Season 1: Episode 9

0:55 Megan Ingram (MI): Lucy Vincent, social media maven from Brooklyn, New York joins our podcast this week. She helps purpose-driven women entrepreneurs breakthrough their goals. We discuss how she motivates and inspires female founders to achieve success, why self-care is so important, the “money mindset”, and proven video strategy tactics that she's seen have the most impact. Hey, how's it going today? 

1:17 Lucy Vincent (LV): Hello. I'm so happy to be here today, it’s great. How about yourself? 

1:23 MI: Good. Good. Yeah, we're thrilled to have you.
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1:25 LV: Well, thank you so much. I can't wait to dive into all things female entrepreneurship. 

‍1:31 MI: Yeah, for sure. I'd love for the listeners to hear just a little bit more about your story from agency founder to helping female founders achieve success. So can you just share a little bit about your story and your path to where you're at now? 

‍1:49 LV: Absolutely. So about four years ago I was working at a SAAS tech company. And I just continuously felt like I was building someone else's dream, wearing all the hats, taking on all the stress. And I had known that I always wanted to be an entrepreneur. I just wasn't sure exactly what that was going to look like. So I did something that most people tell you never to do. I quit my nine to five without any idea of how I was going to replace my income or continue to support my lifestyle in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. But I think that really was a huge catalyst because I had no choice. So there's a saying about “burn the boats,” give yourself no other option but to be successful. So I really burned all my boats. I quit my nine to five and it was like, okay, we gotta figure this out. And I had marketing experience. So I just started going online and networking and landed one job after another. And I was like, hey, this really can support me. This can support my duplex in Williamsburg and get me off of eating ramen noodles every night. So fast forward to last summer. I decided that as much as I love doing, I also love teaching and supporting, and it was just breaking my heart being in Facebook groups and seeing women cannibalizing their pricing and just kind of saying like- I'll do it for $200. No, I'll do it for $150 now I'll do it for $50. And it really just spoke to me that when you do that, when you're price gouging yourself and others in the industry, you're never going to build that financial freedom or freedom in general to travel and to create your own lifestyle when you're severely undercharging yourself as a service-based entrepreneur. So that just lit a fire under my butt to help show women how they can charge $5,000 for a proposal to a prospect and land that deal and keep that deal, and create an amazing relationship with those clients and really be able to build their six figure multi-six figure empire.

4:10 MI: That’s so great. And that's very cool. And I agree. I've heard similar things from women, who maybe even have trouble just with the confidence while they're going through pitches and  negotiations to get the value that they really deserve. So that's a really cool thing that you're doing. What learnings did you find from your own career that have helped you when you're working with other women, founders, freelancers, entrepreneurs to help you on this path that you're on now? 

‍4:41 LV: Oh my gosh. Everything is a lesson, really. I always say you guys are so lucky, you ladies are so lucky that I made all the mistakes so that you don't have to. I've had so many hiccups. I didn't buckle up NDAs or non-competes with my employees. They ended up taking a $7,500/month retainer client from me, which is almost a six-figure client, like a thousand dollars away from a six figure client. So that was a big hiccup and getting those systems and processes in place to make sure I'm protecting my business. Making sure that we're protected from charge-backs, even though that's not a very sexy conversation. You want to make sure you have those systems set up. Just really figuring out how to price your services and how to reverse engineer your goals. So a lot of us are like- I want to make six figures or I want to make $250,000 this year. And I have this really cool- it's not unique to me, but what I bring women through a lot of the times is- so you have this goal for $250,000 this year, let's strategically backtrack or reverse engineer from that goal to how you're actually going to get that and what you need to bring in monthly. And I also bring it around how many hours do you actually want to work a week? How much vacation time do you want to take a year? Because we set that goal and then we're like, okay. I'll do anything I can to get there. So I'll take this client, I'll take this client and I'll take this, then I'll do that. And we're just trying to stack the win. But a lot of times, as an entrepreneur, especially a service-based female entrepreneur, when you weren't super strategic about those proposals that you're sending out and how you're pricing yourself, we only have a finite amount of time, right? You have the same amount of time as I do. So when you don't price yourself properly enough to hit those goals, a lot of people end up building this business that was their dream, to provide them freedom or stability. And it's actually worse than their nine to five because they have to work on the weekends. They can't take any time off, they become an entrepreneur to spend more time with their children and they can't spend any time with their kids. So when you can backtrack that and be really strategic about it, you know you need to make this much an hour. And so then this proposal needs to be worth this amount. 

‍7:08 MI: Yeah. So taking that a step further, what challenges and pain points do you find that people are coming to you with that’s really holding them back from getting to that number or just even achieving whatever goal that they've set for themselves?

‍7:24 LV: I believe that as women, men too, but a little bit more women are more likely to want things to be perfect before moving forward where a guy more likely will apply to a job, even if he's not exactly sure how to do it, he realizes he can figure it out. So I think perfectionism really holds back us females as entrepreneurs. I committed in 2020 to a phrase, which I welcome everyone listening to take on as their own phrase. And it was “massive imperfect action.” And I can not tell you when I was really being true to that phrase. I'd send out an email with a typo, but who cares? 4,000 more people saw my email then not, right? And yes, I hosted things and had typos or misspoke or something like that. But I was showing up consistently and my business grew 4X last year. So the growth that I saw by taking massive action, even if I knew there were going to be typos or there were going to be this, and not everything's perfect. And just rolling with the punches and continuing to show up consistently was a huge learning lesson for me. And I know so many of us, we want to offer our services for free because we want to make sure we're perfect at it before we bring on our first person. Do not offer your services for free ever. Just start, take messy action and every day, be committed to improving yourself and getting closer to your goal. And don't let the fear of being perfect hold you back because perfect doesn't exist. No single individual is perfect at anything. Even if you have 30 years of experience doing this one thing, you're still gonna make mistakes. We're all human. And so when we realize that our need for perfect is really our ego’s way of keeping us safe, and keeping us small, and holding us back, when you realize that, you can bust through that and be like- Oh my gosh, this is just my ego talking and trying to keep me safe and protect me so I don't get embarrassed, but this is holding me back from achieving my goals. Then you really can smash through and accomplish more in a year than you ever imagined possible. 

9:57 MI: I hear that a lot myself too, the idea of perfection, especially in entrepreneurial-ism and it's such an unattainable thing and I think you often learn a lot more too, once you put it out there and you get feedback, you get results and then you can figure out what works and what doesn’t. 

10:15 LV: Absolutely. Yeah. I am definitely the best way I learn is by doing so if I can actually work with a client. Figure out what works. I'm going to go the extra mile to make sure it works out. Even if I don't know the exact steps I need to take from the get-go.

‍10:31 MI: On the other side of things, what have you seen work really well for people as they're trying to achieve their goals and give them that success that they're looking for?

‍10:42 LV: Yeah. The flip side of what we just said, taking action, taking messy action and just showing up consistently, networking, actually telling people what it is that you do. I've had so many people come to me and they're like, Lucy, nobody's booking my services. I just can't figure it out. And I say okay, but I go to your Instagram or your Facebook page and it doesn't say anything about what you offer. It doesn't say anything about what you're doing. And I deal with a lot of marketers, right? And so a lot of marketers are, I'm sure you've heard, how the shoe cobbler’s son has no shoes. A lot of us marketers, our businesses are like the redheaded stepchild that we kind of put to the side and don't think about because either we're too focused on getting clients or we're too focused on managing clients, but using your own social and your own strategies to build up your business is really, really important. And it takes seven to nine, maybe more times of exposure before somebody will make a purchasing decision. So I think every single person remembers what I wore for the first day of school in sixth grade. Nobody else remembers that, right? And so same with your social media posts. People were like- I don't want to come off as pushy. I don't want to continue saying the same thing and be annoying. Nobody remembers what you posted last Wednesday on your social media, because everybody is so concerned with what's going on with themselves. That's all they're thinking about. So you just gotta show up and let people know what it is that you do. And then the word will spread. 

‍12:29 MI: Yeah. What have you found to be the most rewarding part of working with women, founders, freelancers, and entrepreneurs for you? 

‍12:38 LV: Oh my gosh, everything. I love it so much. I always have girls in my coaching program that are like, I'm sorry to bug you. This is not bugging me. I love this so much. I think helping women to achieve goals that they really questioned if it was even possible for them is so rewarding, and helping women build a business that's really intentional and supports the lifestyle that they want. So they can still show up as amazing mothers, right. They can still be amazing girlfriends, wives. They can still travel and see the world. And they don't have to put that off until they're 65 and retired. And so allowing them to build this intentional business that surrounds their dreams and supports their dreams in a really short amount of time is awesome. And then also just being an ear because entrepreneurship is a journey up and down very much. You're going to feel one day, like you're up here and nobody can talk to you and you're an amazing bad-ass and then you're going to get maybe a mean email and you're gonna be like- Oh my gosh, who am I to think I can do this? Right? Or, Oh my God, I'm so busy. I had 10 proposals out this week. Oh my God. I'm so slow this week. What's going on? What am I doing wrong? And so I think just allowing women to know, this is all normal and just being able to share my history and stories and lessons that I've learned with them. But yeah, it's the most incredible rewarding job I've ever had in my whole entire life.

‍14:20 MI: That's so awesome. I talk a lot about the importance of self-care, especially in COVID times now. And it is really important to unplug and kind of give yourself that space. How do you think as leaders and freelancers we can hit our goals while not overworking ourselves to death?

‍14:38 LV: Great question. I think boundaries are so important and self-care and boundaries with yourself are really important. So scheduling in that hour a day for yoga, or for you to go on a walk, or for you to go to the gym, do whatever. That's so important. It's important that we fill up our own cup, right? You can't give from an empty cup. And so you're going to do better for your clients. You're going to achieve better results if you're treating yourself better. If you're healthy, if you're eating well, if you're sleeping well, right? You're going to be able to create more of an impact and change for them. So you really can't skip on or skim on self care. It's so important. And boundaries are something that I definitely want to bring up because I'm definitely a big female empowerment person, but from more so than men and some men have this, but from the time that we were five and our parents loved us, and this is just like a generational thing, they didn't realize what they were doing, but we were always told, Oh, be a good girl. Do this to be a good girl. And so I think most women are raised to be people-pleasers where we care so much about making sure that our client's expectations are met and that anything that they want, they can have. And so we end up like letting go of boundaries and I think it can be difficult to push back. I, for one, used to make it such a big deal in my mind, Oh my gosh, confrontation. I don't want this big thing to happen. Oh my gosh, what is the client going to do? Are they going to fire us? Yada, yada. I had one client where I literally felt like I was almost in an abusive relationship for $1,200 a month. I would never let a guy treat me that way. Why would I ever allow clients to treat me that way. But I just had it in my mind. Oh, I got it. I got to make sure he's happy. I gotta make sure he's happy. Even if it was so outside of scope, what he was asking for, I wanted to do it to make him happy. And I realized nothing was ever going to be enough for this individual. And so I set boundaries with him and I was expecting it to be this huge blow up and explosion. It was the opposite. He was like, Oh, okay. Here's Lucy. She's actually showing up as an expert. She's setting boundaries with me, she's respecting herself. Oh, I should respect Lucy. She's behaving like a true professional. So I thought it was going to be this massive explosion and really it created a tighter bond for us because I was showing up. And showing how I believe I wanted to be treated and what I was willing to accept and not. For some reason, I was relating entrepreneurship to relationships and dating, because there's a, I forget what movie it was, but we accept the love we think we deserve is a quote from it and we do the same thing in entrepreneurship. So knowing what you're willing to accept and not, and how you want to be treated in your career and clearly defining that and explaining that to your clients is going to make it so you have a lot of healthier client relationships, and that you're happier and less stressed overall.

18:05 MI: Yeah, those are all really great points. Setting boundaries is definitely something that's key. And it's really cool, too, that you've seen that build relationships and work in a positive way. Just from setting those boundaries.

18:21 LV: Yeah. It's something that we're so nervous to do, but that's okay. If you have a client that’s not respecting your boundaries or scope, do yourself a favor and have a conversation and let them know what you're willing to accept versus not because either they will respect that. And that will be great. And you guys will have a better working relationship and more successful working relationship or they won't, and then they're not your people, right? Not everyone is our people, not everyone should be worked with. And I think respecting that for yourself is so important. 

‍18:58 MI: Yeah. That's a very great point. You've also talked a lot about the ‘money mindset”. What does this mean to you and how can you help people achieve their financial goals through this kind of mindset?

‍19:14 LV: Yeah, that's a great question. We set our own glass ceilings as entrepreneurs, right? In a corporate career, you can grow maybe 5% a year, if that. And so you kind of have someone else setting your ceiling. As an entrepreneur, we set our own ceilings. So there have been people that have started as an entrepreneur and six months later hit the seven figures. And there's other people that have spent 10 years with and are only making the 30, $40,000 a year or less $5,000. Right? And so what we believe we achieve. And so if you're saying, okay, I want to make a hundred. I bet if you take the action, you're going to make a hundred, but I bet you probably could've made 200 if you wanted to. So just realizing what is achievable and obviously setting realistic goals, saying I want to become a millionaire tomorrow is not realistic, but just knowing that you create your own glass ceiling and what you believe is achievable, is that glass ceiling. And so I just think it's really important when I tell some women I'm like- Hey, you could build a six-figure business in three months. And they're like- yeah, fricking right. And I'm like- no, you can, I've helped them do it before. I've seen it done time and time again in three months. But they have to believe that that's possible to achieve that. If I tell someone you can make- if I was saying to you- you can make six figures in the next three months and you say, no way, then you're not going to be able to do it. So it's really important that we're really realistic with ourselves and we set expectations. I asked most women, what would you feel like if you were to hand your next prospect a $5,000 monthly proposal? And a lot of them say well, my throat gets itchy, my hands start sweating, heart palpitations. I'm so nervous. So why is that? Why do you feel that way? It comes from imposter syndrome. We feel, both men and women, every single person suffers from imposter syndrome. Whether it's Oprah or Ellen Degeneres, or Obama, or Biden, or Trump. Every single person that you can think of, no matter how successful they are, no matter where they are, they’ve experienced imposter syndrome. And so we just get more into what is that and why is it present here? And again, it's your ego trying to keep you small and safe. It's your body's protection mechanism for keeping you safe because the unknown is not safe. And we're still in this tribal mentality, too, where you do the same things every single day, and then you will be able to eat and live and be able to procreate. We're not in that world anymore. And so I always say, whenever you start to feel imposter syndrome lean into it. That is a really good sign. Whenever you start to feel like, Oh my gosh, I can't do that. I shouldn't be doing that. That feeling of “I'm not sure, I'm nervous.” Lean into that. If you can do something every single day that expands your comfort zone, you won't even recognize the person that you will be in 365 days from now. 

22:57 MI: Yeah, that's so true. Definitely a good point about how you can just, even with simple things, really expand just by that self-belief. And I've heard that a lot too with contract negotiations where you can price whatever you want to price, but you gotta go into those meetings thinking that you can actually price it. 

23:21 LV: I tell women in my program because I review sales calls for them and I say, so why did you look away from the camera and stutter about the price? I can feel your nervous energy from here. You need to go look in the mirror and start saying, that'll be $5,000 a month. Just say it with confidence and get used to it because your clients can feel that energy. And they're like- why am I spending this money? She doesn't obviously believe in herself. Why would I pay her this much money? 

‍23:56 MI: Yeah, exactly. So true. To wrap up today, talking about video marketing. Brand and social advocacy is obviously something that as an agency we are very passionate about. I wanted to talk about the ways that you've seen video marketing kind of cultivate and rave up fans, what ways have worked for you and do you recommend to others to use video marketing? 

‍24:24 LV: Oh, my gosh. Yes. Video marketing is the way of the future and it's really amazing because the fastest way that I could get to know you aside from jumping on a Zoom call is seeing you on video. I get to see what your mannerisms are. I get to see your passion. I get to see how you act, how much you believe in something rather than reading text off a piece of paper. I really get to know you as an individual way faster from video than any other thing. And so what's nice with video, although, especially with subtitles, you still will help those people that are audio learners and visual learners and people that like to read, you get to hit all three of those all at once. And so it really is incredible. And I also think about the power for repurposing. I teach women. And we do this in our agency. I'll show them how one piece of video content can be used to create over 30 pieces of content. And so then you're creating this omnipresence in the marketplace where somebody says- Oh my gosh, Megan, dropped a video on Instagram today, and here she is on Facebook and then a blog. And then she's emailing me like, Holy moly. Megan is crushing it. She's everywhere. And as I said, it takes seven to nine times to hear a message before making a purchasing decision. So you just took one message and you just put it out over five different platforms. That means if you do that two days in a row, you're already at 10 touch points for these people, and they're more likely to buy from you. So I love it. I think it's the most efficient and effective marketing strategy out there. Huge video girl. 

‍26:21 MI: Yeah. Obviously as a data person, there's a lot of really great data coming out about video marketing and what we've seen over the last year. What are some recent trends in video marketing that you've seen have the most impact, especially as we're looking into the new year now that we're in 2021?

‍26:41 LV: Yeah. I don't know how new it is, but I think the repurposing aspect of a video is so great. So think about this. You could take our 30 minute podcast here. You can go to rev.com and have a transcript created. From that, you can create a blog post. You can create social media captions. You can create an email. You can create a YouTube video from this and a podcast, right? And so then you just took 30 minutes of your time, and now you have so much content for every platform that you're on. It allows you to show up so much more consistently. In 30 minutes, right? That's incredible. What used to take someone two days to create 30 pieces of content. Now it just took us 30 minutes and you have so many gems. You can take a minute from here and a minute from here. And a minute from here, you can do that 30 times. And there you have 30 micro mini videos that drop value for your ideal audience and really allow them to trust you and build your authority. And it will cultivate raving fans. 

27:55 MI: Yeah, totally agree. And repurposing is one of the many benefits that you can get from doing video marketing and doing content like this because there's just a number of different ways that you can use it and continue to get your message out to the right people.

28:09 LV: Yeah. One other thing that I would like to say about that. It was the power of YouTube that I've learned. So we do YouTube content creation for clients, but also I teach my girls how to do YouTube and it's so awesome because just from my using myself, for instance, I've gotten really, really busy and have fallen off the YouTube game, which I'm getting back on because I probably did YouTube for four months. Every week I was coming out with a YouTube video and I stopped sometime last summer. I'm still getting appointments on my calendar booking. They go watch my YouTube video. They go to my website and they book a discovery call. And so it's this power of this evergreen strategy, my lead generation system that you can create with YouTube, where you can post a video once. And create leads and business opportunities for you for years to come. And there's so much more that goes into it. It’s not just I film a video and slap it up on YouTube, and then it's gonna work. No, there's research, if you know how to research the topic, you know how to do the SEO right, keywords correctly. You have to make sure it's engaging and visually captivating and it holds people's attention until the end. There's a lot of things that have to happen for it to work, but when it works, it works so well. I've ranked on video right under these videos. And I say- who am I? That's just my ego asking that question. 

29:44 MI: That's awesome. Well, it was so great having you on the show today. Where can listeners find you?

29:50 LV: Yeah, I would love to hang out. I have a Facebook group called “The Purpose Driven Service-Based Female Entrepreneur Group.” I’d love, love, love to have all of you there. I do weekly training there. I am just building an incredible community of purpose-driven service-based female entrepreneurs. We support each other and network with each other. So I'd love to see you there. And if you're not on Facebook, my Instagram is the next best place to hang out. And it's @thelucyvincent on Instagram. 

30:22 MI: Great. Well, definitely check her out and check that Facebook page out. Again, so glad to have you on today and appreciate you joining us.

30:32 LV: Thank you so much for having me. This was so fun. I hope you guys found this valuable. If there was anything that I mentioned that wasn't clear, reach out to me on one of those avenues. I'm happy to talk through absolutely anything with you and support you, however possible.