How to do marketing & much more - with Jane Hillsdon of Dragonfly Marketing

If there's one challenge we hear more than most from our community here at Mums & Co, it’s marketing; how to connect with more customers, even just your next customer, to grow your business. This is far from a surprise with time being such a precious commodity, making space to do marketing can be hard to prioritise and overwhelming to know where to start. Living in Port Macquarie on the north coast of New South Wales, Jane Hillsdon works with small businesses to get their best foot forward in terms of marketing, and champions regional and rural based businesses across Australia.

 I would love to hear your elevator pitch. How is it done and what you do, who you are, and ideally emotionally connect?

“I actually have two businesses. One is called Dragonfly Marketing, and that's an agency where we do marketing for small businesses. The other is the How to Do Marketing Academy, which is where we show how a small business is how to do marketing.

Both businesses, though, are born out of making marketing much more simple for small businesses to do.”

I'd love to hear your tips and perhaps even describe the shape of a good life for you.

“Surround yourself with people that lift you. So people may have heard the advice or the saying, if you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room or other sayings along those lines. I much prefer the notion of being among people that bring diversity, a diverse range of thinking, a diverse range of perspectives, people that can be your cheerleader, people that want to see you succeed, people that you can help as well as they can help you. So there's a notion of reciprocity there. So there's been various people who have kind of contributed to that along the way, and sometimes that evolves, people who help to get you to a certain place may not be the right people to get you to the next place.”

Who is in your Co and how do they support you and the businesses you're running?

“My family is number one, so that's my husband and then I have three children. I also have a dog and a cat who are in my Co as well because they generally hang out with me throughout the day as well.

I have a lot of groups that I am part of, I have a business minds group that we set up locally in town with a diverse range of business owners and we meet monthly. I'm a member and have been a member of Business Chicks for years. I'm a member of something called The Accountability Circle. I also have another group locally, which is just like marketing professionals and graphic designers, websites, copywriters, etc.

Then another part of my Co, clients, friends, clients generally tend to become in regional areas specifically, tend to become friends and mentors. So to me, often when we're working with the client, particularly in the Dragonfly business, where we might be working with clients over the course of years and years, it's very hard not to actually become good friends and business confidants.”

If you could ask for anything right now in your business or your life, what would it be?

“For me, it's mindset and that's what I'm really focusing on at the moment. In particular, an abundant mindset that allows abundance. I think one of the things that I took out of last year was that sometimes I have a scarcity mindset. I think it's starting a new business and starting it from scratch. Like Dragonfly grew so organically and accidentally, and now I'm really intentional and purposefully building products and marketing this new business, which is going to grow at a much, much more accelerated rate than Dragonfly.

So me showing up in that space, all of a sudden this scarcity mindset has been exposed. I know now that I need to embrace the mindset of abundance, but it's not like you just turn up and go, “right, I need to put it on the list.” You know, checklist for Monday morning - get an abundant mindset. When you've had that mindset for a good portion of your life, when you've had the not enough ness or the imposter syndrome and all of that stuff, when you're trying to reverse that, that's a big job.”

Want to know more about how Jane Hillsdon can help you grow your business?

Are you looking to take your business to the next level but not sure what that means in terms of marketing? Have you ever wished for a simplified marketing plan that gives you answers to the key questions of who, what, why, how and where? Looking to do a health check to ensure you’re doing your absolute best to gain new clients? 

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