Kiara Nelson is a recent graduate turned full-time entrepreneur and is the founder of two online-focused brands: Natural Boss Creative & TheDigitalKi.
Natural Boss Creative is a brand & web design company for service-based entrepreneurs. Kiara helps her clients go from feeling overlooked in their industry by creating a strategic branding experience to reflect their high-quality expertise. TheDigitalKi is a social media consulting business, where Kiara helps small business owners and personal brands confidently create tribe-attracting content that sells their services and products. Kiara and her clients have been featured in SHEEN Magazine, HBCUBuzz, TeenVogue, WalkersLegacy, Impressions of Beauty, The Dinner Table Doc, WayUp, Greensboro News & Record, and more.
She also runs a YouTube channel that provides small business and personal branding tips to an audience of over 7,500 subscribers.
Kiara holds a Bachelor of Science in Communication from North Carolina A&T State University.
What is Natural Boss Branding and The Digital Ki all about?
Natural Boss Creative is a brand and web design company that focuses on building a brand identity and online presence for service providers, while, TheDigitalKi is an online platform that helps small business owners confidently create content to increase their engagement, sales, and connection to their community.
Tell us a little bit about your background and how you started your company?
I have a Bachelor of Science in Communication with a concentration in media production, and over 5 years of experience in web design, graphic design, and video production. I started my company by helping others develop the identity of their personal brands while I was an undergrad. I would design their creative resumes, business cards, cover letters, and website portfolios in hopes of helping them receive internship and full-time job offers.
What are the top 3 skills needed to be a successful entrepreneur, and why?
The top 3 skills to be a successful entrepreneur are discernment, flexibility, and confidence. There are times when you are presented with opportunities that may not align with your values. Being able to use discernment to judge when to say no will take you further down the line than saying yes to anything that comes your way.
There are always going to be people who have opinions about the things you do and how you do them, and without confidence, you allow for everyone who has an opinion on what you do in your business to potentially stunt your success out of fear that you won’t be satisfying them. And things don’t always go as planned or projected, resulting in your being stuck if you don’t practice being flexible.
How do you plan to grow this company?
My ultimate plans for the future are to turn my company into a complete agency by having contractors to work for my clients’ projects so that we make the most out of their investments. I plan to hire copywriters, brand photographers, and junior graphic and web designers.
How do you separate yourself from your competitors?
Honestly, I do my best to be 100% authentic in everything I do. I find that my clients and audience on social media relate to that most and that many decide to work with me because of it. I share my wins like everyone else but I’m also very vulnerable about what it means to be an entrepreneur and some of the challenges that I face day-to-day. When it comes to working with me, my qualified leads say they chose me because they felt that I was more personable than the rest.
What has been the most successful form of marketing for you?
75% of my clients come from Instagram and 10% come from referrals of previous clients (who come mostly from Instagram), so I spend a lot of time utilizing Instagram as a selling tool by promoting my services, showing off transformations of my clients, and sharing some of my personal experiences.
I spend a lot of time in my ideal client’s DMs getting to know them and learn about their pain points. And because I understand that Instagram is not exactly “my” platform, I’m always prompting my audience to join my email list. I also make sure I’m giving my clients what I like to call a “tell-all” experience: where after everything we do together, they want to share it with their friends by posting on their [Instagram] stories like “look what we just created! Kiara is amazing at what she does!”
If you started your business again, what things would you do differently?
There isn’t much that I would change about how I did business starting out, as every action in my business has led me to where I am today, but if there’s anything I would change it would be my limited mindset and initial pricing. Before, I had this thought that people wouldn’t want to work with me because I was still in college at the time and was only in my late teens/early twenties. In reality, that is one of the primary reasons people enjoy working with me – because they know I bring fresh ideas to the table. Because my target audience was initially college students, I lowballed myself with the pricing of the services, thinking that people wouldn’t pay a premium price for my services because we were in college.
What are the top 3 online tools and resources you’re currently using to grow your company?
The three essential tools I use every day in business are Dubsado, Flodesk, and Trello.
Dubsado is a business management software that assists with everything from collecting client leads, invoicing and contracting, automated workflows, and even an exclusive client portal where your clients can see their remaining balance for their project.
I use Flodesk as my primary email software. They’re known for their beautifully designed email templates that are great for bloggers, video creators, and service providers.
Trello is a collaboration tool that I use with my clients as their project portal, giving them a sense of confidence knowing that they can see what I’m currently doing within their project even on days that we don’t communicate. This goes back to that tell-all experience I talked about earlier. They love to share their customized portal on social media. It makes them feel special.
Can you recommend one book, one podcast, and one online course for entrepreneurs and authors?
I’d recommend Profit First by Mike Michalowicz: a book that teaches entrepreneurs how to manage their money in a way that positions the business for success by setting aside a certain amount for taxes, employee pay, and leaving the rest for the company.
Redefining Wealth with Patrice Washington is a podcast that discusses what wealth means outside of making money and material obsession. Patrice starts every episode with her introduction where she says “we chase purpose – NOT money.” Because I believe that every entrepreneur should have a website and know what the data of that website means, I highly recommend the Google Analytics Academy. It’s free and informative.
If you only had 1000 dollars to start a new business, knowing everything you know now, how would you spend it?
I’d use the $1000 to subscribe to the software needed for my business and use the remaining to invest in someone to help me map out the foundation (my business’s purpose, mission, values, target audience, ideal client, etc.) of my business.
Who should we interview next and why?
You should interview Kourtney Cassanova, of Cassanova Media, next. She is a video editor and content creator who creates amazing, eye-catching videos and has such an authentic personality.
How can readers get in touch with you?
Readers can get in touch with me by visiting my website, naturalboss.com, following me on my Instagram pages – @thedigitalki and @naturalbossbranding, or follow me on Twitter @iamkiaranelson.
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