IAM1996 – Founder and Author Helps Businesses Promote Themselves and Increase Their Publicity

In the world of entrepreneurship, taking an idea from conception to success is no easy feat. But for Kristin Marquet, founder and creative director of FemFounder.co, it's all in a day's work. With a unique blend of expertise in public relations, branding, and business planning, Marquet has become a go-to resource for small business owners looking to scale their ventures.

• Background: Kristin Marquet created Femfounder.co, a platform that offers resources and support for women entrepreneurs, helping them promote their businesses effectively.
• Publicity Jumpstart: Kristin's upcoming second book, “Publicity Jumpstart,” is co-authored with Michelle Lewis of Visibility Vixen, offering valuable insights and strategies designed to boost publicity for businesses.
• CEO Hack: Kristin recommends using the project management tool Asana and adopting the Lean Startup methodology to efficiently run and grow a business.
• CEO Nugget: Her advice to entrepreneurs is to not be afraid to take calculated risks, ask for help and delegate tasks, and not to quit a full-time job for a side hustle without proper planning.
• CEO Defined: Kristin sees a CEO as a mentor, a leader, and someone who creates something substantial and impactful.

Previous Episode: founder-author-helps-businesses-promote-themselves-and-increase-their-publicity

Kristin Marquet Teaser 00:00

So we actually offer anything from branding strategy to PR execution to PR consulting to business planning, marketing plan development.

If an entrepreneur is looking to pitch to investors, so it's really launching early-stage startups, taking them from zero to 100, 000. And then working with businesses that, have hit that 100, 000 and are looking to scale to over that million dollar mark, I would say on the agency side, most of our clients were, in the I would say in between 500,000 to 10 million range.

Intro 00:44

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview?

If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I am CEO podcast.

Gresham Harkless 01:12

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I Am CEO podcast, and I have a very special guest on the show today at Kristen Marquete of FemFowder.co. Kristen, it's awesome to have you on the show.

Kristin Marquet 01:23

Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here today.

Gresham Harkless 01:27

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. The first thing that I wanted to do was just read a little bit more about Kristin so you can learn a little bit more about all the awesome things that she's doing.

And Kristin is the founder and creative director of FemFounder.co. And she is releasing her up and coming second book, the publicity jumpstart manual.

So Kristin are you looking forward to speaking to the I Am CEO community?

Kristin Marquet 01:50

Absolutely. I'm so excited. I can't wait to talk to everything, small business, P. R. Marketing and share all my insight with them.

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Gresham Harkless 01:59

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. We're super excited to have you on the show. So what I wanted to do, which kind of give you the mic, so to speak, for the first question, just ask you if you can tell us a little bit more about your CEO story and what led you to start your business.

Kristin Marquet 02:12

Yeah, sure. Okay. So right out of college, I had worked as a public relations manager for a law firm for about a year. Cause at that point I was thinking about going to law school. I am glad I didn't because I actually. Realized that the scope of work in the type of work that attorneys do, I was fortunate enough to work across a lot of different disciplines within the legal field.

So I just figured out that wasn't for me. And then I was the head of communications for a management consulting firm here in New York for 4 years. And then during the financial crisis, I was laid off. So at that point I had to figure out, do I want to find another job or do I want to start a business?

So I decided to just take that leap of faith and start a business and I never looked back. The beginning was very, very tough, especially trying to scale up during the financial crisis. For the first 6 to 12 months, but then after, once I, I guess you could say created a name for myself and start to build credibility and become a thought leader in the industry, that's when I started to get clients and, book my pipeline out, 6 to 12 to 18 months out and scale my business with an amazing team.

And the name of that business was Creative Development Agency. And ever since about a year ago, I've had a lot of smaller business owners that can't afford to hire PR firm or digital marketing agency asked me if I had any resources available that they could utilize on a smaller scale. So that's how I created Femme Founder.

And in the last year, since I launched Femme Founder, we've interviewed over 400 female entrepreneurs, have over 50, 000 email subscribers, and we get in between 10 and 15, 000 unique visits a month. So, and that's just been through organic growth. I haven't done any paid marketing to acquire that audience.

And every month it seems like we're growing and growing and I'm just really excited to share all my knowledge with the world. Anybody who needs help on the PR front, because it is a mystery. A lot of small business owners, entrepreneurs really don't understand how it works. So, yeah, that's my story in a nutshell.

Gresham Harkless 04:27

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome, man. Yeah, I too was on the path towards going to law school and I too am happy that I didn't actually go because I don't think it would have been a great fit. But it's funny how the world kind of pushes you in the way that you should be going.

And it sounds like even though those 6 to 12 months might have been the hard time to get through, it seems like you're definitely in the right place for you doing some pretty awesome things helping out the small to medium sized business owners.

So what I wanted to do, which kind of drill down a little bit more and try to get an idea of what exactly what services do you provide? And if you can give us like a little bit of a maybe a snapshot into your up and coming book as well.

Kristin Marquet 05:00

Yeah, for sure. Absolutely. So we actually offer anything from branding strategy to PR execution to PR consulting to business planning, marketing plan development.

If an entrepreneur is looking to pitch to investors, so it's really launching early stage startups, taking them from zero to 100, 000. And then working with businesses that, have hit that 100, 000 and are looking to scale to over that million dollar mark, I would say on the agency side, most of our clients were, in the I would say in between 500,000 to 10 million range.

But obviously it takes a lot to get to $10 million. So I find that the clients that need the most amount of help are those that are trying to hit that first a hundred thousand or that first million. And that's where our sweet spot is, and the publicity jumpstart of actually. co writing with Michelle Lewis of Visibility Vixen.

She's an amazing branding entrepreneur and comes from a Hollywood background. So she actually has a very interesting background being an actress and her father being, a very well known director. But so she decided to take her branding knowledge and pair it with My publicity knowledge and we essentially are creating the publicity jumpstart and it is a 10 step guide showing entrepreneurs how to brand themselves all the way on through to getting national publicity.

We talk a lot about local publicity, but I find that so many entrepreneurs want to know how they can, get mentioned, Forbes entrepreneur or, daily newspapers like the times, the journal. And I pretty much give them all the tools they need so that they can essentially start doing PR on their own without hiring, a PR firm because most admittedly so, most reputable firms.

They started 5, 000 a month. And honestly, what small business can afford that? Unless, of course, you've already hit that 500 to a million dollar mark.

Gresham Harkless 07:12

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And it's important and it's awesome that you, have given back, to the community so that people that have the desire to eventually, ramp up to that 500 to a million dollar mark are able to start planting those seeds in the very beginning so they can go towards there.

So one of the next questions I wanted to ask was a little bit more about like what makes you and your organization unique.

Kristin Marquet 07:33

That's a great question. And you know what?

In the beginning, the first year I always was flim flamming and always flopping around trying to define what my value proposition was. So I went through, trying to be everything to everybody offering everything from like website design to copywriting to app development to social media marketing to PR branding and everything in between.

And when I did that, it was like a free for all and we had so many clients and I just wasn't able to provide the quality level of service that they needed to grow. So then I decided to go on, go the opposite way and really niche down. And once I niche down and really figured out who my core demographic is, that's how I've been able to build a viable agency and brand.

And that's fashion, beauty, lifestyle brands that focus on e commerce that have an e commerce component. And also they need help with business intelligence and analytics. I do a lot of work on the analytics side consulting wise and I use a lot of the knowledge that I acquired at MIT to, help businesses really optimize their sales cycle.

And that's what our value proposition is. We essentially help businesses e commerce. If they're getting 10, 000 page views a month and they're only selling, two, two units a month, we help them, convert to above the industry standard. So 10, 000, we try to get them to sell at least a hundred to 200 units a month.

And that's essentially, by analyzing their business data, because at the end of the day, data really, it doesn't lie. It tells you everything that you need to do. to increase sales and get more people to your website and fill up your pipeline or your sales funnel, whatever you want to call it.

Gresham Harkless 09:28

That makes perfect sense. Yeah. Data is huge and, make sure, you have, and are looking at and reading the analytics is insanely important to figure out how you take those next steps so that you can reach whatever goal that you're hoping to reach. So, That makes perfect sense.

And you know what? That kind of takes me to the next question that I have, which is something that I call a CEO hack, which might be like a resource or book or something that you use on a regular everyday basis that you feel like makes you more effective and efficient as a business owner.

Kristin Marquet 09:53

Yeah, for sure.

So I actually have one tool that I rely on. It's my Keepsake. I bring it everywhere. I'm able to track all of my to do lists, all my projects. I'm able to communicate with the team, which is the project management software sauna. It's a little, it could be a little overwhelming to learn in the beginning because there's so many bells and whistles, but once you get it down, it's like a godsend.

I'm able to keep my life so organized and structure. So that's one, I guess you would call productivity slash efficiency tool that I use, it's interesting. The one book that I love and that I read all the time is actually the Lean Startup. And it always reminds me that, to be thankful for what I have and for the knowledge that I do have and just continually try to improve my business.

One step at a time, take small, incremental steps towards progress because there is no such thing as perfection at the end of the day. And it's really important to keep your life in perspective and just really focus on the things that you do have and essentially how you can improve your overall, your overall business.

Gresham Harkless 11:15

Yeah, that makes it. Those are two awesome hacks for one. Asana is an amazing way to organize your different projects and everything. So definitely say the same with that. And then the lean startup does remind you of, being of scaling up and taking it step by step by step and seeing, how much the market actually likes or whatever product or service you have.

And then you scale up from there. So I think those are awesome hacks that you provided. The next question I had was like a CEO nugget. So do you have a word of wisdom or a piece of advice you can give to us?

Kristin Marquet 11:45

Yes, I do. I have many, but I think, the one that would resonate here the most with your listeners would be, don't be afraid to take calculated risks, but always don't put all your eggs in one basket either make sure that you're strategic and how you spend your funds, your resources.

And don't be afraid to ask for help because, there's only so much that one person can do really. And you can't do it all by yourself, you can't, you can run a very profitable and successful business yourself, but if you want to hit a certain benchmark, let's say 10 million in revenue.

It's very, very difficult to do that alone. So don't be afraid to ask for help and delegate when you need to trust. You gotta trust those around you.

Gresham Harkless 12:33

Makes perfect sense. You have be able to leverage and use your team to their strengths. So the kind of the next thing that I went to ask you was the definition of being a CEO because we get to have a lot of different quote-unquote CEOs on this podcast.

So I wanted to ask you very specifically, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Kristin Marquet 12:51

It means essentially, overseeing the operations of the organization, and it means leading a team to do excellent work and help our clients build their businesses. So that they can essentially, have the financial freedom that they need to, spend time with their family or, create a legacy for their family, whatever it is.

But yeah, it's a really about, it is about the financial independence, but it's more about mentoring and leading people and creating something that's substantial. And just overall, just helping people get to where they need to be.

Gresham Harkless 13:35

I love it. I love it. I love it. Yeah, definitely leadership and being able to help people get to their goals so that you can also reach your goals is an awesome way to look at it.

So Kristin, I truly appreciate you taking some time out of your schedule to speak with us. I wanted to give you the mic so to speak one more time to see if there's anything additional you want to tell our readers and our listeners.

Kristin Marquet 13:54

Yeah, absolutely. So don't be afraid to go after your dreams.

Another piece of advice is don't quit your full-time job until you know that you have a product that's going to be successful. So don't quit your full time job for your side hustle unless you know that you actually have something that's viable and substantial. I think that I've heard so many of my friends do that and it's just bomb flat.

So be strategic, be smart. You guys have any questions you can, or if you need a resource for publicity and digital marketing, check out femfounder.co. We have resources we have books, we have downloads, we have, blog posts that are 3000, 4, 000 words in length that are like mini eBooks giving you really a short or an abbreviated MBA.

And don't be afraid to reach out and say hello on Twitter. My Twitter is Twitter and the handle is just my name. Kristin Marquette, K R I S T I N M A R Q U E T. And I look forward to connecting with you guys, in the near future. And you can pick up a copy of our book.

On the publicityjumpstart.com website will actually be up this week so you can sign up for a free download and you can sign up to find out when we release it.

Gresham Harkless 15:14

Awesome. Awesome. I was super exciting and we're definitely gonna have those links in the show notes. So just in case anybody wants to click through to follow you on Twitter or to get a copy of the free download and get notified when the book goes live, you'll definitely be able to do that.

But Kristin, thank you so much again. Truly appreciative of all the great information you provided and all the great things you're doing in the world.

Kristin Marquet 15:32

Thank you so much for having me. This was so much fun.

Outro 15:35

Thank you for listening to the I Am CEO podcast, powered by CB Nation and Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co. I Am CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community.

Check out the latest and greatest apps, books, and habits to level up your business as. ceohacks.co. This has been the I Am CEO podcast with Gresham Harkless, Jr. Thank you for listening.

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