August 18, 2025 • 42 mins
On this episode of the Stuck In My Mind Podcast, host Wize El Jefe sits down for an inspiring and candid conversation with Kym Insana, the dynamic founder of Always On Digital. Kym is living proof that you can build a multi-million dollar business, work with some of the biggest brands in America, AND still make it home for bedtime stories and soccer games. In this heartfelt episode, she opens up about her unconventional journey from a high-stress corporate grind in New York City to creating a thriving digital marketing agency built on freedom, flexibility, and genuine connection.
The episode kicks off with Kym reflecting on a pivotal moment when her young son's daycare journal made her rethink her priorities. She shares how her family’s needs—and especially her desire to be present as a mom—inspired her to quit her long commute, leave her corporate job, and go all-in on entrepreneurship. Kym’s raw honesty will resonate with anyone who’s ever felt the pull between career ambition and family life.
Wize guides Kym through her bold transition from corporate leader to business owner, diving into the mental shifts required to move from employee to entrepreneur. Kym talks about her learning curve, from sales to mastering the less glamorous (and often overlooked) aspects of running a business: payroll, insurance, accounting, legal rules, and, most importantly, looking out for her team as she would her own kids.
A significant theme in this episode is how Kym structured Always On Digital around her family’s schedule, creating boundaries that work for both her and her clients. She reveals how honesty and transparency—about things like not taking calls during the 3-5pm “mom window”—built not just a business, but a loyal clientele that appreciates real work-life balance. For listeners wondering if that kind of balance is possible, Kym’s practical advice and lived experience offer real hope.
Wize digs into some of Kym’s growth strategies, from her proven five-step framework for product sales to her philosophy that “the foundation” is the most skipped step for small businesses. She expands on digital marketing myths, strategic platform selection (hint: you don’t have to be everywhere!), and why so many entrepreneurs get distracted by shiny new tools instead of focusing on what works for their actual audience and budget.
Kym spells out the biggest mistakes she sees in digital marketing, including overspending before you’ve exhausted the free and organic opportunities—think, posting consistently and using AI tools like ChatGPT to spark creativity. She emphasizes the importance of cost transparency, knowing exactly where your ad dollars are going, and understanding when it makes sense to shift to paid ads.
An especially powerful section centers on building relationships: whether it’s developing an engaged email list or leading a team of powerhouse moms, Kym shares why loyalty, community, and authenticity always win over flashy metrics or mass production. Her insights into retaining talent and delivering quality service are invaluable for business owners tired of organizational churn and cold company culture.
Throughout the conversation, Kym and Wize keep it real about the highs and lows of juggling work and parenthood. They both share hilarious anecdotes—like kids and grandkids unintentionally crashing live calls—to highlight the beauty in the chaos and the blurry lines we all navigate in the remote work world. There’s wisdom, laughter, and some well-earned humility about days that don’t look as perfect as the Zoom frame suggests.
On the future of digital marketing, Kym forecasts a surge in AI-powered tools but predicts a renewed hunger for the “human touch.” She explores the fast rise of live shopping and how brands need to create authentic, interactive experiences to engage audiences. As technology brings instant gratification closer to home, she stresses the enduring value of genuine, person-to-person service and creative content.
For entrepreneurs hungry to scale sustainably, Kym drops some hard truths about understanding your finances, embracing flexibility, and not falling in love with any one idea (shoutout to Jay-Z’s business advice). She urges listeners to be open to pivots, get foundational accounting skills, and remember that long-term peace and happiness trump empty hustle.
The episode wraps with Kym’s encouragement to anyone on the fence about starting a business: you don’t have to wait for the “perfect” moment. Take small steps, try things part-time, and remember—you can always go back to a job, but you’ll never know what’s possible if you don’t bet on yourself.
If you’re a parent, entrepreneur, creative, or just someone tired of being told you can’t have both ambition and a life, this episode is for you. Kym Insana proves you can scale with soul, and that real success comes from showing up fully—at work, at home, and for yourself
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Sa
(00:32):
foreign
and welcome to another episode of Stuck in My Mind
podcast. And today's guest is proof that you can build a
(00:52):
multi million dollar business and still be present for bedtime stories and
soccer games. Kim Insana is the founder of Always
On Digital, a powerhouse digital marketing agency serving brands like
the US Air Force, Texas Rangers, and American Airlines.
She's a wife, a mom of four boys, and a leader who built her
business around freedom, flexibility, and results.
(01:16):
She's not just teaching others how to scale. She's showing women and small
businesses how to do it without losing themselves in the process.
Let's welcome to Stuck in My Mind podcast, the queen of scaling with soul,
Kim and Sana. Hello. Hold on, let me get you on here. How you
doing? Good. I'm great. Thanks so much for the introduction, Will. I appreciate it.
(01:36):
Thanks for having me. The pleasure's all mine. I'm glad to have you on the
show, fellow New Yorker. So I love that. That's great.
All right, so we're gonna just jump right into this.
Excuse me. Hold on. Take us back to
the long. To the long commute, the corporate world and the moment you knew that
that wasn't you no more. So one of
(01:59):
the moments of clarity for me was my oldest. He's
gonna be 19 in a couple weeks, but when I used to pick him up
from daycare, they would write in a journal. They would do these, like,
drawing pictures and write a journal. And my son's journal
always said, oh, my mom works in the city to make money.
And he used to say to me, oh, mom, you know, you're the last one
(02:21):
to come. I hear your heels and your car keys and I know you're coming.
And he would make all these little comments that weren't necessarily
malicious in any way, but they were so hurtful to
me as a parent, thinking, like, here I am scrambling to
get here on time, and I'm the last one, and my poor kid
is sitting there and he could hear my keys jingling because it's. No one else
(02:43):
is there, even at this point, like, I'm the last parent for pickup, and
everything is indicated that I. I have to work to make money and
I'm not here for him. And so it just started to, you know, put
in my mind, why would I even have kids if I really wasn't there? From
that. And work ended up being such a big part of my life
and who I am, and that shouldn't be who I am. When. When someone
(03:06):
asks me, you know, who are you? It should be a Mother first or a
parent or I'm, you know, Jake's mom or Dylan's mom. I should not be,
oh, I work at this company or I sell advertising. That shouldn't be who I
am as a person. And when that started to take over, I thought, this is
probably not right. This doesn't feel right. I need to make a change.
What was the biggest mental shift you had to make
(03:29):
to go from an employee to becoming your own boss and
entrepreneur? So I actually didn't go to
business school, and I didn't know what I was doing when I made the
jump. So I had thought I could just get a handful of
clients and I don't need as much as I had before because I'm running a
smaller organization and I can just, I can do this.
(03:52):
And it took a little while to really understand some of
the elements of starting a business mentally. And I
always ran a sales team and I was involved in revenue numbers and things like
that. But, you know, what I didn't know
was, was, you know, the other logistics of the business. So there was an
extreme mental shift that happened from, yes, I led a team and I
(04:14):
understood revenue, but what I didn't understand were the
logistics of insurance and the accounting aspects and
the hiring and employee law. And so that were, you know,
that was one of the critical things for me that I had to start
changing mentally and understand this isn't just about me. This is something
bigger. When you're an employee, you just worry about yourself getting your
(04:36):
job done, obviously for the benefit of a team. But when
you become, you know, the owner now, you're looking out for other people,
much like a parent would. And you got to protect all your children,
you know, or employees as if they were children. So.
So how did your family influence the way you structured
always on, from. From day one. So
(04:59):
my kids, I really focused on their schedules first.
I found that when I was working in corporate, I would
come home, you know, get the kids dinner, help them with their homework or
whatever, and then I'd go back to working when they went
to sleep. And so I would work around their schedule anyway.
I was just killing myself doing it for somebody else. And when I switched over
(05:22):
to doing it for myself, I kind of kept a similar schedule.
And, and we were clear and upfront to our clients from the beginning
that this was going to be something where maybe you didn't have calls with us
from 3 to 5pm but we were accessible
nights and weekends as well. And, you know, funny enough, when you start
to deal with people that are in similar situations, they're happy to do a
(05:45):
call. They say, you know
what, that's a good time for me because I've got everything else done.
I would rather talk to you at 9pm at night and do a conference call
then, then do it during the day when I'm trying to struggle to get home
for daycare or whatever. So, you know, it was a welcome change
for some folks, for sure. Yeah, absolutely. Because again,
(06:06):
you know, you from experience, being a mom, that works. And
so you have to rush to come get the kids and all that. So yeah,
so for some people that those hours are beneficial. It
benefits them to make me have a later call. So that gives, that
gives you an advantage because some people might not want to do those late
night calls or whatever it is. Yeah, especially,
(06:29):
you know, many of us, as the fall comes, kids start getting sick and their
sick days or, you know, the summer's a disaster as it
is with camps. And for some reason camps don't go to the end of
summer and there's an expectation to take a couple extra weeks off from work somewhere.
You know, like society doesn't set us up for success at all,
(06:49):
honestly. But you know, we're struggling, we're trying to make it work.
So what advice would you give to women who feel like they have to come,
they have to choose between career and, and kids?
I always say, you know, try to create
somewhat of what you're looking for so it's not
all or nothing. You know, we may have ideals of what
(07:13):
we want, want it to be and what we want it to look like, but,
you know, maybe there's something in between, you know, point A and
point B that allows you to have some flexibility
and an opportunity to kind of
breathe a little bit better. And maybe that's a day
home. You know, after Covid, there was a lot of work from home. We did
(07:35):
this, we started this before COVID but after Covid there were some
exceptions. I know that there's people going back to return to
office, but maybe you can maintain a hybrid environment.
Maybe it's, it's a timing thing or hours. Um,
you know, my sister in law, when she had kids, she was struggling
and she had said, oh, well, can I come in four days?
(07:57):
Can I just work four days? And they said, yeah, take 20% off your salary.
You know, which is the, the fifth day. And you can, you can work four
days. And you know, so maybe it's not a perfect scenario and, and
there's give and take, but sometimes those little things make such a difference
in your life that it's worth that trade off, you know,
kind of what you're getting. And so try to be creative. I
(08:20):
always suggest, you know, it doesn't have to be everything, just little
baby steps towards getting what you want. And it doesn't happen overnight, even
when you go and start your own business. Because I literally got
pregnant six months after having I started
the business and I had a baby physically and
then had to send an email immediately after because there was nobody else to cover
(08:42):
for me. And so, you know, obviously that's not the situation I wanted to be
in, but it happened. So, you know, it isn't perfect doing it
yourself, but understanding, you know, trying to find a balance as
much as possible. Absolutely.
You've gotten a proven five step framework for product sales. What's
(09:03):
the first piece most people skip?
I think people forget the foundation. You
know, thinking about the janitor of a school
or anything. Like, how does it start? Where, you know, what are the basics
of something? You know, in starting from the ground up,
sometimes people miss that step before anything else.
(09:25):
What, no matter what the industry is or if it's a product or
whatever, you know, kind of like, you know, if you're selling product,
what is the why, what is the need that someone would have versus just saying
I created an invention. You know, people forget the, the
beginning part of that and, and who does it suit and is there, you know,
what's the foundation of that first?
(09:49):
So, so many entrepreneurs get stuck on platforms. How do
you help them get, help them pick the right one? From
an advertising standpoint, what I find is that a lot of times
people want to be on the hot new platform. And
we were actually just, I was just on a call earlier today going
through this and you know, company says, I want to reach
(10:11):
moms or women 25 to 49 and with a focus
on moms. But I want to be on TikTok and Facebook and
Instagram and you know, Snapchat and they
rattling off, you know, video, YouTube, there's a million things they're saying.
But when you start to talk about people's budgets, you really have to break it
down and then prioritize. So we usually start with, you
(10:33):
know, what do you have that you're available to spend? What is
it that you're trying to accomplish? And understanding that obviously
the target audience. But you know, if you're trying to sell
a product, then maybe it's not, you know, jumping into full branding. What's going to
give you the, the quickest Return on your ad spend right away.
And, you know, generally that search, you know, searches like
(10:55):
closer to shooting fish in a barrel. People are raising their hand, they want something.
And you also want to make sure that you're allocating enough budget that
gives you a statistical relevance, you know, for
understanding if that works or not. Does it perform? Is it
getting you customers or not? And you
know, usually we start with the, the money makers first, the
(11:17):
easiest ones, the ones that perform the best, the ones that have enough
data that they pass back to allow us to make decisions. And
then we could always go with the shiny new toy, you know, and add that
in. But a lot of times those shiny new toys don't
have the same sophistication to pass back information
and really, you know, get your product going. There's a lot of
(11:40):
hurdles with that, you know, with those types of things. So we like to
stick with, you know, start with the tried and true, focus on your
audience and then, you know, what type of budget you have. But,
you know, target audiences are usually found in
specific areas. So not everybody is going to be
on Facebook and not everyone's going to be on TikTok or Snapchat or,
(12:02):
you know, or even, you know, just display advertising. You'll find
different folks in different areas a lot of times. Yeah, like, yeah, like
when you mentioned that she's looking for older women or.
Yeah, they wouldn't be on Snapchat. They would be on different platform.
Yeah, it would, it would depend on what platform they needed and, and they
wanted. So, yeah, it, everybody thinks that they have to be
(12:25):
everywhere. Yes. But your, your client, your, your, the
people you, you want, they aren't everywhere. They're in specific,
specific spots. And, and that's where you would focus on.
Yeah, absolutely.
What's the number one mistake you see small business owners making with
digital marketing? I think sometimes people
(12:48):
don't do enough themselves first, and
sometimes you don't know enough initially. But there's a lot of
things you can do free posting consistently
just on your organic channels as much as possible. So if you
can start doing that on your own first. And now, I mean, Honestly,
we have ChatGPT, we have all these AI tools that can help
(13:11):
you at least get ideas. Right. You're not a creative person.
Can you just give me some ideas for some posts or something like that just
to get the ball rolling and get you going as much as possible
for free? You know, I'm probably not a great salesperson
to say, you know, do free first before you hire somebody, but do
Free first before you hire somebody, and then from, from there
(13:33):
on, shop around. Don't just go with the first partner.
It's hard to see sometimes what you're going to get. And I think,
like a lot of times people don't really recognize what they're paying.
So they may say, well, what's the cost for this? And, you know, a company
will say, oh, it's 10%. But then they don't know all the hidden fees. And
it's really important to break down the fees and get reporting back from
(13:55):
whoever you work with that you want full transparency on what
everything costs. What does the media cost, what does the
technology cost, what is the service cost, you know, anything
like that. Are there taxes? Some platforms charge taxes, like
just understanding your full cost to know exactly how much
money is really going towards my advertising. And
(14:17):
that's one of the biggest mistakes. People don't realize how little is actually going
sometimes.
Can you break down when it. When it's time to shift from organic traffic to
basically paid and how to know you're ready?
So when you have some decent budget, I would say it's
(14:37):
time to make the shift. So if you can start to allocate, you know,
maybe 10% of your revenue and say, okay, where,
you know, or profit at least, or, you know, something where you're saying, all right,
like, you know, what can we do here? And maybe that's five to
$10,000 a month that you have in your pocket and you, you know, you can
allocate. I would say that's a good place to start.
(15:00):
You know, sometimes people want to start with $1,000 and, and that's good, too.
You're going to end up probably having to do a lot of that on your
own because hiring another company is going to eat away a lot of that budget
because at $1,000, it usually costs money to run. So,
you know, once you're towards the 5,000, $10,000
range, you can usually engage another company that can do
(15:22):
the heavy lifting for you, and then you're losing
less, you know, less percentage than you would with those
smaller budgets. Once you're at that stage, would say,
you know, pick one or two channels to, to work off of,
but make sure that your back end is, is kind of working in tune with
your front end. So if you're doing marketing on Facebook or
(15:44):
you're using Google, make sure that you have a plan. If you're
capturing email addresses, are you following up, you know,
what's your customer retention strategy in order to
get those people to either be return customers or get them as
customers. So once people come to your site and they're dropping their email address
or whatever information you're collecting, make sure you develop a
(16:07):
relationship with them, because that's the other part. It's not just getting them
to your door. You have to build a relationship with them to, you know, and
customer service is king. So if you're not really
building that relationship up, it's hard to get repeat customers if
you're, you know, if you struggle with your product or anything down the road or
shipping times. Everyone's competing with Amazon. Yeah. So it's
(16:29):
really important. Absolutely. And for
when you're talking about. A lot of people don't know what to
do with email lists, they don't really know how to really properly use
them. That's something that I've had to learn as
a podcaster is. Yeah. You have to generate and build an email list, so
you have to have a page where you can collect these emails
(16:52):
and, and, and you have to build a relationship. That's one of the biggest
things, is building a community. Everybody thinks you have, like,
as far as podcasting goes, everybody thinks that, oh, you need to have
these outrageous numbers to be
successful as a podcaster, when in or actuality, you just need
(17:12):
a loyal fan base that'll support you and, and to help build you
up. And so I've, I love the fact that, yes,
I'm not a very great humongous podcast,
but I'm in the top 5%. Yeah. And I've worked hard to, to
get to where I'm at by building
a community, by community, by building a relationship by.
(17:35):
With the emails I do collect, sending out weekly messages
to people and seeing how they're doing. And, and like,
that's something that was very important for me to. That it took me,
for me to learn, for me to actually start implementing these things.
Yeah, absolutely. And to, you know what, it's better to have a loyal fan base
(17:55):
that's smaller than to have, you know, fly by
night fan base that's larger. So I, you know,
we're not this huge corporation. We like to
stay within our means and be able to have a quality product.
And I always think of, you know, it's like a bakery. Like if they want
to go mass production, does the quality change? So you want to be at a
(18:17):
point where you can provide the same quality, you know, at
scale. And the scale is really whatever makes you happy. It doesn't,
you know, there's no real race here. There's no trophies. At the end,
we all end up dying. And there's. Now
there's the winner is what? Your peace and your happiness is within yourself
and your, you know, your people around you.
(18:40):
You've built a team of powerhouse moms. What does that bring
to your company that most agencies miss?
Loyalty. So we have folks that have been here
since day one. We have people that say this is the best job they've ever
had. And when we're in an industry with extreme turnover
and layoffs and things like that, and I see those
(19:02):
Instagrams where people are just ripping their organizations apart,
you know, mocking them for bringing in a ping pong table, to think that it
creates culture and all of that. What we strive
to do is just create a team that wants
to be here and loves being here because it shows in
their work. We are providing them an opportunity to have peace
(19:25):
in their lives. And then it's just a cycle. It's just, you know,
it's in and out of happy employees,
is great work, and then it's not, you know,
rocket science, really. Just do the right thing by them
for the most part is usually all it takes. And so I think that
ability to create loyalty has really helped us and
(19:48):
it's helped us gain and keep clients because we can tout
our experience and how long people have been here. In the industry
that we're in, there's extreme turnover. People Last
a year, 14 months at a job. You
know, I could say we have people here nine years, eight years, five years.
Like those are strong numbers for a small, you know, for a company
(20:11):
like ours. Yeah, absolutely.
Your mantra is about balance. How do you personally stay grounded while running
a multi million dollar company? Some days
look good and some days don't, for sure. I
mean, I, you know, it's not all pretty.
It's kind of like how we dress for these zooms, right? It's all good on
(20:33):
top and then we're wearing sweatpants on the bottom. It's all, it's how
I make it look. You know, it's just, you have to,
I think you have to laugh at yourself sometimes and just say, okay, like
today is going to just be this way and I'm going to get the important
stuff done because it's heavier with the kids or, you
know, school or whatever. And then other days, you
(20:55):
know, my kids know, like, hey, listen, we're going to be homeless if
I don't work. So you guys have to chill out,
figure out how to do something on your own for a little bit or understand
you know, this is not a day that you're calling me because you
forgot something or you need a ride or you want to ask a question about
going to someone's house after school. Like, that's not happening today. So
(21:16):
they kind of know. I mean, I have a kid home. I have a couple
kids home today. I told them not to knock on the door.
Ten seconds before we got on, I heard the door banging, and
I'm like, no. So it's not perfect at all.
But I think we all try to have our boundaries, and mine's a locked
door. Um, but we just. They
(21:38):
know. But our clients also are in similar boats. You know, once you
have an honest relationship with people, they tend to share
that. Oh, yeah, you know what? It's the same thing for me. Or my kids
are in the car. You know, why we're on a conference call, or their kids
are on a call. And so, you know, I think that honesty and
transparency definitely helps with maintaining some
(21:58):
sense of balance, but I don't think anyone's got it perfectly figured out.
Oh, no. One. One. Funniest moments I've ever had on
the show was I was recording an episode and
live, and. And my grandson was living with us
at the time, and he was like, two. Two years
old. And he crawls under my desk,
(22:21):
and he sees the lights under my desk. Yeah. And he hits
the button, and he cuts off all the powers. Everything
on the screen, everything. The computer went up, everything. And I
looked down, and he looks up with these big eyes,
and I can't get upset. I just look at him and I
(22:42):
laugh and I go, like, all right. But again, I have to lock my
daughter. Yeah. Yeah. But he says. He looks at me. Hey,
Pop. Pop. I'm like, I can't do nothing. I can't.
I gotta laugh and enjoy it. And it was great because the guest
was a fellow podcaster, so they know. They know about technical
difficulties, and they kept the show going. And when I got back, I told
(23:05):
them we laughed on air. And it was just a great experience to be able
to have that moment with my grandson. And he's looking up like, yeah,
like, yeah, hi, Pop up. I can't. And you can't get upset. You
gotta just laugh at it. Yeah. No, you do. And then it's a great story
and memory that you have with him as he gets older,
you know, to tell them, because they somehow become part of and
(23:27):
ingrained in what you're doing. And, you know, I find
that my kids, too, sometimes we'll be on A call and they
hear what's going on. And at dinner, like, two nights later, they're like, so
what happened with that thing? Like, did you get that deal or what happened with
that person? Like, they're, they're part of it and involved, you
know, sometimes nosy parkers with things, you know, like. Or how much money did you
(23:49):
make off that sale? Like, how big was that deal? And I'm like, well, that.
Don't worry about that part. But, you know, they're, they're funny because they
become part of it. And then I think that that's where all the respect comes
in too, where, you know, it's.
We're in a different society than, you know, children should be seen and not
heard. And every, you know, I respect people's different parenting decisions, but
(24:11):
ours, we share a lot. And so by sharing,
I feel like they know better. Better to step
back when they shouldn't be involved or whatnot, but they do.
They love, they love to give their. They love to give their opinions. They're all
going to take over the world. They. They know everything. So. Yeah.
So we are live. So one, we have a first time,
(24:33):
someone turning in for the first time. Desiree of Sunshine. Hey, thank you
for, for coming through. She goes, thank
you, Kim, for your insight and honesty. You are incredible. Oh, thank
you. And then a locked door becomes our best friend
sometimes. Absolutely.
For sure. Absolutely. All right, so
(24:57):
where do you see digital marketing heading in the next two to three years? Because
you mentioned AI. Right. Where do you see it?
So we're definitely going to have lots of AI for sure.
It's all you hear. I feel like it's going to, it's almost like the,
the new drinking game. Like, every conversation you're part of
someone saying, I, AI. Their technology is AI. They use, you know,
(25:20):
AI. But I honestly think there's going to be a swing back
towards human because AI,
you know, is not perfect. Humans aren't perfect
either. But you need a combination. You can't just
trust technology to make, you know, anything,
whether it be for marketing and creating your ad and
(25:42):
what your voice is, it's going to make mistakes. People don't
like ads that are photoshopped completely, that don't look real. And,
you know, people like real people and seeing themselves within.
And right now we're in the whole American eagle uproar,
you know, with Sydney Sweeney, like, just, you can see by the
reactions. People don't always want perfect. They don't want things a certain
(26:05):
way. They, you know, they, they. You have to be able to adjust. So I
think the human element is really important. I think the ability
to access and shop things
quicker is important. So however that technology allows
you to do that like TikTok shop and Google Shopping has changed
a lot recently. We've noticed it's changed some of the
(26:28):
search, you know, performance and algorithms just because the way
they have the shopping on the top now and how that, you know,
users are engaging with that and as consumers I think of,
you know, how easy you want something to be and how frustrating when it's not
easy. We want to be able to look at something on Instagram and say I
like those pants. I want to click on it and I want to buy it
(26:49):
and I want to be not bothered by anyone. I want short shipping
time and I, you know, I want it here yesterday and I want
it to look exactly the way it does on that person, on me. So you
know, we, we want, we want this instant gratification and I think
technology has to keep up with it to provide us with the tools
to be able to purchase that way versus going to a website and
(27:11):
scrolling and looking for the color, looking for the size. You want to be able
to do that in like, in a one shot.
Something that I've been actually researching lately and looking into
live shopping. Yes, live selling. Yeah, yeah,
TikTok does, does it very well. A lot of people do it on TikTok. They're
doing very well with it. There's whatnot is, is an app where, where
(27:34):
people go and they, they do live selling and all and it
seems like that's the next wave. That's where some,
some, someone who, who, who sells whatever,
that's something they should look into and see.
Absolutely. And you know what, it's so funny how everything is
old, is new again and, and when I was first introduced
(27:57):
to live selling I'm like oh, like qvc. That's what I think
most shopping network. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like they talk for
20 minutes about this product and show you all the different ways you can use
it. It's the same. And if that's, you
know, how we're consuming it and they've done well, they're still around their
home shopping network. I bought things they do a
(28:19):
great deal on PS5 controllers around the holidays. Like there's
always, you know, they're still around, it's great. But
yes, the live selling and, and the live shopping where you can just
go and, and purchase something like that and, and really see it
and it's the same as kids with the unboxing videos, how
they would watch some random kids start opening his toys and
(28:42):
really see the product and, and how it works and, and
what do you get in the box? So, yeah, there's definitely
a market that I see exploding there. Now. The
flip side of that is you have to have the ability to create
that content and keep it fresh. And that is a whole another
thing that's not AI. So there comes the
(29:05):
human again. You're going to need people to really show and demonstrate and
maybe engage live and, you know, answer questions and things
like that. Where a chatbot may not be the appropriate think
for it. Yeah, absolutely. It's something that, that's
very important. If eventually, if you, if your brand
becomes successful in doing the live shopping, eventually you might, if you want
(29:27):
to extend the hours because you, if it's you just selling, you can only work
for a certain amount. You can only do a certain amount of hours. But if
you get big enough where you start hiring people to, to work the
channel for you and live sell for you, then that's another step. But yeah, there's,
there's so many opportunities growing. And I just released my,
I just started a newsletter on LinkedIn and
(29:50):
this week's newsletter was on AI and
how we need to use it for what it is, a tool.
It's not the answer to everything. Like you said, it does make mistakes,
but sometimes you're stuck and you don't have an idea or
whatever. You can feed it and,
and use some of it and help it help you. Like I've helped. It's helped
(30:13):
me take my podcast to another level.
But it's not the only thing. There's
parts of me in it. And so you, you use it
as a tool that. That's meant to be. Yeah,
absolutely. And it's great. You know, I've used it in
(30:34):
some random ways. Um, we were going on a vacation. I knew
kind of what we wanted to do, and I typed in the
itinerary, had, and I said, you know, what else am I missing? And
it gave some other options and it gave some options for restaurants and you know,
within certain budgets, like, you can use it for a bunch of different things
in our, in our daily life, but sometimes it's,
(30:56):
hey, I need some thought starters for. Or I, I
don't even know, you know, I. My brain's not working
today. Give me some ideas. And maybe you don't use those ideas,
but it gives you, you know, sparks something else.
Exactly. It sparks another idea and you take it from there,
you know, and even I always, you know, my kids, one of
(31:19):
them did get caught with using Chat GBT for paper at school,
middle school. Right? Let's, you know, test the waters a little bit.
He had a draft that he wrote and then the final he used
AI for. There is a drastic difference. And, you know,
he didn't understand why it's not okay. You know,
(31:39):
he's like, I'm going to end up using it when I work. I get to
use a calculator on my phone. Like, what's the big deal? And,
you know, I said, there's no foundation that you
have right now for writing because you're, you're still learning. And
so you don't understand everything. So you don't even know when it's not
exactly correct, when the tone is wrong, or when
(32:02):
it's just missing the point. And I kind of explained, like,
Amelia Bedelia, I don't know if you remember those books where, you know, she likes
sponge cake and it's, it's an actual sponge. Like, it may not always get
it and you have to know it so that you can
differentiate whether or not it's getting it. And it's just like
that with advertising. Like, we can put in Chat gbt, oh,
(32:24):
what should we do for this advertiser? And it may spit back TikTok
because it's more popular or pull up some numbers. But we
know personally from our background and our history and our
foundation what something, you know, it's best suited
for and is it going to work there or not? And if we just,
you know, trust AI, our business could go down the tubes. It. We can make
(32:46):
all the wrong decisions for us and maybe we didn't even know. And that's,
you know, in that use case. Obviously, a lot of the technology we use is
powered by AI, but we struggle with, you know,
Google's doing AI keywords and it's just adding keywords, and some of them we don't
want. You know, Facebook has Advantage plus Creative,
which is AI creative, and making ads that don't always
(33:08):
work, the clients don't like, for whatever reason or they're not
approving. So we can't let, you know, AI completely take over
because it's not going to always be better than what we're doing. No, absolutely. Sometimes
you need that human touch element. You need that realistic.
Because, yes, there's things it does, but like you said, people
want the authentic content.
(33:31):
So when you, when you're able to provide it, and that's why I love doing
the podcast is because it's, it's authentically me and
being able to have these conversations. It's not AI up here having these
conversations. So people really are learning from real
people and, and begin to hear, getting to learn myself personally.
And, and just. It was a
(33:54):
point where I was like, I was, I enjoy these conversations so much because
like I said, I'm learning so much from these conversations that it was, I was
like, man, oh man, I feel kind of selfish because this is so much fun
just being able to do this and learn so much. But then the guest was
like, well, I guess pointed out that, no, you're sharing all this content
you have people on, you're providing a service, you're giving people
(34:16):
some amazing content, you have great guests on. So, yeah,
I love this. I love being able to provide this
platform and I've had some great guests on.
Yeah, and you're giving back. Exactly. You're sharing the knowledge that
you're gaining. At the same time, everyone's learning and it is authentic.
It's not driven by technology, it's driven by people.
(34:40):
Absolutely. Yeah. What, what do you wish more entrepreneurs
understood about scaling with, with sustainability?
So I wish, and I encourage my kids with
school and everything to do this, is that the accounting background is pretty
important. I think sometimes we don't fully understand
finances. I don't think we're taught it properly in school
(35:02):
to the point we know for, you know, to be able to start a
business. So I would say, you know, I, I wish that was a, a
bigger sticking point for a lot of people to understand and really
know so you're, you're not getting misled or swindled or things like
that. So understanding the finances of a business and the
accounting, you know, to go into it is critical,
(35:25):
you know, and other than that, being open
to what comes next, it's not perfect.
It's going to maybe not be the path that you thought you were on.
And sometimes you need to pivot. I think a lot of companies understood that during
COVID where, you know, even for us, we were
focusing mainly on,
(35:48):
you know, online advertising. And then Covid hit and we
started to go back into traditional advertising as well and doing,
you know, billboards and stuff like that to help supplement our sales
and, you know, that pivot, being able to do things quickly and
really just say, like, okay, you know, and
like, kind of an example I always think about is like, watch Shark Tank. And
(36:11):
I see these folks and they're like, but it's my business and they're not thinking
bigger Picture sometimes, and they're, you know, they don't want to give a percentage,
but, like, you know, 100% of zero
is zero. But, you know, could you get 10% of
millions? Isn't that bigger? You know, isn't that better
if that's what you're trying to do? If you're passionate and you want to get
(36:32):
this thing out there, find the smarter path.
And so there's a flexibility that has to happen with that.
I know. It's something I
learned. Jay Z, actually, he's. He's one who
said he doesn't fall in love with anything. He. He's. Everything he's built.
He. He's willing to sell it. He's. He's willing to. Because
(36:55):
you don't fall in love with it. You build it up, and then you're like,
okay, it's time to move on, and you go to the next thing and you.
And so, yeah, we. We shouldn't.
If. If there was to come off me some. Something for the. For
this pod. Yeah, I've built it up to equity. And then, yeah, I'm like, okay,
it's time. Time for me to build something else. Now.
(37:17):
You can't fall in love with. I love doing the podcast. Wrong.
I know what you mean, though. But if I
have. Hey, they came with the check. I'm like, yeah, okay, let's go. I
gotta say no. Yeah. How does it benefit you and those around
you, you know, the most? And making sure
I agree. That's a. It's a great philosophy. And he's pretty
(37:39):
successful, right. So he kind of knows what he's doing.
So what's next for always on. And are you expanding, branching into new
services or maybe writing a book or something?
So I think if I ever wrote a book, I'd probably write a children's book
more because. Or just maybe, I don't know, stories of where people put their socks
(38:00):
in my house, Something like that.
I feel like there's a lot out there. And, you know, sometimes we have imposter
syndrome and we think, you know, what could I say that someone hasn't said already?
But, you know, what's next for us is we're trying to have this as a
growth year. I think, personally, I'm at a point
(38:20):
in my personal life where my kids are getting into
more of a stable path. You
know, my youngest is going into third grade now, so. And then I've
got, you know, a kid in college. So, like, we're. We're
cruising, I guess. You know, they always need Things and
there's baseball. But we're trying to grow a lot this year, so we're expanding
(38:44):
our office space. We've been hiring more, you know, products and
services. The future really will tell us kind of
what it is. As new platforms evolve and pop up.
We always try to be, you know, in the mix of it and make sure
that we can be experts on those platforms too, so that we could,
you know, really help others. Not have to
(39:05):
build a whole team just for Facebook or just for TikTok. Like
will have expertise in all those areas and you work with us and you kind
of get everything in one place and you don't have to hire
individuals for everything when you may not need the headcount for it.
So we'll continue to expand on that front. But
we're always looking to work with new advertisers and continue to grow and
(39:27):
hope that, you know, we can continue to hire moms
or, you know, parents or people that are looking for a work life balance
situation that are dedicated to creating
great customer service for our clients. Absolutely.
So Desiree has an answer to where the
socks go. Oh, the dryer eats socks.
(39:50):
The dryer does eat socks. Like, I want to find. There should be a magic
door somewhere that you open and the socks are in there.
And now this trend of these kids wearing slides
with white socks, like, why, why does that have to happen? It's so hard to
clean them when you're doing that. They're not shoes. White socks are not
(40:10):
shoes and shouldn't be treated as such. Oh, absolutely not.
So final message to the person listening who's on the fence about starting something
on their own. And at the same time, you're going to get the, the solo
screen and you're going to let them know where they can find you everything.
So. If you're
(40:31):
on the fence about starting something, um,
you know, I don't think there's ever a perfect, perfect time to do things.
And, you know, I always say just, you know, try it. You could always
go and get a job or, or do something else. You could always dip your
toe into it and see how it goes. If it's something that maybe you could
do as a hybrid or a part time, I say go for it.
(40:53):
It is a risk. It's not for everyone, but if you're passionate
about making it work and putting the work in, absolutely do it.
So I'm on LinkedIn. You can find me on LinkedIn. Kim and
Sana K Y M I N S A N A and our website
is getawayson.com and you can reach out to us
(41:15):
through the Contact Us form.
Awesome. Awesome. Thank you so much, Kim, for being a guest. I greatly appreciate
you stopping by and spending this time with us. Thank you so much.
Will, it was great. The pleasure's all mine. Pleasure mine. But don't leave just yet.
Let me close out the show and we'll chat a little bit off the air.
But once again, thank you so much. This was wonderful having you on as a
(41:37):
guest. Thank you. All right,
everybody, another great episode is in the Can I
if you've been waiting for a sign to build a business that fits your life,
this is it. Follow Kim and Sana and check out Always on Digital.
See. See how smart, flexible marketing can actually scale your business
and your freedom. If this episode sparked an idea, share it with
(42:00):
fellow mom, entrepreneur, or creative who's been stuck because
balance and success aren't opposites. They're a blueprint.
And as always, stay driven, stay grounded, stay wise.
Peace out.
(42:22):
It.
Sa
(00:32):
foreign
and welcome to another episode of Stuck in My Mind
podcast. And today's guest is proof that you can build a
(00:52):
multi million dollar business and still be present for bedtime stories and
soccer games. Kim Insana is the founder of Always
On Digital, a powerhouse digital marketing agency serving brands like
the US Air Force, Texas Rangers, and American Airlines.
She's a wife, a mom of four boys, and a leader who built her
business around freedom, flexibility, and results.
(01:16):
She's not just teaching others how to scale. She's showing women and small
businesses how to do it without losing themselves in the process.
Let's welcome to Stuck in My Mind podcast, the queen of scaling with soul,
Kim and Sana. Hello. Hold on, let me get you on here. How you
doing? Good. I'm great. Thanks so much for the introduction, Will. I appreciate it.
(01:36):
Thanks for having me. The pleasure's all mine. I'm glad to have you on the
show, fellow New Yorker. So I love that. That's great.
All right, so we're gonna just jump right into this.
Excuse me. Hold on. Take us back to
the long. To the long commute, the corporate world and the moment you knew that
that wasn't you no more. So one of
(01:59):
the moments of clarity for me was my oldest. He's
gonna be 19 in a couple weeks, but when I used to pick him up
from daycare, they would write in a journal. They would do these, like,
drawing pictures and write a journal. And my son's journal
always said, oh, my mom works in the city to make money.
And he used to say to me, oh, mom, you know, you're the last one
(02:21):
to come. I hear your heels and your car keys and I know you're coming.
And he would make all these little comments that weren't necessarily
malicious in any way, but they were so hurtful to
me as a parent, thinking, like, here I am scrambling to
get here on time, and I'm the last one, and my poor kid
is sitting there and he could hear my keys jingling because it's. No one else
(02:43):
is there, even at this point, like, I'm the last parent for pickup, and
everything is indicated that I. I have to work to make money and
I'm not here for him. And so it just started to, you know, put
in my mind, why would I even have kids if I really wasn't there? From
that. And work ended up being such a big part of my life
and who I am, and that shouldn't be who I am. When. When someone
(03:06):
asks me, you know, who are you? It should be a Mother first or a
parent or I'm, you know, Jake's mom or Dylan's mom. I should not be,
oh, I work at this company or I sell advertising. That shouldn't be who I
am as a person. And when that started to take over, I thought, this is
probably not right. This doesn't feel right. I need to make a change.
What was the biggest mental shift you had to make
(03:29):
to go from an employee to becoming your own boss and
entrepreneur? So I actually didn't go to
business school, and I didn't know what I was doing when I made the
jump. So I had thought I could just get a handful of
clients and I don't need as much as I had before because I'm running a
smaller organization and I can just, I can do this.
(03:52):
And it took a little while to really understand some of
the elements of starting a business mentally. And I
always ran a sales team and I was involved in revenue numbers and things like
that. But, you know, what I didn't know
was, was, you know, the other logistics of the business. So there was an
extreme mental shift that happened from, yes, I led a team and I
(04:14):
understood revenue, but what I didn't understand were the
logistics of insurance and the accounting aspects and
the hiring and employee law. And so that were, you know,
that was one of the critical things for me that I had to start
changing mentally and understand this isn't just about me. This is something
bigger. When you're an employee, you just worry about yourself getting your
(04:36):
job done, obviously for the benefit of a team. But when
you become, you know, the owner now, you're looking out for other people,
much like a parent would. And you got to protect all your children,
you know, or employees as if they were children. So.
So how did your family influence the way you structured
always on, from. From day one. So
(04:59):
my kids, I really focused on their schedules first.
I found that when I was working in corporate, I would
come home, you know, get the kids dinner, help them with their homework or
whatever, and then I'd go back to working when they went
to sleep. And so I would work around their schedule anyway.
I was just killing myself doing it for somebody else. And when I switched over
(05:22):
to doing it for myself, I kind of kept a similar schedule.
And, and we were clear and upfront to our clients from the beginning
that this was going to be something where maybe you didn't have calls with us
from 3 to 5pm but we were accessible
nights and weekends as well. And, you know, funny enough, when you start
to deal with people that are in similar situations, they're happy to do a
(05:45):
call. They say, you know
what, that's a good time for me because I've got everything else done.
I would rather talk to you at 9pm at night and do a conference call
then, then do it during the day when I'm trying to struggle to get home
for daycare or whatever. So, you know, it was a welcome change
for some folks, for sure. Yeah, absolutely. Because again,
(06:06):
you know, you from experience, being a mom, that works. And
so you have to rush to come get the kids and all that. So yeah,
so for some people that those hours are beneficial. It
benefits them to make me have a later call. So that gives, that
gives you an advantage because some people might not want to do those late
night calls or whatever it is. Yeah, especially,
(06:29):
you know, many of us, as the fall comes, kids start getting sick and their
sick days or, you know, the summer's a disaster as it
is with camps. And for some reason camps don't go to the end of
summer and there's an expectation to take a couple extra weeks off from work somewhere.
You know, like society doesn't set us up for success at all,
(06:49):
honestly. But you know, we're struggling, we're trying to make it work.
So what advice would you give to women who feel like they have to come,
they have to choose between career and, and kids?
I always say, you know, try to create
somewhat of what you're looking for so it's not
all or nothing. You know, we may have ideals of what
(07:13):
we want, want it to be and what we want it to look like, but,
you know, maybe there's something in between, you know, point A and
point B that allows you to have some flexibility
and an opportunity to kind of
breathe a little bit better. And maybe that's a day
home. You know, after Covid, there was a lot of work from home. We did
(07:35):
this, we started this before COVID but after Covid there were some
exceptions. I know that there's people going back to return to
office, but maybe you can maintain a hybrid environment.
Maybe it's, it's a timing thing or hours. Um,
you know, my sister in law, when she had kids, she was struggling
and she had said, oh, well, can I come in four days?
(07:57):
Can I just work four days? And they said, yeah, take 20% off your salary.
You know, which is the, the fifth day. And you can, you can work four
days. And you know, so maybe it's not a perfect scenario and, and
there's give and take, but sometimes those little things make such a difference
in your life that it's worth that trade off, you know,
kind of what you're getting. And so try to be creative. I
(08:20):
always suggest, you know, it doesn't have to be everything, just little
baby steps towards getting what you want. And it doesn't happen overnight, even
when you go and start your own business. Because I literally got
pregnant six months after having I started
the business and I had a baby physically and
then had to send an email immediately after because there was nobody else to cover
(08:42):
for me. And so, you know, obviously that's not the situation I wanted to be
in, but it happened. So, you know, it isn't perfect doing it
yourself, but understanding, you know, trying to find a balance as
much as possible. Absolutely.
You've gotten a proven five step framework for product sales. What's
(09:03):
the first piece most people skip?
I think people forget the foundation. You
know, thinking about the janitor of a school
or anything. Like, how does it start? Where, you know, what are the basics
of something? You know, in starting from the ground up,
sometimes people miss that step before anything else.
(09:25):
What, no matter what the industry is or if it's a product or
whatever, you know, kind of like, you know, if you're selling product,
what is the why, what is the need that someone would have versus just saying
I created an invention. You know, people forget the, the
beginning part of that and, and who does it suit and is there, you know,
what's the foundation of that first?
(09:49):
So, so many entrepreneurs get stuck on platforms. How do
you help them get, help them pick the right one? From
an advertising standpoint, what I find is that a lot of times
people want to be on the hot new platform. And
we were actually just, I was just on a call earlier today going
through this and you know, company says, I want to reach
(10:11):
moms or women 25 to 49 and with a focus
on moms. But I want to be on TikTok and Facebook and
Instagram and you know, Snapchat and they
rattling off, you know, video, YouTube, there's a million things they're saying.
But when you start to talk about people's budgets, you really have to break it
down and then prioritize. So we usually start with, you
(10:33):
know, what do you have that you're available to spend? What is
it that you're trying to accomplish? And understanding that obviously
the target audience. But you know, if you're trying to sell
a product, then maybe it's not, you know, jumping into full branding. What's going to
give you the, the quickest Return on your ad spend right away.
And, you know, generally that search, you know, searches like
(10:55):
closer to shooting fish in a barrel. People are raising their hand, they want something.
And you also want to make sure that you're allocating enough budget that
gives you a statistical relevance, you know, for
understanding if that works or not. Does it perform? Is it
getting you customers or not? And you
know, usually we start with the, the money makers first, the
(11:17):
easiest ones, the ones that perform the best, the ones that have enough
data that they pass back to allow us to make decisions. And
then we could always go with the shiny new toy, you know, and add that
in. But a lot of times those shiny new toys don't
have the same sophistication to pass back information
and really, you know, get your product going. There's a lot of
(11:40):
hurdles with that, you know, with those types of things. So we like to
stick with, you know, start with the tried and true, focus on your
audience and then, you know, what type of budget you have. But,
you know, target audiences are usually found in
specific areas. So not everybody is going to be
on Facebook and not everyone's going to be on TikTok or Snapchat or,
(12:02):
you know, or even, you know, just display advertising. You'll find
different folks in different areas a lot of times. Yeah, like, yeah, like
when you mentioned that she's looking for older women or.
Yeah, they wouldn't be on Snapchat. They would be on different platform.
Yeah, it would, it would depend on what platform they needed and, and they
wanted. So, yeah, it, everybody thinks that they have to be
(12:25):
everywhere. Yes. But your, your client, your, your, the
people you, you want, they aren't everywhere. They're in specific,
specific spots. And, and that's where you would focus on.
Yeah, absolutely.
What's the number one mistake you see small business owners making with
digital marketing? I think sometimes people
(12:48):
don't do enough themselves first, and
sometimes you don't know enough initially. But there's a lot of
things you can do free posting consistently
just on your organic channels as much as possible. So if you
can start doing that on your own first. And now, I mean, Honestly,
we have ChatGPT, we have all these AI tools that can help
(13:11):
you at least get ideas. Right. You're not a creative person.
Can you just give me some ideas for some posts or something like that just
to get the ball rolling and get you going as much as possible
for free? You know, I'm probably not a great salesperson
to say, you know, do free first before you hire somebody, but do
Free first before you hire somebody, and then from, from there
(13:33):
on, shop around. Don't just go with the first partner.
It's hard to see sometimes what you're going to get. And I think,
like a lot of times people don't really recognize what they're paying.
So they may say, well, what's the cost for this? And, you know, a company
will say, oh, it's 10%. But then they don't know all the hidden fees. And
it's really important to break down the fees and get reporting back from
(13:55):
whoever you work with that you want full transparency on what
everything costs. What does the media cost, what does the
technology cost, what is the service cost, you know, anything
like that. Are there taxes? Some platforms charge taxes, like
just understanding your full cost to know exactly how much
money is really going towards my advertising. And
(14:17):
that's one of the biggest mistakes. People don't realize how little is actually going
sometimes.
Can you break down when it. When it's time to shift from organic traffic to
basically paid and how to know you're ready?
So when you have some decent budget, I would say it's
(14:37):
time to make the shift. So if you can start to allocate, you know,
maybe 10% of your revenue and say, okay, where,
you know, or profit at least, or, you know, something where you're saying, all right,
like, you know, what can we do here? And maybe that's five to
$10,000 a month that you have in your pocket and you, you know, you can
allocate. I would say that's a good place to start.
(15:00):
You know, sometimes people want to start with $1,000 and, and that's good, too.
You're going to end up probably having to do a lot of that on your
own because hiring another company is going to eat away a lot of that budget
because at $1,000, it usually costs money to run. So,
you know, once you're towards the 5,000, $10,000
range, you can usually engage another company that can do
(15:22):
the heavy lifting for you, and then you're losing
less, you know, less percentage than you would with those
smaller budgets. Once you're at that stage, would say,
you know, pick one or two channels to, to work off of,
but make sure that your back end is, is kind of working in tune with
your front end. So if you're doing marketing on Facebook or
(15:44):
you're using Google, make sure that you have a plan. If you're
capturing email addresses, are you following up, you know,
what's your customer retention strategy in order to
get those people to either be return customers or get them as
customers. So once people come to your site and they're dropping their email address
or whatever information you're collecting, make sure you develop a
(16:07):
relationship with them, because that's the other part. It's not just getting them
to your door. You have to build a relationship with them to, you know, and
customer service is king. So if you're not really
building that relationship up, it's hard to get repeat customers if
you're, you know, if you struggle with your product or anything down the road or
shipping times. Everyone's competing with Amazon. Yeah. So it's
(16:29):
really important. Absolutely. And for
when you're talking about. A lot of people don't know what to
do with email lists, they don't really know how to really properly use
them. That's something that I've had to learn as
a podcaster is. Yeah. You have to generate and build an email list, so
you have to have a page where you can collect these emails
(16:52):
and, and, and you have to build a relationship. That's one of the biggest
things, is building a community. Everybody thinks you have, like,
as far as podcasting goes, everybody thinks that, oh, you need to have
these outrageous numbers to be
successful as a podcaster, when in or actuality, you just need
(17:12):
a loyal fan base that'll support you and, and to help build you
up. And so I've, I love the fact that, yes,
I'm not a very great humongous podcast,
but I'm in the top 5%. Yeah. And I've worked hard to, to
get to where I'm at by building
a community, by community, by building a relationship by.
(17:35):
With the emails I do collect, sending out weekly messages
to people and seeing how they're doing. And, and like,
that's something that was very important for me to. That it took me,
for me to learn, for me to actually start implementing these things.
Yeah, absolutely. And to, you know what, it's better to have a loyal fan base
(17:55):
that's smaller than to have, you know, fly by
night fan base that's larger. So I, you know,
we're not this huge corporation. We like to
stay within our means and be able to have a quality product.
And I always think of, you know, it's like a bakery. Like if they want
to go mass production, does the quality change? So you want to be at a
(18:17):
point where you can provide the same quality, you know, at
scale. And the scale is really whatever makes you happy. It doesn't,
you know, there's no real race here. There's no trophies. At the end,
we all end up dying. And there's. Now
there's the winner is what? Your peace and your happiness is within yourself
and your, you know, your people around you.
(18:40):
You've built a team of powerhouse moms. What does that bring
to your company that most agencies miss?
Loyalty. So we have folks that have been here
since day one. We have people that say this is the best job they've ever
had. And when we're in an industry with extreme turnover
and layoffs and things like that, and I see those
(19:02):
Instagrams where people are just ripping their organizations apart,
you know, mocking them for bringing in a ping pong table, to think that it
creates culture and all of that. What we strive
to do is just create a team that wants
to be here and loves being here because it shows in
their work. We are providing them an opportunity to have peace
(19:25):
in their lives. And then it's just a cycle. It's just, you know,
it's in and out of happy employees,
is great work, and then it's not, you know,
rocket science, really. Just do the right thing by them
for the most part is usually all it takes. And so I think that
ability to create loyalty has really helped us and
(19:48):
it's helped us gain and keep clients because we can tout
our experience and how long people have been here. In the industry
that we're in, there's extreme turnover. People Last
a year, 14 months at a job. You
know, I could say we have people here nine years, eight years, five years.
Like those are strong numbers for a small, you know, for a company
(20:11):
like ours. Yeah, absolutely.
Your mantra is about balance. How do you personally stay grounded while running
a multi million dollar company? Some days
look good and some days don't, for sure. I
mean, I, you know, it's not all pretty.
It's kind of like how we dress for these zooms, right? It's all good on
(20:33):
top and then we're wearing sweatpants on the bottom. It's all, it's how
I make it look. You know, it's just, you have to,
I think you have to laugh at yourself sometimes and just say, okay, like
today is going to just be this way and I'm going to get the important
stuff done because it's heavier with the kids or, you
know, school or whatever. And then other days, you
(20:55):
know, my kids know, like, hey, listen, we're going to be homeless if
I don't work. So you guys have to chill out,
figure out how to do something on your own for a little bit or understand
you know, this is not a day that you're calling me because you
forgot something or you need a ride or you want to ask a question about
going to someone's house after school. Like, that's not happening today. So
(21:16):
they kind of know. I mean, I have a kid home. I have a couple
kids home today. I told them not to knock on the door.
Ten seconds before we got on, I heard the door banging, and
I'm like, no. So it's not perfect at all.
But I think we all try to have our boundaries, and mine's a locked
door. Um, but we just. They
(21:38):
know. But our clients also are in similar boats. You know, once you
have an honest relationship with people, they tend to share
that. Oh, yeah, you know what? It's the same thing for me. Or my kids
are in the car. You know, why we're on a conference call, or their kids
are on a call. And so, you know, I think that honesty and
transparency definitely helps with maintaining some
(21:58):
sense of balance, but I don't think anyone's got it perfectly figured out.
Oh, no. One. One. Funniest moments I've ever had on
the show was I was recording an episode and
live, and. And my grandson was living with us
at the time, and he was like, two. Two years
old. And he crawls under my desk,
(22:21):
and he sees the lights under my desk. Yeah. And he hits
the button, and he cuts off all the powers. Everything
on the screen, everything. The computer went up, everything. And I
looked down, and he looks up with these big eyes,
and I can't get upset. I just look at him and I
(22:42):
laugh and I go, like, all right. But again, I have to lock my
daughter. Yeah. Yeah. But he says. He looks at me. Hey,
Pop. Pop. I'm like, I can't do nothing. I can't.
I gotta laugh and enjoy it. And it was great because the guest
was a fellow podcaster, so they know. They know about technical
difficulties, and they kept the show going. And when I got back, I told
(23:05):
them we laughed on air. And it was just a great experience to be able
to have that moment with my grandson. And he's looking up like, yeah,
like, yeah, hi, Pop up. I can't. And you can't get upset. You
gotta just laugh at it. Yeah. No, you do. And then it's a great story
and memory that you have with him as he gets older,
you know, to tell them, because they somehow become part of and
(23:27):
ingrained in what you're doing. And, you know, I find
that my kids, too, sometimes we'll be on A call and they
hear what's going on. And at dinner, like, two nights later, they're like, so
what happened with that thing? Like, did you get that deal or what happened with
that person? Like, they're, they're part of it and involved, you
know, sometimes nosy parkers with things, you know, like. Or how much money did you
(23:49):
make off that sale? Like, how big was that deal? And I'm like, well, that.
Don't worry about that part. But, you know, they're, they're funny because they
become part of it. And then I think that that's where all the respect comes
in too, where, you know, it's.
We're in a different society than, you know, children should be seen and not
heard. And every, you know, I respect people's different parenting decisions, but
(24:11):
ours, we share a lot. And so by sharing,
I feel like they know better. Better to step
back when they shouldn't be involved or whatnot, but they do.
They love, they love to give their. They love to give their opinions. They're all
going to take over the world. They. They know everything. So. Yeah.
So we are live. So one, we have a first time,
(24:33):
someone turning in for the first time. Desiree of Sunshine. Hey, thank you
for, for coming through. She goes, thank
you, Kim, for your insight and honesty. You are incredible. Oh, thank
you. And then a locked door becomes our best friend
sometimes. Absolutely.
For sure. Absolutely. All right, so
(24:57):
where do you see digital marketing heading in the next two to three years? Because
you mentioned AI. Right. Where do you see it?
So we're definitely going to have lots of AI for sure.
It's all you hear. I feel like it's going to, it's almost like the,
the new drinking game. Like, every conversation you're part of
someone saying, I, AI. Their technology is AI. They use, you know,
(25:20):
AI. But I honestly think there's going to be a swing back
towards human because AI,
you know, is not perfect. Humans aren't perfect
either. But you need a combination. You can't just
trust technology to make, you know, anything,
whether it be for marketing and creating your ad and
(25:42):
what your voice is, it's going to make mistakes. People don't
like ads that are photoshopped completely, that don't look real. And,
you know, people like real people and seeing themselves within.
And right now we're in the whole American eagle uproar,
you know, with Sydney Sweeney, like, just, you can see by the
reactions. People don't always want perfect. They don't want things a certain
(26:05):
way. They, you know, they, they. You have to be able to adjust. So I
think the human element is really important. I think the ability
to access and shop things
quicker is important. So however that technology allows
you to do that like TikTok shop and Google Shopping has changed
a lot recently. We've noticed it's changed some of the
(26:28):
search, you know, performance and algorithms just because the way
they have the shopping on the top now and how that, you know,
users are engaging with that and as consumers I think of,
you know, how easy you want something to be and how frustrating when it's not
easy. We want to be able to look at something on Instagram and say I
like those pants. I want to click on it and I want to buy it
(26:49):
and I want to be not bothered by anyone. I want short shipping
time and I, you know, I want it here yesterday and I want
it to look exactly the way it does on that person, on me. So you
know, we, we want, we want this instant gratification and I think
technology has to keep up with it to provide us with the tools
to be able to purchase that way versus going to a website and
(27:11):
scrolling and looking for the color, looking for the size. You want to be able
to do that in like, in a one shot.
Something that I've been actually researching lately and looking into
live shopping. Yes, live selling. Yeah, yeah,
TikTok does, does it very well. A lot of people do it on TikTok. They're
doing very well with it. There's whatnot is, is an app where, where
(27:34):
people go and they, they do live selling and all and it
seems like that's the next wave. That's where some,
some, someone who, who, who sells whatever,
that's something they should look into and see.
Absolutely. And you know what, it's so funny how everything is
old, is new again and, and when I was first introduced
(27:57):
to live selling I'm like oh, like qvc. That's what I think
most shopping network. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like they talk for
20 minutes about this product and show you all the different ways you can use
it. It's the same. And if that's, you
know, how we're consuming it and they've done well, they're still around their
home shopping network. I bought things they do a
(28:19):
great deal on PS5 controllers around the holidays. Like there's
always, you know, they're still around, it's great. But
yes, the live selling and, and the live shopping where you can just
go and, and purchase something like that and, and really see it
and it's the same as kids with the unboxing videos, how
they would watch some random kids start opening his toys and
(28:42):
really see the product and, and how it works and, and
what do you get in the box? So, yeah, there's definitely
a market that I see exploding there. Now. The
flip side of that is you have to have the ability to create
that content and keep it fresh. And that is a whole another
thing that's not AI. So there comes the
(29:05):
human again. You're going to need people to really show and demonstrate and
maybe engage live and, you know, answer questions and things
like that. Where a chatbot may not be the appropriate think
for it. Yeah, absolutely. It's something that, that's
very important. If eventually, if you, if your brand
becomes successful in doing the live shopping, eventually you might, if you want
(29:27):
to extend the hours because you, if it's you just selling, you can only work
for a certain amount. You can only do a certain amount of hours. But if
you get big enough where you start hiring people to, to work the
channel for you and live sell for you, then that's another step. But yeah, there's,
there's so many opportunities growing. And I just released my,
I just started a newsletter on LinkedIn and
(29:50):
this week's newsletter was on AI and
how we need to use it for what it is, a tool.
It's not the answer to everything. Like you said, it does make mistakes,
but sometimes you're stuck and you don't have an idea or
whatever. You can feed it and,
and use some of it and help it help you. Like I've helped. It's helped
(30:13):
me take my podcast to another level.
But it's not the only thing. There's
parts of me in it. And so you, you use it
as a tool that. That's meant to be. Yeah,
absolutely. And it's great. You know, I've used it in
(30:34):
some random ways. Um, we were going on a vacation. I knew
kind of what we wanted to do, and I typed in the
itinerary, had, and I said, you know, what else am I missing? And
it gave some other options and it gave some options for restaurants and you know,
within certain budgets, like, you can use it for a bunch of different things
in our, in our daily life, but sometimes it's,
(30:56):
hey, I need some thought starters for. Or I, I
don't even know, you know, I. My brain's not working
today. Give me some ideas. And maybe you don't use those ideas,
but it gives you, you know, sparks something else.
Exactly. It sparks another idea and you take it from there,
you know, and even I always, you know, my kids, one of
(31:19):
them did get caught with using Chat GBT for paper at school,
middle school. Right? Let's, you know, test the waters a little bit.
He had a draft that he wrote and then the final he used
AI for. There is a drastic difference. And, you know,
he didn't understand why it's not okay. You know,
(31:39):
he's like, I'm going to end up using it when I work. I get to
use a calculator on my phone. Like, what's the big deal? And,
you know, I said, there's no foundation that you
have right now for writing because you're, you're still learning. And
so you don't understand everything. So you don't even know when it's not
exactly correct, when the tone is wrong, or when
(32:02):
it's just missing the point. And I kind of explained, like,
Amelia Bedelia, I don't know if you remember those books where, you know, she likes
sponge cake and it's, it's an actual sponge. Like, it may not always get
it and you have to know it so that you can
differentiate whether or not it's getting it. And it's just like
that with advertising. Like, we can put in Chat gbt, oh,
(32:24):
what should we do for this advertiser? And it may spit back TikTok
because it's more popular or pull up some numbers. But we
know personally from our background and our history and our
foundation what something, you know, it's best suited
for and is it going to work there or not? And if we just,
you know, trust AI, our business could go down the tubes. It. We can make
(32:46):
all the wrong decisions for us and maybe we didn't even know. And that's,
you know, in that use case. Obviously, a lot of the technology we use is
powered by AI, but we struggle with, you know,
Google's doing AI keywords and it's just adding keywords, and some of them we don't
want. You know, Facebook has Advantage plus Creative,
which is AI creative, and making ads that don't always
(33:08):
work, the clients don't like, for whatever reason or they're not
approving. So we can't let, you know, AI completely take over
because it's not going to always be better than what we're doing. No, absolutely. Sometimes
you need that human touch element. You need that realistic.
Because, yes, there's things it does, but like you said, people
want the authentic content.
(33:31):
So when you, when you're able to provide it, and that's why I love doing
the podcast is because it's, it's authentically me and
being able to have these conversations. It's not AI up here having these
conversations. So people really are learning from real
people and, and begin to hear, getting to learn myself personally.
And, and just. It was a
(33:54):
point where I was like, I was, I enjoy these conversations so much because
like I said, I'm learning so much from these conversations that it was, I was
like, man, oh man, I feel kind of selfish because this is so much fun
just being able to do this and learn so much. But then the guest was
like, well, I guess pointed out that, no, you're sharing all this content
you have people on, you're providing a service, you're giving people
(34:16):
some amazing content, you have great guests on. So, yeah,
I love this. I love being able to provide this
platform and I've had some great guests on.
Yeah, and you're giving back. Exactly. You're sharing the knowledge that
you're gaining. At the same time, everyone's learning and it is authentic.
It's not driven by technology, it's driven by people.
(34:40):
Absolutely. Yeah. What, what do you wish more entrepreneurs
understood about scaling with, with sustainability?
So I wish, and I encourage my kids with
school and everything to do this, is that the accounting background is pretty
important. I think sometimes we don't fully understand
finances. I don't think we're taught it properly in school
(35:02):
to the point we know for, you know, to be able to start a
business. So I would say, you know, I, I wish that was a, a
bigger sticking point for a lot of people to understand and really
know so you're, you're not getting misled or swindled or things like
that. So understanding the finances of a business and the
accounting, you know, to go into it is critical,
(35:25):
you know, and other than that, being open
to what comes next, it's not perfect.
It's going to maybe not be the path that you thought you were on.
And sometimes you need to pivot. I think a lot of companies understood that during
COVID where, you know, even for us, we were
focusing mainly on,
(35:48):
you know, online advertising. And then Covid hit and we
started to go back into traditional advertising as well and doing,
you know, billboards and stuff like that to help supplement our sales
and, you know, that pivot, being able to do things quickly and
really just say, like, okay, you know, and
like, kind of an example I always think about is like, watch Shark Tank. And
(36:11):
I see these folks and they're like, but it's my business and they're not thinking
bigger Picture sometimes, and they're, you know, they don't want to give a percentage,
but, like, you know, 100% of zero
is zero. But, you know, could you get 10% of
millions? Isn't that bigger? You know, isn't that better
if that's what you're trying to do? If you're passionate and you want to get
(36:32):
this thing out there, find the smarter path.
And so there's a flexibility that has to happen with that.
I know. It's something I
learned. Jay Z, actually, he's. He's one who
said he doesn't fall in love with anything. He. He's. Everything he's built.
He. He's willing to sell it. He's. He's willing to. Because
(36:55):
you don't fall in love with it. You build it up, and then you're like,
okay, it's time to move on, and you go to the next thing and you.
And so, yeah, we. We shouldn't.
If. If there was to come off me some. Something for the. For
this pod. Yeah, I've built it up to equity. And then, yeah, I'm like, okay,
it's time. Time for me to build something else. Now.
(37:17):
You can't fall in love with. I love doing the podcast. Wrong.
I know what you mean, though. But if I
have. Hey, they came with the check. I'm like, yeah, okay, let's go. I
gotta say no. Yeah. How does it benefit you and those around
you, you know, the most? And making sure
I agree. That's a. It's a great philosophy. And he's pretty
(37:39):
successful, right. So he kind of knows what he's doing.
So what's next for always on. And are you expanding, branching into new
services or maybe writing a book or something?
So I think if I ever wrote a book, I'd probably write a children's book
more because. Or just maybe, I don't know, stories of where people put their socks
(38:00):
in my house, Something like that.
I feel like there's a lot out there. And, you know, sometimes we have imposter
syndrome and we think, you know, what could I say that someone hasn't said already?
But, you know, what's next for us is we're trying to have this as a
growth year. I think, personally, I'm at a point
(38:20):
in my personal life where my kids are getting into
more of a stable path. You
know, my youngest is going into third grade now, so. And then I've
got, you know, a kid in college. So, like, we're. We're
cruising, I guess. You know, they always need Things and
there's baseball. But we're trying to grow a lot this year, so we're expanding
(38:44):
our office space. We've been hiring more, you know, products and
services. The future really will tell us kind of
what it is. As new platforms evolve and pop up.
We always try to be, you know, in the mix of it and make sure
that we can be experts on those platforms too, so that we could,
you know, really help others. Not have to
(39:05):
build a whole team just for Facebook or just for TikTok. Like
will have expertise in all those areas and you work with us and you kind
of get everything in one place and you don't have to hire
individuals for everything when you may not need the headcount for it.
So we'll continue to expand on that front. But
we're always looking to work with new advertisers and continue to grow and
(39:27):
hope that, you know, we can continue to hire moms
or, you know, parents or people that are looking for a work life balance
situation that are dedicated to creating
great customer service for our clients. Absolutely.
So Desiree has an answer to where the
socks go. Oh, the dryer eats socks.
(39:50):
The dryer does eat socks. Like, I want to find. There should be a magic
door somewhere that you open and the socks are in there.
And now this trend of these kids wearing slides
with white socks, like, why, why does that have to happen? It's so hard to
clean them when you're doing that. They're not shoes. White socks are not
(40:10):
shoes and shouldn't be treated as such. Oh, absolutely not.
So final message to the person listening who's on the fence about starting something
on their own. And at the same time, you're going to get the, the solo
screen and you're going to let them know where they can find you everything.
So. If you're
(40:31):
on the fence about starting something, um,
you know, I don't think there's ever a perfect, perfect time to do things.
And, you know, I always say just, you know, try it. You could always
go and get a job or, or do something else. You could always dip your
toe into it and see how it goes. If it's something that maybe you could
do as a hybrid or a part time, I say go for it.
(40:53):
It is a risk. It's not for everyone, but if you're passionate
about making it work and putting the work in, absolutely do it.
So I'm on LinkedIn. You can find me on LinkedIn. Kim and
Sana K Y M I N S A N A and our website
is getawayson.com and you can reach out to us
(41:15):
through the Contact Us form.
Awesome. Awesome. Thank you so much, Kim, for being a guest. I greatly appreciate
you stopping by and spending this time with us. Thank you so much.
Will, it was great. The pleasure's all mine. Pleasure mine. But don't leave just yet.
Let me close out the show and we'll chat a little bit off the air.
But once again, thank you so much. This was wonderful having you on as a
(41:37):
guest. Thank you. All right,
everybody, another great episode is in the Can I
if you've been waiting for a sign to build a business that fits your life,
this is it. Follow Kim and Sana and check out Always on Digital.
See. See how smart, flexible marketing can actually scale your business
and your freedom. If this episode sparked an idea, share it with
(42:00):
fellow mom, entrepreneur, or creative who's been stuck because
balance and success aren't opposites. They're a blueprint.
And as always, stay driven, stay grounded, stay wise.
Peace out.
(42:22):
It.
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