"Just produce stuff. Learn from it. Adjust for the next one."
As The Impact Authority, Stephanie Scheller shares everything she’s learned over the past decade working with 5,000+ small businesses to make marketing make sense so small business owners can understand and own their marketing, make an impact, and generate real results!
She does this by leveraging her knowledge of psychology as well as teaching how to build a comprehensive, cohesive business plan that creates room for exponential business growth.
Check out more interviews with entrepreneurs here.
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Table of Contents
We are thrilled to have you join us today, welcome to ValiantCEO Magazine’s exclusive interview! Let’s start off with a little introduction. Tell our readers a bit about yourself and your company.
Stephanie Scheller: I’m a violinist and a marketer at heart who happens to design and produce educational events for ADHD entrepreneurs.
I have always approached pretty much everything with an eye on psychology. So that’s how I tackled marketing and how we were able to establish Grow Disrupt as one of the few event companies that survived and thrived through the pandemic. I also use all of my study in regards to the field of psychology to understand how to produce events that actually support the ADHD entrepreneur for not just learning but also implementation.
On a more practical side, I’ve won a few awards as an entrepreneur. I got to stand on the TEDx red dot. I’ve published two books (and am working on my next two).
In the past year, what is the greatest business achievement you’d like to celebrate with your team? Please share the details of that success.
Stephanie Scheller: It’s weird, we produced a literal TV show this year…an eight-episode, fictional TV show to normalize the struggles that small business owners go through… And it was a HUGE endeavor. We had our first company-wide team retreat and got to do some REALLY cool stuff.
But what I’m MOST proud that we had more than $25k in actual cash profit distributions to me and my team and I was able to purchase some really expensive gifts for all of my team members for Christmas this year.
If we go back just to 2018…there was a moment where I was literally sitting alone in the dark at my desk at midnight wondering how I was going to pay all of the bills that I had coming due for the Grow Retreat. Now we’ve turned all of our events into profitable events and me and my team are not just able to take really solid paychecks, but actually have profit distributions and have money set aside to pay taxes, for unexpected expenses AND for investing when great opportunities come along.
It’s wild and it seems so small that I’m almost embarrassed to say that’s what I’m most proud of in my business this year but it means everything to me to be able say “Yeah…we actually distributed real cash profits in addition to our paychecks AND I can do profit distributions to my team” as a small business owner!
What advice do you wish you received when you started your business journey and what do you intend on improving in the next quarter?
Stephanie Scheller: “Go with the flow more…”
Stop pushing yourself to PERFECT your marketing messaging and niche and business model right away. Just produce stuff. Learn from it. Adjust for the next one. You’ll find your niche naturally as you get more experience. Trying to force yourself to niche down too early can actually be detrimental to your ability to grow and end up in the RIGHT niche! I’m one of the few marketers out there who says it’s okay to be a little wider…That said, I will push people to, even if you want to have MULTIPLE target markets, get detailed on them individually…so really get to know your millennial-female-identifying-matcha-slinging-yoga-practicing demographic….and your gen-z-man-who-is-feeling-lost-and-loving-brew-pubs-and-sports in detail so you can plan to market to both of them.
Same thing goes for marketing. I spent SO long trying to create the perfect social media post or flier or video or landing page. Instead, I’ve learned to just get stuff out there!
Beyond that…Whenever I find myself panicking that I have to DO IT RIGHT or DO IT BETTER, I really just need to breath. When I fight, I tend to push people away. So instead, relax into the flow a little more. Listen to myself a little more. Rest a little more.
I perform better and so does the business!
Here is a two fold question: What is the book that influenced you the most and how? Please share some life lessons you learned. Now what book have you gifted the most and why?
Stephanie Scheller: I have to talk about two books because I think I’ve gifted them an equal amount and they are the two I reference the most…
- Profit First by Mike Michalowicz
- Find Your Yellow Tux by Jesse Cole
Profit First:
This is the book that took me from sitting in the dark, almost in tears trying to figure out how to pay all of the contracts I signed…to having an actual paycheck…and profit distributions for myself and my team. Not just that, but to having one of the few profitable event companies through the pandemic. It’s revolutionary how he gets you to think about your pricing, business models and managing your finances. It made how I manage finances actually tackle-able for me!
Keeping in mind that I was the kid who flunked algebra…twice.
So for Mike to make understanding how to price and manage my business easy. Blows my mind!
Biggest less? Price everything to take your profits first. Not last. Taking your profits LAST leaves you in a bad place mentally and physically and leaves your business unstable. Setting yourself up to be profitable first and foremost will change everything. Including how you value yourself!
Find Your Yellow Tux:
This was the first time that I really finally grasped that I had to be willing to embrace something that might make me uncomfortable if I wanted to get attention and grow the way I wanted to grow. Previously, I’d toyed around with the idea of using the violin onstage…but I hadn’t really pulled the trigger on it because I was insecure about my playing ability. I finally pulled the trigger and realized I needed to lean in while reading that book.
I leaned in on incorporating the violin.
That led me to realize that my marketing and branding as a keynote speaker and personal brand really does an incredible job of bringing together my passions for art and music and psychology into ‘The Creativity Spark’.
I think the biggest lesson actually came for me in watching Jesse Cole after reading the book, and seeing how he dealt with the people who were VERY vocal against some of the things he was doing with the Savannah Bananas…and how committed he was able to be to the things he knew were right. Like standing out in the crowd.
It gave me a lesson in grace, courage, and the importance of standing out.
Business is all about overcoming obstacles and creating opportunities for growth. What do you see as THE real challenge right now?
Stephanie Scheller: Understanding and staying committed to the importance of constant evolution.
This requires us, as small business owners, to lift our heads from the day-to-day and focus on strategy. To take time to watch the marketplace and understand how it’s changing. And to watch for the opportunities that might present if we can just make a tiny shift.
If we can focus in on that as the most important obstacle to overcome, it eliminates so many of the other obstacles that can pop-up. It’s easy to get sucked down in the routine and mundanity of life, but if we take time to lift our head, we KNOW how important it is to be committed to constant evolution.
I know it’s hard because we spend so long trying to figure out how our business model and structures and processes. But it’s the changes to the marketplace and our ability to adapt that give us an edge of the larger organizations.
In your experience, what tends to be the most underestimated part of running a company? Can you share an example?
Stephanie Scheller: Honestly, strategy.
It’s the thing we all know that we need to take time for. And it’s the first thing to get rescheduled. We plan to attend an event that is supposed to help us with our strategies for the upcoming year…then skip because we’re busy.
We plan to take time to review and reset goals for the long and short term…and end up dedicating less than half the expected time to that because we’re trying out best to solve the problem that popped up at 7am this morning.
We know that we need to take time to sit with our inner CEO and reconnect with our long-term vision. But it’s the easiest thing in the world to reschedule.
The problem is that it results in exhaustion and that leads to more problems that we cannot solve because we don’t have the energy for it. We end up cutting corners and losing sight of the long-term goals, which leads us in a death spiral to nowhere.
We need to be taking time to review and strategize not just in terms of the vision of the company (What I refer to as the CEO work), but also in terms of the finances (the CFO work) and the marketing (the CMO work), and if you’ve got extensive operations, the operations (the COO work).
Even if you have individuals in all of these roles for your company, you as the CEO should still be meeting with them to evaluate and strategize regularly.
On a lighter note, if you had the ability to pick any business superpower, what would it be and how would you put it into practice?
Stephanie Scheller: Funnily enough! I think I’ve GOT a superpower…
I get a lot of sideways glances when I share that I’ve got ADHD.
But in my mind, as an entrepreneur, ADHD is a superpower. Like with most superpowers, it comes with great responsibility (thanks Spiderman!).
To me, ADHD comes with the following superpowers:
Hyper-Focus – It’s taken me years, but I’ve learned how to enter hyper focus with sensory triggers to an almost 80% accuracy, and how to note when I’m spiraling into the attention deficit side, and how to reset myself. When I remember to put myself in hyper-focus mode, I can accomplish more in a few hours than most people will all day, or even all week!
Creative Problem Solving – as someone with ADHD, I tend to find my brain gets a little haywire and more creative than most. Which is great when I’m problem solving. I can come up with three or four ways to tackle the problem and at least one of them will work!
Visionary – I never realized that my ability to see a whole bunch of potential paths forward is actually a pretty common trait for those with ADHD. So when I’m at an intersection, making a decision, or solving a problem (See above!), I can typically see a bunch of solutions and even start to see what are the pros & cons for making that decision (or not) in more detail than most. This gives me great insight to making decisions that will serve our long-term interests best!
Jed Morley, VIP Contributor to ValiantCEO and the host of this interview would like to thank Stephanie Scheller for taking the time to do this interview and share her knowledge and experience with our readers.
If you would like to get in touch with Stephanie Scheller or her company, you can do it through her – Linkedin Page
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