#awinewith Anastasia Geneave
MEET Anastasia Geneave, Founder of No Grey Suits.
You can find them here:
Transcript
Danielle Lewis (00:05):
Anastasia, welcome to Spark tv. I'm so excited to have you here.
Anastasia Geneave (00:09):
Thank you for having me.
Danielle Lewis (00:10):
So good. Let's start out by telling everyone who you are and what you do.
Anastasia Geneave (00:16):
Slightly loaded question. I'm Anastasia. I run no gray suits, which is a business, which is kind of morphing at the moment, hence the loaded butt. But essentially it's all around marketing, content creation.
Danielle Lewis (00:32):
I love it. I love it. I just love the name because it's like, it's screams to me we are not boring here.
Anastasia Geneave (00:42):
Well, that's the idea. I came from corporate, I'm ex banking, ex mortgage broker, and I got sick of it. So
Danielle Lewis (00:50):
3:00 AM
Anastasia Geneave (00:50):
One morning feeding a newborn. I went no gray suits. Yep. I'm going to do something called no gray suits.
Danielle Lewis (00:57):
Oh my God, I love it. So what did you do? So you said banking, what was the career before business ownership?
Anastasia Geneave (01:03):
Yeah, so there's been a few business ownership careers in there as well. I'm one of those people with a chameleon type background. So I was a mortgage broker and then that put me into banking. Then after that, well I was on my second lot of maternity leave and I just decided, as I said, I didn't want to go back. I was totally sick of it. I'd been in and around marketing all my careers, so in different industries since I was young and always wanted to jump into it more. But I had that little fear of what if it fails and it's something that I actually love. Whereas having a business, say as a mortgage broker, I enjoyed it and I liked helping people, but it wasn't something I was super, super passionate about. So if it failed, it
Danielle Lewis (01:53):
Failed. Yes. Sorry. Isn't that interesting? Sometimes that's why people say don't turn your hobby into a business because what if it doesn't work? Then you end up resenting the one thing in life that you actually enjoy doing. Yeah. Oh my gosh, I love it. So marketing and content creation, who's your ideal customer? I take it we're not targeting the corporates.
Anastasia Geneave (02:20):
No, no. Well, actually in a way, yes, in a way, yes, because I'm targeting the X corporates.
Danielle Lewis (02:27):
Oh, cool.
Anastasia Geneave (02:27):
So when I talk about niche or ideal customer, for me it's never been so much, I've never been able to really pinpoint an industry or a certain position. It's more what journey have they been on to get where they are now and why do they want to be doing what they're doing? And it's those business owners that came out of corporate and they want to do things a little bit differently. They want to do things their way, but maybe just need a bit of a nudge, particularly on the putting them out there, putting themselves out their side of things. And that's where I like to think I can come in and help.
Danielle Lewis (03:04):
That's so cool. So then do you do marketing content for personal brands as well as business brands?
Anastasia Geneave (03:13):
Okay. No, not at this stage. Although most of my current clients at the moment, I would say yeah, most of my current clients are almost one man bands or very close to, so they are their business. So it is that mix of personal brand, their own values, their own personality seeps into the brand big time because they're not a faceless brand and that's not what I want to deal with.
Danielle Lewis (03:39):
That is really interesting and it's always funny how conversations happen all at the same time. And it's just interesting because I've been talking about personal brands a lot lately and I've prerecorded some solo episodes giving my 2 cents worth on personal brands. Do you think that businesses can exist today without the founder being somewhat involved?
Anastasia Geneave (04:04):
Can they exist? Yes. Will they do as well as another small business that doesn't have the personality behind it? Maybe not big business and corporates. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, look, we don't go looking for
Danielle Lewis (04:21):
The founder of Zero.
Anastasia Geneave (04:22):
Exactly. We don't necessarily go looking, but even some of those do get online and do the personality bit to a degree. But the reason people choose small business most of the time is because they want to support small. And where that comes in is they don't want to support a big faceless corporate. They want to know who they're supporting. They want to feel like, I mean, I think I even did a recording on this the other day. I dunno if I've put it out yet. As a small business, you're probably going to cost more than the big business down the road. So why would someone choose? You can't most of the time compete on price. But a lot of the time people are more likely to choose you if they like you, if they've gotten to know you a little bit, if they find you a bit funny, if they resonate with something you've said, if they relate to you. So trying to keep the personal side or not the personal side, but the human side out of a small business, I think in most cases isn't the right way to go.
Danielle Lewis (05:31):
Yeah, I love that. And it's interesting that you made the distinction between personal and human.
Anastasia Geneave (05:37):
Yeah.
Danielle Lewis (05:37):
Maybe we don't need to know what you ate for lunch today
Anastasia Geneave (05:40):
Exactly.
Danielle Lewis (05:41):
But what you stand for in terms of your values and mission. Yes. We want to know.
Anastasia Geneave (05:47):
Yeah. I was in the room with somebody the other day actually, and she said, I don't want my personal life all over social media. I don't want to be getting up and putting my family in front of social media and doing all of that. She said, so what would I talk about if I got on video or got on a reel or something like that? And my simple answer was, you tell stories and you tell why. You tell your business stories and you tell your why. And I asked her a couple of questions, tell me about a time when those good old ones
Danielle Lewis (06:18):
And
Anastasia Geneave (06:18):
She was able to, and I said, well, you could record that.
Danielle Lewis (06:20):
Wow. Tell a story. Isn't it interesting though? I feel like sometimes we are just so wrapped up in our businesses when it comes to content creation or marketing our businesses. We just hit a brick wall sometimes and we need someone like you to say, just ask us those simple questions and be like, oh yeah, dah, dah, dah, dah. And it's like, yeah, that's it. That's all you need to do.
Anastasia Geneave (06:43):
Yeah. And I do find mean everybody talks about their superpowers, but one of my superpowers is coming up with those ideas of what stories you could tell or what you could put out there and sort of sitting down and brainstorming with somebody, what would your audience want to know? And then even going down that research rabbit hole of what are people asking for in your industry right now? That's fun for me. I'm one of those weirdos, but
Danielle Lewis (07:07):
We need those weirdos in our life though.
Anastasia Geneave (07:11):
I think if you are wanting to bring the human side into your brand. Yeah, I think you do. Sometimes you need somebody to bounce off a little bit because you don't know what somebody who's not in your industry wants to know about you.
Danielle Lewis (07:26):
Yeah.
Anastasia Geneave (07:26):
You're seeing it from your own perspective. You're too close to it. So that woman said the other day, what would someone want me to say? So I think you do sometimes need that second set of eyes over things like that.
Danielle Lewis (07:41):
Well, and I guess that's the challenge of being a one man band in business sometimes is we are the marketer, we are the delivery person, we are the accountant, we are the this, we are the that. And it gets a little bloody exhausting sometimes. The brain power is gone. When I look at what should I do with content this week,
Anastasia Geneave (08:07):
One of the biggest tips that I give small business owners and I do it myself. I've got a notebook next to me constantly and every time a customer asks me a question, I write it down,
Danielle Lewis (08:18):
Oh, that's
Anastasia Geneave (08:18):
Gold. That's so good. And then on days when I'm not feeling inspired, but I know I need to get some content out there, I go back through that book and find a question that I feel like answering.
Danielle Lewis (08:31):
And that's such a good point too. So I do something similar in terms of keep a list of, oh, you do it for my podcast for the solo episodes of my podcast and I keep the list. But then something you just touched on, what do I feel like talking about? Because sometimes I'll have a list of 10 things and I'm like, I don't really have the energy to think about that one. And then there'll be others that are fresh and that I can just have a little rant over. I was having a rant. It was actually because I got annoyed. I was trying to pay someone money, pay a business owner money to do a job, and they just made, it was one after the other. I was trying to order flowers for my brother's wife and they live in a regional town. And so of course you can't order online.
(09:17):
You've got to call them and then they don't answer the phone. And I've left it to the last minute and I'm like, why is you making that hard for me to buy something from you? And then I had to do the same booking a pool service, and this lady was so grumpy on the phone and I was like, wow, why are you putting someone on the phone to take my money for a thing that doesn't want to be there or talk to me? And so I did a rant episode about making it easy for your customers to give you money, but it was something I felt passionate about at the time. And there were plenty of other things on that list that I was like, I just don't feel like talking about that right now. So I do love the what do you actually feel inspired and have energy for today as well.
Anastasia Geneave (09:58):
Yeah. And that's why keeping a list is a good thing because even though you might come up with an idea or you might have an idea come past your desk, if it's not what you're feeling that day, it's going to show
Danielle Lewis (10:10):
If
Anastasia Geneave (10:10):
It's not a
Danielle Lewis (10:11):
Top of mind, if people get your vibe, don't
Anastasia Geneave (10:12):
They? Oh yeah, yeah. Big time. Big time. And that's why I'm a big advocate of using video in your content and your marketing and things like that because if you are passionate about what you do, if you love what you do and the topic that you're talking about or passionate about it in the other way, like you say, if it's a rander event, people can tell and it becomes less boring quite honestly. Because when people get up and talk for two minutes on something that's scripted and in front of them and they really don't give too about you tune out, you don't want to listen anymore.
Danielle Lewis (10:49):
Totally. You are so right. And I think that when we do get a little emotional, whether it's positive or negative, people can kind of almost associate with, they've been there before as well, so it's they've get it because they've already experienced that emotional, that experience with you, which kind of makes it connect even better.
Anastasia Geneave (11:09):
Yeah, yeah. It's that empathy that we've all got, whether it's for good or bad. And yeah, it's the same thing of if I smile, chances are you're going to smile back at me.
Danielle Lewis (11:22):
Yeah, exactly.
Anastasia Geneave (11:24):
If I yawn, you're going to yawn. We tend to mirror. So if you think about that when you're telling your stories or you're jumping online to put a reel out there, if you are sitting there just going, blah, I just don't want to do this today, don't do it today, do it tomorrow.
Danielle Lewis (11:40):
Yeah, it's true. The world doesn't end if you don't post on social media. I know that we've all been brainwashed to think differently, but you do have to do it regularly, but the world doesn't end if you miss a day
Anastasia Geneave (11:55):
And you're better off putting nothing out there than something that will actually turn people away.
Danielle Lewis (12:00):
Yes. Oh my God, that is such good advice. So when you were sitting there in the middle of the night nursing baby going, oh my God, I got to get out of here. And you decided to start the business, what was that leap? Did you just walk in and quit or hand in notice or did you start to try and get customers first? What was the transition period for you?
Anastasia Geneave (12:27):
I didn't actually jump into doing no-go suits straight away. I quit from the corporate job and took a part-time job that good, which served its purpose while I was there, but it also taught me I'd been out of small business for a little while because I'd been in corporate. So it got me back into that mindset as well. And I had an awesome colleague there who kind of pushed me to do this even more as well. She was amazing. So I took that part-time job, and every morning I would listen to podcasts on the way to work in the car and get more and more excited about eventually doing my own thing. And then it was just time one day to leave that small job or that part-time job and do it myself. I had a bit of an idea of what I wanted to do, didn't really have a client base, had still some connections from when I had run a small mortgage breaking business before. So I kind of jumped back into those connections that I'd made eight years earlier. And strangely enough, some of those people are not only my best client, but my biggest advocates today. So those relationships can last.
Danielle Lewis (13:40):
I love that you said that because it's interesting, sometimes people think a career path or a business path is linear. It's just like I woke up in the morning out of high school, I had the right idea, I launched the business and I was a giant success, and I'm like, I've never talked to anyone. That's what the path was. And one of the things I always say to people is, your first idea may or may not be right, but don't discount the skills and the networks that you get from every experience, whether it be a career, a failed business, an event, whatever it is, you can always bring something into your next move.
Anastasia Geneave (14:22):
And I find a lot of entrepreneurs, even though that word's a bit, a lot of it's really got a bad rap, hasn't. It does just authentic. But I do find a lot of business owners, especially small business owners, have jumped from one thing to the next, to the next, the next. And you're exactly right. If we do completely sabotage with everybody and everything we've come across during that prior project, you're not doing yourself any favors because you never know. They might've been a person in your circle for that particular thing, but who's to say that they don't need what you do now as well or know someone that needs what you do now?
Danielle Lewis (15:07):
Oh my God, you just reminded me. I literally just had a call this week with a woman who I think I worked with on an influencer campaign at my other business scrunch six years ago who she's now left, had babies and started her own business and wanted to talk about joining Spark. And I was like, that is wild that, but it just shows you how small the world is and you've got to foster human relationships and be a good human.
Anastasia Geneave (15:38):
Yes. You try not to burn those bridges. Look, small business isn't the same as corporate and corporate. People move on and you don't ever generally see them again. But in small business, you're right, it's a small world. You come across people again and again and again,
Danielle Lewis (15:59):
And I just love what you said, you just never know where people will end up. And it's not always that they will be a customer, but they might know somebody. It's interesting even, I know we always talk about Instagram, but LinkedIn's probably my favorite place because that's almost the home for all of the versions of Danny and all of her jobs and all the businesses. That's where all the people are. And so yeah, when you post something, I see sometimes somebody I know tag someone like, oh, I know somebody who does that. They might be someone that I worked with in corporate that still works in corporate, but they've got a friend who's a business owner or whatever, and they know me as a good person from when they worked with me, so then they trust me to recommend someone to me. So I just think it's so powerful that we look after our networks.
Anastasia Geneave (16:51):
Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, look, yes, what I do is very much in the online space and the advertising and marketing and that sort of space, but you'll never hear me say that networking and connections are not your main thing that you should be doing because they're, look, that's where I think almost all of my business is either repeat business or referral, and some of that is even referral from when I was in that very, very different mortgage broker business who would've thought it mortgage broker to content marketer and yet still have the same client base.
Danielle Lewis (17:25):
But I love that, and that's so interesting. Repeat business and referral business, I think that those two are literally the best channels if you can. It's because also it's free. There's all of these channels out there that we have to pay for or give our energy to social media like ads, like content marketing, blogging, all the things pr. But if you can keep customers and you can get your customers to get you new customers, that is where the magic and the profit happens, I reckon.
Anastasia Geneave (18:01):
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you're never going to get a better return on investment putting the time into your customers to make them repeat a referral.
Danielle Lewis (18:10):
What's your secret for that?
Anastasia Geneave (18:14):
Tell
Danielle Lewis (18:14):
Me. I want to know your secrets.
Anastasia Geneave (18:17):
It's probably something that I actually slightly need to change to remain profitable, which is I tend to, I've always got a thing of I under promise and I ever deliver, sometimes
Danielle Lewis (18:33):
Don't think that's bad. I don't think that's bad.
Anastasia Geneave (18:35):
It can be for my profit levels sometimes for my bank account, if I take it too far. I'm generous by nature because I get excited about actually helping people that I forget that I'm supposed to charge,
Danielle Lewis (18:50):
Okay, we need to talk about this one.
Anastasia Geneave (18:53):
Yeah, so I might be just a little bit spicy and I forget a lot of things and I get very excited and I hyperfocus very easily on something that I'm excited about. And sometimes I'll turn around and I'll go, I've just done two days work with this person on their business, helping them out, helping them with socials, content, copy, whatever it might be. Hang on. I'm not getting anything for that. I just did that out of the goodness of my heart, not just because I want to be that generous person. It is literally because somebody will come to me with a quick question or something and I'll go into full project mode,
Danielle Lewis (19:34):
Complete
Anastasia Geneave (19:35):
Project mode, and I'll fix all the problems and then I'll go, now that it's done, I can't really turn around and say, can I have some money for my time? Please.
Danielle Lewis (19:42):
Yeah,
Anastasia Geneave (19:43):
True. The quoted to start with.
Danielle Lewis (19:48):
So knowing that about yourself, do you then leverage that to try and get them into future work? So if they say so, it could be like a, it's been so good working with you if you want to do it on a consistent basis. This is kind of the product services packages that I have.
Anastasia Geneave (20:06):
That's what I'm working on getting better at the moment.
Danielle Lewis (20:09):
Awesome.
Anastasia Geneave (20:10):
I love it. Is actually doing that or leveraging it in another way, such as, would you mind actually jumping on camera and giving me a review, a video testimonial? So yeah, I'm getting a lot better at that because I am learning that for me to keep this business, yes, it does have to make money and for me to continue helping people actually make the money.
Danielle Lewis (20:32):
Yes, that's very true. Fortunately or unfortunately, money does seem to rule the world and we do need sometimes money to make an impact even in a good way, not just to look after our family and have the lifestyle that we want, but if we want to do something greater in the world, a little bit of money usually never hurts.
Anastasia Geneave (20:53):
Yes, yes. Exactly. Exactly. And I think one reason why that's been tough for me, anybody who has worked in something like a mortgage broking business, even if you are a business owner, when you're in something like mortgage broking, you work on commission from the bank, not from the client,
Danielle Lewis (21:09):
Which
Anastasia Geneave (21:09):
Means prior to this business, I'd never charged for my time. So that's been a really big hurdle mindset wise for me to get over as well. So there's the getting excited and hyper focusing and doing a whole heap of extra work for somebody or just work for free for somebody. But then there's the other part of getting comfortable actually having those conversations about money when yes, I'm used to talking about money, I talk about home loans. I did it for years, but it's different when you're asking somebody for money.
Danielle Lewis (21:40):
Absolutely. Is there anything that you are doing at the moment to try and make that easier for yourself?
Anastasia Geneave (21:47):
I've actually tried to not necessarily avoid the conversations, but I've tried to package up the work that I do and just put a number on it and put it on the website so it's transparent
Danielle Lewis (22:01):
So
Anastasia Geneave (22:01):
That I don't have to try and quote each and every customer, each and every job, each project I try to package things up so that I don't have to think about it. It just
Danielle Lewis (22:14):
Is, this is what it is. I love that. I think that is actually a great tip because you're not the only person that feels this way. I know it. And that is such a good, and look, I do it as well. I do it also for a time point of view. So even you don't want to, if you're in that funny spot of, I don't love having the conversation about asking people for money, I even think this is a great tip to save yourself time because as a business owner, you will have tire kickers that are never going to buy from you anyway. So if you do spend that time custom quoting everyone and custom creating things, sometimes it can be a good thing. And most of the times it's a time waster. So I think that's so good. Having brochures, having it on your website so people can opt to themselves out. And then the serious ones that already know how much you charge, they're the ones that you can then go, okay, well, we'll invest an awkward conversation in you.
Anastasia Geneave (23:07):
Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, it does. It weeds out the TA because it stops some of the conversation. And then I've got other clients where they just, you don't even have to have the conversation. They're like, oh, yeah, I saw this was X amount on your website. Cool. Can I sign up?
Danielle Lewis (23:20):
Yeah,
Anastasia Geneave (23:20):
I love that. So that's just easier.
Danielle Lewis (23:23):
Yeah, that is such a great tip. I love that. Now at the start of the episode, you alluded to some little changes in biz. Are we allowed to know, or is it too early?
Anastasia Geneave (23:33):
Yeah, no, no, no. So as I sort of said, went with my journey, I started no gray suits knowing I wanted to go into marketing knowing that I actually enjoy social media. I'm one of those strange people that actually thinks there's a lot of good to be had in social media. I'm not down on it and saying, oh, nobody should have it. I agree kids shouldn't have it, but that's a whole nother conversation. There's a whole nother podcast episode. Oh, yeah. But in saying that, I didn't really know exactly what I wanted to do, so I went into social media management, and that is still my bread and butter today. Most of my clients are on social media management packages where I do the whole lot. It is, however, in just the past year even it's changed because of ai, because of, I suppose, easier access to cheaper overseas services and such.
(24:32):
The expectation of time versus the income that you can make doing social media management has dropped a little, not for everybody, but I also only do organic. I don't have a lot of interest in doing paid ads. It's just not something that ever I found for a lot of businesses. They sink a lot of money into it and it just doesn't do anything. So I've shied away from it a little. I've done it for myself, but not for others. But I started to realize a while ago that I'm a bit more of an ideas person. I'm definitely a chatterbox. And there was an idea that actually the colleague that I had at my part-time job, after I left the bank, we sort of came up with it while we were talking about our consulting clients of doing video interviews with people for them to use as video content. Now, when we initially sort of chatted about that idea, and she was like, yeah, that's awesome. Video wasn't as big as it is now. So as I started to see through my social media management clients, as I started to see static posts dropping off a lot and video, and I will use the word authentic or real or ugly stuff, doing better than the overly produced possibly AI done.
Danielle Lewis (25:55):
Yes, exactly.
Anastasia Geneave (25:56):
Stuff. We don't trust it as much now. We don't trust content as much as we did because a lot of it is AI now, and people want to see people again.
Danielle Lewis (26:07):
Yeah, absolutely. I agree.
Anastasia Geneave (26:09):
So that idea finally actually came to life and I launched what I've called Real Ready Reel as in reels reel ready. I launched that about a month ago. Now it's going really well. And what it is is we just sit, we have today,
(26:27):
And except I'm in your shoes, I ask the business owner a bunch of questions. I'm recording my end, take it away, and then myself and my video editor snip it up into a bunch of reels for you, put your branding against it. There you go. You've got a library of reels that are ready to go, and you didn't have to think of what to say. You didn't have to do the editing. And because it's a conversation, it comes across a lot more genuine, a lot more real than if you were sitting there with a script in front of you.
Danielle Lewis (26:57):
This is actual genius. This is so good. I mean, it's so interesting, even to your point of the lady that you were talking to at the networking event who was unsure of what to do and all you did was ask her questions. As soon as someone gives you that kind of question, you go, oh, yeah, I can talk about myself. I can talk about my business. But having you there and then having you do the legwork in terms of editing, I just think that is so powerful for anybody who might be struggling to do reels or to do video, because again, you are spot on. It is what is going on right now. It is what's trending. It is what's getting served up in the algorithm. So if you're ignoring it, you're probably not going to be doing as well on social media
Anastasia Geneave (27:43):
And even on your website. So you can tell us before we edit, if you want something that is not just your vertical reel style, but if you want something that's like a welcome video for your website that's a little bit longer, we'll chop things up and make that happen as well. So it's quite flexible in that way because it is just a chat about your business
Danielle Lewis (28:07):
And
Anastasia Geneave (28:07):
It's evergreen content, it's your business, it's your journey that we talk about.
Danielle Lewis (28:12):
Oh my God, this is genius. And I think that it's so interesting how your business can evolve with the times, right? You've obviously been in business for a little while. You've got a package, you're evolving, and now you're like, oh, I've spotted something in the market. I'm listening to my customers and how they might be struggling, so here's a service that's going to support them. I just think that is, if you can always do that in business, then that is how you stay relevant. I think it's awesome,
Anastasia Geneave (28:41):
And I think it's, especially for somebody like me who has jumped from job to job or business to business, looking for other opportunities and looking for ways to grow and change the business also keeps my brain happy.
Danielle Lewis (28:55):
Yes.
Anastasia Geneave (28:56):
So it's not to say I won't
Danielle Lewis (28:57):
Keep, that's important too, because business is a struggle sometimes. We've got to keep ourselves excited and into it.
Anastasia Geneave (29:05):
Exactly. Exactly. And if you're not feeling the love for what you're doing right now, take a look at what might be right next to it that's still related to it that you could love again.
Danielle Lewis (29:18):
Oh, I love it. That is the best advice ever. Okay. Speaking of advice, I always love to wrap up these podcasts with one last piece of advice for women in business. So reflecting on your time in business, what would be a piece of advice that you would give to another woman on her journey?
Anastasia Geneave (29:38):
Try and switch off the overthinking. You'll overthink things. You'll question a message that you've received and wonder if somebody's grumpy with you. You'll put something out into the world and in the first 24 hours, it won't get great results. So you'll start spiraling. Don't overthink it. Write it down if you have to, so you can go back to it later and then move on to something else for a while. Chances are it'll probably work out.
Danielle Lewis (30:10):
Oh my God, that is so true. And even if it doesn't, it's probably irrelevant the week later. Anyway, that is the best advice ever. Don't overthink it. I love it,
Anastasia Geneave (30:24):
And I know it because I'm very guilty of it myself.
Danielle Lewis (30:27):
Oh, you and me both. Anastasia, you are incredible. Thank you so much for sharing your time and your wisdom with the Spark community. Today's been a blast. Thank you.
Anastasia Geneave (30:41):
Thank you.
✨ Thank you to IP Australia for supporting the SPARK podcast and women in business ✨
