Welcome to Milestone Moments, the show where we explore the journeys that lead to success.
I'm Sheila Slick, your host and founder of Five Milestones. In every episode, we will bring you
insights from the minds of entrepreneurs, leaders, and experts who will share not just their expertise
but the milestone moments that have reshaped their journeys and led to significant achievements.
So if you're looking for motivation, you're in the right place. Subscribe now and discover the
milestones that mark the path to success.
Welcome to another episode of Milestone Moments in Business and Leadership. Today, my special
guest, Bianca Smith, is joining us from Spain. Bianca is the founder of Simplified Marketing
Services, a marketing agency helping financial professionals and coaches simplify their business
through content marketing. She's a wife, a mama three, and a retired military spouse and veteran.
She's all about work-life integration and teaching others how to simplify their lives and marketing
strategies. Welcome to the show, Bianca. Thank you, Sheila. Thanks for having me.
Let's talk about how you got to being the owner of a marketing agency today in Spain.
Yes. So as you said, I am, I say retired military spouse because my husband is retired,
but he still works for the US government, which is why we are in Madrid, Spain. I've been here for,
I say 10 years total because we lived here before. My husband retired from here. Then we went to some
other countries and then came back. When your kids get older and being overseas, a lot of times
being in the military, you can't work on the economy. And so you're almost forced to kind of
become a stay at home mom. A lot of people go back to school or in my case, to start a business.
And so when we were stationed in Cuba, I decided to start a vinyl shop. So making t-shirts,
making wine glasses, making key chains, it was going great. I was doing cry fairs every three
months. And then we moved from Cuba back to Spain. And I decided to open a bookkeeping firm.
Because when I was in Cuba, I got my master's degree in accounting. And again, moving to Spain
could work again. And so I said, okay, my kids are in middle school. They're all a year apart.
I have this master's degree in accounting. I left my job in banking. I'm a lawyer. I'm a
lawyer. I'm a lawyer. I'm a lawyer. I got a job in banking. What am I going to do all day?
And when all those people, how to work from home. And somebody pointed me to a Facebook page for
military spouses and veterans to find legit remote work from home jobs. And I joined that
group and I became their ambassador because I love what they were doing. And through that
internships for marketing actually. And through one of my marketing internships, somebody was
looking for a social media manager, but she was a CPA. And I almost didn't apply because I was like,
oh, I'm not a BA yet. I'm kind of going through an internship. And there were so many comments.
And lo and behold, I said, I'm just going to do it. And she was my client for three years.
And she pivoted. So we just stopped working last year together. And I started doing social media
and BA services and bookkeeping. I decided to stop doing bookkeeping for e-commerce because it was
very stressful for me to do bookkeeping for e-commerce. And I decided just to be a VA
slash social media manager. And then I believe it was 2022. I just decided to be a virtual
assistant agency because we all know what happened. And I needed to find... I needed to niche down just
a little bit more because I had too many clients coming in. And I'm only one person. I only have
so many hours. And so I became a virtual assistant agency. However, a lot of our clients were in the
financial space and they would come in to us primarily for social media marketing. So we got
rid of VA services and I focused on a social media agency and also being a virtual assistant coach.
So here I am running a social media agency and at the same time teaching people how to become a
virtual assistant. So I had a monthly membership and a Facebook group and a course and group
coaching. And it was a lot. It was a lot running two businesses with three kids in high school who
were all back to back. And at this point, they're going to college back to back. And it was very
stressful and my husband was traveling a lot. So I went for a walk one day, came back and quit VA
coaching. That summer, I said it's going to be my last group coaching and I stopped doing that
to focus on the agency. And at that same time, we pivoted to a social media marketing agency.
And just this year, we niche down a little bit further into marketing. So we're doing not only
social media, but we're dabbling a bit in the email marketing space. And as the years go by,
we'll be expanding our services. Okay. I'm going to have to simplify that statement.
It's a lot. It is. But what I find really fascinating, and I'm just thinking out loud here,
is as a veteran and you were offering the coaching, I know there's a lot of veterans out there that
some sometimes struggle going into the civilian world. Have you considered perhaps helping
veterans? You've been successful in pivoting and starting all different types of businesses.
You're almost like a pure heart entrepreneur that's multi-faceted in the different industries
that you've served. Helping veterans start a business? I haven't. I started actually
wanting to work with veterans, as my clients tell. And at one point, I was only hiring veterans to
come work in my business. And so my marketing assistant is a military spouse or hiring military
spouses because if anything, I feel veterans, they have the background, the schooling,
the years in the military to kind of find a job. Whereas military spouses, we move a lot and may
not have that. So I wanted to kind of more support military spouses versus veterans. So it's not an
avenue I have explored. But you do hire them because in that way, you can also scale your agency so
that you can continue doing what you do, what you do, what you love. So your company helps businesses
discover their marketing north star. Can you share how finding this north star can lead to an
impactful marketing approach? So a lot of times the industry that we serve, which is primarily
the financial industry, they are very busy. As a lot of people know right now, we are in tax season.
And so their marketing tends to fall off. And that's even if they do marketing. And so marketing
for the financial industry could be a little bit more difficult. Sometimes just maybe a little bit
of the laws behind it where you can and can't post, which has got a little bit more lenient.
And so a lot of times when clients come to work with us, they're dabbling in marketing,
but it's just too much work. And at the same time, they have all of these financial clients,
they may, like I said, maybe in tax season. And so it's where do I start? But at the same time,
I don't want my marketing to subside because I'm too busy. And so when they come to work with us
here at the agency, our main goal with them is simplifying their marketing. It's also not
only doing it for them, but teaching them. Because a lot of them don't know how to show up on video.
They don't understand how to even do a story. Sometimes they're like, what's the story? How do
I do it? So we're not only doing it for them. I also want to teach them the side of marketing
because I want them to understand what we're doing so they understand the impact of the
brand, the impactfulness that we're bringing into their marketing and bringing into their business.
So what does the North Star represent?
So your North Star, the star that's so bright, right? And it's unique. And for some people,
it's their compass. It can be, I don't want to bring Christianity to it, but it can be like,
you know, kind of finding your way home. And it's kind of the way I feel as marketing because I
talk about work-life integration a lot. And I feel like your work and your home is integrated.
It's blended. I don't believe in a balance because it's like, okay, you're kind of integrating it
both, especially as an entrepreneur in the financial space. And a lot of our clients have kids.
So they can be working one moment and they got to tend to the baby. And then they're working
for a little bit more and then they got to cook dinner. Then they're working a little bit more.
So I like to just say like their North Star is just kind of bringing them home back into
like this work-life integration where they don't have to pick one over the other.
So looking back at your career and your entrepreneurial career,
what's the most valuable lesson that you've learned along the way?
I would say I love to talk about different seasons in our life and that it's okay to
pivot. It's okay to change your mind. It's okay to try different things. Don't be like looking at
all what the gurus are out there doing. Focus on you and your business. And if something's not
working, it's okay to pivot. So prime example, I have two kids in college and I have a senior
in high school. So next year I have a freshman, sophomore, and junior in college. And me and my
husband will be empty nesters. So here's another pivot. So even going through those seasons,
I've had to adapt my business where I'm not going to take that many clients this season.
This season I can go hard. And when it comes to pivoting in your business,
for example, you saw earlier how I said, okay, I did bookkeeping. I did vinyl. I did the agency.
And prime example, in the fall, no, no, no. In the summer, I said, I'm going to start working
with coaches again. I was just working with people in the financial space and coaches.
And I took away coaches in 2023. And then in the summer, I started to add them back because
a lot of coaches were asking to work with us, especially when it came to content repurposing.
A lot of them have podcasts and we help them repurpose that content. A lot of people in the
financial space don't have podcasts. So I said, great, we'll bring them both in. However,
in January, I was having a hard time with my marketing because here we have the financial
industry. We have the coaching industry. I was having a hard time focusing on how to
bring them together in my marketing. And I still found myself... My heart just lied with the
financial industry. So I said, you know what? For 6 months, I try to bring coaches in and we do have
coaches in our agency. But it's not where my heart lies. I don't want to... They're not like my niece
who I enjoy truly working with. It truly is a financial industry because that is my background.
And so, yeah, actually it was in February last month, I was talking to my coach and I was like,
my marketing fills off. And she was like, this isn't what you want to do. And I was like, you
know what? I don't want to do it. And literally that same... The next day, I just sleep on it.
I went and took away, like rearrange my bio, rearrange my website and I'm pivoting right now.
And will it change? I don't know. It might change in the future, but I pivot a lot and I think it's
okay. But at the end of the day, my branding stay consistent. My marketing is consistent. And I think
the financial space is what people truly know me for. Financial industry is our main focus.
The marketing landscape is also always pivoting. How can we adapt and thrive in such a dynamic
environment to make sure our marketing strategies remain effective and relevant?
I would recommend that you either follow people in the marketing space that stays up with the trends
so that you're staying up the trend if you don't have a marketing team. For our clients,
they don't have to worry about it. We literally dedicate a day. Every single Thursday, we dedicate
two to three hours where we are doing training. So we're going through podcasts. We're going
through people that we follow. We go through thought leaders in this space where we're learning,
okay, Instagram is changing. LinkedIn is making major changes. So we keep up to date with what's
going on. Not only that, we test things on our own feed on our agency. So you'll see at one moment
when it came to real, we weren't using covers. And now we're going back to using real covers.
I may change our story strategy. Right now, we're doing LinkedIn without any graphics,
just on our own feed to see how it's working before we bring it into our clients. But if you
don't have a marketing team, you can just follow some marketing strategists like myself. I have
a newsletter that I go out every week. And at the bottom of that newsletter, it has marketing news.
I give you the latest marketing news on what's happening that week. And so that you can tell
your marketing strategy to what's going on in the world right now. But you don't have to,
I would say, be on every single platform. So right now, LinkedIn is a little bit trending right now.
So if you're not on LinkedIn, I recommend it's the place to be right now. Get in before it gets
to be a little bit too much. And dedicate... This is your business. Marketing is a big part of your
business. Dedicate a day of training just like we do. And try things. It doesn't hurt to try because
rules may not be great for one client, but it's great for another. Another client may
thrive on stories. Another one doesn't. Another one may thrive on Instagram, but another one thrives
on LinkedIn. So really finding out where your ideal client is hanging out for us and then finding
into a space is LinkedIn. So we spend a lot of time on LinkedIn. LinkedIn has the top marketing
voice, which is what our agency has right now. And so yeah, if you have a business, you have to do
marketing and set aside some time to just learn and try. It's an experiment. I feel like everything's
an experiment. And just have fun with that. I think when you have fun and you're not worried
about what everybody else thinks, and like I said, carousels work great for some, it doesn't work
great for others. So what's your next milestone? Oh, my next milestone. So personally, my last kid
goes to college in August. The husband and I will be empty nesters. We are moving again, we're moving
from Spain to another country, but I don't want to say until we... If anybody knows the military,
we say nothing until we get paperwork in hand. So it looks like in September and October, we'll
be moving to another country. And the next big, big milestone for business is starting a podcast.
So I'm going to be having a podcast come out called Simplified Marketing. And it's going to
be geared towards the financial industry, but anybody can take it because it's all about marketing.
But I don't want to be another marketing agency. I like to simplify things. I want to make it easy
for you. I want to give you small bite-sized action bar items, but also talk about work-life
integration. Talk about how is the blend and how you take time to go for a walk, travel,
get from behind your desk, do unplug vacation, do a plug vacation, but also just integrate in
both of those. Because to me, like I said, I think there were just one.
Before I let you go, how can my audience follow you or find you?
Yes. So I'm on Instagram. I love that platform. I'm in stories all day, every day. I'm doing a lot
of behind the scenes of my life, or personally and business-wise. So you can find me at Simplified
Marketing Services on Instagram and LinkedIn as well as Simplified Marketing Services.
Well, thank you so much for your time. What would be your one key piece of advice that you can give
our listeners, either work-life integration or living that simplified life?
Yeah, just try to, just when it comes to your marketing, keep it simple. A lot of us are not
influencers. We do not have to be posting three times a day, every single day. Find that sweet
spot. For example, we're a marketing agency and I only post four days a week on Instagram.
I do post five days a week on LinkedIn, but I just started that because I'm testing right now.
And before it was three days and you can see posts a week later on LinkedIn. So do whatever
that's comfortable for you. Focus on one platform. So just focus on that one platform, your ideal
client is on, let's say that's LinkedIn, just find everything you can about LinkedIn. Be
really good on that platform. Really speak to your clients on that platform and then maybe bring in
Instagram, you know, one day a week, then two day a week. So that's what I would say as far as just
simplify your marketing and just keep it simple. Well, thank you for joining us today.
Thank you. It was a pleasure. And thank you to all of our listeners for tuning in for another
episode of Milestone Moments in Business and Leadership.