Local Business Marketing | #GetChatty
Hi I’m Arthur and I’m a marketer in Melbourne. I consult small businesses, local businesses, organisation, artists and creative professionals about their marketing strategies (social media, digital and events). During late 2020, I started this new series to help encouraging Melbournians & Sydney-siders to support their small to medium operations, at this stage I’m offering this project to businesses located in Windsor, Prahran, South Yarra, South Melbourne and Greater Melbourne, (also greater Sydney where I love and lived most of my life). This is a self-volunteering project and there will be no cost for businesses that’d like to take part, if you’re interested to take part please reach out to me here or DM me via my social media!
Chatty: Hi Anita how are you?
Anita: Hello Arthur how you doing?
Chatty: Not to bad, do you mind sharing with our audiences a bit about yourself?
Anita: Sure, sure, sure, so I’m Anita Van Rooyan I’m a confidence coach and a human behaviour expert. Which basically means I help people understand the weird stuff they do so that they can do things differently, if they choose too.
Chatty: That’s fantastic. And how did you meet Arthur the Chatty Curator?
Anita: I met you at a, an international student event that was organised by VicWise I was there talking about how to network, how to start the process of creating networks and how that can then also merge into that really challenging space sometimes of how to make friends!
Chatty: It is, It is, I think one of the biggest challenge is I work in social media but then at the same time that it looks so easy. But then making friends is another question. You might have thousand of people connected to you or liking your photos on instagram but then if you’re not actually communicating with other people with confidence and with personality if you made then.
Chatty: What Prompted you to start Confidence Hacking?
Anita: Well, as I said because I used to be the shyest person in the universe, like confidence was donuts right, It was absolutely like zero level. And over time I did a lot of work on myself. I realised that confidence is actually like an internal job, like it’s up to me and so did a lot of work on myself, started doing it by myself. You know trying different things it was sort of like the cha cha of personal development like two steps forward, one step back. Sometimes one step forward, 10 steps back! And over time I realised that a lot of people in the community have got a lot of challenges with confidence. And so I think about 5, 6 maybe 7 years ago I started, I went and learnt how to be a coach. I wanted like, people used to come and ask me about, you know can I get advice, can I help get your help on this and I decided that well all these people are asking me maybe I should actually get paid for it! Because I thought that I was pretty good at it. People kept coming back and asking me, maybe this was this place, this magical place of where something I’m really good at, something I can get paid for and something that I enjoy all of those kind of bits merging together to create
Anita: wow this could actually be something that is something!! So started doing that and was working initially with a lot of dancers and performers. Interesting that you know that you’re in that kind of performance space. Because a lot of performers have got a very shiny outside, glamourous, glitter fake eyelashes all that kind of stuff. But if you scratch the surface, a lot of them are very, very reserved very shy lacking a lot of confidence. But on the outside, and you know I guess on with social media, you would see that the outside is all very shiny but the person on the inside is; maybe the story is very, very different.
Anita: And so I started working with performers and dancers and that was really great. It was this whole thing of they needed it by they didn’t want to necessarily have it. They kind of, you know like there’s that whole difference between I know you know, yes ok i’ve got this shiny outside, but the inside is a challenge but as long as the shiny outside is still shiny and glossy that’s all that matters, and so it became, meant that my business became a big challenge and a kind of a lot of push. Fast forward, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah I decided that I would allow the performers to continue to contact me if they needed that help. But I would not be focusing on them as a business, like as a group for my business. And then I sat in the nothing for a while which was incredibly frightening of, ok, I’m no longer going to be focusing on working with performers and dancers, but I don’t know who i’m going to work with and that was incredibly frightening. Probably one of the most frightening things i’ve done, because I put a lot of time and energy and money and effort into working with dancers and performers and just to, like allow that to do that. And then sit in nothing, not knowing where like what was going to happen with my business where it was going to go, how I was going to make money, because like I have a mortgage and you know and it’s me, like my business is me. And it’s still, it is….
Chatty: It sounds like that the working with artists and performers had kind of like sow into the fabric of your business in the early stage, wasn’t it?
Anita: Most definitely. Absolutely it was, it was, it was the fabric of the business. It was very, very much that and you know like I was in, you know i’d spent a lot of time in dance world. Like I love latin dancing so I spent a lot of time in that world and you know to put your heart and soul and your energy and kind of like your business is your baby. You know I think business owners will recognize your business is your baby, and people were kind of saying “hey your baby’s cute but I don’t want to do anything with it”. Like it’s great and it’s lovely but, I don’t want to give it a hug, you know.
Chatty: Meanwhile I think my business is a bitchy one!
Anita: But your baby is beautiful right! Everybody’s business baby…
Chatty: yes…”
Anita: Everybody’s business baby, it’s my baby right! So it’s beautiful. And other people could see yes that it was helpful and it was useful but they didn’t necessarily see the need for it. Because they were shiny on the outside and that was ok. So I sat in this space of kind of nothing for a while and it was only, like I was meditating and I’ve started meditating I think probably for the last 2 years or something. Never thought that I would be a meditator. I think that’s a word never thought that I would meditate. Started meditating and out of, like nowhere I was meditating and it was like this question came to my head so why did you start, why did you start coaching in the first place? Just get back to the basics, why did you start, like what is your “why”. And that was like this switch that just flipped and I was, well I wanted to help people with life skills. I had a number of friends who, you know 35 still didn’t know how to cook or look after themselves, you know they, had a couple of friends who were like 35, 40 still living at home with mum looking everything for them. And, and I was like I want to help people with these life skills so that they can become independent adults. And from that, like I literally I finished my meditation, I came into this room, my office aka my spare bedroom and got onto the internet and just went “student accommodation providers in Melbourne”.
Anita: And literally the first one that came up got on the phone and said who looks after your student well-being and resilience? And they said, nobody. And I went, well that’s what I do. Like it was a very awkward conversation, because I hadn’t even worked out, like what I was offering, anything, I just kind of was like, look that’s what I do. And so organised to meet with them, they gave me, the person was so generous with their time gave me a lot of information as they were talking I was formulating things in my head, offerings that I could give to them on the fly. And rang the next one and did exactly the same thing and rang the next one and the next one and the next one and realised that there was actually a really huge need here.
Chatty: It is and look I mean ultimately it’s always starting a conversation, it’s a little bit like, it’s always about saying hi. I mean what’s the worst thing they can do? Just say no and hang up…
Antia: Exactly!
Chatty: I mean in the workspace that they can’t swear at you, I mean hope not!
Antia: But even if they do, like who cares right! Like they weren’t the right person but maybe the next person was.
Chatty: Exactly
Anita: And it’s so interesting that even with, you know the connections and stuff that that I created like that first person that I had that great conversation with that business”
“Anita: still has not got me to come into do any workers yet but they were…
Chatty: huh?
Anita: totally, but they were, like that conversation totally changed my life.
Chatty: It’s amazing…
Anita: They haven’t done any work with me the lady I spoke to has now moved She’s now working another student accommodation property they haven’t done any work with me either. But that conversation was absolutely pivotal in me changing my business.
Chatty: Because I was,
Chatty: I started my business back in 2010 and then I, when it get to a point a couple of years in that I was like, it’s a little bit like the original market dried up if you may, and then I just start ringing around different, because I’m, I’m from Sydney, so I was, I personally I enjoyed doing a little road trip to regional NSW and so I just start calling people, start calling different places or like you know, and then I ended up getting a project amongst the tourism, Tourism NSW and then a few wineries a few golf courses and then, and then the next thing you know I got a referral to work at conferences and expo’s and which is much bigger and they were held at like Melbourne’s MCEC or Canberra Convention Centre and Sydney Convention Centre and it was like, that yes. So starting with, Hello…
Anita: Yes, and it’s, you know like it’s that whole thing I think of just starting like there’s so many reasons why you can’t pick up the call and make a phone call, I mean reasons in our head right? There’s so many reasons because, oh maybe they’re busy, maybe they’re this, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe. And you know I’ve devised this thing that I call the courage bucket and I never knew that I had this courage bucket i’ve discovered that by my, by my right foot was this courage bucket that I never knew was there. Sometimes you just need to take a little bit of this courage and go like that, just splash on your face. And sometimes you need to pick up that whole courage bucket like the ice bucket challenge and just go… and just completely dump over it your head. And that’s what you need to do sometimes and especially I think in business. I think we, we start becoming, lazy not the right word, comfortable, comfortable we start getting comfortable in, oh well this is our clients and this is what it and this is who it is and that’s it.
Chatty: It’s a little bit like I think the universe always give us a gift of your first bunch of clients or the first bunch of market. But it’s always up to you to discover the second, the third and then before you you spend your whole life working on it and…
Anita: and part of the joy is that discovery you know, like I think, you know covid sucks right, let’s just be like covid sucks full stop. And, and it’s also allowed business owners to really look at their businesses in a very different way and the ones that haven’t done that are the ones I think that will probably fall by the wayside. Because we need to start looking at, at client, you know customers in a different way because you never know all of a sudden the customers that you have may all of a sudden, the backside may fall out of that industry for whatever reason and having different places that you can go to having a bit of diversity within that or diversity within yourself. You know we have all these amazing skills that sometimes we forget about.
Thank you so much Anita for taking part in this Get Chatty about your local businesses series, and do you mind if someone’s looking for some help with the coaching or the confidence helping such as, how are they going to find you?
Anita: sure, sure, sure, so they can contact me at anitavanryan.com. I’m sure you’ll put a link somewhere and you know on Instagram and Facebook and all that, all those social media kind of channels, all the jazz, because you know you’ve got to be everywhere right! And, and the other one, the other place is I created a couple of online courses specifically for people who are struggling with stuff around covid. Mental wellbeing stuff I don’t even like to use that word because urrgh, mental urrgh everything! A webs, on a website called social-wellbeing.com and, there may or may not be daggy dancing at the end of every 15 minute lesson. There totally is, there is because dancing just helps with everything right! So yah, so there’s a bunch of different ways people can connect.
Anita can be contacted via:
☎️ 0437 075 593
? [email protected]
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/anitavanrooyen
Instagram: @ConfidenceHackers
Facebook: groups/ConfidenceHackers
If you are / know of any Melbourne based businesses, artists or organisations that may interested to take part, please make sure to read this post then request a meeting with me!
#GetChatty #TeamArt2Public #SupportLocalBusiness #smallbusiness #WithMe
Follow me on social every Wednesday & Saturday:
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/arthur-chan-9433338a
Facebook: www.facebook.com/chattycurator
Instagram: www.instagram.com/chattycurator
