#036 Chatterkick Is Turning Ten!

Ten years ago, CEO and founder, Beth Trejo, quit her job and took a chance on social media. All with an 18-month-old at home and pregnant, we might add. Since then, she has brought on dozens of creative souls who have helped make Chatterkick what it is today. The Chatterfam has enjoyed the freedom to do what we all love most: building human connections all while helping companies grow through social media marketing, digital media, and content creation. Cheers to another ten years!

In this episode, Beth answers questions that her daughter, Lola, asks her about what it was like to start Chatterkick ten years ago and what is in store for the future.

Biggest Takeaways From This Episode

Take the chance on your dreams, no matter how impossible they seem. You will either fail or succeed, but at least you tried.

Starting a business can be hard and scary.
Hustling is not a bad thing.
Things are constantly changing on social media.
Make good choices.
Chatterkick’s goal going forward is to make a difference in the world.

Message From Beth

“And now, a word from our sponsor...” or in this case, our founder.

Want your question to be answered on the generation social media podcast? Tell us what it is here!

Transcript

This text below is a straight up audio transcript of the episode. In our humble opinion, we think the audio podcast sounds much better in its original form. We have not edited the transcription below so there are indeed some grammar errors (some quite funny, in-fact).

All right, welcome back to generation social media. I am Beth Trejo, CEO and founder of Chatterkick, and we took a little hiatus from generation social media, but I'm so excited to be back today. I have a very special guest, Miss Lola Trejo. Lola is my nine year old daughter and we thought this would be very fitting since two thousand twenty two is Chatterkick, 10 year anniversary and Lola will be 10 this year. And before I let her start drilling me with questions, I thought I would tell a little bit of the story of why Lola's birthday was so special to the starting and forming of Chatterkick because I first decided to quit my job way before I found out I was pregnant with Lola. I had a son at home at the time. He was 18 months old and I decided, You know what? I'm going to start my own business. I'm going to go out there and I'm going to do it. And so I quit my job, which I loved, and I decided I was going to start a business, and then I found out I was pregnant with Lola.

Beth: [00:01:23] And so I didn't know she was a girl at that time, but ended up having a very complicated pregnancy. So imagine starting a business and going to the doctor every day. It was also challenging because people didn't really know if social media was a business model, and they kind of thought I could just do it on the couch from home. So I hid my pregnancy from most of our customers and people that we were working with and just kind of wore loose clothing because I felt that I wanted to prove it to everybody that I could do it. So I ended up having Lola early. She was four pounds and a tiny little thing in the NyQuil, and just definitely a challenge to starting a new business. I wouldn't have traded it. She was an extraordinary good baby. She was very calm and was easy to work next to. So she was a great coworker. And so ever since then, we've done a little bit of a tribute to Lola, and Lola has interviewed me or I've interviewed her on our cheddar cake anniversaries. So Lola, I'm going to let you ask questions and I'm all yours.

Lola: [00:02:26] Ok, so this is the first question I have for you. Where did the idea of starting Chatterkick come from?

Beth: [00:02:34] Well, first of all, I saw a problem, and I think that's the best thing to think about when you're starting a business. The biggest problem when I was out visiting with businesses is that they were forming relationships with their partners, with their customers, and they didn't have a way to take that online. This was all happening in real life. But Facebook, social media, all of those things were kind of becoming important at that time. And I saw a problem. How are they going to do this? They don't have time, and they don't have the knowledge to take these relationships online. Enter social media. I happen to have a background in that, and I thought that I could help those business owners with their problems if we could just connect those relationships and help their businesses grow. And so that's what we did, and that's when I started Chatterkick.

Lola: [00:03:24] Ok. This is the second question. Were you afraid to start Chatterkick?

Beth: [00:03:30] You know, I was afraid many times, and I think it was one of those things that when you quit your job and you don't have your next paycheck, you kind of have to figure out, Well, where's the money going to come from? I was fortunate I won. I think it was $100 off of a Swimming With the Sharks competition here locally, and it bought me a laptop, which is what I needed to start my business. And from there, I just kind of hustled and found new business and sold our packages and delivered our services and grew it from there. So I definitely had fear in many instances, but I think that also motivated me and made me want to work hard and make sure that I was doing a really good job for customers.

Lola: [00:04:20] How things changed over the years.

Beth: [00:04:23] So things have changed a lot. I'll kind of break that down into two components. First of all, social media how if things change in social media in the last 10 years? Well, for one, the platforms have gotten a lot more complicated. Facebook used to be a lot simpler than it is today. And now we have lots more platforms from Pinterest, Twitter to YouTube to Snapchat to TikTok. You know those? All right? And so there's a lot of platforms, and so it's hard for businesses to figure out what platform should I be on? How many times a week should I be posting? How do I make sure I'm hitting my business goals and growing my business and all of those questions, even though they are more complicated today? It's still the same that business owners were trying to figure out 10 years ago. So I like to say we kind of grew up with the social media platforms, and we're still trying to figure out how to solve those problems. But we just put the puzzle together a little bit differently today than we did 10 years ago.

Lola: [00:05:23] Do you have any advice on being a CEO and in managing your personal life?

Beth: [00:05:29] Man, these are hard questions, Lola. So that my advice is limited that at times I think it was really interesting for me growing a business while also you and your brother were young. And so I was trying to figure out how to be a mom and how to be a boss at the same time and the leader. And so some of those things really did connect. They made sense and I could help. Instead of just telling people what to do, I could help guide them in making good choices and help them grow and help them be their best self. So those are kind of things did connect, but I know I spent a lot of time at work when you were little, and I still spend a lot of time at work today, right? And so sometimes that is hard because I want to be there. I want to see all the things. I want to spend time with my friends, but I also love what I do. So it's a hard balance. I don't ever think it's an actual balance. I think it's more of a do you have a good day at work? Then your day at home is good, and if you have a good day at home, then your work is good.

Lola: [00:06:35] What are your goals for the future?

Beth: [00:06:39] Wow. So I think one of the things in the next 10 years that I really want to focus on, I think a lot of businesses are trying to figure this out is just how as a business, we can make a difference in the world like a real impact, whether that's on our employees life, our future employees life or how we can help people who may not have had the same opportunities as other communities and really make a difference. We've done really good as a company in terms of being able to train team members and help facilitate entrepreneurship. And so I want to do more of that in the next 10 years and help our clients grow and develop just as we have.

Lola: [00:07:23] That's all the questions I have for

Beth: [00:07:25] That's all of them, well, that was really great. Thank you so much for helping us today, Lola, and we appreciate you having here and happy 10th birthday in July and we'll celebrate here in February at Chatterkick. All right, make sure and follow us this season. We have some amazing guests planned and we're really excited to dive deep into some of these issues on social media and just where we're at in the world with these platforms. So if you want to connect with us, we are on all the social channels generation social media podcast and please share this episode with your friend if you find it valuable. We are always looking for additional guests and for you to spread the word.

inspiration, BusinessChatterkickFebruary 4, 2022internal team, Anniversary