1. Gain actionable marketing tips tailored for creative solopreneurs, especially photographers and artists.

2. Discover how to connect authentically with your audience to grow your business.

3. Learn strategies to balance creative passion with practical business growth.

4. Kendra’s approachable advice helps simplify marketing, removing stress and overwhelm.

5. Perfect for solopreneurs looking for free resources on email marketing and niche targeting.

Kendra's Website...

https://GirlMeansBusiness.com

Join Robin J. Emdon as he chats with Kendra Swalls, a business coach and host of *Girl Means Business*. Kendra shares insights on authentic marketing, productivity, and balancing work as a creative solopreneur. Discover tips for audience connection, time management, and valuable free resources.

02:34 Ideal Client: Kendra’s target clients are creative solopreneurs who need help balancing their artistic passion with strategic business growth.

03:25 Problem Solved: She dispels the “Field of Dreams” myth, emphasizing that successful marketing requires strategy, not just creation.

04:43 Valuable Free Action(VFA):Auditing client sources helps solopreneurs focus their marketing efforts where they count.

06:23 Valuable Productivity Action (VPA): Time blocking for focused tasks increases productivity and balances work-life demands.

08:35 Flexibility in Scheduling: Kendra shares how adapting to unpredictable schedules helps working parents stay effective without feeling overwhelmed.

(Note, this was transcribed using transcription software and may not fully reflect the exact words used in the podcast)

Welcome to the Goalbusters Expert Peak Productivity Tips podcast, where top business experts get just seven minutes to answer five rapid fire questions about what they do and how they stay productive.

Each episode is packed with actionable insights to help boost your efficiency and achieve your goals. Let's dive in and unlock the secrets to peak performance.

ROBIN 0:22

Well, hello, everyone. I'm Robin J. Emdon, creator of the Get Resultsology system and an accountability coach. I help people harness productivity to achieve meaningful results, increase income, grow their business, and create success that resonates with their authentic selves. Today, I'm excited to introduce you to Kendra Swalls. Kendra is a mom of two, former teacher, and a full time photographer and business coach. She's also the host of the successful Girl Means Business podcast that delivers weekly doses of business and marketing tips for creative female entrepreneurs.

Her approach to marketing is refreshingly simple.

It's not about stress or overwhelm, but about connecting with your ideal audience and building genuine relationships.

Through her own experiences, Kendra has learned that every solopreneur can succeed with the right mindset, tools, and support, and she's here to share her insights with you. Keidra, welcome.

KENDRA

Thank you. I'm so excited to be here. I appreciate you having me on.

ROBIN

I'm absolutely thrilled to have you. I'm really excited and looking forward to our conversation today. So whereabouts in the world are you, Kendra?

KENDRA

I am in Dallas, Texas, in the US of A, where it is October and still hot.

So It's always hot in Texas.

Always hot. I know. We get a very brief reprieve, and then we get, like, cold, wet, gross, and then it goes back to hot again.

ROBIN

But as you can probably tell from my accent, I'm not in Dallas. I'm in Torquay in South Devon in England, but I've been to Dallas and I did wave, but you didn't wave back. I think you were doing something else at the time and it was about twenty years ago so you probably missed it.

So okay so shall we get on with the questions? Remember we've got five questions and seven minutes which is more than enough time to have a very meaningful conversation.

So I'm gonna hand the floor to you just by asking you the first question, which is Kendra. I'll start the clock and then ask you, who is your ideal client?

02:34 KENDRA

My ideal clients are photographers, specifically female photographers, and really creative business owners in general. I've also worked with artists and, you know, event planners, things like floral design people. But, usually, it's, someone who is kind of early on in their business, and they really love the creative aspect of their business. But then the marketing side, the strategy side does not come as natural to them, so they need someone to help them kind of merge the two so that they can have a successful business.

ROBIN

Okay. Perfect. I love as I told you before the call, I love photography. It's something it's my passion too. So I'm really excited to hear what you're saying. So you've already covered it a little bit with when you're describing your ideal client. But can you go into the specifics a little bit more of the problem that you solve?

03:25 KENDRA

Yeah. So a lot of times, creative business owners, they get into business because they are passionate about something they love doing, like photography or, creating works of art or designing floral designs, things like that. And they think originally, like, all I need to do is create this beautiful thing and put it out in the world, and the people will come. It's that Field of Dreams idea of if you build it, they will come. And, unfortunately, that's not how marketing really works these days and probably not really has for a long, long time. And so they get into this position where they're like, oh, I want this business to be successful. I want this to be really something that can support my family or be something that I can do full time.

And they need someone to come in and help them understand the more strategic side of the business so that they can focus on the creative side and let everything else kind of run behind the scenes in their business.

ROBIN

Perfect. And you're right. Field of Dreams is such a brilliant movie, but it is pure fiction. Sadly, pure fiction.

So and it doesn't make any bones about the fact that it's pure fiction. it's all fantasy, isn't it? So, Kendra, thank you for that. What is the most valuable free action that the audience can implement that will help them solve that problem?

04:43 KENDRA (Valuable Free Action - VFA)

Yeah. So one of the first things I tell my audience to do or a client that works with me is to kind of go in and do a quick audit of your where your clients are coming from right now. And this is something that a lot of times we don't focus a whole lot or pay attention to. We might have a little drop down on our contact form.

How did you hear about me? But we never really go look at that. So look and see, like, where are your clients finding you? Are they all coming from word-of-mouth?

Are they coming from social media? Are they coming from Google searches?

Are they coming from, you know, one specific refer that's a business that's maybe sending you clients? And then that tells you where you need to focus your marketing efforts. Because the problem I see a lot is especially with social media, client like photographers, for example, they will put all this energy. Ninety percent of their marketing effort goes into social media. But once they realize that only, like, a small fraction, two, three, four percent of their clients are actually coming from social media, it's an imbalance in where they're spending their time versus the result they're getting. So doing that audit is a really great way to kind of look at where should I be focusing my efforts and how can I kinda redistribute that effort in my business?

ROBIN

I love that. It's so basic what you're saying, but as you say, people miss it. Yeah. And they overcomplicate things, and then they wonder why it doesn't happen.

That's brilliant. Thank you. So now we know a little bit more about what you do. Let's talk about goal busting.

Meaning, how do you make the best use of your productive time to achieve your own business goals? So can you share any tips or advice for someone looking to improve their productivity habits?

06:23 KENDRA (Valuable Productivity Action - VFA)

Yeah. So for my audience, a lot of them are moms with either young children or, children of school age. My kids are both school age now, so I've kind of had it both ways. But the struggle is that kind of trying to find that balance between how do I have working time and how do I still have time to be a mom and spend time with my family.

So my advice for that, biggest thing that's helped me, is having time blocking. So setting aside even if it's thirty minutes or an hour, sometimes ninety minutes, if you can. And that is focused work time where you're like, this is what I'm working on. Having a specific task, not just sitting at your computer going, what can I get done in this thirty minutes?

But having a specific task that is, like, in this thirty minutes, I need to respond to all these emails, or I need to create this client proposal, or I need to edit this session. And if you have a specific task and you have a block of time that is you are away from all your distractions to put your phone on do not disturb, turn on some background music, and get the work done, then you'll feel at the end of the day you've been able to check more things off your to do list, and you feel like you've been more productive even if you weren't necessarily working all day long. You had these little bursts of energies.

And then in between, you can go do the things that are like, put the laundry away, help your kids, go run the errand, whatever you need to do, but you've had that block of time where you've been really productive and you feel accomplished in something for that day.

ROBIN

I'm so glad to hear you say this because when I was writing this section in my book about, you know, working from home moms specifically, or in my case, I was a single I'm a single parent as well, a single dad.

I explained that there is no one solution for for parents because everybody has unique situations. Some people have extended family they can leave the kids with. Some people, their kids are a school age and so on. It's a pretty challenging situation, so it's always good to hear insights from other parents about what they do.

So thank you for that. That was very powerful. Very good tip. So now I I shouldn't say this because question four is kind of the purpose of the of the podcast, but I like question five more because I never know what's gonna be said.

What should I have asked you today, Kendra, that I didn't? And, obviously, your answer.

08:35 KENDRA

So the question I get asked the most from my clients and things is, how do I manage my schedule when it's not consistent day to day? So in a perfect world, we would have the same schedule every day. We would know when our blocks of time are. We would know when we have this and that done.

And that's not reality. For example, when I leave here, I'm gonna go to my kid's school. I'm a PTO mom. I'm president of our PTO, and I have to go help out with some school stuff, which means my afternoon work time is done.

So knowing that it's going to be flexible, being okay with that flexibility, and knowing your schedule ahead of time. Where if I know today is gonna be spent doing stuff with my kids, I've stacked up my work yesterday, and I got a lot of things done. So just being flexible and not putting too much pressure on yourself and not being too hard on yourself in that space.

ROBIN

Perfect timing as well. So you weren't flexible with your timing, which I like, but you are, but your tip about flexibility is a hugely valuable one. As I often say, you also need to have backup plans for your backup plans. That really helps with your flexibility because then you kind of, like, you don't start panicking if, you know like, most common thing that always used to happen to me was was, oh, it's the school here on the phone ringing to say your son's forgotten his packed lunch again.

Oh, gosh. You know, there goes an hour of my morning straight away. Exactly. Or he could starve.

Well, probably not. You know, not an option. Yeah. Kendra, that was brilliant. Thank you so much.

KENDRA

You're welcome.

ROBIN

Thank you. Some fantastic, material there. I'm gonna enjoy listening to it again and and make some notes about the things you've said. That was really useful. So how can people, how can people connect with you?

You have a website? If you could give us your website address. Also, do you have, like, a a free resource of value what I call a valuable free resource? If it's a long link, I can post it, with the podcast and the YouTube video in the text.

If it's a short link, I'll I'll put it on the YouTube video. And, of course, you can say it now.

10:42 KENDRA (Valuable Free Resource - VFR)

Sure. Yeah. So, my website is just GirlMeansBusiness.com, and that's kinda my home base for all the things. You can find the podcast information there. You can also find the podcast Girl Means Business anywhere you get podcast, episodes.

And then social media, same thing. I'm on Instagram at @girlmeansbusiness. If you go onto my website, I do have a resources page where I have a couple of free resources. My number one resource that I have is a free email marketing starter kit.

So it helps photographers and small business owners get started with email marketing, which is one of my number one marketing tips and advice that I always tell people to do. So that's on there as well. And there is one that helps you kind of know, like, what is the niche that you should be a part of or they should be focusing on. There's a couple really great free resources on there, but they're all at girlmeansbusiness.com.

ROBIN

Perfect. And that will be, splashed across the video, and you've said it also for our podcast listeners too. That's absolutely ideal. Kendra, it's been an absolute pleasure and a real joy and very, very educational. Thank you so much, Kendra.

KENDRA

Thank you. I appreciate you having me on. Thank you so much.

ROBIN

You're very welcome, and thank you again. Bye bye.

11:53 OUTRO
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Robin J. Emdon is an accountability coach and creator of the GetResultsology® System, a comprehensive guide designed to help people overcome procrastination and achieve their goals.

Robin’s journey started in his family’s retail business, but he soon realised his true passion was empowering others. In 2001, he trained as a life coach in the U.S., which led him to specialise in accountability coaching and eventually create the GetResultsology® System.

During the 2020 pandemic, Robin faced his own challenge with procrastination. Despite years of coaching experience, he still struggled with distractions. Determined to find a solid, permanent solution, he developed the GetResultsology® System to help others and himself boost productivity.

Based in South Devon, England, Robin helps clients all over the world boost their income and profits by achieving extraordinary results through accountability coaching. In his spare time, he enjoys sharing his passion for local history.

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