Boss Your Business - The Podcast

[00:00:00] Yvonne Heimann: Hello, and welcome back to another episode of Boss Your Business. And today we're going to have a little bit of fun. So we'll start with the whole official whole shebang and then we'll drop the official thing and you've got to know exactly why in just a second. Today I have asked Kendra Losee, the driving force behind kendralosee.com.

[00:00:24] And by the way, guys, that's one s and two E's. Yes. Even the German took a little bit to finally remember that. As always, you're gonna find it in the show descriptions. Kendra seamlessly combines 25 years of digital marketing processes and knowledge and amazingness. With advanced mindset, mastery, and NLP techniques to empower business owners to rewire their mindset, master marketing and claim their success. As an award winning marketer with a commanding grasp of the digital and omni channel [00:01:00] strategies, she trusts.

[00:01:02] She is a trusted go to professional who has shared her wisdom as a San Diego social media professor for nearly a decade and impossible because you can't have been teaching for nearly a decade at the age of 29, just saying.

[00:01:18] Kendra also co authored the Digital Etiquette for Dummies which just underscores her expertise, let's be honest.

[00:01:27] Her live streaming finesse shines through 100 plus captivating interviews with top tier partners, including renowned universities, and with degrees from UCSD and Purdue. Kendra dedicated, kendra's dedication to knowledge led her to master neurolinguistic programming, timeline therapy, and hypnotherapy, forming a unique blend of marketing brilliance and mindset mastery, who is now ready to guide entrepreneurs over 40, helping them unearth their true worth, build confidence, generate leads and cultivate [00:02:00] purpose driven, sustainable businesses.

[00:02:03] So guys, now you have the official version of this. The unofficial version is I'm drinking coffee right now because Kendra and I went out last night to the PodFest Expo tour and I stayed out past my bedtime. We didn't go till two o'clock in the morning guys. We did not. However, having Kendra right here in town and being a fellow podcaster, I don't know, since COVID, it's, we've usually, I've been fairly early in bed, but we were out last night till what? 10:30 or something.

[00:02:36] Kendra Losee: Easily. Yeah, it was really fun event. It was really fun to get to meet new people, meet a lot of podcasters, lay of the podcast land in San Diego.

[00:02:47] Yvonne Heimann: I do have to admit that the PodFest team and the community was really fun.

[00:02:53] Kendra Losee: It was really fun.

[00:02:54] Yvonne Heimann: Open up connecting with people really easily.

[00:02:58] So yeah. Guys, you're gonna have fun on this [00:03:00] episode today, because I'm on coffee. Here I am. Yeah, you know me

[00:03:05] Kendra Losee: and I like evenings and I've had my coffee, so I'm ready to go.

[00:03:12] Yvonne Heimann: Welcome. Welcome to the insiders club guys. Yeah. Kendra is one, one of my close friends. So we're going to have some fun today. However, I have realized in this podcast that even though, I often think I know people really well, and then I bring up my first question and suddenly it's wait, what? How did I not know that?

[00:03:39] So here it is. All right. How did you get here? How did Kendra become who she is today? What was your yellow brick road?

[00:03:49] Kendra Losee: Ooh, great question. Yellow Brick Road. It has so many different winding turns, and I think it comes down to the fact that, actually, [00:04:00] it's not even winding turns, it's like stops. It's like the Yellow Brick Road just cut off, and then you have to navigate across terrain for a while to find another frickin Yellow Brick Road.

[00:04:10] And then you're like, there it is! I have been laid off six times in my career. Like I would win this great award and then they would cut the department down or we launch this really big project and they give credit to somewhere else and get rid of our department or get rid of our branch or whatever it was.

[00:04:26] So I've been laid off 6 times in my career and I thought starting my own business, Yvi. I absolutely was like, I don't want to do that. And it was because my parents had their own business, but they had a lawn and garden business and they had it for 26 years. It was open seven days a week from 7am to 6pm and they worked their asses off.

[00:04:53] And I was like, I don't want to do that. I don't want that life. But that was the only model I had. And it was the only [00:05:00] example I saw. So I tried starting my own business and I did for a little while in 2002 or 2002 after. After 2001. Yeah, because I got laid off. It was a 9/11 and I started my own business for a little while and did some consulting and it was fine, but technology wasn't there.

[00:05:22] Like I tried to move to San Diego and I was doing consulting and actually working part time for my friend's company. And I was moving from Denver, my company, like the person lived in Chicago. The company was based out of West Lafayette, Indiana. I was working remotely and trying to explain that to someone so I can rent an apartment.

[00:05:40] Oh, and I'd owned my condo in Denver for a while. So I had zero references, like trying to explain that to someone in 2002. They were like, people would just hang up on me.

[00:05:52] Yvonne Heimann: Even still at this point, getting something I remember, and one of the reasons why I'm not moving right now, it's like the [00:06:00] paperwork and the bank account trail and all the things that I had to put down to get into this rental. I'm like, really people?

[00:06:10] Kendra Losee: Oh yeah. I remember when I moved to San Diego, I had my accountant, like I came to this accountant that I found and I was like, I had consulted and, for states all over the country. I'd lived in Denver. I was working out of, I worked out of New York for a little while.

[00:06:26] I was going to school in Indiana for my MBA and I had seven state returns like I had done business with companies across seven different states. And the accountant just looked at me. He was like, I've never seen this before. It's like my W-2 is from all the different states in the world. And it was so new.

[00:06:49] So no one knew how to set it up. No one knew how to do anything at that time. So now I'm like, okay. Now it's a whole different world, right? I started my new business in 2016 [00:07:00] and like never looked back like this like the text seamless all the things are seamless and it's so easy things are so much more advanced.

[00:07:07] I'm like, oh, do you remember to remember when?

[00:07:14] Yvonne Heimann: I think that was also an interesting piece for us going into COVID.

[00:07:20] Kendra Losee: Yeah.

[00:07:21] Yvonne Heimann: Because we've been used to working from home. We've been used to the whole Zoom meeting. We've both been already doing video for years at that point. It's what are you people talking about? Nothing is changing. I just don't get to see people.

[00:07:37] Kendra Losee: I think the difference there was that I became like the therapist, right? So like for the friends that weren't used to being home at all the time, they'd be like how do you do this?

[00:07:44] Yvonne Heimann: Yeah. Yeah. Or the tech support where it's like, how does this thing work? Yeah. How do I get the cat filter off of my Zoom call?

[00:07:53] Kendra Losee: Stop holding the camera under your nose, Mom. Yeah. Ahhhh.

[00:07:59] Yvonne Heimann: Yeah.[00:08:00] It was an in, it was an interesting time, though. I have to say, it was fun. Seeing all our nerdy friends come together and we ended up doing, right in the beginning, we ended up doing so many game nights online and all kinds of stuff. Yeah.

[00:08:18] It's even though we knew the technology and we knew all of the stuff, we now suddenly did new things with it.

[00:08:26] Yeah. While we are at this, completely off topic. One of the favorite things that actually came out of COVID for me is QR code usage. Believe it or not. I loved QR codes from the beginning.

[00:08:41] It's one was one of these simple, easy scan this thing, send it somewhere. And it wasn't adapted. It wasn't adapted till nobody wanted to put out paper menus or anything on the streets of San Diego. And finally they just stuck a QR code everywhere. And now it's everywhere. [00:09:00] Did you have any technology experience throughout COVID that was similar where it's like, Oh my God, finally people get it.

[00:09:10] Kendra Losee: I think it was video, honestly, yes, I get the QR code thing. I would, they make me happy, but it's just like such a simple frickin thing that I never thought about.

[00:09:20] Yvonne Heimann: People did not adapt it. I'm like, it's so easy. It's so simple. Yet you have a worldwide pandemic for you to finally see the use case.

[00:09:30] Kendra Losee: And yeah, I think for me it's video, because I've been talking about it and I was trying to get I was working, I was managing social media for a university. I didn't mention this, but I've worked in higher education, doing marketing for universities, teaching at universities for probably, I don't even know, 15 years if I add it all together.

[00:09:47] Just the marketing for universities and helping. So I was managing social media for a university and I could not get them to embrace video. And trying to explain the impact that video can have and it wasn't [00:10:00] until early 2021 that they were like all let's try having you host an interview. Let's try it, maybe we can do it you know you'll see just put the proposal together and it took off I ended up doing them one to two times a month for the university because it helped humanize people in a way that you couldn't do before.

[00:10:21] So it was what I love and what it's not just video, but it's that acceptance of it's okay to be imperfect. It's okay to be who you are as a business owner, as part of a university. That's the part people want to see. They want to know who you're going to be talking to.

[00:10:37] They want to know who they're going to be working with. They want to know who's going to be teaching them. So that let go of making everything perfect. is really like at the heart of what I absolutely love about what's come out of the pandemic.

[00:10:53] Yvonne Heimann: And the whole pandemic thing got us off track to roll back a little bit. So you [00:11:00] tried in 2002-ish one time, and then you came back in 2016 to be like, Hey, okay, we are doing this thing. I know a little bit of that, Hey, we're doing this thing history, but go tell the audience, the evolvement off your business from when you started out to what you're doing now.

[00:11:24] Kendra Losee: Yeah. So I left, I was managed, I was basically the CMO of a large university in Southern California, and I went to work in an agency because there was just too much pressure, too political. It was actually physically killing me. I was really unhealthy. I was working all the time. And so to work less, I'm one of the few people that actually went to an agency to do that.

[00:11:44] I gave myself a demotion. I wanted to get my hands dirty because I knew that I eventually wanted, I, in the back of my head, my goal was always to start my own agency even though I had done it for a couple of years before. And so I wanted to get my [00:12:00] hands dirty and I worked at that agency and when they closed down, I started my own.

[00:12:06] And I, I like, like I said, I fought it for a while. Okay, I was applying for jobs and I finally, this always, It's such a funny way to go into a business. But I was like, I've been laid off six times. I would rather be in control and make my own goddamn bad decisions than trust someone else with them.

[00:12:24] And I want to control who I work with, who I don't work with and what that looks like.

[00:12:33] And so I put everything together, started to do that. I put, I'm like a marketing strategist. I was desperately learning some more of the hands on stuff. Cause I ended up running departments again, cause I'm I like to take over things.

[00:12:52] I might have a strong personality that likes to take over things. And so I started my agency and my very first client was a [00:13:00] cannabis client. And it was right when cannabis was voted legal in California. And I went to a networking event and I was expecting, I'm from a small town in Northern California, a small beach town.

[00:13:12] It is known for its cannabis and burnt out surfers kind of vibe. And so I'd always avoided it. And, but that's what I was expecting when I went to that networking event and I came home on such a metaphorical high, not a literal high and I researched cannabis marketing and what's legal and what's not and who's doing it and who the competition is.

[00:13:38] Yvonne Heimann: That's not an easy one.

[00:13:41] Kendra Losee: Probably until four in the morning.

[00:13:43] Yvonne Heimann: Oh, only till four?

[00:13:45] Kendra Losee: That night. Yeah. I was on such that adrenaline high of like possibility and risk and like what can you take? What can you do? And I enjoyed everyone I met. So I went all in, I created a business around it. [00:14:00] I set up marketing.

[00:14:02] I learned everything I could about the regulations in California and some of the other states where things were. And I did cannabis marketing and CBD marketing as my main focus for up until last year. And I still CBD clients too, but the industry changed of all, there's a lot more competition.

[00:14:21] Businesses were struggling in California. There was a lot that happened there. That's an entirely different conversation. But what I found was that the same things were working for my cannabis clients that are under very heavy regulation were also what was working for the non cannabis clients that I might've been working with, or like the service based businesses that were just, offering market research or business consulting or legal services to the cannabis companies.

[00:14:48] That's where I started, was focusing there and last year, go ahead.

[00:14:56] Yvonne Heimann: This is the fun thing, guys. When you have two hosts on the same [00:15:00] show and your guest catches that you are ready to ask a question no you already started to answer pretty much where I was going with this because I was going to ask.

[00:15:11] Where your passion has led you and what is Kendra doing now?

[00:15:19] Kendra Losee: Fantastic. I'm so glad you asked Yvi.

[00:15:25] So a year ago, almost exactly a year ago, I was really struggling with a bunch of health issues and I went through master prac-ing LP and there was a lot of things that just shifted into place. This time last year, I COVID, I was in the middle of COVID for five months and it was, I realized that I was teaching.

[00:15:42] I was managing the cannabis stuff. I was working on like the higher education and some of those other clients that I had in the FinTech services clients that I have. And I was all spread over all over the place trying to like do things I enjoyed, but I didn't realize how much it was once again, affecting my health, how burnt [00:16:00] out I'd become and how exhausted it made me.

[00:16:05] Yvonne Heimann: It was hard to watch you.

[00:16:07] Kendra Losee: Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm sorry you had to.

[00:16:10] Yvonne Heimann: Oh, we all have to go through our lessons, right? It's like at some point, but it's like you do have so much passion. You have so much commitment to everybody you are working with and everybody around you. That you want to give it your all, but at some point there was just no more time left in a day.

[00:16:32] Kendra Losee: Yeah. And and like I said before, that was the model that I saw my parents business, right? Giving everything nonstop. And so it took the few years, what, four years now of neurolinguistic programming, studying and learning and that changing and that focus on my health and I literally remember sit down and probably talk to you about it too.

[00:16:53] And I just wrote down everything I was doing and everything had its own piece of paper because I physically [00:17:00] wanted to see and I lined it all up and I looked at it and I saw what was working across the board. What was working for me. And that's where I decided to pivot my entire business and say, okay, here's what I'm doing.

[00:17:12] And so helping particularly women business owners over 40, show up on video here, have their voices heard, find, be found, build their personal brand, grow their visibility, grow their leads, grow their sales. And that is where my passion is. That's what was working and what I was doing, even though I had created all these layers and different areas around it, stripped it all away.

[00:17:38] And now that's the focus. And it's been amazing. I've never been so happy at what I'm doing.

[00:17:46] Yvonne Heimann: It is nice seeing you with a smile again. Don't get me wrong guys. We still have tired nights. We still have some days way too much coffee, but it is. [00:18:00] It's a different energy. It's a different glow. It's a Kendra is back.

[00:18:06] And sometimes that's, that I've had those stories where I'm like, people were like, yeah, you dudes, that's just what you have to go through. It's just sometimes for us to realize things or to learn things or to see that yellow brick road again. Sometimes it's just, take something or it takes a little bit longer or we are just too tired to even look who knows what it is.

[00:18:31] But it's like you never did stop looking. There was always analyzing there was always doing. I am excited you have come here. Now with that passion, with that new focus.

[00:18:46] How are you helping people? What are you specifically doing now? What does your business offer?

[00:18:53] Kendra Losee: So glad you asked. So I'm working with business owners.

[00:18:57] I'm just relaunching. So [00:19:00] excited about this. I have taken all those years of teaching, all those years of working with entrepreneurs, working with students who are also adult, like a lot of those were entrepreneurs and put it together into a group coaching program to help people go from invisible to invincible.

[00:19:17] So for those people that are, for those business owners that are like the hidden gem or the secret, the best kept secret, those types of descriptions don't help you grow your business. So it's helping people move from that head in the sand, ignoring marketing or feeling stuck or not sure what to do next.

[00:19:34] And that overwhelm into that position of, I can confidently talk about my business. I can confidently market my business. I know where I need to be, who I'm talking to, what my message needs to be, and what to say when I press go live.

[00:19:48] Yvonne Heimann: And guys, if you want to learn more about that, as always, you can dig deeper into it.

[00:19:52] The the link is going to be in the description. Now, I always go a little bit technical at [00:20:00] the end of my show.

[00:20:01] Kendra Losee: You, so weird.

[00:20:06] Yvonne Heimann: Never. Let's tool nerd a little bit. We know what you have here. We know what you are offering. We know you, you cleaned up, cleaned out and rearranged a lot of things.

[00:20:21] What are those tools and processes that allow you to be and do as you do?

[00:20:32] Kendra Losee: Good question. I have so many, I'm like. One of my assignments for my students was to create a tech stack like a visual tech stack. And so I did that recently with myself just to see. So I rely on very similar, right? Like I rely on ClickUp. I rely on Magai and AI, hands down.

[00:20:53] Yvonne Heimann: Oh, guys, seriously? Yes. I am jumping on this.

[00:20:56] I am a completely woo host and I'm completely cutting you off, [00:21:00] because Magai has been our tool guides.

[00:21:02] Kendra Losee: Oh yeah.

[00:21:03] Yvonne Heimann: You are still paying for a single ai. What the fuck are you doing? This is why podcast is being marked explicit because Magai gives you Chachi PT, clot, I don't even know. I'm beta testing right now, so I have JAMA two weird ones that I hadn't heard before in beta test.

[00:21:22] And you get the image AI too. Yeah. Have you played with image AI yet? I haven't played much with it yet.

[00:21:27] Kendra Losee: A little bit, yeah. Remember I called you 'cause I started there first and you were like, why are you starting there? Go back to the words . I also use mid journey form. What'd you say?

[00:21:39] Yvonne Heimann: Mid journey.

[00:21:41] I have watched Kelly work a lot in mid journey. I'm like, Ooh,

[00:21:45] I need to

[00:21:45] Kendra Losee: I start playing with it actually over the weekend. Cause I, I was just like, what does that look like? What if I use an image there? So I use ActiveCampaign for my emails. I use ClickUp for management. I use Descript for [00:22:00] video repurposing.

[00:22:01] I use Magai for all the things. And ThriveCart for my program posting. I use, there's so many more too that are just like smaller quick things that I don't realize like Canva and Easel, for design work. What else do I use? I feel like I have so many. Those are the main ones. I think go ahead.

[00:22:23] Yvonne Heimann: Your tech stack is pretty much similar to mine where it's we just switched back to ActiveCampaign.

[00:22:28] I'm like, is it quite an, it's one of the higher costing tools we use, but it's so worth it because ActiveCampaign pretty much integrates everywhere. It makes life so simple. I think you're using StreamYard too, similar to me.

[00:22:46] Kendra Losee: Yeah.

[00:22:46] Yvonne Heimann: Ecamm.

[00:22:47] Kendra Losee: Ecamm sometimes, yeah. I also, and this is really ridiculous, but I've been using, I use GoodNotes for my iPad every single day.

[00:22:56] It's like the whole reason for my iPad. And I've been using the [00:23:00] Notes app just on my phone, on my computer, and here's what I did. As I, and I actually recorded a video about, of this that I'm gonna, I'm editing right now or working with an editor. I went live every single day in July on Instagram and I put that plan together in hours.

[00:23:16] I used Magai and I set up the prompts so that way I could say, okay, here's my target audience. This is what I want to say. This is what I do. Got the weekly themes, created the content for each of those days, put the speaking points together. I had Magai put together a hook, talking points, a CTA, and a social media post.

[00:23:34] I gave it examples of everything I needed, revised as I went. Put the social media posts for every single day in my notes, so that way I could pull them up and just copy and paste them into Instagram. I was using InShot for my covers, and I did that without it taking much time each day was one of the easiest processes I put together, once I put the process together.

[00:23:55] Yvonne Heimann: Guys, did you hear that? Did you just hear that going live for [00:24:00] 30 days in the row? 31 process 31 being an easy process. That's what happens when you actually use the tools that are around. And I love that you brought up GoodNotes and the notes app in our phone, because it's, I did the same thing last night when we went out where I'm like, I'm going to have people following on Instagram and here and there.

[00:24:23] I'm like, forget about that. I pulled up my notes app on the phone. Noted down their company slash Instagram name, their actual name, grabbed a phone number, grabbed an email and had a list of everybody that I wanted to connect with on high priority because I knew it's, it's just going to get lost somewhere in an Instagram message or whatever.

[00:24:45] But it comes down to using, first of all, the best tool is the one you always use. Yeah. Second of all, the one that's easily accessible and especially on iPhone, the Notes app, I have it on my first screen. It's there.

[00:24:59] Kendra Losee: I think it's one of [00:25:00] those things where sometimes we overlook what's simple and easy for what's the fanciest, not, or what other people tell us they think they, that we need when really it's just the Notes app.

[00:25:13] Like my sister told me that she created a whole calendar for her content calendar and Google. Because it's just working for her, like whatever you're going to use and whatever you're working for is working for you, make it work for your new process. Because when you start to add in too many extra tools, and I've done this myself many times too, like I can't tell you how many different process management tools from day planners and physical fucking books that I had to carry around to, to Asana, to Basecamp, to all of the different things to try and find what's gonna work for me.

[00:25:44] And part of it's a little bit of ADHD, right? Oh, this routine's working. Let me fuck it all up and try this over here, because that thing over there might be shinier and

[00:25:53] Yvonne Heimann: it's I'm the tool squirrel over here. By the way, I haven't even told you that yet. I have been working on [00:26:00] building a dashboard that emulates the full focus planner. However, I've been going a step further rather than three things in a day. It's only one thing.

[00:26:14] I read the one thing book and it makes so much freaking sense. So yeah, I've been working on a ClickUp dashboard that, that really allows one to focus. I'm like, it's going to be based more on the one thing rather than the full focus by the full focus plan.

[00:26:31] It has I think three things to focus on or something. However, it's going to be different focus areas where it's going to be one, one a day, one a week, one a month where you have the bigger projects for the month. This is the one thing I need to get the fuck done today.

[00:26:47] Kendra Losee: It's so funny. You say that. I actually really like that book, cause it helped me look at things differently. And it was very much like how to break it down. Cause that's something that I noticed most planners and even the tools that I use, like I'm [00:27:00] such a big picture person. And I've already said I've had, 20 different things going on at once because that's how I think.

[00:27:08] Yep, and so being able to actually force myself to focus in one way while I still can dance around over here, it helps make a big difference.

[00:27:18] Yvonne Heimann: And with that, we are going to be focusing on kicking ass, taking names, and... Getting people into your program. So guys, as always, you are going to find all of Kendra's information and the book links we mentioned and all the things in the description it's right there.

[00:27:39] Go make sure follow her on Instagram, connect with her. Yes. Kendra is just as open in her DMs as I am. So pop on in, say, hi, tell her you listened, watched, read the episode and, thanks coming on today.

[00:27:56] Kendra Losee: Thank you for having me.

[00:27:58] Yvonne Heimann: Drinks again soon. [00:28:00]

[00:28:00] Kendra Losee: I'm like, we're done already.

[00:28:02] Yvonne Heimann: We're done already. We had 30 minutes actually, believe it or not.

[00:28:07] And with that, everybody make sure to subscribe to the podcast. So you are not missing any of the upcoming episodes. You are getting to meet a couple more of my inner circle people. Thanks again for coming on Kendra. And I'm going to see, listen and read all of you in the next episode. Bye, everybody.

[00:28:26] Kendra Losee: Thank you. Bye.