674 Katrina Aronson:

Perhaps that icky salesy feeling, you know the one that stops you from sharing how amazing your product or service truly is … comes in part from women trying to fit the masculine mold of marketing as pursuit rather than attraction, relationship, and community. Because my guest today – Katrina Aronson – discovered the joy, flow and ease of what she calls attraction marketing and we’re going to dive into that today.

MELINDA

Hi, I’m Melinda Wittstock and welcome to Wings of Inspired Business, where we share the inspiring entrepreneurial journeys, epiphanies, and practical advice from successful female founders … so you have everything you need at your fingertips to build the business and life of your dreams. I’m a 5-time serial entrepreneur who has lived and breathed the ups and downs of starting and growing businesses, currently the game changing social podcast app Podopolo. Wherever you are listening to this, take a moment and join the Wings community over on Podopolo, where we can take the conversation further with your questions, perspectives, experiences, and advice for other female founders at whatever stage of the journey you’re at! Because together we’re stronger, and we soar higher when we fly together.

Ok so let’s get to it. Attraction marketing. And yes, wouldn’t it be nice to have your ideal client or customer easily finding you, pursuing you for your secret sauce solution? Today we meet an inspiring entrepreneur who left her Wall Street corporate finance career behind to grow her first business to six figures in its first year. Katrina Aronson says her entrepreneurial debut was not without a lot of trial and error and expensive mistakes. But there is one thing she learned along the way that is now changing the game for ambitious women who want to catapult their business as the face of their brand, with powerful and practical marketing that sets them apart from the rest. I’m going to give you a hint: It’s all about community.

Katrina is going to share her experiences, what she learned along the way, practical marketing tips and much more. She’ll be here in a minute – first…

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What does it take to find and convert the perfect customers for your brand? We all get bombarded with tactics and strategies that can leave us spinning in place and burning out trying to figure out how to navigate all the things … your Instagram, myriad other social platforms, email marketing, SEO, content, YouTube, your podcast, your sales funnels, so many, many things to do.  Right? Thinking of it can be exhausting but it doesn’t have to be that way.

Katrina Aronson was burning out on Wall Street, so she left it all behind to launch two businesses… without any real marketing strategy other than a passion and willingness to learn. And learn she did, driving 6-figure sales out of the gate, before finding that her true passion is helping others with what she learned as a business coach with a major marketing twist. She works with entrepreneurs who are the face of their brands and businesses to help them step into the thriving CEO role, and get their brands noticed without expensive ads or a big team.

Today Katrina is going to share how you can attract your ideal community to your brand, how to avoid common mistakes and burnout, why perfectionism is your enemy, and much more. Be sure to check out her podcast, Through The Marketing Lens, which is all about using tactical marketing and mindset tools to up-level your business and stand out in a noisy crowd.

Be sure to join Katrina and me after the episode on Podopolo where you can share your perspectives and ask Katrina for her marketing advice. Now let’s put on our wings with the inspiring Katrina Aronson.

Melinda Wittstock:         Katrina, welcome to Wings.

Katrina Aronson:             Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

Melinda Wittstock:         I’m really interested in learning what made you take the leap from your first successful business into coaching people to launch businesses? What was the epiphany?

Katrina Aronson:             I had so many along the way, but I will tell you the aha moment was in my first business where I put my heart and soul into it I completely burnt out and I realized that I had fallen out of love with products and really kind of giving someone a feature versus the community. Like I fell in love with the community that we built and that realization of how do I harness that? How do I do it in a way that it feels good again and stop burning myself out and working until two o’clock in the morning, which is just not sustainable. That really was… It felt impossible to me at the time and so I did a lot of deep dives and I was doing it already, I just didn’t know that business coaching was a thing. I was helping women to start their fashion lines or start their events company, and a lot of people were coming to me, and this is what I hear all the time too, is that people tend to come to you for your superpower and you don’t even recognize it as a superpower.

Melinda Wittstock:         Right, because it’s intuitive to you, so I think a lot of people, the things that are really our superpower, sometimes we undervalue because it’s so easy for us that we don’t necessarily understand that other people see value. So you had a whole bunch of people saying, “Hey, help me with this. Help me with this,” and then finally it’s, “Oh, gosh, I guess I’m meant to be a coach.”

Katrina Aronson:             Yes, and I was doing it totally not fancy at all. Right? I’d meet people for coffee and you know what? I would buy the coffee because I got so much joy out of doing it. So I realized that there was a business there. I just kind of never looked back and there’s no burning out, because I’m able to control how many people I take on, there’s no brick and mortar and that’s really what my soul needed, I needed the freedom. That’s really what I was looking for the full whole time.

Melinda Wittstock:         Interesting what you say about community, so how did that manifest in your first business? So you created this whole… You know, it sounds like a vibrant community of women. How did that come about? How did you kickstart that community and what led you there?

Katrina Aronson:             So I think it’s just something that is pretty natural to me. I am a woman’s woman, I love understanding people, and it came through in our brick and mortar. And a lot of the ways that it came through is we hosted a lot of events. That’s a lot of the marketing that we did, it was extremely community focused. And we started doing book signings and you know, someone would come in because they were attached to a charity and they’d want to host something there, and it became the place where people would host things. So we had jewelry classes and macramé classes… And it was so built on what people wanted, someone asked me for it and we would see a way that we could invite people in and create something together. And so it wasn’t about selling things, it was about feeling connected and that is what I think at the core of everything we are as humans, is what we’re looking for, so it felt good to me. It was always the way I was going to go, it just took the form of a boutique.

Melinda Wittstock:         Ah, I love this because community is really the essence, I think, of the best marketing. You know? Because ultimately, your community members become your best sales people in so far as your business is really ultimately really about relationship. And so you’re kind of creating this community where what you’re selling is almost incidental, but what you’re really selling is human connection.

Katrina Aronson:             Yes, beautifully said. So true. So true. And funny enough, you just said that community is your marketing and relationships is marketing, relationships at the end of the day, I mean, we can think of marketing as sales. A lot of people will use negative connotations around marketing, but it’s really just having the ability to understand what people need and bridging that gap between what you have to offer and that need. So that’s just about understanding humans, one human connecting to another, and when you take the ickiness out, it actually feels really good. So yeah, the one thing I love, yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah, this is a big issue for women, because I think when women think that sales is pursued, kind of like you think of prehistoric man going after the wildebeest or whatever. And if we try and fit ourselves into that method of sales, we’re not as good or we get this weird mindset issue that that’s kind of icky. But on the other hand, if we’re in a community, because I think women maybe are wired a little bit more that way and we’re adding value in that sense, is kind of some people call it enrollment sales, but it’s really more about attraction than pursuit.

Katrina Aronson:             Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:         Were you conscious of that dynamic that it made you feel more comfortable with sales in that community aspect rather than, “Oh, my god, I’ve got to go down my list and close deals, close deals, close deals.”

Katrina Aronson:             Yeah, I think I would often say that I was a horrible salesperson. I would say those words out loud and I don’t think I actually was. It’s a lot of what you are saying, it’s what I really thought sales was. Whereas to me, when I was just being completely authentic and I was in that flow, in that community spirit, it was very easy because there was no kind of masculine energy around anything that I was doing. So when we find that authenticity and I love what you said about the attraction sales, because what I teach is attraction marketing. It is 100% about your client finding you, your clientele finding you, and then pursuing you, and I didn’t know that that was even possible until I experienced it. Right? And then I had to learn all about it because how do I teach this to other people in a way that there’s formulas and content around it, not just kind of nebulous and saying, get into your flow?

Melinda Wittstock:         Well, what a wonderful segue, because I wanted to go into what makes attraction marketing work? Katrina, break it down for everybody.

Katrina Aronson:             So there’s lots of different schools of thought on how attraction marketing works. But I find that as we’re going into 2022 or whenever you’re listening to this, everything in marketing has changed so drastically in the last 10 years. And if you can pay attention to the trends, where we’re going, like right now, 81% of consumers say that they want to trust a brand before they buy it and I really believe that this kind of comes off of… You know, we buy so many things off Amazon that we want to feel good about our other purchases and we want to feel connected to those. So what do we do to make sure that we are trusted by the consumers, that is our job now. Our job now is not to sell products, it’s actually to have our consumers that find us to trust us. So when we can kind of flip that, then it becomes about you attracting them in to you.

Melinda Wittstock:         So how do you develop that trust?

Katrina Aronson:             I think that the number one thing that I would focus on today, whether you are product brand, a service based brand, or if you are working in corporate America, you are still marketing yourself, right? So it’s about creating your expert story and what I get a lot of pushback on here, is my brand is products, it’s not about me. You have to start showing your face on your social media, on whatever platforms you’re on, in your emails, showing that you are an expert and that you know more than the people that are buying from you. So that doesn’t mean that if you sell hair things or shampoo, it doesn’t matter what you sell.

Katrina Aronson:             It doesn’t mean you have to be just an expert in shampoo, right? You can be an expert in one facet of this. And one way that I really positioned myself in owning a boutique in a jewelry line back in the day, rather than saying I’m an expert in clothes, I was really positioning myself as an expert for busy moms who wanted to feel stylish. So they would come to me and ask me for things, “Hey, how do I style this?” Right, so it wasn’t about fabrics, it was very specific to, I can help you to elevate your style while still feeling comfortable and being able to get down the floor with your kids. And I didn’t ever say those words, I would just constantly talk about it, so I really crafted my expert story so that everywhere I showed up, networking events, social media, emails, anytime I told my story, it was going to be that these are the things that I’m obsessed with.

Melinda Wittstock:         Well, it’s very specific. I know it’s very, very specific. So, so many entrepreneurs go into business saying things like, oh, my product is for everybody and it’s not. And really focusing on selling the features and that all those things. And then there’s no real connection, it’s not differentiated, people can’t really relate to it. So I want to dig a little bit into the fear factor that I think a lot of entrepreneurs have when they’re niching down to find their true say. Early adopters or their real niche of expertise there, because sometimes there’s so much choice. It could be applicable in a lot of different areas, but figuring out what that is, presumably this comes up in your coaching?

Katrina Aronson:             Yes, it does. Yes, it absolutely does. And I completely understand this mindset, right? Like you said, there’s a lot of fear around it that we don’t believe that there are enough people out there for us, but the more… What they say is like the riches are in the niches and it is absolutely true that once you start kind of really getting clear on what it is that you are an expert in… So I will give you an example of a virtual assistant that a client of mine was hiring. Now, a virtual assistant, if you don’t know what that is, it’s someone who does maybe admin work for you or maybe some social media work. It’s a very, very vague job, they can do a lot of different things.

Katrina Aronson:             So she said to me, “I really need someone who has expertise in Dubsado.” That’s a system, and I said, “Well, great. So why don’t you do some searches on Instagram or on LinkedIn for virtual assistants that specialized in Dubsado.” And there was about 10 virtual assistants that came up and she ended up hiring one of them, and I just thought it was like a perfect example of those virtual assistants that try to do everything, they’re not pulling anyone in. When you are able to really say, “This is exactly what I do,” and say it to enough people, it’s a matter of statistics, right? Your goal going to pull those people directly to you.

Melinda Wittstock:         Well, also, it clears up the clutter in your sales pipeline as well, because presumably at that point, you’re talking to only qualified people for what you actually do rather than wasting a lot of time and getting a lot of no’s just because it was never a fit to begin with.

Katrina Aronson:             Right. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Melinda Wittstock:         And so how did you narrow down, I think you called it your expert story. I think with the emphasis on the word, story, because storytelling is very, very powerful in marketing, it’s what leads to that kind of emotional connection that’s so vital and from there to where we started the conversation about trust. So how did you narrow down or get your expert story finally crafted and repeatable for that consistency.

Katrina Aronson:             Time. Uh-huh (affirmative). So honestly I think this is the hardest part for a lot of people too, it’s just sitting down and actually doing it. So creating a document in Google and Google Docs where I started writing it out and I was creating it originally for a magazine. And I wrote it once or twice and I read it out loud, and when I read it out loud, that’s kind of the trick that I’ve been taught over time, it just felt very kind of boring, so I had to spice it up a lot. I had multiple people read it for me and every time I write it and rewrite it, which I do all the time, it gets more and more specific. So this is something that’s going to evolve over time. Absolutely, this isn’t something that stays this way. So that is something that’s really important to understand.

Katrina Aronson:             But as you get more clear, you need to remember to go back to that, so your expert story is something that you should be paying attention to. Honestly, I’m probably rewriting it every 90 days where I go back in and maybe I have another win that I want to share or something big that you can put in there. And I also ended up hiring a copywriter and it really helped too, because although I am the expert in my story, I needed extra eyeballs and there’s no shame in that, because if you’re going to be telling this story over and over again, you might need some other person to come in here and really zhuzh it up for you.

Melinda Wittstock:         Right. Right, so you get in that kind of repeatable language, but language you know is going to resonate with exactly your target market.

Katrina Aronson:             Uh-huh (affirmative).

Melinda Wittstock:         Copywriters are great. By the way, it’s hard to find great copywriters, because people can write great pros and it can be really compelling and beautifully written, but it doesn’t necessarily translate into conversions.

Katrina Aronson:             Absolutely.

Melinda Wittstock:         What was your experience and how do you advise people on the marketing side for finding that ideal copywriter for them?

Katrina Aronson:             Yeah. So a lot of this was through asking around and I ended up teaming up with someone who is an attraction copywriter, or she actually calls herself a conversion copywriter. So that’s something, if you’re looking for someone who is really able to take your story in, ask you the right kind of questions. You don’t want on someone who is an expert necessarily in sales pages, you want someone who is an expert in being able to tell your story. That is a specific type of copywriter. So I would search for something like an attraction copywriter or a conversion copywriter, and start from there, and make sure that they’re asking you questions about who your client is and what you’re trying to do, not just what you want to put on a landing page.

Melinda Wittstock:         Right, yeah. No, this is really, really, really important. Gosh.

Katrina Aronson:             Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:         When you’re coaching your clients and they come to you and they need help really in the marketing, what are the mistakes most of them are making. I guess I’m moving towards here, the before and after for your clients and what are the things that they really need the most help with?

Katrina Aronson:             Yeah, so marketing is such a nebulous term, right? There’s so any things that we could be doing, but where I like to focus and what I call my magnetic marketing formula, is where we focus on the four basic structural components of your business. So every person in business needs these four things, whether you have your expert story or if you need it a little bit tweaked, crafted, that is something that we work on. And then making sure that your visuals align with your story and what I mean by that is, is it time for an up level, right? So if we’re showing our visuals on our website, on our social media, on various platforms, maybe even your podcast, you might need a professional photography session that really shows this elevated version of you. And it is such an integral part of your marketing and people miss this so often, where they’re trying to up-level and they’re not matching their words to their visuals.

Katrina Aronson:             They’re taking pictures on their iPhone, which is okay for some of your pictures, but your website needs to be really strong. And your actual leverage, so where are you generating your demand? So what platforms are you on that you are actually calling people to you, and you and I have talked about who your ideal client is, what I will find is that people will be on Instagram consistently, but their actual client is on LinkedIn, right? So they’re kind of missing the mark there. So you do need to know that where you are showing up is actually where you should be showing up, because if you’re trying to call in a client that doesn’t hang out on Instagram, you’re wasting your time, you’re probably getting the wrong kind of clientele.

Katrina Aronson:             Then, where should you be focusing on moving towards? So if you’re going to be on multiple platforms, what I find is that people try to scale too quickly and they will want to have a podcast, get on Instagram, have an email nurture sequence, and they try to do everything at once and it is so hard for us entrepreneurs to listen to someone say, “You need to slow down.”

Melinda Wittstock:         Oh, it is. Yeah.

Katrina Aronson:             Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:         I know that one, I have that speed thing, for sure.

Katrina Aronson:             Yeah, and I know results and so do I, but that leads me into that fourth component, which is you need to be able to respond versus react. So are you set up to respond if you don’t have the systems in place to be able to respond to your leads, to be able to respond to inquiries, it doesn’t matter what it is that you do, you’re going to end up in this reaction mode and then you’re going to lose clients who you’re attracting. So all of this kind of has to work at the same time and it feels a bit like you’re drinking from a fire or host going through those four steps, but it’s only like that for a little while. So once you nail all four of these components, you are just ready for the marketing component, right?

Katrina Aronson:             So you’re just ready for that content that you’re creating and pushing that out there and leveraging that content in the right places, with the right visuals, with your right story, with the ability to actually respond. So those are the four things that I find are so incredibly powerful and impactful, and you don’t feel like you’re spinning on this hamster wheel, which I felt like for so long and just felt like you’re supposed to feel like you’re drowning. That’s just what it’s like to be an entrepreneur, that’s just not true. There’s definitely seasons where you’re going to feel like that, when you’re growing, but you don’t have to be in that awful kind of spiral all the time. Everything for me came from a place of really perfecting as much as I can those four things.

Melinda Wittstock:         Mm-hmm (affirmative). I think it’s interesting what you say about seasons, because Spring. You know, it’s like the growth season, right? So you’re kind of sprinting, and then there are other kind of more hibernating winter, you’re conserving your energy or whatever.

Katrina Aronson:             Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Melinda Wittstock:         But I think so many women go into business and you mentioned burnout at the beginning of our conversation, where it’s so easy to fall into that trap of just doing, doing, doing, doing, doing until you lose your enjoyment of the business you’re actually creating. And like you said, you were up at two o’clock in the morning and all this kind of stuff. So a lot of women fall into this trap because we don’t hire early enough or delegation doesn’t necessarily come easily or we fall into the trap of thinking that we have to perfect everything or be good at every single part of the process in our business, or don’t really maximize leverage. Right? You know, kind of delegating, delaying or deleting if you will. Right?

Katrina Aronson:             Yeah. Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:         So I mean, how many of your clients really fall into that? I see it so often. I mean, it comes up on this podcast so often that women who really succeed at entrepreneurship ultimately have to overcome and master that, that like get out of their own way, if you will, and to understand the seasonality of it.

Katrina Aronson:             Melinda, I feel like you’re talking directly to me.

Melinda Wittstock:         I mean, okay. So this is my fifth business, so it’s been true of my own journey and then beyond that, some 670 women on this podcast so far, and it’s a continual theme, it comes up on every single episode, because it’s our experience.

Katrina Aronson:             Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:         And I think it’s the main thing that kind of holds us back, because you never see a guy shying away for just say, like asking for what he wants or asking someone to do something or whatever. They just are wired differently in that sense, whereas we think we have to do it all.

Katrina Aronson:             Oh, I mean, there’s so much about the patriarchy in here for me. I think part of the reason that we’re wired this way is because we are taught from a very early age by schooling, by parents, by grandparents, whatever it looks like, that we’re supposed to be a little bit quieter, that when a man uses his network, it’s powerful. But for us, it’s asking for help and that’s weakness. And this has been something that is so subconscious for so many women and like you said, with all of your podcast guests, every single client of mine, I cannot think of one that has not experienced this. And typically that’s why they come to a coach, because they’re experiencing some kind of pain. And when you pull back the pain, they are either too fast or they’re scaling without any kind of help, which essentially means they’re scaling too fast.

Melinda Wittstock:         Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Katrina Aronson:             So how do we get out of telling ourself the story of hiring early isn’t scary, because there is a return on this investment, that’s number one.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah, hiring is an investment, it’s not an expense. Right. But yeah, that’s a whole other conversation on that. Yeah.

Katrina Aronson:             Exactly. And believing that it will be a return on investment because I think that that mindset of like, “Am I actually going to make it is in so many women and a lot men do not experience that, although they may very well fail in their business. They’re not as fearful of failing as women are in their businesses.

Melinda Wittstock:         It goes into what you said about weakness, this idea that asking for help somehow means we’re a damsel in distress and so it’s a weakness and we’re struggling so hard to prove our competency, which then aggravates that kind of perfectionism thing. Right?

Katrina Aronson:             Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:         It pulls us back. Yeah, absolutely.

Katrina Aronson:             Yeah. Yeah. And you know, I’m sure you’ve read the statistic before, I can’t remember the actual percentage, but how many more men will apply for jobs that they’re very, very underqualified for versus a woman-

Melinda Wittstock:         Oh, yeah. It’s something like, I forget the actual stat, but it’s something like, say if there are like 10 things on a job ad that you had to have mastered to qualify for the job. Men will apply if they have maybe two.

Katrina Aronson:             Sure.

Melinda Wittstock:         But women, it’s sort of seven or eight out of the 10.

Katrina Aronson:             Exactly. And so this goes to your point about undervaluing ourselves and it’s so all tied together. So how do we get out of that place? And honestly, I think, I mean, one of the most powerful things for me is to surrounding myself with women who are doing it already and that is scary in itself by the way. But it is really effing powerful to be around these women who have already mastered it, and so I’m being lifted up, I’m being pulled up by these women and it puts you immediately in a place of abundance like, “Oh, my god, there’s so many people who want what I have to offer versus that scarcity mindset, which we’ve been brought up around. Right?

Katrina Aronson:             So the story of money and all of that, but the scarcity mindset of I don’t want to… I don’t want to narrow down what I do because there’s only a few people that would want it then. And seeing other women who have already done it, really takes that scarcity mindset out of it, but I believe that you need those reminders because if you’ve never done this before, how are you supposed to truly believe that? Right. We are so visual, we need to see that someone else has done this before.

Melinda Wittstock:         Mm-hmm (affirmative). Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, and it’s tricky if the only role models really and historically, so many of the role models, most of them have been men. And so I think what happens is if we fit ourselves into that kind of hustle and grind pursuit, kind of more masculine energy and then burn out, which often happens a good proportion of women on this podcast have had burnout experiences, right. For themselves into that mold rather than making a mold of doing business in a way that actually is more an alignment with what I like to call feminine power.

Katrina Aronson:             Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Melinda Wittstock:         You know, when you work with your clients, you’re talking about mindset really being at the root of all of these things. How does it play up in the conversation of masculine versus feminine energy, I guess, for the best kind of phrase I can use a kind of archetypal sense, right? Where women have this kind of natural kind of empathy or intuition or relationship. You were talking about building a community where I think women are really great in community and then the masculine kind of doing, pursuing, getting it done that kind of thing? What works best? Is it really ultimately a mix of the two?

Katrina Aronson:             Yeah, I really believe everyone kind of has their own strategy that works for them and really getting clear on what that is for you. I think we’ve been trained that masculine energy is the energy. It’s in schools, it’s in how we see businesses run, it’s in the do, do, do. Right? I mean, how much do we hear people saying how busy they are and there’s almost this pride behind being busy as if busy equals success. That’s such a masculine way of thinking.

Melinda Wittstock:         And with women too actually, even a pride and a scarcity like, “Look at how much I’m doing with so little,” and that that’s the pride that I’m doing it with, with nothing, when actually, why be proud of that? Why not be proud of doing it with a lot?

Katrina Aronson:             Exactly. Yes, yes. So getting out of that. But I do think the balance of the two is really powerful too. And we were saying the seasons, sometimes I just don’t feel as though I can do certain things. And so instead of fighting that really going into, for example, creating.

Melinda Wittstock:         Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Katrina Aronson:             And I’m in very different spaces and we won’t spend time on this, but depending on my cycle. So understanding that you it’s okay to lean into the places that you are feeling the most powerful today. And sometimes I do feel like I want to go in do, do, do mode, but that would last for a day or two, that I’m feeling a lot of power or even bursts of energy. So instead of fighting it, what if you leaned into those places and then completely cut out the things that really didn’t feel good, and this is why you hire so going out and getting business, if that’s what you do and networking, if that doesn’t feel good to you, you don’t have to do it.

Katrina Aronson:             This is why attraction marketing is so powerful, that literally people will DM you depending on what platforms you use, email you back, there’s definitely strategies that you can do so that you’re not feeling like you have to go networking all the time. So it’s just that we have to reframe the way that we look at marketing overall, business overall, and the way that we do them and really getting creative and seeing… You know, tapping into other people how they do it. I think asking a lot of questions, being around other people who are successful and not that you’re going to copy exactly how they do it, but this is where a lot of the most amazing ideas that I’ve had come from, other people.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah, very, very true. So going back in the day, you were an analyst at Morgan Stanley, so you were on that kind of corporate talk about grind. What was a moment there, where you’re like, “Okay, so I’m making a lot of money. I’m doing this thing that I’ve been told I should do. I’m supposed to want.” I’m presuming here and when did you hit the wall on that and say, “Gosh. No, I’m going to go out my own and be an entrepreneur.”

Katrina Aronson:             Well, I have been an entrepreneur since I was about five years old. I was the kid who would ask my mom to buy Now and Laters big, huge container at Costco, and she would bring it home and I would sell it to all the neighborhood kids.

Melinda Wittstock:         Oh, gosh. That’s so funny. Isn’t that funny how it’s in our DNA? When I was five, I went door to door demanding prepayment for my show. So I don’t know where that comes from.

Katrina Aronson:             That’s awesome.

Melinda Wittstock:         Where you have this entrepreneurial DNA. So anyway, so there you were and you’re making money, I guess, as a little kid. So you’ve always been entrepreneurs?

Katrina Aronson:             Yeah, I always knew that this is what I was going to do. I said to my mom when I was 12, “I’m going to own a store one day.” So it was always something that I wanted to do in the back of my mind, but I felt like going into finance, which I happened to be very analytical and good with numbers, it doesn’t mean I like to do it, but it’s a little bit easy for me. So I did that in college, right. I went to school for finance and I thought, “Okay, I’m doing this,” but I always in my heart was longing for this other thing. But finance was a means to an end, I was able to save money and do it that way, and then decided to take a chance and believe me, my family was looking at me like I was absolutely crazy, but this was not something that I could have not completed in my lifetime. I really think that I would’ve been depressed had I not done it.

Melinda Wittstock:         It’s interesting when someone says, “Hey, I have this idea for a business. I think I’m going to start a business.” And there are friends and relatives, while often well meaning, I don’t know, it brings out their fear for you, they want to kind of protect you. So like you said that, “Oh, god, everyone thought I was crazy,” but you did it anyway. And I wonder how many times the people around us stop us from playing in the entrepreneurial space or even playing as big as we can in the entrepreneurial space? But I love that you just sort of heard them and did it anyway.

Katrina Aronson:             Well, I will tell you that I love what you… Because it really… My grandfather was very into me doing it and taking a big chance, but warned me that I was never going to make the amount of money that I did in finance. Right, so there was all of these kind of fears that were coming up for them that were coming through to me. And at the time as a 26 year old, I struggled with it. I went to therapy over it. I wanted to do this, but I felt like I wasn’t being supported. What I learned through that process is, that is how they knew how to support. Right. They were like you said, “protecting me,” and it was my own decision to go ahead and do it, and it only gave me, and I think a lot of entrepreneurs would understand this.

Katrina Aronson:             It only gave me more fuel to say like, “Look at me go.” Right, and here I am years later and I have, of course, this outpouring of support around me with my family, and I remember what they said to me, they probably don’t. And I don’t hold any of that against them, but yeah, I mean, it was for me a bit of fuel in the beginning more than anything.” And it took me therapy and mindset work to actually get to that space, so I don’t want to say that it was just like, “Oh, I just went ahead and did it, like it’s took work to get there.

Melinda Wittstock:         Absolutely. So anyone listening to this podcast, who’s in that situation at whatever stage, whether you’re just about to take the entrepreneurial leap, considering it, or you’re about to do something even bigger in your business, or play a little bit bigger and you have people around you, you have recognize it as their fears, it’s not even about you. Right?

Katrina Aronson:             Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:         But it’s hard at the time, especially when you’re young and you were saying you were like 26 and… Yeah, you don’t really know because you haven’t had enough lived experience at that point to really actually be able to, I guess, contextualize that. You know?

Katrina Aronson:             Sure. Sure. I think also, it’s their fears playing out, but it’s also this idea that you’re about to change and that’s scary too. Right. We all want people to stay exactly where we are.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah, so Katrina, you’re going to go off and get super rich, and then you won’t need me anymore. I mean… Right?

Katrina Aronson:             Exactly. Exactly. Exactly, yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:         It does trigger people. It’s really interesting and I think that’s one of the fears that holds a lot of women back in business, because deep down we really care a lot about what other people think about us, we want to be liked, we want to be really part of the community. There’s this existential fear of being like kicked out of the tribe or whatever, going way, way, way back at epigenetics and our DNA. And so this idea that, “Oh, gosh. If we really go for it, if we really live our dreams and ambitions, will men like us, will we find a guy, will women like me anymore?” Do you know what I mean?

Katrina Aronson:             Absolutely. Yeah, I think a lot of us women struggle with that, but I think this speaks to finding your tribe and people who can build you up because it is a scary thing to go out alone. But realizing that you aren’t alone and there are, especially now that we’re all on Zoom and COVID has given us this gift that there’s so many other ways to connect with people, you don’t have to do this alone.

Melinda Wittstock:         Right, so-

Katrina Aronson:             Whether it’s letting other women-

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah, so…

Katrina Aronson:             Maybe it’s a coach or maybe it’s just a community that you can network with, and it’s very powerful to do that.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah, absolutely. No, no. So, so true. Oh, gosh. Katrina, we could talk for a lot longer. I want to make sure that people know how to find you and work with you, because obviously, you’re helping people a lot with this marketing piece, but also the mindset piece and much more. What’s the best way?

Katrina Aronson:             I live on Instagram, so if you want to hop over to Instagram and connect with me, you can absolutely DM me. @katrinaaronson_consulting is my handle. I also want to throw you a freebie if you’re interested in that and that is a marketing content roadmap, which is exactly the format that I create with clients to help them to create content for their marketing in a way that’s actually sustainable, and you’re not spending hours and hours a day on creating stuff for social media and all your other platforms.

Melinda Wittstock:         Oh, that’s fantastic. And also, I was going to invite you as well to download Podopolo, my podcasting app so that I can add and feature you as a guest, and you can participate in our comments. And so if any listeners have any questions for you, Katrina, or want to interact with you further, we can all take the conversation about this further over on Podopolo. So I’d love to invite you to join us there and carry on this conversation over on Podopolo.

Katrina Aronson:             I would love to do that. I will see you over there.

Melinda Wittstock:         Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for putting on your wings and flying with us today.

Katrina Aronson:             Thank you for having me.