From struggling to pay bills to helping others discover a way to make seven-figure incomes, Dielle Charon has done more than most people. She started working as a coach in her spare time after her nine-to-five was over. From a side hustle, she turned this into her career, becoming a professional coach who was making just as much as her clients. However, life wasn’t always so easy for her.
Humble Beginnings Leads to Understanding Money
Charon grew up in a family that wasn’t rich. During her formative years, her family often had to deal with debt and worry about where money was coming from. Living this struggle made her realize that she wanted to give back to the world. Serving others came from this desire to help so they wouldn’t suffer.
While working her regular job, she knew that there was something more waiting for her. Her side hustle was the first taste of that life. She knew she didn’t want to be living the same life as her family, and that required her to build herself up. She realized that with income came freedom.
Making a Unique Business
Charon believes she has a few things to offer her clients that others can’t. The first thing is that she focuses on women of color as her core demographic. She knows what it is to be in their shoes, allowing her to figure out the best way to serve them. She knows them because she’s just like them.
Another thing that sets her apart as an entrepreneur is that her coaching is honest. She doesn’t believe in lying to her clients to make them feel better about themselves. She will tell a client if they’re not doing the best that she knows they can. Both of these things combine to make a no-nonsense approach to helping people make the money they should be making.
Using Online Platforms to Promote Her Business as a Boon
As someone who works a nine-to-five schedule, Charon didn’t have the time to advertise herself like other coaches. She didn’t have books to her name or fancy speaking tours that people could notice her at. She says that competing against people who had more time than her required her to work smarter, not harder.
This mindset helped her realize that social media might be the answer to her problems. She knew it could help her reach a wider audience than traditional marketing with lower entry costs. Social media ads cost a fraction of what other coaches paid for their audience, yet she targeted the same people more directly.
Entrepreneurs Should Stop Overcomplicating Their Businesses
Charon says that one of the biggest mistakes she made in her online business at the start was complicated pricing. She tried offering a price point to appeal to as many people as possible. She advises new entrepreneurs to avoid doing that since it makes the business unnecessarily complicated. Instead, set a price and stick with it.
The people who buy into your idea when it’s at a certain price are the ones who want to be there. Trying to serve as many people as possible with varying price points and sliding scales only makes the business more complex and drains time from you that you could be spending on the clients that can benefit from the company the most.
Know When to Follow the Crowd
A social media revelation that Charon came to was that trending events are a trap. Just because everyone is doing it doesn’t mean you should follow the trend. Sure, social media might encourage you to follow everyone else, but doing so just turns your content into a single video in an entire trend.
Instead, look at the things that are getting traction and look at how you can capitalize on that traction. See what other people are doing and adapt it to what you want to do. Copying someone’s approach is not plagiarism once you don’t rip off their content. Look at their methodologies, see where they’re succeeding, and follow their example.
Play To Your Strengths
One of the amazing things about people is their flexibility and adaptability. Each person has their own strengths. Once you’ve determined where your strengths are, lean into them. Charon admits that one of her social media mistakes was thinking she had to do everything on every platform.
She quickly realized that no one has the energy and commitment to be doing stuff on all the social media platforms. However, she knew she was great at ranting about a particular thing that bothered her. Unscripted rants turned into something a lot of people were interested in seeing. Her popularity exploded after people discovered how much they identified with her rants.
Follower Numbers Aren’t Sales
Too many new entrepreneurs equate their follower numbers with their success, but that’s not the point of social media for a business owner. Followers are just potential sales, but the final conversion numbers are a whole lot lower. Charon advises social media entrepreneurs to consider closing sales, not raising numbers.
She reminds entrepreneurs that all they need to succeed is to find a handful of fans who love their work. Once they have that, those people will continue to enjoy their content and be willing to pay for it.
Dive Into the Deep End
Charon advises social media entrepreneurs that they have to leave their comfort zones if they want to see success. Instead of sticking to content that’s boring and the same as everyone else’s, they should experiment and try new things. Charon invites business owners to experiment with what they’re doing and see how their engagement numbers change.
Charon has been experimenting, utilizing YouTube ads and learning how to use funnels to grow her business better. She suggests that these approaches offer the best viability for new social media entrepreneurs.
Sticking to what other people are doing will probably grow an audience, but that audience won’t be able to tell you what’s different about you compared to anyone else. In business, uniqueness is the thing that sells. And Charon knows how that works better than anyone else.
