was using the same methods as before and the same advertisement channels that had worked in the past. Being a business consultant with experience in market research, I knew that we first needed to step back and evaluate the business and the customers more closely.

I first took a look at what she was offering, her prices, and how she was marketing, online vs offline. She explained that offline she was usually able to move at least 10 weekly, but even that had dwindled down to about 3-4, weekly. Online she was using influencer ads and organic posts in order to reach her target market. She said that she learned from other online business gurus that this was an effective way to gain customers. She stated that she knew that her target market was women that followed the same influencers as her because when she created the product, she created it for women of color, such as herself, who like to also be fashionable, even at bedtime.

The next step I took was researching competition I asked her if she researched her completion, to which her reply was that she had researched popular companies that offered the same type of products, in order to create her prices. She had not however researched the local competition or smaller businesses that also offered the type of bonnets that she was hand-making and customizing for her customers. As part of her market research report, I began researching her local and national competition as well as their audiences, prices, locations, and advertisement channels. This allowed me to get a better idea of where her particular market was at and what was actually working to get her target to continue to spend at these companies and not hers. During my research, I noticed that many of the comp. businesses were pairing the bonnets together and selling them as a mommy and me type of package. This let me know that we could sell more bonnets at one time with the right pricing, message, and marketing.

Following researching the competition, I compiled all of my information on the competition and where her business was at the current point and began researching in-depth, on her target market. I used customer and sales data that I collected from her company, as well as secondary information that I had found from her local and national competition, to begin understanding her target’s demographics, as well as hobbies, and ways that shop online and offline for products like hers as well as other leisure and essentials that they spend their money on and or entertain.

Once I created the customer avatar for her company and put together a report of all of my findings, I was able to create a marketing plan for her Black Friday sale that was only 3 weeks away from that particular point. We worked together to create her email sales letters, find new influencers that held that target that I had created from my research, create FB ads, and create content such as a social media calendar and promotional material that her target would most likely gravitate to and buy. She began posting and running ads, and by the end of Black Friday, she reached out to me and showed me where she had sold out all of her bonnets within 3 days of launching her sale. She could not believe how quickly we had turned around her luck in business, all by doing research.

This is the reason why I started my business helping other business owners not only start but grow within the business world. There are so many ways to make money and help others if people would only take the time to do the research. I see and hear of many businesses starting up and failing within the first 3 years, and in my opinion, I feel that it is a lack of research when starting out. I have always had a passion for learning new things so research has been a passion and talent of mine since I was 12 years old, and could “Google” whatever I wanted to know. My motto is, “Never give up when things get tough. Research another way first.”

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

I am a single mother of a 10-year-old boy. I began Blue Monet Media LLC in 2017(LLC est. in 2019). I started out as a virtual assistant where I worked for some of the top influencers online at that time, as their social media manager, researcher, business consultant, and content creator. I began my company by bootstrapping. I was working in health care as a secretary making $10/hr and working 30+ hours a week with a rotating schedule. My son was in pre-school and needed me to be around more than I was able to. This along with some other life-altering moments, caused me to look at my life as a whole and really evaluate the type of life that I currently had versus the one that I wanted and knew I deserved, not just for myself, but for my son and loved ones as well. This caused me to begin my research process on how I could obtain the type of lifestyle where I could have more freedom and work from home so that I could be with my son more and do the things that we enjoyed like traveling more.

I learned how to obtain certifications online for little to no money since I had gone to numerous colleges but had yet to obtain any type of degree due to life happening as life does. I read about and took webinars, courses, and tutorials on how I could obtain, my dream life using my knowledge, research skills, and network, online and offline.

In 2019 I left the healthcare field and went into the government sector where I also took a $2 pay cut and no benefits. I did this because it allowed me to be on a 9-5 schedule. This meant that I could be around my son more. While on this job I was blessed enough to be able to have enough freedom to begin building BMM more and more each day. By July of 2019, I had released my first successful Ebook online, after doing market research inside Facebook groups as well as other audiences on platforms like Twitter and Instagram. I made $2500 in less than 2 weeks, with no paid advertisement. I strictly used Facebook groups, word of mouth, and influencer ads that were free. From there the Ebook continued to sell quickly. I then began consulting and helping other small businesses to be able to do the same.

From there BMM took off and went from being a simple virtual research assistant company to being a full business consultant company by 2021. In 2021, BMM landed its biggest contract to date with an international digital marketing company that works for Fortune 500 companies, which is where BMM is currently in 2022, from a business point of view.

My biggest accomplishment in BMM would be landing the international contract because it showed me that I am capable of creating my dreams, through the help of research, faith, and patience. I now work from home and have a flexible schedule and career where I am able to take the type of trips and breaks that I had always dreamed about. Dreams really do come true, when you set goals, keep pushing, and use negativity to fuel your drive.

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

A few things that clients have told me over the years, that I feel have helped me to build my reputation within my market are that I am transparent and easy to understand, and I show that I have a passion for everything that I do for my clients and audience.

I value myself and my company on transparency because this is something that I do not see often in my personal as well as professional life. I have experienced too many people and companies that are afraid to address the truth because it may cause embarrassment, shame, or trigger an emotion that is not wanted. I feel that by addressing “the elephant in the room sort of speak, you are letting the other person know that you are willing to take on any consequences, good or bad, for your actions. This shows that you are more genuine than those who are too afraid to admit it. Once people see that they can trust you with the truth, they are more open to hearing what you have to say or offer.

When I first began my company, I did not have much business background other than what I had picked up here and there from various sources. With this in mind, I did not have all of the fancy business lingo that many of my competitors did. This is what helped me to stand out with my particular audience. Although we both were learning from the same gurus, I seem to be able to pick up what they were teaching and then teach it in a way that my audience who also had little to no business background, could understand and apply the tips and tricks to their business. As many of my clients are older or had little to no tech background, they appreciated that I was able to break the information down into a language that they could digest and produce successful results like the gurus.

My passion for what I do is what rubs off into my outputs for clients. I intentionally went into business for myself so that I could not only obtain the dream life that I had for myself but to be able to help others do the same, in my own way. I enjoy what I do so working for clients is like a treat to myself which in turn allows my creative juices to really flow for each individual client. I have basic packages, but I always do something more than what I told the client I would because I enjoy seeing and hearing the extra happiness and surprise once they receive my deliverables. This is what helps to separate me from my competition.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

A lesson that I had to unlearn as an adult is to not take things so personal. As a child, growing up, I was always judged on my appearance. I was always short, heavy set, and had some skin disclorations in various parts of my body, due to a chemical imbalnce called Polycycstic Overian syndrome. I was teased so much back then, that once I became an adult carried that same fear of being teased by outsiders. I automatically thought that anytime someone was telling me how to better myself, I assumed that they were saying that I was less than or worthless. This feeling carried over into my business life which is where I first began learning my lesson of not taking things so personal.

I had begun working for a business owner, as their virtual assistant, when I first starting BMM. I would run her social media, email marketing, webinars, and even set up her client and group meetings. Due to just starting out and teaching myself different social media growth tricks and tips, I was making mistakes at least 3 times a week. I would forget to post at certain times, mess up email tagging so certain people were not receiving the right emails, and the list goes on. This is not to say that I did not quickly fix the issues that I had caused, but it did start to become a major issue when I began scheduling one on one and group meetings for the wrong dates and times. This caused the business owner to start losing clients due to the inconsistency. These clients had paid $17K to work with my client, but I was making silly jr mistakes within her company, which was making her look untrustworthy to her clients.

She brought this up to me and let me know that she had lost 3 clients due to my mistakes. She did not communicate it in the way that I would have thought a leader, mentor, multimillion dollar business owner and influencer should have handled the situation because she decided to email me instead of calling me. We were on close terms and she would call me with any other issues she had, so I was not understanding why she carrying her self in such a rude manner via email. I did understand her frustration as well the clients. I let her know that I felt that since I was still new to some things and having to teach myself along the way, maybe it would be best for me to handle tasks that I was already an expert at, and she deligate the more challenging tasks to another team member. This upset her even more, so she then proceeded to give me a few choice words on how she felt I was acting. Again she was communicating with me via email so I was confused as to if she was giving me feedback to help me to grow or if she was ready to fire me.

I decided to resign due to my actions costing her so much money as well as how she handled the situation. I am all for helping others, but when I get to a point where I am hurting more than helping, I choose to pull away. She let me knowthat she was not giving me the feedback because she wanted to fire me, butinorder for me to learnmy lesson and grow from that experience. I still decided to resign due to the words that she had said to me out of anger. She then let me know after the fact that she was going through some personal things at home and that me resigning because of “how she was acting at that moment” was only adding to her stress. At that moment I felt attacked, so I decided to end all communication with her team and her.

To this day I know that I could have handled that situation a lot better. Although she was the client, it was my job as the service provider to reassure my client and let her know that I understood that she was going through some personal things at home and that I didn’t take the delivery of the feedback, personal. Looking back I now understand that she was only trying to help me understand that my mistakes don’t only hurt her, but they also hurt her client’s businesses. She wanted me to understand that sometimes mistakes can’t be fixed and that is why it is important to always check behind myself and ask questions if I do not understand something fully or if I feel that what was said to me is not accurate. Growth is apart of life but the less I take things personal, the happier I have been in all aspects of my life. Sometimes people are genuinely trying to help you become a better version of yourself, and that is okay.

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