florida small business

Trish Murphy is the owner and CEO of Marketing Smarty Pants, an online marketing company with an emphasis on content marketing. Content Marketing is the secret weapon to making your business stand out in the crowd. Trish helps businesses create and promote valuable content that connects with customers and builds brand equity. Trish is applauded for her fun and informative marketing presentations and providing simple content marketing solutions that fit any sized business as a content marketer.

An Air Force Veteran, Trish was born and raised in Orlando, Florida. She was stationed in Alaska for five years, which was quite the experience for her. The tremendous change in nature and culture captivated Trish, and she visits quite often. “The nature is just breathtaking, absolutely breathtaking. I think going to Alaska is probably the closest you can get to Mother Nature, the closest to visiting another country without actually leaving the United States.“

After having her daughter, Trish decided to part ways with the Air Force and stayed home with her children for years. After her youngest was born, she decided to get her marketing degree, where she fell in love with digital marketing. “It was fairly easy to do from home, or at least remotely, so I did not have to be face to face with people all the time.“ Having friends who owned their own business, Trish was able to test her marketing skills by offering free help and, over time, learned the ins and outs by doing on the job training.

Small businesses are one of Trish‘s key clients. “Small businesses have excellent why. They all have a passion. They do what they do because they love it. They have a great story to tell, so it makes it easy for me to connect with them.“ Some of her biggest tips for small businesses are not to feel like you must do it all. Somebody else may tell you completely different, and that‘s okay. “If you do everything, you’re going to reach a point of diminishing returns if you spread yourself thin. Evaluate your social media marketing, how much you want to do on your own, then hand off the rest to somebody else to execute, then streamline what you are doing.“

Something that we talk about in our CEO Mindset™ courses Automate. Delegate. Eliminate. Trish came to JULO Strategy‘s Phase I course to define and implement a strategic plan to gain more monthly clients. “I realized the current approach I have been taking isn‘t going to get me there. Something must change!“ She learned that not just in personal relationships but in business relationships, she was drastically undervaluing herself. Collaborating with other like-minded business owners was rewarding, especially when they would all come together to tackle a challenge. As a result, she increased her fee structure and learned to delegate the execution of client work to someone else. “CEO Mindset™ dives much deeper into concepts AND leaves the business owner with tangible tools that will help them adjust and grow their business in the future.“

Easily bribed with a glass of wine and a good book, when she’s not being a Smartypants, you can find her at the barn riding her horse or keeping “the boys” largely out of trouble. She is also Chairman of the Orlando Chapter for the Florida Association of Veteran-Owned Businesses, one of our JULO collaborating partners. Trish is currently finishing up our CEO Mindset Phase II course and has proven she knows how to Get. Shit. Done. Congratulations on all your success, Trish. We are so happy to be a part of your journey!

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Program expenses for all Florida veteran participants are covered through funding provided by the Florida Legislature and Veterans Florida

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With the Labor Day Holiday this weekend, are you able to walk away from your business, and it runs without you? If you are not sure, this would be a great time to discover what works and what does not work in your business when you are not available.

Having clear processes and systems in place and knowing when and where to automate, delegate, and eliminate is crucial to running your business. As entrepreneurs, we spend a lot of time doing and do not take the time to write down how we do it to be able to delegate later prevents us from scaling our businesses and keeps us “stuck.” We end up working through the holidays and upsetting those around us.

This weekend I challenge you to take the time to enjoy NOT working. Refrain from looking at emails, answering phone calls, text, or social media. Try to keep the computer shut down.

When you get back to the laboring, you will quickly find out what needs fixing. You might also discover that your business was fine, and everything could wait.

Look at your written processes. If you do not have them written, therein lies the first step.

Take any system, onboarding, client intake, online events, buying your products and services, and 10 x the amount of volume you have. Then take away the critical person who does that job. Are you prepared for success?

At JULO Strategy, we start building a process by thinking of it in this way, if I were to ask you, “Go to my house and bake me cupcakes.” Recipe for Success image Think through step by step and everything you need to make that happen—tools, passwords, equipment, brand, type, supplies, etc. It is easy to make a checklist from “your brain” until someone else has to follow that checklist.

Let me see your recipes for success.

Juliann Nichols CEO & Founder of JULO Strategy image With over 40 years of entrepreneurial experience, Juliann walks her talk! She has cultivated a personal brand that demonstrates who she is no matter what she is doing, with a “million-dollar PhD in Entrepreneurism.”