Introducing - the Sales and Marketing Bundle for Aviation Startups and Side Hustles

We put together the tools and resources we wish we’d had in our earlier adventures (!) with startups and side hustles. And packaged it conveniently to help you succeed.

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JG56EwevRdQ[/embedyt]

Paula Williams: Hey, welcome to this week’s episode. I am Paula Williams

John Williams: And I am John Williams.

Paula: And we are ABCI and ABCI’s mission is…

John: To help all you ladies and gentlemen out there in aviation world sell more of your products and services.

Paula: Absolutely. So, we have had a couple of episodes where we have talked about startups and side hustles.

We talked about my experiences taking care of high-end properties and horses and dogs and animals and things like that and John’s side hustle or startup experience.

John: Yeah, I jumped in with both feet and paid the bills for two or three years.

Paula: Right. And then we had an episode where we talked about a whole bunch of different ideas. So hopefully there is one or more that appeal to you. And if you are in the aviation industry and want to start a side hustle or a startup, there are a ton of different great opportunities for you. It is just a matter of picking one and putting it together into something that hopefully you will love even more than being somebody’s employee.

John: Exactly.

Paula: Some of us are just not cut out to be employed except by clients, right?

John: Uh-huh.

Paula: Okay. So, we put together a bundle of services for startups and side hustles in the aviation industry. What it includes is a number of things that we wish that we had when we started our businesses, some of which worked and some of which didn’t. When they didn’t work out, it was usually because we didn’t have enough customers and usually because we weren’t doing enough sales and marketing at the time.

What this includes is six different workshops that we sell separately to different people for different reasons. You can always go and get our strategy planning and budget workshop. Whether you are working for a big company or a small one, those are things that have worksheets and other things that are really helpful for you and you can just go do that if that is all you need. That is fantastic. But if you are in a situation where you are doing a startup, you need a lot of things to happen fairly quickly and you don’t have a lot of time. So, what we want to do is make this as easy as possible to get up and running as quickly as possible.

Starter Web Site

So, the first thing we do is a starter website, and a lot of people think, “Well, I could just use social media. I don’t really need a website in 2021. I don’t really need a website nowadays.” The problem with that is that the social media, you are not going to have as much control over the way that things are portrayed. The social media companies are not in business for you. They are in business for themselves. So if they change their rules or anything else, you are stuck with what they have, right?

John: Yeah, that means they eliminated your source of whatever you put on social media. You got no backup.

Paula: Exactly. Or if they cancel your account, and this has happened with a few people that we know. Something has happened to their social media account whether it was an accident with them or they hired somebody and something went wrong or whatever the situation was and their account actually got deleted or canceled or something got disabled from their social media account. This is a third party that you don’t have any control over and there is usually no recourse if something goes badly. If you have a website, then you have backups and you have control over this real estate. Actually, a lot of companies that you are going to want to do business with and a lot of people that you are going to do business with are not going to consider you a real company unless you have a website and you just had an incident with that just recently, right?

John: Yeah. They are business consulting it for a client and they want to talk with one of the larger mainframe companies in the world. When I got to the [inaudible] we need a website to prove that you are a business. I said, “Say what?” Really, that is not how you prove somebody’s business, but that is what everybody thinks these days.

Paula: Right. If they can’t find you on the web, you are not real, right?

John: That is what I was told.

Paula: Yeah. So, what we do is with a five-to-eight-page website that includes the basic information about your company. It is going to be a beautiful aviation website, of course, because this is what we do for Aviation companies. The fact that we are in the aviation industry we have a lot to work with that is beautiful. So, we put this together for you and with you. We help you design it. We are not finished until you are happy. We make sure that this is something that is going to represent your company in a way that you are going to be happy and proud of. So, it is super simple because you are a startup, we want to keep the costs low and everything else.

Company Social Media Profiles

We also put together your company’s social profiles on all of those social media. Now, in spite of everything I just said about social media, they are a great way to find audiences that are already there about a particular topic. So, if you are into agricultural aviation in Indiana or the VIP aviation in Los Angeles or the fracking world of the Midwest or whatever it is that you are into, there are groups of people that are already assembled on Facebook or Instagram or YouTube or some other social media that you have access to by just putting together these profiles and making yourself known to those groups.

John: You just don’t want that to be your primary thrust.

Paula: Exactly. So, the ideal thing is to publish materials on your website, and then ‘syndicate’ is the word that we like to use in the aviation industry, but it just means copy what we just did on your website to your social media profiles so that you are showing up in all of those places in formats you can control and in formats that get you the reach that you want. Right?

John: Yes.

Prospecting Workshop

Paula: All right. The next thing is prospecting. How do you find people that are good prospects for your product or service? And if you are new to that part of the industry or anything else and there is some research that you are going to have to do to get a top ten list put together and to start reaching out to those folks. So this will help you put together your top 10, your top 100, your top 500, your top 5,000. Depending on your business, you may need one or all of those kinds of lists.

John: And social media is a very good place to do it.

Paula: Yeah, and we do use…

John: It is called Data Mining.

Paula: Yeah, we do use Data Mining pretty heavily in this workshop, and we help you every step of the way. So we called them workshops. That means that you are putting in some of the work and we are doing the consulting and we are helping you every step of the way with every question that comes up.

John: Yes.

Strategy, Planning & Budget Workshop

Paula: All right. Strategy planning and budget workshop. It is very important to have a strategy, a plan, and a budget for your sales and marketing. In fact, if you are going after investor money, this is absolutely essential to have a marketing plan and those kinds of things, and this really helps you put together that piece. If you are not going after investor money, then you are even more have to know what you are doing. Right? Because you are the only one that knows your business. And so, if you have a plan, you have the option to make changes as you need to because you know what you need and you know what the implications are as you go through this and make changes which you will.

John: Oh, yes.

Personal Branding Workshop

Paula: Okay. Personal branding is very important because most small companies and startups rely pretty heavily on the credibility of one or more of the founders. To be honest, there is more branding done, personal branding done often than actual branding. You are not Coca-Cola. You are not Harley-Davidson. You do not have that kind of marketing budget. So, you need to be the one that is doing the public speaking and writing the articles and getting on the podcast and doing the legwork to get known in your industry. And some folks are really kind of born comfortable with that, and some folks are not.

John: But you can learn it.

Paula: But you can learn it, and you can get better, and you can become the rockstar of your company and the one that everybody trusts.

John: And currently public speaking means Zoom.

Paula: Right.

John: Our go-to meeting.

Paula: If there are no events. In a lot of cases these are virtual events and so you are doing virtual speaking.

John: Which makes it a lot easier to get into because you don’t have a thousand people standing in front of you or sitting in front of you, so you get used to this. And then when these things change and you get invited to go speak in front of a bunch of people, you are good.

Paula: Yeah, and then you can respond to those requests for speakers, requests for papers, and other kinds of things. So, all of that is covered in this workshop so that whatever events there are you will be ready for it, right?

John: Yes.

ABCI’s Sales and Marketing Lab

Paula: All right. And our Marketing lab, this is cool. I really enjoy these people because this includes all of our clients. We have a private Facebook group and they are all…

John: Well, all the clients that are invited to it does not mean all of them are there.

Paula: That is true. There are some folks that are just not Facebook people, and that is okay. They come to our breakfast when we start having breakfast again. It will come to our breakfast and…

John: What she means by that is when NBAA starts having a real session, we always have breakfast at one of those.

Paula: Right.

John: Each one of those.

Paula: We are hoping this year in Las Vegas in October. So that will be fun. But regardless of where and how it takes place, this is a group of people that really supports one another and enjoy one another’s company and answers one another questions. It is great to have a group to run things by, to run ideas by, and say is add A or add B more effective and those kinds of things. We are real people in the industry.

John: Or you got a problem with how to do A, B, or C and they will say, “Well, I did it this way. And if that didn’t work, try this way.”

Poly: Right. So we have a book club. We have live discussions once every two weeks and we really do cover a lot of different topics and enjoy each other’s company.

John: And it is not just books, they alternate. One is about a specific book and the next one is about business, basically.

Paula: Yeah, a business or sales or marketing topic.

John: Right.

Paula: Yeah, that is a great opportunity to meet other people in the business so that you don’t feel like you are in it alone and you really have the opportunity to see how other people have succeeded or failed and to follow in their footsteps or not as you see fit. Right?

John: And they are a bunch of good people. It is a fun group

Paula: It is. It really is. That is one of my favorite things about my job nowadays is the folks that we work with. All right, so that is what’s included in the bundle.

Bundle Pricing Saves Money

And once again, you are welcome to purchase any of the components of the bundle. If you just need one thing, no problem. But the bundle is a much better price.

John: Oh, yes.

Paula: And also, we do a consultation at the beginning when you make that purchase of the bundle and put those into a priority list. We say we should do this and then this and then this and then this based on your objectives and where you are starting and your priorities.

John: So we give you a strategy for the first five or six months.

Paula: Absolutely.

John: And then help you with the tactical solutions niche.

Paula: So it is a six-month program. It takes our most successful folks that have done this are spending three to five hours a week working on these projects with us and making sure that they are getting all of these tasks checked off and everything else. And by the end of that, he will have a very robust sales and marketing program that would rival any established company in the aviation industry. So, all of those things are what really put you far ahead of the game in terms of having a stable, reliable source of revenue because you have got a stable, reliable source of customers.

John: Absolutely.