Author: sofia fortin

Instagram is all the rage these days. With many great features and super high engagement, brands are finding this platform a great way to reach and connect with audiences.

 

In episode 6 of the SMRT Women podcast, we sat down with Kym Rempel of Anto Yukon, a Yukon-based bath and body company, to talk about using Instagram to launch and grow your brand. Made of all natural ingredients, Anto products are produced from a passion for the natural world and travel. Kym launched two years ago and has used Instagram to create connections with wholesalers all across the country. She also runs two local shops (on in Whitehorse and one in Carcross) where she sells her products and fabulous goods from the Yukon and beyond.

Ep 6 Rock Instagram to Grow Your Biz

Instagram Success Takeaways

Do the research

There are many different ways to use Instagram successfully to build your brand and sell. Any winning strategy is based on audience research. Different audiences respond to different content and different stories. The ideal strategy is a match between how you naturally express yourself and connect and what your audience is looking for. Instagram can be a great tool for this research. Check out competitors, check out people you would love to see follow you and engage with their content. What do their feeds look like? What stories are they telling?

 

Forget shiny object syndrome - do what works and stick to it

As mentioned above - there are many ways to win over your Instagram audience. It can be easy to get distracted trying different things. Research your strategy - choose a few key things to focus on and stick to it with consistency before you go randomly following shiny objects.

 

Tell a story

Whether you are selling a product or service you must tell a story. Give your audience a reason to click to read more, to get excited, to comment and engage.

 

Engagement matters more than followers

Are you caught up in how many followers you have? Worried you haven’t hit the 1K, 5K, 10K mark? Followers are not what matters - engagement is. It doesn’t matter how big your following is, what matters if the people who follow you are engaged and buying. So focus on your engagement stats and ultimately your SALES.

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So many people are starting a freelance business or side hustle of some sort these days, and we get questions almost weekly about how to set a business up, what steps to follow, and what things you need to know. Over the last week alone, we've gone over the basics with three people! So, we thought - it's time to dish the details. 

 

This isn't a post about knowing your audience, marketing to the right people, or putting together an operations budget - more on those details later. This is a post about the legal and logistical things you need to consider and do in order to have a real, live business. What will your business name be? Should you incorporate? Do you need insurance? What is GST? How will people pay you? 

 

There's a lot to consider but we have you covered. Whether you are launching the next big thing or setting up a small side hustle, the answers to your questions and the things you need to consider are in this guide. Download the SMRT Women Quick Start Guide for our basic primer on how to get started.

 

Caveat - we live in Whitehorse, Yukon so the steps that follow are relevant to our City. However, the basic steps apply anywhere in Canada. I recommend speaking with your local chamber of commerce or City permitting office to make sure you've crossed all of your "T"s and dotted all of your "i"s.  This article is not a substitute for legal or financial advice. Please make sure you talk to a lawyer or accountant and talk to Government of Canada, your provincial/territorial business and your local municipal government as needed to make sure you have followed all the appropriate steps.

 

SMRT POP UPS and SMRT WOMEN makes no representations as to accuracy, completeness, correctness, suitability, or validity of any information in this article and we will not be liable for any errors, omissions or delays in this information or losses, damages or injuries, arising from its display or use. All information is provided on an as-is basis. The user must verify their own facts.

 

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SMRT Women Podcast Ep. 02 Mindfulness in Business with Ruth Lera

 

This week we are excited to welcome Ruth Lera to the podcast to talk about mindfulness and meditation in business. Ruth is an energy healer, mindfulness facilitator, meditation teacher, instructor of energetic self-healing, writer and boreal forest loiterer. She is the author of Walking the Soul Path: An Energetic Guide to Being Human.

 

In this episode, we talk about the busy business brain. Untamed, our brain can stay focused on the fear,  spin us out, derail us, or stop us in our tracks. So many of us start our businesses with the goal of happiness, freedom, and living life on our own terms – the busy business brain can keep us feeling incompetent, not enough, and like we are always behind the eight ball.

 

So what can we do about it? How can we conquer those mind spirals so we can feel confidence and ease and pleasure in our business?

 

Take a listen to find out and see our hot tips below.

Ep 6 Rock Instagram to Grow Your Biz

Accept the Journey  – Failure is a given
Our brain likes to get so focused on the what ifs. What if people don’t like what I am doing and send me hate-mail, what if I don’t make any sales, what if I fall flat on my face in front of everyone. Mindfulness forces us to accept that these things will happen, or are already happening – failure is a given, life’s ups and downs are a given. The goal of mindfulness is not to make life perfect, it’s to strengthen our brain’s ability to roll with the punches with ease and flow.

 

Practice makes perfect.

Did you know that only 11 hours of meditation will change your brain? That’s like less than an hour a month. Mindfulness can be used in two ways to train our brains. Informally we can ask ourselves the two core questions at any point in the day: while we are driving, cooking dinner, playing with the kids, writing our next blog post. We ask ourselves the question and redirect to create an immediate shift. But this practice gets amplified when we do a formal practice – sit and focus on your breath in silence for 5+ minutes. We fire what we wire, and formal practice rewires our brains.

 

Think of it as a workout. Formal practice is going to the gym to build strength, and informal practice is focusing on your glutes and squat when you go to pick up something heavy at home. You need both to build strength over time.

 

Self -Compassion is key

Finally, none of this works if we are beating ourselves up for not being a “good” meditator. The goal of meditation is not a quiet mind – it’s a mind that notices our thoughts and actively chooses if we want to focus on them or something else. When the little voice says “ I suck at this” we are wiring negative thoughts. Our goal is to practice neutral observation -” I had a thought” and leave the judgments at the door.

 

Mindfulness is simple, but not easy. Five minutes a day of sitting with your thoughts can change you and your business – so why not give it a shot.

 

Do you have a mindfulness practice you use in your business? How does it help you? Any tips you would recommend for folks starting out? Leave a comment on the Facebook page. We’d love to see you there.

 

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