Permission to Kick Ass

Making the most out of everything you've got with Jean Kuhn

• Angie Colee • Episode 188

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Jean is a seasoned business woman with a knack for turning around a failing business - and she does it with serious (and unconventional) style. Today we're talking about her journey from fearing she was about to lose everything to owning a successful franchise business. As if that weren't enough, now she's reinventing herself again, and helping other women find their own second acts. If you've ever felt stuck and hopeless, this one's a serious kick in the pants... in the best possible way.

Can't-Miss Moments:

  • Jean's "milk crate moment" - the rock-bottom low that forced her to pick herself up and turn her failing business around...

  • How do you get yourself out of a funk when everything's going wrong? Jean and I share what got us up from our self-pitying puddles so we could get out there and kick ass...

  • The surprising reason Jean sent customers directly to her competitors (there may or may not be chocolate-dipped cicadas involved)...

  • A cautionary tale on using outreach attempts for easy content: what happened when Jean recognized that she was the "bitch" a prominent business owner was talking about on Facebook...

  • Out of context quote featuring a full on rant courtesy of Jean: WHOLE ASS IT! (you gotta listen - it's SO good)

Jean's bio:

Jean Kuhn, is a serial entrepreneur who became self-employed on April 29, 1985, at 8:52pm, when the nurse put that first baby in her arms, and she immediately knew she wasn’t going back to a job she hated.

In 2002, Jean bought her first bankrupt franchise business, and turned it into a profitable cash generating machine in 12 months. In 2006, she bought a second bankrupt franchise business and created another cash generating machine in less than 12 months.

In both cases, Jean added $100,000 to the bottom line for each company in the first year. She did this with no list, no help or training from the franchise, and no budget for marketing. She created low cost/no cost marketing strategies that she still teaches her clients today.

Jean, has been a successful business strategist since 2006, when she started helping all types of businesses grow and scale their businesses.

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Angie Colee:

Welcome to Permission to Kick Ass, the show that gives you a virtual seat at the bar for the real conversations that happen between entrepreneurs. I'm interviewing all kinds of business owners, from those just a few years into freelancing to CEOs helming nine figure companies. If you've ever worried that everyone else just seems to get it and you're missing something or messing things up, this show is for you. I'm your host, angie Coley, and let's get to it. Hey, welcome back to Permission to Kick Ass. With me today is my friend, jean Kuhn, say hi, hi. Oh, my gosh, I'm so excited for this one and I love this. Okay, so, for people that aren't watching the video, there's this sign in the background that says lucky me, which I just. Oh, I love, I love, I love. I bet there's a story behind that one too. But before I go down the rabbit hole, please tell us about your business and what you do.

Jean Kuhn:

I help small business owners use really unique marketing strategies like out of the box over the topme-crazy marketing strategies to increase their revenue fast.

Angie Colee:

Oh, I really, really love that. You know, what you just said reminded me of a book that I read once upon a time called Marketing Outrageously. It's a fantastic book and you'll recognize it by a sumo wrestler doing a slam-dunk basketball move on the front cover. It's so fantastic. I learned about that when I was an impetuous young copywriter I mean, we're talking the copywriter inside the corporate office that would ask for meetings with the president, because I have a few ideas. I have some ideas on how we could do better, and you probably don't know what it's like down here at the urgent level here, but I got some ideas and one of the presidents there were three during the time that I was at that particular company, but he goes. You know you should probably read this book. It's called Marketing Outrageously and it's about how a sports marketer his name is John Spellstray, I believe helps turn around a losing franchise by turning these sporting events into like family events instead of just games, and so it's fascinating and now I need to reread it. Yeah.

Jean Kuhn:

Well, I, I actually started creating these for myself when I bought a bankrupt franchise right, a chocolate franchise and I'm like I didn't have. I took out just enough money to get to buy the business Right and they practically give those away. I didn't have. I took out just enough money to get to buy the business Right and they practically give those away. But I didn't take any extra money for marketing. This was pre-social media and I had to freaking, look, figure out, how am I going to turn around this business. But I had been reading marketing books Like I don't even know why, long before I even became an entrepreneur. I have no idea how that even came into my existence, but I love different marketing strategies that are so different that. Are you familiar with Savannah Bananas, angie?

Angie Colee:

Oh, yes, I recommend those to everybody.

Jean Kuhn:

Right, I recommend those to everybody. Right, and Jesse Cole does exactly like in 2020, right 2020,?

Angie Colee:

when he bought it, he does exactly the kind of thing to a higher level than I did it when I just had a little chocolate store, oh my God. So for anybody that is unfamiliar with the magic of the Savannah Bananas, you need to look these guys up. You need to watch as many videos as you can, because they are a local minor league baseball team in Savannah. Right, they wear these bright yellow outfits and they are renowned for doing ridiculous things. We're not just talking like mascot dances or anything like this. These guys did a dirty dancing reenactment, complete with the flying leap. They've done baseball on stilts. I don't even remember all the crazy things banana costumes, right, and they.

Jean Kuhn:

Here's the. What Jesse says is they? What's really interesting about them is that he's trying to find that friction in the marketing, meaning what is the part about baseball that people hated? Right, and what they hated is the game was really long, could get really long, so it's a two hour. It's a two hour game and it's called banana ball. Long, so it's a two hour. It's a two hour game and it's called banana ball. Right, there are like I can't even remember all the rules but to banana ball. But if you're a baseball purist you would hate these guys, but I love them because it's a whole two hours of entertainment. Oh, the other thing ballpark food right. When you buy a ticket to the bananas, all your food and soft drinks are included. I don't know if they have alcohol even. Yeah, so, and the ticket is like crazy, like maybe $25 to $35. It's not a really expensive ticket.

Angie Colee:

Oh, that's incredible, Because I remember I think I saw some documentary or some interview where he was talking about this. I mean this was a failing franchise. Some documentary or some interview where he was talking about this? I mean, this was a failing franchise. How many people love to like? How many minor league games do you imagine are selling? Sold out, crowds, right, and everybody is showing up for the games. That's just not really happening. And I agree, I always felt like such a I don't know like a traitor or something, when people would be like let's go to a baseball game and I was like, no, those takes.

Angie Colee:

So that would be like three innings would be my perfect, then I would go out with you, but nine. Then I start to be like kind of like the same with stock car races oh, they're turning left. Oh, they're continuing to turn left. This is so exciting. Sorry, sports fans, don't come for me, I am just not a sports ball person but just the fact that they turned that into an event and picked out the things that most people just really don't resonate with and turn it into something new is fantastic.

Jean Kuhn:

And if you can do that in your business, find that friction piece and make it so to kind of get rid of it, if you can. We all have things in our businesses we'd like to. I'd love to hear it. When it's like that's our policy, Well, maybe your policy should be how about customer service and how can you serve the customer, instead of figuring out how you can not serve them by saying that's our policy.

Angie Colee:

No, just just convince them that the way that I do it is the right way. Don't actually listen to their concerns. So tell me more about this chocolate company. Like I've heard this story before, but I'm enthralled by this and I think people are going to love it.

Jean Kuhn:

So let's go back to 2001,. 9-11 hit right. So I had a dance studio at the time for kids and I still had it for a few more years. But things were really turned around fast. The market crashed, the economy crashed and we were really looking hard to find another revenue source other than the dance studio, because we lost 30% of our kids, which at that point was the first year we were ever going to be profitable was 2021. We had such a good signup and within three weeks we had lost 30% of our student base for the dance studio, which put us right back to where we were not making any money. So I was looking for a revenue stream.

Jean Kuhn:

I had a friend who owned one of these franchises. She says, hey, there's another one down, this you know, down in LaGrange you could buy, you know, go look at that. So I went and looked at it, loved it. I knew immediately what needed to be fixed. I could see all the wrong things, right, what they were doing wrong when I walked in and I'm like this should be easy peasy, two weeks in, right, first of all, the franchise did not know I bought that store. I didn't know, right, I mean, I knew that they didn't know, we had not been approved yet. But the guy told me he's like you, either buy it on this date or we're closing it and the offers you know it's not even going to be an option for you. So I bought it right, and to find out that the franchise could have taken that away from me had they chose right. So anyway, two weeks in, I've not been trained by the franchise because they don't know that we own it and we're just doing our best.

Jean Kuhn:

And I happened to walk in the kitchen of the chocolate store and there was nobody there. But what was sitting there was a milk crate and I sat down on that milk crate and I just started sobbing Like nobody's coming into this stupid bankrupt franchise I just bought. I made the biggest mistake of my life. My kids are never going to go to college. We're going to lose the dream home that we built and took a loan out on to buy the damn chocolate store.

Jean Kuhn:

So I had a really good, you know pity party, like snot's dripping out of my nose. I my eyes are all red and you know how when you cry, your eyes get really puffy at least mine do and red. My nose turned all red. I looked like I'd been drinking back there and it was just a horrible, horrible feeling. And then after about 20 minutes I don't know, I just I'm not one who stays down long, usually it's a little more than 20 minutes.

Jean Kuhn:

But I realized pretty fast I better get my ass up off this milk crate and go to work. And I had a plan when I bought it, right, and because I own a dance studio at the same time, I literally would go from the dance studio from nine to four I'm sorry, the chocolate store from nine to four, and then I'd go over to the dance studio and I'd work till nine o'clock at night. I was exhausted, right, and I was stupid. I was just stupid. So I started, picked myself up off that milk crate, got to work, implemented my plan. I turned that store around within the 12 months before that I bought it. So by the 12 months later I had made it profitable and we had added a hundred thousand dollars to the bottom line. Oh, that's four years later, yeah Thanks.

Jean Kuhn:

Four years later I bought another bankrupt one, right? Same franchise turned that one around in just under 12 months, adding just a tad over a hundred thousand to their bottom line. And I'm like, huh, I might know a little bit something about turning around a business, right, due to all of the marketing books I read, because I did crazy stuff in my marketing. We sold chocolate, caramel apples and fudge. I created a whole caramel apple festival right In October, which was our busiest month of the year for caramel, for anything, and I created a whole festival around caramel apples. And then the next month I gave a coupon to come back, kind of like Kohl's cash, right, we all know what Kohl's cash is, right, I created something like that that they could bring their apple bucks back in and exchange them for product, and I had the best November.

Jean Kuhn:

November was our second lowest month of the year, right. So it was just about doing silly little things, but always watching. What do I need to increase? Do I need to increase our customer count? Do I need to increase our ticket account? Do I need to increase revenue? What is it that I'm looking for? So I was. I'm really lucky that my husband was watching that while I was working 12 hours a day, he was watching what do? Where are we at every single week where he'd let me know it's like we're dropping. We're not where we should be. We need to do, we need to create another $1,200 or whatever it is, and I would come up with some some ridiculous marketing strategy to get people in the door. And if that meant I had to send somebody out on the street with a chocolate tray dressed as a teddy bear, I would do it.

Angie Colee:

That's so fantastic. All right, I'm circling back to these marketing strategies because I want to hear whatever you want to share. But before I do that, like, I really wanted to point out the fact that I think, especially in American entrepreneurship, there's this, this fallacy of like you have to figure it out all alone. And I was so glad because that was one question I was going to ask. Okay, you're working these 12 hour days, you're going back and forth between these two businesses, you've got this overwhelm, plus all of these feelings of, oh my God, I just messed up right. How on earth do you make good decisions? And then you pointed out okay, I've got somebody in my corner who's supporting me, and I just wanted to highlight that and tell people, if you're listening, this is important.

Angie Colee:

Stop trying to do shit by yourself. Stop it. You are not the most objective, especially when you're stressed out and overwhelmed. You need a support system. It could be a friend, preferably somebody who's familiar with business, because otherwise you've got employees going well, that sounds really scary. I don't know if I would do that right and just amplifying the doubts, but you need that support system and you need to feel the feelings, too, like I think that was one of the things that really attracted me to having you on the show. We had talked about this in the past the milk crepe moment right and I've been on your show talking about my own milk crepe moment Right, like you know feel the feelings and then go all right, well, cool. Now that I know that I feel that way and like I've messed everything up, what am I going to do about it? Time to get up and take some action? Yes, yes, yes, yes. Oh, my gosh, I love that. Yeah, all right. So, getting back to the marketing strategies, what else did you do? I'm so curious.

Jean Kuhn:

Okay, well, I had. I had four that I really focused on right. Number one was customer service because, first of all, it was free. Customer service is completely free and it doesn't take a lot to smile when somebody walks into your store. It doesn't take much to help them and say yes to them. We had a policy in our store we never say no. Now listen, I'm the first one to say no to my kids, to my husband, to my employees. Right, I will say no to almost everything till I can process that through. Is that a good idea? But to our customers it was always we say yes and then we'll figure it out. But I was the only one who could say no, and those are the last people I wanted to say no to was the customer.

Jean Kuhn:

Somebody walks in and says, hey, can you create a fudge mountain? And I'm like, well, yes, I can, even though I've never done it before and I don't know how to do it. But how hard could that be? To just pile some fudge up and make it look like a mountain? It can't right. The first time I did it it looked like a pile of dog dew, right. But I started doing it again and again and again adding a little white chocolate. So it's dripping down the sides. It now looks like snow falling down the mountain. Add a few little plastic trees on it. Now we've got a forest around the mountain. It looked like Fudge Mountain, right? So it's.

Jean Kuhn:

How can you say yes to whatever that they're looking for? And I always said yes because you know why so many people would say no, we don't do that, we don't. We don't mold chocolate, we don't. We don't color chocolate, we don't blah, blah, blah chocolate. Right, we would do everything. You know it's so funny. I did say no to one thing. Want to hear it. I'm just thinking about it now because we're in cicada season here. I don't know if you guys get cicadas Not as bad as up there. Yeah, we get. I guess we got a double bunch. I walked out yesterday. It was deafening. The one thing I said no to is there was another chocolate store that had moved in across the street and they, when cicadas came, they were, I guess, roasting them and dipping them in chocolate. And people came in asking me for those and I'm like, oh hell, no, we're not doing chocolate dip cicadas.

Jean Kuhn:

I know exactly where you can get those right over there, exactly yes, go see them, go buy them.

Angie Colee:

They're the experts in that. I refuse Exactly.

Jean Kuhn:

Right, that was really the only thing I said no to.

Angie Colee:

Love that and you get to do whatever the hell you want to. That's, I mean, within reason. Obviously we're not talking about breaking the law of murder or anything like that, Right? But like if somebody comes in and says I want chocolate chip dipped cicadas and that, like I mean, anybody watching the video saw my faces. No, I'm not doing that. Hey, there's somebody over there. They can give you all the ones that you want.

Jean Kuhn:

Tell them I sent you Right. What did they come up through? A ground full of Roundup, right? Oh God, yes, that was my thought. Is they came up eating Roundup and then we're going to ingest that? No, thank you.

Angie Colee:

No, thank you. All right, so we have say yes. What else did you try?

Jean Kuhn:

So one of the other things was I did my a friend of mine from Arizona, christy Ellis. We created something called um uh, shoot, uh, um, strategic volunteering. And strategic volunteering is where do you put yourself to be seen in your community doing good, right, people love it. When they see their businesses, um, they they view it as giving back. I don't view it as giving back because, no, I never took anything from anybody right. I exchanged fair value product for a price, right for the price, but I didn't take anything. So I don't ever look at it as giving back. I look at it as supporting my community.

Jean Kuhn:

So Christy Ellis did it in such a way which I'm gonna tell her story because it's so cute. She had twin daughters. They're now in college, but I always think they're six years old. She would take her six-year-olds to the Humane Society every Saturday morning and they would read to puppies. Right, they would read to puppies, they would play with puppies. I would watch her videos and now she never mentioned her business. She never mentioned anything. She'd just take pictures and videos and post them on Facebook of her little girls playing with puppies and reading to puppies, and I loved it. But you know what it got her. It got her a lot of exposure because people knew who she was right.

Jean Kuhn:

The way I did that strategic volunteering is I started working with the business association and I volunteered to chair their summer art project. It was at aroundondack chairs that the businesses bought. We had artists paint them and then they sat around town for people to sit in all summer long and then come fall we auctioned them off for charity. It's one of the biggest money makers that the business association had ever made and it was so much fun and I got to meet a lot of business owners I had never met. What that did for me was it increased my revenue 30% that year without doing anything else, because business owners were now coming into my store buying my product, because I had met them. And, by the way, when I went to call on them and ask them for a sale, I always took chocolate, dipped strawberries or caramel apple for them or something right. I never went empty handed, so that was super fun for me.

Jean Kuhn:

So one of my clients now was a financial planner in that same little town and he had an opportunity to and if you know a financial planner, they can only do marketing by basically cold calling and referrals. They are very limited by the government, what they can and cannot do, right? So he was invited to join the board of directors of the Brookfield Zoo, which is our big zoo in the Chicago area. But with that came a $25,000 price tag. So he spent 25 grand to become a member, a board member, at the Brookfield Zoo. And why would he do that? He did it because he gets to hang out with his ideal clients, the people who can afford, number one to donate money to the zoo. The zoo's always having black tie, galas, right, dressing up, hodgepodging, whatever that is. And he was putting himself intentionally, strategically, volunteering, in front of his ideal clients Brilliant move, right, brilliant move. So that was another place.

Jean Kuhn:

I always put myself in a place of doing good for other people, right? So the third one was email marketing right, this was around. I bought that store in 2002. It was around 2003, 2004. I started hearing commercials on my drive-in about constant contact and I, first of all, I really like to write. Second of all, I really like to laugh. So if I can amuse myself by writing as something you know, giving a little humor in my newsletter, I was going to do it. So I started my own newsletter, which I had so much fun putting together, but I came up with five ways you should write your newsletter, and I'll share that with you if you want, because I think email marketing is one of the best ways to get your message out there, and not enough entrepreneurs are using email marketing these days. They think social media is the be all and end all of marketing. Oh, hell no.

Angie Colee:

Oh yeah, I absolutely agree with you. Like I've run creative teams, I've helped a lot of people with email automations and email marketing. Shameless plug for Angie if you want to work on your email marketing but you don't own social media, like I see business owners in online support groups every single day going. I just got locked out of Instagram. I just got flagged on TikTok. I had over a million followers there. I can't get a hold of a human being to get my account back. Like that stuff can happen to you, it can't really happen with your email list, because even if you got shut down at constant contact, well you've still got the contacts there. You could import and start all over again without having to rebuild.

Jean Kuhn:

Exactly, I love email marketing because it's a great way to get your message out in a non-salesy way, but providing a ton of value. Right, and we are in a I just heard somebody use the term the other day. Education-based marketing is what's really hot right now, right, education-based marketing. So that's a way to use education-based marketing is in your newsletter. So there's five ways to write a newsletter. Now, angie, you may disagree with me, but I'm going to tell you my five ways, right? Number one you've got to have a kick-ass subject line. So last year, two years ago, I was unsubscribing from a bunch of emails. Don't you do that every once in a while? You're like, really, 46,000 unread emails in my box, right, okay, let's unsubscribe. I was unsubscribing. I put in her name. Her name was Kim. I put in her name, her name was Kim. I put it in it, pulled up all of her emails and I was just going to click on them and delete really quick, right, go through there. That had to at least be a couple hundred emails. The first email that popped up the subject line was well, slap my ass and call me Sally, and I was like that is the best damn subject line I have ever seen. I'm opening this up and finding out what the hell does that mean? Open it up? She was selling an Instagram course. I reached out to her this Instagram because I hadn't opened these emails. The Instagram offer ended a day or two before. I didn't even know who she was. I just reached out. I sent an email back that said hey, kim, I'd love to be part of that. I know nothing about Instagram. I'd love to be part of that program. Is it too late? Can I still get in? I didn't hear anything for like five days, six days, and then she emailed back and said I could, but I'd moved on. Right, I'd moved on. I was busy doing something else and I I didn't respond. I didn't.

Jean Kuhn:

Anyway, let's fast forward another week or two and I'm on Facebook and we're Facebook friends and I see an email about she's like what would you do if somebody calls you up and told you they're unsubscribing from your list, which I did and I had said hey, kim, I'm getting ready to. I was getting ready to unsubscribe from your list, but that subject line was so killer made me open your email and read it and I saw the blah, blah, blah. I thought I was being complimentary, but apparently not, because she said that bitch. That bitch said she wanted to do my Instagram program. I got back to her. She never answered and it was hysterical. Now, listen, I didn't. I was mad for about five seconds, right? I don't really hold on to a bunch of stuff. I was mad for about five seconds that she called me a bitch, right, there's a lot of things you can call me. Bitch is probably not one of them, but so I didn't do anything.

Jean Kuhn:

Well, fast forward a year and we're now in the same. We both are using the same coach, which means we're in a community year. And we're now in the same. We both are using the same coach, which means we're in a community. And she reaches out to me and she's like Jean Kuhn, you're so funny, let's do something together. I'm like okay, okay, let's do something together. So we get together, we work out the details. It's like but hold on a minute before we go. I got we should have a little uncomfortable conversation because I'm that bitch, right, and we both laughed about it because she had no idea that was me, right, and I knew who she was. I was not. I purposely wasn't reaching out because she already thought I was a bitch. Right, I don't want to, I'm like I just wouldn't reach out to her, so but I also just let it go. But I needed if we were going to work together, I needed to let her know who I was right, that bitch. So it cracked me up.

Jean Kuhn:

She is now a great friend of mine. She sponsors my events. I will sponsor hers and it ended up being right. When you don't get mad about stuff in business, right, you can do amazing things, but that's having a subject line. That subject line right there kept me from unsubscribing. Number one. Number two it gave me a great contact lead later, regardless of the Facebook post. Right, it was a great lead for other things because she does something. She's actually known as the queen of Pinterest, so she's a whatever she like you know how people used to work with Facebook for things that she works directly with Pinterest. There she's on like their piece there that I don't know what that means, but I don't want she does?

Jean Kuhn:

All I know is she does my Pinterest now. So, yeah, that's nice, yeah, so it's there's really great things, can that? Can come from that. But the subject line is the very most important piece of your email. I don't care what you write inside, but you better get me to open it to start with yeah Right, absolutely, absolutely Right. So number two is put something personal in there, right, something personal.

Jean Kuhn:

I, when I was started writing that I, I was that mom who always complained about the fact that teachers got the summer off. Why are these kids home with me and not in school, where they should be? Right? I am running two businesses. I don't have time to take care of my kids during the day when I'm working. Right Now, was I kidding? Of course I was, but again, it's just trying to find that connection.

Jean Kuhn:

So when you share something personal, you're able to connect with all of your audience. Right, because you can talk about kids, I can talk about fine wine, I can talk about great restaurants, I could talk about places to go and do things with your kids, pets these are all just different ways that you can connect with your people. I would always show pictures of my dogs as a matter of fact, someone said to me from that same organization it was Mother's Day and he said to me he says I have carnations for the moms. And I said, well, I didn't get one. He goes well, these are just for moms. I'm like I've got three kids, right. He says I only see pictures of your dogs. So it's like how do you, how do you keep that? My daughter worked at the store so I would put her picture in there when she graduated, right, put her college graduation picture in there. People knew her since she'd been working in that store since she was 12 years old. The connection there with me.

Jean Kuhn:

Another mom reached out to me from Tennessee and she said my daughter is also in nursing school. She had to take the last semester off because she just had twin baby girls. She said but she's going back and she said thank you for sharing the story about your daughter. That's how you connect with people, right? It's not because buy my chocolate, right, because buy my chocolate right.

Jean Kuhn:

So, interestingly enough, the franchise, after I was having such success with email marketing, they decided to get a constant contact account for every franchise owner and they would write the emails and they would. You could send it out, then right For them, right. But what do you think the emails were about? Buy my chocolate. We have dark chocolate and white chocolate and milk chocolate and chocolate dip, marshmallows and pretzels and blah, blah, blah, fudge, right. My emails were not about that. My emails were about how do I connect with people? And Angie, I'm not going to lie to you, I didn't even know I was doing it at the time. I didn't even understand the power that I was creating at the time, because I was really good at making connections with people, so I'm embarrassed to say that now.

Angie Colee:

No, there's no like. There's always a huge learning curve in all of these things and there are things there are so many things that we all, I think, are instinctively aware of. We do something that feels good, that feels right, without really understanding why we're doing it. So I think you have nothing to be embarrassed about, because you actually trusted your instincts. That's actually one of the notes that I wrote down was about personal connection, because I've had people that I work with where I suggest that you know personal connection, telling your stories who have, like, this huge wall of resistance of like I'm a very private person. I don't want the business to be about whether they like me as a person. I want it to be about what I could do, and it doesn't sound like you ever had any hesitation like that. But have you worked with people who have resisted like being personal?

Jean Kuhn:

I've had a few clients that were not wanting to share too much about themselves because they wanted to be. You know, I think we as a society gives business owners, especially small business owners, the impression that you have to be professional all the time and if you're personal you're not professional. That is such bullshit, right, bullshit, bullshit. That way you get to be, um, uh, business you get business is by being personal, right? It's crazy how that works.

Angie Colee:

And I respect that, because you can be a private person who doesn't know. So I've worked with people who, for instance, didn't want to share pictures of their kids Totally understandable, and also, what else personal can you share? And so there was one lady that I worked with, I remember, and it got emotional. We were pushing her in a mastermind group to share some, some personal stories and build that connection, right, because she's such a great person, and she resisted to the point of, like you could tell she was very visibly upset and so I said, hey, hey, why don't? Why don't we attack this from another angle? Why don't we look at this a different way, right? Why don't we attack this from another angle? Why don't we look at this a different way, right? It's a very personal decision about whether to share personal details, right, so you could talk about the internal wrestling that you have about how much details to share about your personal life and the kind of person that you are and who you and how you want to be authentic. Like that is still very personal information, but you're not revealing the intimate details of your life, just of your thought process, like you're still connecting. And I like to anybody that hears this and resists like oh, I can't be my full personality.

Angie Colee:

First of all, if you've been listening to the show for any amounts of time, you know I've told stories about being in mosh pit fights. I've told stories about accidentally flashing my butt on stage, which was like my nightmare come true at the time, because I was always terrified that that would happen if I auditioned for a band. I'm going to make an ass of myself. I did Surprise. I didn't blow up on stage and like instantly evaporate into the universe, like disappear, because that was the end, all be all. But you can share what makes you human and that's going to make people like you and resonate with you and want to do business with you. I've literally had people reach out, go. I've been following you for a while and I've been knowing we need to work together and I just haven't been able to until now. Let's do this. So that was kind of a big old ramble, but I agree with you, no but you're 100% right on all of that.

Jean Kuhn:

Right, that when you share yourself, that's how you connect with people, it's not telling them how, listen, we all are solution problem solvers. Right, our customers have a problem. We have a solution. If you sell anything, there's always you're selling something to help somebody else's problem, right, fix somebody else's problem. There's always you're selling something to help somebody else's problem, right? Fix somebody else's problem. If we can't share ourselves, right, they don't care to buy the solution from somebody that they don't find. Actually, I'm going to say this interesting, right, you have got to become interesting and you're much more likely to like. We're not JC Penney's, right? You're not buying walking into our big conglomerate where you'll never meet an executive, you'll never meet the owner, you'll never meet anybody of higher up, right, anybody who's making a decision, but you will meet a floor salesperson who could change your experience on whether you ever shop there again. Yep, so how do we, how do we do that in our businesses? Right, absolutely.

Angie Colee:

Well, and I mean, there are so many people out there that I think in their marketing they get so hung up on on the traditional marketing elements positioning and pricing and competitive advantage and all of that stuff. You are a competitive advantage because literally nobody else can be you. They could just be a poor imitation of you and like, for instance, I was griping about this on Facebook yesterday, I don't know whose fucking SEO program just let out, but I literally in the last couple days, have gotten at least a dozen random contacts from people who are clearly all like following the same playbook of hey, I just found your YouTube channel. It's unfindable. Irony of ironies, um, and here's what would make it findable. Here's everything that's wrong with it. I can help you fix all of this.

Angie Colee:

And I just went like I don't give a shit. First of all, you told me you couldn't find it, but you found it. But you're what? None of this makes sense. And second of all, like, please don't tell me my baby's ugly if you ever hope to work with me. I just like I've worked too hard and YouTube is definitely not my forte, but it's something to work on. It's just lower down the priority list, right? And if you want to help me, maybe talk about the content that you did find useful and be like it's a shame that this is not getting out there to more people I can help with that. Is that something you'd be interested in talking about? That's a connection that's personal. You showed me a little bit of what you do and how you're interested in me. Yeah, that stands out from the dozen people that I just got. That said the exact same thing to me and I went, go away go away.

Jean Kuhn:

But isn't it interesting that they want to help you, right? And so many entrepreneurs will read that and think they're not good enough, right, that? That's one more thing I've screwed up, right? One more thing that somebody is complaining about. One more reason I shouldn't be doing this.

Jean Kuhn:

Instead of going every day, I get up and I work imperfectly every single day, and you know what? There's? No, there is no every single day. And you know what? There's? No, there is no. What's the word I'm looking for? There is no shame around it, there is no. I don't feel bad about myself for being imperfect every day. There's and listen, there's no judgment. I don't even judge myself about being imperfect, right? So, there, if you can get up every day and do take any action, even imperfect action, you are going to be a success. It's the people who sit back and can't get over their own crap and can't get out there and have to process every damn thing they're doing and check with 14 different people, including your cousin who's never had a job in her life, right, right, it's, it's crazy. Just get up and do imperfect action every day.

Angie Colee:

Follow your instincts. Try shit, see what happens. Detach from the results. It doesn't mean you're a failure if it doesn't work. Like there are so many reasons why shit doesn't work and it could have nothing to do with you.

Angie Colee:

Like I've, oh gosh, this online debate with newer entrepreneurs who are frustrated by people who teach marketing, which, on one hand, I totally understand. The online marketing industry is a landmine, to say the least. Right, with some people teaching some unethical and you know FTC is going to come for you kind of shit, and other people who teach stuff that just really doesn't work. But these folks just go. Oh, you know I can't get anybody to guarantee results. Nobody can guarantee anything, anything ever, right.

Angie Colee:

It just frustrates me because the example I use with folks is so you remember when I love this joke way too much. When, hell, I mean Texas froze over in 2021? I can say that I'm from Texas, don't come for me. A lot of marketing campaigns failed that day, especially if they were marketing to people in Texas who were literally not online checking their emails because they were frozen right. So there's no guarantees in life. You can try something and you have it planned, you have it vetted, you've got money in the bank to support you in case it goes wrong. And it goes wrong and it has nothing to do with you. That's just the way this works, so you just got to keep trying shit.

Jean Kuhn:

Just keep trying shit. But you know what? The people who ask for that guarantee are usually the people who don't do the work. So if you can't guarantee them a result, well then there's no way they're going to work with you, because you won't guarantee them anything. But I can't guarantee you're going to do the work. Right, I'm going to tell you what you need to do.

Angie Colee:

Isn't that so bass-ackwards too? I've vented about this before, and this is no judgment if this describes you, because this has been me. I am grumpy with past me for holding myself back for so long too. But there's no guarantee that you'll do the work. And also, approaching it from that perspective of I'm not going to put my full effort into this unless I know for sure it's going to work, means that you're coming at this half-assed already. How do you expect something to work if you're not even putting in effort because you're already coming at this from well? It's probably not going to fit. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Jean Kuhn:

Yes, yes, you better. Full asset, full asset.

Angie Colee:

We're making a quote graphic of that. That's going to be a video clip for sure. I love that. Got a full asset.

Jean Kuhn:

Number three is you got to add some value. You have to have some value in that email, right? So what does that look like? Educate them a little bit, not over the top, just a little bit. They're only looking for, like sound bites, right A value of what you can put in there. Number four is a call to action. Yes, right, what's the call to action that you have for them? Make them do something, right, buy something. Here's a coupon, take this coupon or whatever it was. And then the last piece is do one more little thing extra. I would put in their chocolate recipes. I would go to allrecipescom. I gave them full credit in my newsletter, but I would find something that had chocolate in it and I would make it a recipe. And the only thing I would change they would say I use brand name Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory, right, so now I just told you my franchise was but Well, we're going to have a link in the show notes Right, so I don't have it anymore.

Jean Kuhn:

I left both my franchises to live my second act fully, completely and happily so yeah.

Angie Colee:

Tell me more about that.

Jean Kuhn:

Oh my God, I could talk all day about women in their second act, because those are my people, right? The woman over 50 who knows she was meant for more and maybe she's coming out of corporate and she's starting a new job. Or maybe the person that's like me. I had been self-employed for the last 39 years and it wasn't until I was 53 years old that I even figured out that there was more that I wanted, right? When that last kid turned 21,. I was like it's my turn now.

Jean Kuhn:

I have taken care of my family for the last 20, 30 years and I'm like it's my turn to create what I want, because before I was just helping pay the bills. Right Now it's my turn to create what I want. I don't have to worry. I don't hardly cook anymore. I definitely don't clean my house anymore. That's why, when I work really hard to have a cleaning lady, I do what I want to do now in creating the life and the business that I want that will sustain my husband and I for the rest of our time together Right? So that's the woman I help, right? Is that woman over 50 who knows she wants more, she knows she can do more, she doesn't want to become irrelevant. She wants to make a ton of money. And, angie, I don't know if you know this only 12% of female business owners ever hit six figures.

Angie Colee:

There's undercharging. I did a podcast with somebody yesterday where we were talking about busting money myths and I told them look, I'm not the world's foremost expert on money, but here's what I've learned over my time in business. Right, we've got to look at how we charge and our relationship with value and money. That's a hole. We could rant about that for two more hours too.

Jean Kuhn:

Right. But once they get it right, once they get it, they get it, and then there's no stopping them.

Angie Colee:

Yes, oh, my goodness, I want to keep ranting for like three more hours. This is so much fun, but I just looked down and realized, holy shit, we're already at time.

Jean Kuhn:

Oh man, Awesome. Well, I get it right. Yeah, Time flies when you're having fun right Time flies when you're having fun.

Angie Colee:

So tell us a little bit more about your business. We want to learn everything.

Jean Kuhn:

Well, one of the things I do is I help small business owners, like I said at the beginning, use really interesting marketing strategies to up their revenue in the next 90 days. So what can I tell what I have coming up? Can I talk about that? Absolutely so when I say coming up, it's October 2nd through the 4th, it's a three day. It's called my second act conference. Second act conference and it's for that woman business owner over 50, who's doesn't have enough leads, doesn't have enough clients and definitely isn't making enough money. How can we turn all of that around for her in three days? Nice, so that's really what I have coming up. Next is that three-day event for women business owners, because it's my goal mission in life to help as many women as I possibly can get to six figures.

Angie Colee:

Yes, and business is a skill. It is a skill that you can learn, and if you are worried about your ability to learn that skill, trust me, nothing makes looking at your financials and your P&L more interesting than when it's your business Right, like? I say that as somebody with a business degree who, like, just didn't get it, didn't understand it, until I had the context to apply to my own business, and now this is suddenly very interesting to me to think about all of these abstract concepts. But I love that. I'm going to make sure. And where's your website? Where can we check you out?

Jean Kuhn:

Oh, you can check me out at Jean J-E-A-N Kuhn K-U-H-Ncom.

Angie Colee:

Fantastic. I'm going to make sure there's a clickable link in the show notes. Thank you so much for being on the show, thank you and can I give away something?

Jean Kuhn:

Yes, absolutely Okay. I'd like to give people the five no-cost marketing strategies that I use to turn those two businesses around and how they can make their business more visible by using them. And we didn't get to. The last one, which was the most fun part, was the marketing things that I did right, all the extra cool marketing stuff, so I'd love to give that to them. There's a couple of good stories in there. Absolutely, where can they grab that? You can grab that at five, the number five fivemarketingideascom.

Angie Colee:

Fantastic. I'll make sure there are clickable links in the show notes. Appreciate the hell out of you. Thank you so much for sharing.

Jean Kuhn:

Oh, my God, thank you for having me. It's been so much fun.

Angie Colee:

That's all for now. If you want to keep that kick-ass energy high, please take a minute to share this episode with someone that might need a high-octane dose of you Can Do it. Don't forget to rate, review and subscribe to the Permission to Kick Ass podcast on Apple Podcasts, spotify and wherever you stream your podcasts. I'm your host, angie Coley, and I'm here rooting for you. Thanks for listening and let's go kick some ass.