Imagine packing up your life and moving to a new city every few years with
your family and potentially having to reinvent yourself every time.
Sounds daunting, right?
I know.
Now, imagine building a thriving business out of your passion for crafting, only
to pivot completely into an entirely new field of digital marketing.
Can you imagine that?
Because that is exactly what today's guest, Bonnie Conrad, did.
In this episode, you'll hear how Bonnie, a military spouse, went from creating
farmhouse tables in the middle of the Mojave desert to becoming a sought
after digital marketing strategist.
She's here to share her secrets on balancing a thriving business while
constantly moving, understanding the importance of flexibility and how to
turn every challenge into an opportunity.
If it sounds inspiring, you are absolutely right, it is.
Because Bonnie's story was definitely one that I loved
hearing about and you will too.
Stay tuned as we uncover Bonnie's incredible journey and our actionable
tips for anyone looking to pivot their career, get a fresh start,
or even start your own business.
You ready?
Let's dive in.
Hello friend, I'm Kendra and you've tuned into the Invisible to Invincible
podcast where passionately driven business owners share their journeys
from hidden gems to industry leaders.
Together, we'll uncover the secrets, mental shifts, and visibility in
marketing strategies that turn these hidden gems into undeniable forces.
So hit that subscribe button and let's dive in.
Bonnie, welcome.
Thank you so much for being here.
Thank you so much for having me as a guest.
I'm super excited.
Absolutely.
I was just so excited because there's a lot of things about your background
and what you're doing now that I think really resonate with a lot of
people, specifically military spouses.
So can you talk a little bit about your business and what you do today?
And then we'll back up and talk about how you got there.
Yeah, absolutely.
So currently I am a social media and digital marketing strategist
with Innately, and I help our clients grow with digital marketing.
And that can be anything from email marketing, social media,
their website, any of those.
facets within digital marketing.
That is what we do for our clients.
it's always so impressive because there's so many people that do digital
marketing, but they don't always look at the pieces of how they all work together.
they only look at it in a silo of like, Oh, I only do SEO or I only do
PPC or paid search or what have you.
So as a business owner, being able to look at the bigger picture and
help others I think is really key.
Can you talk a little bit about your background and how you got there?
Absolutely.
I am a military spouse, like you mentioned.
I have been following my husband around for 14 years now and
it's been a super fun journey.
I originally started when, my husband and I met, I was in the medical
field and thought, this is what I'm going to do for the rest of my life.
I'm going to work as a medical assistant.
every time we move, I'm going to get a new job at a clinic or a doctor's office.
by our third move, I got sick of being the new person.
And I finally, our previous studio station in California, I found my
passion of building and crafting.
I actually started a really great, successful business in our house I
would build furniture like big farmhouse kitchen tables and entryway tables
and five foot signs I would paint.
it became the joke that I was the Hobby Lobby of the desert because where
we were located, there was nothing around us I realized how hard it is
as a small business solopreneur to figure out your marketing on top of.
Building your business.
it became a solo passion of mine.
when we moved this recent time, I started as a virtual assistant and thought
I could do this as my own business, marketing really became a passion of mine.
I, was awarded a full ride scholarship to finish my bachelor's degree at
Southern New Hampshire University.
So I'm almost finished with that.
I want to move on and get my master's, my number one goal is to help my fellow
military spouses teach them how to market their small businesses in a way that
resonates with their target audience.
Also what a target audience is.
If you're not familiar with marketing, you have no idea that that should be a thing.
In a way that fits in with your schedule and your family, because we're so busy
and usually we're the ones that are 99 percent of everything at the house.
having a business, but also maintaining the household and making
sure that everything's kosher here.
So our service members can focus on what they need to do.
it just came to me like a really big passion of mine.
And so I started with that.
And then, James, who I actually kind of merged with, with Innately, we
decided, Hey, let's grow this together.
He has 40 plus years of marketing experience and I have the passion and
energy to do all these fun things.
I feel like I've learned more from him than I have in college.
I joke it's a paid internship because I'm working, but I'm also helping our clients.
So it's been a fun transition And so I absolutely love it and I cannot wait
to help more people along the way.
I love that.
And your energy and passion just comes through when it comes to the topic.
I was saying earlier to a business owner that I always feel bad for them
because exactly what you said, like a lot of people start their business
now because they love what they do.
And then all of a sudden they find themselves deep in
conversations, trying to figure out what SEO is or how to apply it.
And all they want to do is do what they love.
my goal was to figure out how to do that in a way that's easy for someone
who was like, I don't know what digital marketing is, but I know I need to do it.
And this is how I can do it in an easy way that can still work for my business.
For people who might not be familiar with what it means to be a military spouse,
can you talk a little bit about that?
Because I think it's a really unique.
Position to be in.
Yeah, absolutely.
So I didn't know what I was getting into.
my husband and I actually met.
Yeah, we met, 15 days later we were engaged.
So we did the whole like, what you don't do in the military.
And then, like a month and a half later we got married and I,
moved from Michigan to Georgia.
Six months later with our first duty station and I remember pulling into
Fort Stewart in Georgia and we got to the hotel and I sat on the bed and I
just started bawling my eyes out and I'm like, had a pity party of like, I'm
not going to have any friends and I'm not going to know anybody my husband
still laughs about it now because I'm the friendliest person that you'll meet.
Oh, you talk to me.
You're my friend now.
we joke about that as military spouses that we speed date our friends because
we're like, you're my neighbor.
I also need you to be my emergency contact for my child.
we've got to fill out these papers and we just got here and I know no one.
it's an interesting lifestyle.
we get to meet so many people and learn about different, cultures and
ways of life as we move all over.
it's a huge advantage to be a military spouse because we get
so many cool opportunities.
But on the, career side of things, it can be really hard.
that, really resonates with me because I saw this need to fill my
bucket, but also to, bring in a little bit extra, like, shopping money,
but extra income into the house.
And it's so hard when you move so often to keep a career alive.
I have friends that have their doctorate and their lawyers and their nurses and
they have all these high performing degrees that they can't do anything
with because of licensing the military has gotten really great with helping
military spouses with their licensing and all of that, but it's still a struggle.
And so my biggest passion, right now is.
having the conversation with other military spouses or stay at home
parents It's those parents that have stayed home for 15 years
with their kids who used to work.
And now we're like, I want to go back into the workforce, but I
don't have any job experience.
I always want to shake them and say you do, you just have to look
at the things that you are good at and passionate about and turn those
into something that you can do.
so it kind of has became like a little pet project of mine of
Pulling that out of people being like, what do you really want to do?
And how can you do that from home or in a way that fits with your family?
Absolutely.
I saw this a lot when I was teaching.
I taught undergrad and graduate marketing classes at a local university
most of the students were military, either active duty or veterans.
sometimes spouses would come in, but I even saw it with, military people
who were getting out after five years.
After 10 years and they were in the military and then trying
to figure out what to do.
a lot of times they were starting their own business because that's why
they were trying to get their degree.
and it was looking at, there's so many good ideas, but they were really,
really good, like with anything, right?
Like you're really, really good with this.
And then when you try and pivot, there's a lot of mindset challenges
and knowledge, because it can be so overwhelming how much there is to learn.
Yeah, I feel like you have to think about growth being messy.
It can't be perfect and you just have to try it.
I said this yesterday to someone, just because you make a decision on something
doesn't mean it has to be permanent.
I thought I would be in the medical field forever.
I thought I was going to go to nursing school.
I thought I was just going to follow up with nurse practitioner school or PA.
I realized I hated working in the medical field.
doing such a huge pivot is scary, but also, freeing.
I remember the last, Office I worked in, I walked out cause I was so unhappy and I
called my husband and I was like, I just quit my job and he was like, thank God.
that's a big mindset thing just because you make the decision
does not mean it's permanent.
You can always change your mind.
It's funny how much ego and worry about what other people will think
can get wrapped up in that decision
Yeah.
I ask questions about risk taking and how you felt about starting your own business.
what was the mindset and the decision you made to start your first business,
which sounds really impressive and fun.
And then shift into the virtual assistant and now your current role.
it became, out of opportunity.
I wanted a farmhouse kitchen table for our house.
I went to all the different furniture stores and I was like, this is crazy
expensive I could build this myself.
So I built a kitchen table and it was beautiful.
I built the benches for it.
I had someone come in my house and she was like, where did you get this?
and I was like, oh, I built it.
And then she's like, how much would you charge to build this for me?
And I was like, I don't know.
I've never done that.
And it went out of control.
I started building.
I would build things.
list them and they would be gone within an hour.
I told, new neighbors, I was like, I'm really sorry.
I get lots of traffic during the day because I have people
just picking up orders.
I was very conscious of not turning the table saw on at 10 o'clock at night.
Cause we're very close to each other, but it was kind of like out of
opportunity of like, I love doing this.
And the community loves it too.
So I just did it.
when the army decided to move us from California to Texas.
I knew I wanted to do something that I could move with me, but also, that
was flexible enough to where if my husband has to go somewhere or I
want to go travel, I can literally just take my laptop with me and go.
And so I loved the virtual side of things.
And I tried working for a company as a virtual assistant I am very
quick to be like, let's do this.
I was like, I could run my own business.
It can't be that hard.
And I loved it.
I think the military has given me the opportunity of having that
mindset of I'm just going to try it.
See what happens.
I also have a super supportive husband.
he's like, yeah, you should do that.
Let's just, let's figure this out.
So I feel like that is a big part of it too.
It's always interesting hearing all the different Mindsets
and shifts that can happen.
and that's part of why I love this podcast.
So I get to meet so many people that have interesting insights and interesting,
just like the ability to take action.
Because there's so many people and I've been in those stages myself, right?
Where you're like, I think about it and then I get stuck in analysis paralysis
I had parents who were business owners and they really struggled.
sometimes there's a danger in knowing what the negative side can look like.
I've also seen a lot of military spouses struggle because they
don't have that adaptability and flexibility and they, not fully
realized what they were getting into.
And then when they got into it really struggled because they didn't know
what they didn't know, and didn't know how to respond to it in a way that
you have, which is really admirable.
Yeah, and my goal is to like, I love sharing my story because I want to
inspire other people who have said like, Oh, maybe I should do this.
And I'm like, do it.
What's the worst that could happen?
It doesn't work out, then try something else.
But you have to easily pivot.
I'm working on a book about this for, I want to like, I need to finish it.
As a military spouse, it's not just follow your spouse around, take care
of the kids, take care of the house.
It's like you can do anything, reinvent yourself every time you move.
I've joked that last time we moved, I was going to sell used cars you just never
know what you want to do or how great it's going to work out until they try it.
What a freeing ability to be whoever you want to be when you move, right?
Like a lot of people, I like a fresh start and being able to be
like, okay, this is who I was.
Now this is who I'm going to be.
for people that might not be moving and getting those fresh starts, do you have
any advice for someone who might want to figure out how to create one, even though
they're staying put, they might be stuck where they're at or love where they're at.
They are tired of, doing the same thing over and over again.
I always say, look at your skills that you've acquired along the way.
Look at the different things that you know you can do.
Also look at the stuff that you hate doing.
Like me personally, I don't like accounting.
It's just not my thing.
And I know that I will never want to do that.
So looking at the things that you really like to do and the things you
don't like to do, and then looking at what skills that you've acquired
along the way, like, do you know how to do all the Microsoft stuff?
soft skills are huge.
if you have worked in, Retail.
You have great customer service.
That's a huge thing.
If you're just a nice person too, that goes a long way.
you can't teach anybody to be nice and you can't teach them to be responsible.
I feel like that's two great things that you have to push forward and
put those number one, because you can teach anybody how to use a program.
You cannot teach them to be nice.
so looking at all those things and kind of looking within you
what are you passionate about?
Do you really love to cook and want to share that?
i've seen so many People that are like I love to bake and I want to share it
with the community they start Baking for everyone and it could go either way.
But just figuring those out for yourself and really taking that
deep dive, I think is huge.
And along your point, you actually represent that when you said, I
want to be able to be flexible and travel and do things with my family.
And you can't do that if you're trying to lug a table saw.
I love woodworking and I still do it sometimes.
I'll pull out the saws in the driveway and apologize to my neighbors.
There's just sawdust everywhere.
but that's not portable for me I needed something that was portable that I could
still do if I want to jump on a plane and go to San Diego for the weekend.
I want to be able to still take that with me.
And so this was what I wanted to do.
And it's not for everybody.
But it's an option.
it comes down to what are your values and our values change, like your values
when you're living in the middle of mojave might be different than when
you're living in texas or Kentucky or California being able to shift and hold
true to those values, because if you had moved and tried to keep doing what you're
doing, because you knew you were good at, you would have felt stuck and probably
started to resent it at a certain point.
Yeah, I feel like that was a big part of not doing woodworking
anymore it started out as a project and became a career for five years.
when we moved, I was, highly requested.
I do really custom work I still do it now for presents.
I would take handwritten recipes from like family recipes.
I actually just did one for my, cousin for her wedding.
It took her grandmother's handwritten recipe and put it on a cutting board.
those are such a cool gift.
And they're timeless.
I was highly requested for those, but it kind of became a Like resenting,
like, I don't want to do this right now.
so I knew that wasn't what I wanted to do when we moved to Texas.
And the fact that you were able to quickly identify that you could start
your own business and help others is really important and impactful.
starting a business, sounds scary.
you just gotta be messy with it.
You'll figure it out.
Like my thing was, I'll figure it out along the way.
I'll make my mistakes.
learn from it and then move on.
But you can't dwell on the mistakes.
I think that's a huge piece of advice yes, you make your mistake, figure
out what went wrong and then move on.
don't do it again.
Learn from it.
It's easy for people to forget that starting your own business and doing
anything we do is not a straight line.
it's not always going to be that cool chart, increased revenue
that everyone wants to see or increased happiness or success.
We all define success differently.
We all define what our goals are differently.
and it's never a clear path It's always messy.
I've had messy interactions the past two years and I
learned from them and moved on.
Yeah.
So what is it when you're able to work with clients, in digital marketing
capacity, what is it that you love the most with working with them?
I can easily answer this.
I love being able to take the idea they have and connect that, in the
digital world most small businesses or even bigger businesses, can't
afford to hire huge chief marketing officers or anything like that.
So I love being able to connect that and then have the clients
see that and be excited with them when it all starts working.
Yeah.
It's funny you say that because I've worked with clients in the past where
Put the strategy together, get them started, train their team And there's
just no energy or excitement about it.
They're like, cool.
Now we can check this box
And I have found that that energy exchange of like, I spent so much
time on this and I got you the perfect solution to start out with, and it'll
evolve as your business evolves.
But like, aren't you excited about it?
Let's do this.
And when they're not, I'm like, we're getting smarter about
who I bring on as clients.
That excitement and that energy can go a long way and it goes a
long way towards their success.
I have friends that have small businesses within the community
and I tell them you can say no.
If you feel like this client isn't for you, then you say it in a
professional way, but you can say no, you don't have to do everything.
it's hard as a small business owner to say no, because you're like, I
don't know when the next client's going to come through the door, or
I don't know when the next person's going to reach out to me for an order.
But if you don't say no, You're going to burn out faster and you're going to start
resenting your business or what you do.
not only am I working for this client I don't love I'm doing things that take
more out of me than give back to me.
Setting those boundaries is huge.
Absolutely.
Are you working primarily with military spouses?
Are you working with, like, what kind of businesses do you work with?
we have a huge facet of different businesses that we work with.
we offer services that are 49 a month for a business to have a
professionally designed website, that is actually going to work for them we
take care of the backend of things.
We maintain it, we secure it.
If plugins are not working.
We will fix it, we answer the phone.
So I think that's huge when it comes to a website company if you need
help, we are there to help you.
seven figure companies that have very large websites that are very intensive.
It's a range of different clients and I love being able to just help
whoever comes through the door.
I've had clients come to me in the past and they're like, we got this website.
It was built by this company and, pick a country and they're not doing it right.
then you're trying to get ahold of somebody to figure it out.
And then they're trying to hold the website hostage.
we actually answer the phone.
We have amazing content specialists that know what they're doing.
and are friendly.
they are really great at what they do.
And we love being able to help everyone that we can and help
them get a professionally designed website within their budget.
Cause sometimes you can't afford a huge, Budget, but that's why we offer
the stuff for the smaller businesses what is your role in the organization?
So I help with the digital marketing, social media strategies.
and when it comes to sharing their message on their social media and
building that strategy and kind of helping communicate the fact that,
Social media is not your business.
It's just a tool and figuring out how you use it.
I love the reference of like Target has a cash register to help me spend
all of my money Social media is just a tool just like the register at target.
Getting that through and fixing the misconception is, 50 percent of what I do.
Because that can be a hard thing of also taking off that overwhelm of
like, I have to be on social media, I have to post every day, and making
them realize You need to do what aligns with your goals, not what
the influencer is telling you to do.
I think that I personally love the sigh of relief when you're like,
you don't have to be everywhere.
Don't try to boil the ocean.
Pick one.
Let's focus on that.
where your audience is, is where you need to be.
if your audience is over 40 or over 60, they're not on TikTok.
you don't have to be there, even though everyone's like, you gotta be there.
They're probably not there.
So finding your audience and being present where they are is big.
it's been so fun to watch the evolution of social media, and it's really challenging
to see how it's going and how people are using it and what's happening next.
you can see exactly who's using AI for their content.
I love using it, but don't copy and paste straight out of AI.
you have to edit and then edit and then edit the crap out of it.
use it as a brainstorming, not as the final, And I've managed
to develop some pretty amazing.
prompts, which will get it close.
But even with all of my testing of prompts and trying to figure out what's going
to work best, you still have to edit.
we got really deep in a rabbit hole one day building a custom GPT on chat GPT
that will only pull content from our blog.
it will prompt specific questions for our content specialists
like, what are the keywords?
What are the topic?
What's the goal of this?
Like, is it going to the blog?
Is it to download a freebie?
What's the goal?
And then it creates a great caption but you still have to read review and edit it.
I love being able to use it for specific things, but like you
said, it's the brainstorming.
It's the outlining and even that you need to edit.
And then it's like, okay, what can you do and how can I help others
use it more effectively as well?
it does save a lot of time.
Absolutely.
sometimes my brain is fried and I'm like, I need another word for struggling.
Please help me.
I need to double check to make sure I didn't miss anything in this process.
it's been amazing.
Bonnie.
It's been such a pleasure.
I love that our conversation's been kind of all over.
Cause I think that it's very indicative of how more and more entrepreneurs are.
Creating their businesses, right?
Like creating on your passions, creating on what you're good at, focusing on
what you want to be doing and looking at how to set those boundaries.
You've given a ton of great advice.
Do you have any last words?
I do.
when you're starting out with your business, involve your family.
If you have family at home, involve them, talk to them about.
Like this is my idea.
This is what I want to do.
maybe they want to be involved.
when I was building, my husband was my sanding specialist.
He would come out and he would sand stuff for me.
He knows how to build and he knows how to do all that, but he would
come out and do sanding and my boys would come out and they'd help out.
Make it a family affair because then they're more supportive and
they're going to be more excited for you share your goals with them.
If you are like, I have a goal of building 10 tables this month.
They're going to hold you to it, especially when they're younger.
If I grow up being like, mom, did you do that today?
It says on the fridge, you're going to do that.
setting your goals, but like sharing them with your family because they're
going to hold you accountable.
And if you don't have that, your friends.
Share your goals with your friends and be like, I need you to hold me
accountable because sometimes my ADHD lets my ideas just fly out the window.
Yes, exactly.
It's such a strong, powerful example that you're setting for your kids.
That's huge they see that you're going after your goals and it helps them kind
of open their eyes to like, what can I do?
Yeah.
No, it's funny.
I was talking earlier that my parents had a lawn and garden business for 26 years.
They kept it open for that long, but it was constantly a struggle.
A lot of times it felt very resentful.
It was, seven days a week, all hours of the night
And day, I've had my business since 2016.
to this day, they still say, I can't believe you have your own business.
it's the opposite of what I want to hear sometimes.
Me trying to explain to my mom what I do.
I was like, Oh, I do digital marketing.
She's like, I don't know what that means.
I had an aha moment when we were in Michigan a couple of weeks ago.
I saw her scrolling on her phone.
And then I saw her stop on a video.
And I was like, mom, that is what I do.
I figure out why you stopped on that video and do the analytics on it.
I help my clients figure out Why their audience stops on a
video and then replicate that.
She's like, Oh, okay.
I get that.
Cause still digital wasn't even on her radar.
It was like, do you see that billboard?
I put that there, that TV ad, I put that there.
If you use the internet invoicing your clients, And now she's better, it's
so funny trying to explain some of this stuff to people, because you're
like, we're just starting small, she's like, that's a perfect explanation.
And then my husband's like, wow.
That's a really good explanation of that.
I was like, it came to me when I was just sitting here.
That's amazing, Bonnie.
It's been a pleasure.
Thank you so much for joining us.
I'll put all of the links so people can find you in the show notes, but just in
case, if anyone's tuned in and they don't have the show notes in front of them, can
you tell them where they can find you?
they can find me on LinkedIn.
Just search Bonnie Conrad and my smiling face will be there
or you can go to innately.
com and we will be there to help you out.
And those of you tuning in, I can't wait to hear back from you about this episode.
And remember, we are all about helping you manage your career and
business and not the other way around.
Till next time.
Thanks.