Taughnee Golubović had spent years running and growing her online marketing and branding company in the U.S. when, for personal reasons, she decided to move to Croatia. During the transition, she lost a bunch of clients. Taughnee had to come up with a new marketing strategy fast.
Flexibility is not only a crucial key to success, it’s also necessary -- especially when bringing a brand-new business to life. Things don’t always go according to plan, and when that happens entrepreneurs have to think on their feet, come up with new strategies and sometimes even take their venture in a new direction. In this new series, The Startup Snag, we’re learning from established business owners who hit a snag early on and cleverly solved the problem.
Entrepreneur: Taughnee Golubović
Business: Endeavor Creative
Started: 2002
Location: Čazma, Croatia
The Startup Snag: Taughnee says, “When I moved to Croatia, that caused a lot of my clients to re-evaluate. Work dried up, and I blew through my emergency savings. I was entirely referral-based until that point, so I had no marketing system in place to drum up work and lacked the safety net of being able to go out and find a conventional job to pay the bills because of my foreigner status. I had assumed that like always, I’d figure it out along the way, but in retrospect, I can see that I had made a huge mistake by relying on my ‘clients will always just magically be there’ marketing strategy.”
The Savvy Solution: “I did find some freelance work and that helped to bring in some cash, allowing me to take a step back and re-evaluate. The goal was for my ideal clients to come to me with the types of projects that really light me up. I got clear about the work I wanted to do and the people I wanted to do it for and repositioned, rebranded, and created a system for getting visible online. I say that like it's no big deal, but it was the hardest work I've ever done!
It turns out there are plenty of people who are comfortable working remotely, in different time zones and hopping on a video call rather than meeting in person. I found these clients primarily through content marketing. For me, content has replaced face-to-face networking as a way to introduce myself to people online and earn their trust.”
Read Taughnee's full story on QuickBooks Community
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