Welcome to the Online Success Collaborative Podcast!

Click to listen in:    iTunes – Google Play 

Chelsea Dutta truly touches on a giving back with her business, Amma’s Umma. 

She provides great tips on starting a business on a budget and investing wisely as you grow in sales and reach over time. 

Dutta’s Three C’s for Business Growth:

Community – Creativity – Conversation 

• Build a community with your audience and create a sense of belonging. If you create a sense of belonging… people will stick around. They’ll share what you’re doing and they will get invested. 
• Creativity. You have to do everything differently. You might get ten of the same messages from different businesses using some sort of template that’s been handed down and this turns people off. This doesn’t cut it anymore. You have to be truly creative and original with an online business to succeed or people will just get suspicious or uncomfortable and leave. (ideas: giveaways, activities your audience will like, polling on Facebook) 

• Conversation makes the biggest difference. If we’re having a low day in sales, I tell my employees to get on social media and start a conversation with our customers. Engage with them, listen to them, ask them what they want to see. We do a lot of voting for products, like asking what they’d like to see in the story. Putting that ownership back in the community will strengthen it. 

Pro Tip: Find an influencer you love, tell them how they’ve impacted your business, and gift them a product or just words of affirmation letting them know how much their work matters. Don’t expect anything in return! Even a message back is a positive win. 

Engagement ideas 

Ask the question, really listen to the feedback, and then show the outcome.  

Because when people feel like they’re able to invest and make a difference in how you’re doing your business. They become more loyal customers and customers who are going to share what you’re doing. 

When I share something from my life, I get triple the amount of likes and engagement than I do product posts. For example, I couldn’t decide on the color for our brick and mortar stores door, so I pitched it to my audience. Want to see it? Checkout the pic above! 

Time Management: 

As a recovering workaholic, owning Amma’s Umma and working 20 hours for an adoption nonprofit has been a time warp. But, one big move was hiring employees to help with the brick and mortar operations. Having a team and infrastructure is the only way to truly manage what we have going on right now. 

What’s the best way to scale your business? 

Determine what things only you can do, and then find ways to get help. You only have so many hours a week, but as you’re able to give tasks to other people you have more hours to focus on what’s needed to grow. 

From the beginning, I hired a bookkeeper because I knew the stress and hours worked would be worth the price and it’s made the biggest difference as well as given me the ability to move forward. 

Education is also huge in growth. You hit a ceiling of organic knowledge or Googled as much as you can for free information. Who’s Dutta’s go to for online courses? Jenna Kutcher. 

Interested in an online course? Find someone who is established, has a successful business or helps successful businesses, and invest in that person. Avoid people who have little to no experience in the field. Every time I’ve done this, my business had a breakthrough. We need help in order to grow. 

I think it’s really easy as a business owner to become stubborn and stuck in our ways because we have worked so hard and we have built beautiful, amazing things. But unless you bring someone in who you trust or has more knowledge than you (who can mentor you), you are going to hit a ceiling. 

Favorite Online Management Tool: Tailwind; schedules and autoposts on Pinterest 

Planner: Cultivate What Matters Planner 

#1 Inspiration in Online Business: Emily Sexton – Flourish Market in North Carolina 

Book: Dare to Lead by Brene Brown

Drink of Choice: Cardamom Breve or Guava Kombutcha