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[00:00:00] Kathi Burns: Hi there I'm board certified professional organizer, Kathi Burns. I'm really glad you're here. This podcast is designed for busy entrepreneurs, just like you, who wanna take better control of your business and move forward with less stress and more success. If this is your first time listening, then thanks for coming. The organized energized podcast is produced for your enjoyment and show notes are found at thepodcast@organizedandenergized.com. Come back often and feel free to add this podcast to your favorite RSS feed or iTunes. You can also follow me on Twitter at organized energy and Facebook. All links are in the show notes. Now let's get into the show.

Hi everyone. This is Kathi, I'm back with the Organized and Energized podcast. And I'm here speaking with my girlfriend, Dana Magnus. She's a friend in a compadre and what we're gonna talk about today is how to stay impactful and run a mission driven business. We all want to be mission driven. We wanna create impact and Dana's the girl for that. She's the CEO in visual branding and marketing strategist of the marketing brand and speaker, community cultivator and intentional leadership. Efficiency in planning are Dana's jam. I know this I've known her for years. She loves asking the challenging questions to help VIP clients and those enrolled in her marketing course, the impact driven marketing course to tone in, hone in, fine tune their messaging so that they can create breakthroughs. And she really helps them break through to create the way so you think about how they're gonna show up, right? How are you gonna show up in the world is very important. So along with giving them a marketing plan that empowers them to create conversation and build connections, she also helps them convert the people into clients the human way, and she believes that all businesses can be used for force for good. Yeah. That's why she's my girl. So let's jump into the conversation. You're going to love Dana. Cannot wait. Haven't seen her for a year or two in person. So here we are we're gonna get going.

Hi, everyone. I'm back. I am back with my girlfriend, Dana Magnus. She is the marketing strategist of the marketing brand. So marketing, and it's all about mission. So today we're gonna talk about how to be more purposeful with your mission, how to create a mission, how to follow your mission. How do you use your intention to create what you really wanna do? Because as entrepreneurs, we are all here to create something that will cause an impact in the world. So that's what we're gonna talk about today. It is perfect timing and I wanna welcome Dana, my girlfriend.

[00:02:46] Dana Magnus: Hey everyone. Thank you so much, Kathi. I'm excited to dive in with you.

[00:02:51] Kathi Burns: Absolutely. Okay, so you are the marketing queen. I know this to be true. How did you get there, Dana? What's your backstory?

[00:02:58] Dana Magnus: Sure. So I started my business actually out of a complete happenstance and the stake, like it was such a weird situation that I was in. I was a entrepreneur. I was a headshot photographer and wedding photographer traveled around the globe for destination weddings and pretty much, a lot of different events. And I became passionate about serving entrepreneurs and business owners helping them to take their branding headshot. A lot of them came to me for headshots and when I started to ask a little bit more strategic storytelling questions how are we gonna be using these photos? Are we doing banners on your social media? All those like more tactical questions. They were dear in the headlights. And it was apparent to me that a lot of people weren't connecting who they were and what they stood for and what stories they wanted to tell, but the way that they were presenting themselves in their business, such as their headshots or their marketing collateral. And right then in there, the conversations that started to spark up became a holy business and all these offerings that now I help support people with. So we are four years into it going on year five and I couldn't be happier. Finding that passion, since I was 10 years old of picking up a camera to also incorporating my degree in marketing and how it all came together. And so here I am, as a marketing strategist, helping support people with their big mission, their big story, and then being able to go out in the world and share it.

[00:04:27] Kathi Burns: Yeah. And it's so important. A lot of people say, oh, I need a headshot, but they have no idea why they need the headshot or who do they wanna be in that headshot. All about the image and the projection and yeah, over the years I've discovered the same thing that people don't really have. They don't have their backstory or their forward story. They just know that they need to do it.

[00:04:48] Dana Magnus: I say the internal talk is so much more important. Sometimes the external talk and being very clear and concise and focused. And what you wanna present yourself as is really just showing up in the world and showing up as your next level self, which is so important when it comes to growth. If growth is your goal.

[00:05:08] Kathi Burns: Absolutely. And not just showing up willy nilly, the authenticity, I think, is really what the world is coming around to thank goodness. So we no longer have to put on a superficial coat. We wanna be who we are. And I know that you do that very well. You help people bring out who they really are. Talk to me about your very first. So you were such a good photographer. You still are such an amazing photographer, but tell me about your first client when you dug into it. And you're like, oh, okay. We need to talk about. What you wanna look at? How did that look and how'd it feel? What was the experience for you?

[00:05:43] Dana Magnus: Sure. I can think about the sexy industry that I worked out of leaving marketing to go off on my own with photography was insurance so I was actually I had a big network of insurance agents people in the financial services world. So typically with all the regulations and all of the compliance that they had to follow, it wasn't really as popular, if you will, to share yourself your story, talk about who you were, but when you talk about insurance with these life insurance agents, it was actually a very personal and relationship first industry.And so people reallywanted to see that this person wasn't just trying to turn them into. A transaction. Like it was really thinking about the best interest for people's lifestyles. And so we wanted to build this character of trust because when I talked to the people, they were trustworthy, they were great people, but then I go to their website or go to their social media and it just seemed so stark and like corporate and icky. And there was a huge challenge with the connection. And I just felt like this was something that I can really help with. Low and behold, I really got passionate about asking the question of, when you're done with your career, when it's all set and done, and you're looking down the road of all the amazing things that you've done and the people you've helped, what would you say that mission was? What did you say that you were set out to do? What was the whole purpose of all these day in and day out hours that you feel like were nonstop, you were working toward. And that is what I feel like people were excited about, they got lit up for was that kind of bigger picture concept. And that's what I think is really important to share in your marketing is what is the whole, what is this all for?

[00:07:27] Kathi Burns: Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you struck a chord with one of the hardest industries to do that. Financial planners and insurance sales people they're so regulated, they all think, the blue suit coat, the white shirt, the red tire, whatever. I think this is how I have to look. I think you've broke so many people out of their shells and helped them find their voice, right?

[00:07:48] Dana Magnus: Yeah, exactly. It was so much fun too. Taking photos and different settings and scenarios, which they had never seen before and never put out. It was scary for a lot of these people. So they really needed my help to build that courage as well, to be like, Hey, can I post these things? And can I do this? And this was back in 2015 when we still had a lot of opportunity and very little noise when it came to social media. So it was a great time.

[00:08:15] Kathi Burns: Yeah, fantastic. Okay. So let's talk about your mission. What's your mission girlfriend. I know you have it all laid out. Let's hear it.

[00:08:22] Dana Magnus: Yeah. By the end of this decade in 2030, I wanna support a hundred thousand entrepreneurs to be clear and focused and consistent with their 30 day action plans. So I want everyone to have an intention on where they're going 30 days at a time, because with those little milestones, they can. I know they're able to push through all the challenges that it takes to stay in business when it comes to small business.

[00:08:47] Kathi Burns: Breaking it down into steps, make it much less overwhelming and much more doable. I love what you're doing with the program in that regard. That's what happens. People go into overwhelm, but you can, we can all think about 30 days.

[00:09:00] Dana Magnus: Absolutely. Absolutely. And I do that through my program called CEO days. It's a great time.

[00:09:06] Kathi Burns: Yeah. Yeah. And I'm gonna pop into that actually. I didn't tell you that, but I'm jumping in girl. Yeah, it'll be fun. I know your stuff is so valuable and we all need it. We all need reminders, refreshers, re energizers. We need all that as we go through being an entrepreneur. So speaking of that, tell me about a time where you felt deflated and you weren't really on task or about, outta wack so to speak. What did you do to bring yourself back from that and what went well?

[00:09:35] Dana Magnus: Kathi, we've worked together and been friends for a long time. And over the past couple years actually became a new mom and that was a whole journey I would say of no way to plan, no way to really be prepared for all the things. As many times as you put your list together and try to do your schedule. These little humans will totally take you for a turn if you will. So that was a time that I just felt like it was last year, February 2nd, 2021 was when my daughter was born two weeks before I was expecting as well. I also was growing my company to I had eight teammates and it was delegating delegating, and, getting everything off my plate. So the business can run successfully and profitably while I had to take a, somewhat of a maternity leave. And that was a big challenge. It was a challenge for me that I kept pushing and pushing throughout the rest of the year. And at the end of the year, I decided to just actually go down to a company of one. I looked at my whole life and simplified a lot of things. Really looking at the currency that I wanted to be growing the most was time with my daughter and time with my family which is a big shift as the first couple years in entrepreneurship. You're thinking about growth and scale and reaching those, six figure incomes and things like that. I think the biggest lesson for me was that I looked at my values and I looked at what was most important to what I needed to do. And this is an exercise I do a lot with my marketing clients is really get clear on what's most important because we all don't share the same goals across the board. That's what makes being an entrepreneur. So cool. As we get to decide. And then at the beginning of this year, I was then gone from team of eight to just me shaved a little bit down on my client load spent now only four hours a day on work for four days a week. And I can actually tell you I've surpassed already the monthly income that I did last year with a huge team. So it's been really cool to be focus. Like I said, be clear on your mission, be clear on what you wanna do. And break the rules sometimes. Cuz that's what us entrepreneurs do is we go against the grain and sometimes it really works in our favor. I think all the time it works in our favor when we go stay in alignment with who we are and what we're called to.

[00:11:49] Kathi Burns: Yeah, it's alignment and it's intention. And if you an intuition, if you really feel like this is what you should do, who cares what everybody else says? Do what you do. And yeah. If it comes from a deep inner knowing, then you're good to go, no matter what the norm is. So let's talk about CEO days, cuz I think everybody should jump into this. Tell me a little bit about.

[00:12:12] Dana Magnus: Yeah, I'm gonna see if the virtual background won't distract it too much here, but I'm holding up a packet that is about nine to 10 pages long. It's our workbook that we use each month at this virtual zoom event. It's two hours that I host for free each month. Yes, but thank you. Thank you, Kathi. I really appreciate that. But yeah, my goal is to really expand people's accountability and their ability to access, focus, where they don't have to spend tens of thousands of dollars on business coaching, nothing against it. But sometimes they go to a coach and don't even know if they need a coach. And this is a great time to use the time to work on your business. Look back at the past 30 days. Assess where you are, what you've learned, what kind of tools and takeaways you wanna bring to you for bring to the next month and just take that pause because otherwise we're on the hamster wheel, constantly serving our clients, constantly getting everything we need to the bookkeeper and the accountant and the lawyer and all the other things, and this is our time to dream. This is our time to visualize this is our time to really get intentional on what we want to receive out of our business that we always are just depositing into. So it's a great time to just take a step back and then decide what are we gonna do? What is our intention for the next 30 days? And let's leave with a 30 day action. And so sometimes this touchpoint of just checking in with ourselves and our business is all people need to get over the huge challenges that sometimes shut people out of business. I know if I didn't have that time to get clear and intentional, I couldn't sustain raising my daughter and the childcare situation I had at my availability, having a team as big as I did, like it was a colossal drain on me, physically, emotionally, mentally, and for my family. So if I didn't take that time to just pause and then say, Hey, what am I doing? Why am I doing it? And what do I need to do to move forward with my goals? It could easily spend out of control. And I see that time and time again with people that they go and then they realize, holy cow, I'm running a hundred miles an hour in the wrong direction.

[00:14:28] Kathi Burns: Absolutely. And we're doers, we're action takers. So what we think oftentimes, and I was stuck in this for such a long time that I'm just gonna be busy. I'm just gonna keep doing, but I agree with you totally. If you don't know why you're doing what you're doing, you don't know what you should be doing, and therefore you might be doing it all wrong, or you might just be doing a bunch of stuff that you shouldn't be doing anyhow.

[00:14:49] Dana Magnus: That's right, Kathi.

[00:14:51] Kathi Burns: Amen. Hallelujah. Hey, I've been there because I am an action taker. So the hardest thing for me to do is to pause and reflect. And that's why I'm joining in, on your CEO days. I think it's really gonna help me as well. We all need it. We all need the opportunity and the invitation. To stop, just stop. Think about it, lay out the plan, figure out why we're doing the plan and if it even resonates instead of doing, doing and doing we're gonna be for a little while, during your thing.

[00:15:25] Dana Magnus: Going back to what you do, Kathi too, it's staying organized. I love to tell people, print out this workbook, put it in a binder and then almost use it as your way to look back. Last year on this time, what were your goals? What were your wins? What were your challenges and celebrate those things. So keeping all those things in one place in one binder each month, you insert your next workbook. I bet it's an organizer's, little dream idea of just organizing your business and archiving in a way, which is.

[00:15:54] Kathi Burns: Yeah, absolutely. And putting things on paper, the thought word be thing, actually writing down your intentions and writing down and celebrating. I find that when I published my first book in 2009, I didn't even celebrate. Oh, like then I was like, oh my gosh, how am I gonna market it? I went directly into the, oh no. Now I need to market it. Not just, say, oh what was I thinking? Like, why didn't I stop and celebrate.

[00:16:18] Dana Magnus: And let's put it this way. If you would've celebrated and cheers and set out your wine and cheese and on your beautiful little Treehouse there in San Diego, those probably would've been all your marketing collateral that you would've needed to give people that excitement about the book. It's like sometimes we don't realize that our celebrations are, what we wanna communicate and it gets other people excited too, which is way more impactful. So this is a little tip there.

[00:16:45] Kathi Burns: Yeah, no, I totally am with you on that. And I've been putting celebrations into all my trainings lately, like what, and what's interesting I found is that people have different ways to celebrate. I ask them, how do you like to celebrate? And some people will say, I like to take a long walk, other people I'm just gonna get up and dance. Other people are like, I'm just gonna have a bottle of champagne or celebrate that way, or, I'm just gonna sit in the sun for five minutes. So whatever way that we have to celebrate, it's all unique and individual, but there definitely needs to be an homage to an accomplishment. And I think that's so very important. So that's why I think your program's so fantastic. Okay. I know you like to get organized. What's a secret hack that you use that you rely on all the time? What's your favorite little organizing, either hack or strategy or program that you use, Dana?

[00:17:33] Dana Magnus: So I'm a big fan of the Google drive. I have mastered it where it speaks to all of my devices. So no matter where I go, everything is organized and they're set folders. I'm also somebody who I mentioned, I work very little nowadays. So like yesterday we were on our way to a family party and I'm like, oh my gosh, I have to get my newsletter out. And it was a great tool that I used Google drive for to be able to access what I call my monthly marketing dashboard, which again, all members in my community and my space know that. Go right to the date and copy and paste the content I already wrote and throw it into my scheduler which is my email program called Flow Desk. And just the simplicity of no matter where I am, no matter what I'm doing, I've already, pre-thought my theme. I have it all down on these dashboards and I can access them on Google drive on my tablet, on my phone, on my desktop. On whoever's device I wanna log into, if said all those things were stolen outta my backpack one day on an adventure. It's just great that I have everything packed away in Google drive in my folders and access to anywhere on the cloud. It's pretty cool.

[00:18:49] Kathi Burns: Yeah, I love Google drive. That's part of my training that I have for the, Get It Done formulas all about Google drive and and if you have everything stolen, then you can definitely, you still have it. It's not stolen.

[00:19:01] Dana Magnus: It's like a cool thing. Yeah. I never want that to happen to anyone, but at the same time, it's like, it's cool to know that you have that extra insurance in your back in your mind of like okay.

[00:19:14] Kathi Burns: Absolutely. And a password vault too. I'm sure you use.

[00:19:17] Dana Magnus: Last Pass for now, until who knows. There's always some cool things that come out every couple of. And then that migration of getting everything over, but the more organized you stay, the more organized you will be so things are always integrable. If that's even a word.

[00:19:33] Kathi Burns: That's right. And the more organized you are, the less time it takes to do that transition into whatever new whiz bang things happening out there. There's always something going on out there. Okay. So if you were to write a book tomorrow, what would your book be?

[00:19:51] Dana Magnus: My gosh, I've been asked this a couple times. People will say, oh, you need to write a book. I really think the book that I would write would be around, setting an intention, one moment at a time or something like that. I'm really bad at the titles unless I really distill it, but definitely about intention setting. And really what I would love to do is almost make it a workbook where it's a 365 day intention reminder for people and then maybe a little story that they can journal on. I love the interaction and like giving the empowerment to others, to learn and grow just from a quick prompt. So that's what I feel like my book would be about. And of course, anything that they write down could be their marketing prompt for the day as well. If they're more of sporadically posting or sharing or doing emails, like I just shared my story to be. Something about a daily intention setting book would be fun.

[00:20:44] Kathi Burns: That's great. I love it. And you're on your way to doing that already. You probably have it halfway written probably I'm thinking you might, but everything you've been doing well, that's fantastic. Okay. So I know you have a valuable free resource that you wanna talk to people about and let's bring it on. What do you got?

[00:21:03] Dana Magnus: Yeah I think that one's really would be CEO days. It is free. You get the workbook, you get the time with the community. And it's like a triple impact kind of experience with the people you get to meet. It's a little networking component. It's the, get it done time. It's the workbook. And then it's of course that accountability, we have that time where you can actually pick something, work on it and say, wow, what an amazing little homework club for my business. So CEO days happens every single month and you could check it out at danamagnus.com/ CEOdays.

[00:21:39] Kathi Burns: Yes, and I will have the link there, so you can just click and join. And even if this month doesn't work, it's always happening every single month. So you don't have to, the time is not a problem. You just have to, again, schedule that time in whenever you decide you're gonna jump in. So that's really generous of you. It's actually generous of you to give two hours of your life to your people every month. It's fantastic.

[00:22:03] Dana Magnus: Oh, anytime it's my mission to help people. So I love it.

[00:22:07] Kathi Burns: Hundred thousand. Is that what you said?

[00:22:09] Dana Magnus: A hundred thousand people. So I'm not one for doing the math, but if everyone brings a buddy with them and then they bring a buddy, I'm sure one day we'll reach that even sooner because it is such a shareable and fundament to do with the buddy system.

[00:22:23] Kathi Burns: Absolutely. And I'll put it out there in my newsletter as well, alright gang, I really, this is, I love talking to you. We could just chit chat forever.

[00:22:33] Dana Magnus: Oh my God about so many topics too.

[00:22:35] Kathi Burns: Yeah. Okay. So what did I miss talking about to you? Is there anything that I should have asked you that we wanna discuss?

[00:22:44] Dana Magnus: If I were talking about organization and marketing, I would ask people, how are they staying organized with their marketing? I think that then if I were to answer that definitely keeping your ideas in a very accessible place. Let's face it, we take showers and have those brilliant thoughts that come up, we're in the middle of driving and maybe we have the best way that we're thinking about something and we wanna share it out. It's always in those very inconvenient off the computer moments is when we get our best inspiration. So if I were to share anything valuable for you to take home today, it would be to find your way that you like to capture your very authentic and genuine thoughts around the way that you think about in innovating and inviting people to your business. Some of the things that I tell people is sometimes just simply on your phone, even while you're driving, pop that record on your camera. And even if it's, the video's turned off, just talk while you set your phone down and, just talk into it with your ideas and then you can later transcribe that into a service that there's so many of them out there now, even for free. And then you can just continue elaborating and writing. So little things like that. I know I'm a 2:00 AM like wake up in the middle of the night with a brilliant idea. So keep a notepad. If you're somebody who doesn't sleep next to your technology, keep a little notepad next to your nightstand and just jot down whatever you can, because those are sometimes your brilliant multi-billion dollar ideas. And I think that those are great to record and then keep organized and put them in a spot in maybe your Google drive or digital files to then roll those into your monthly content.

[00:24:29] Kathi Burns: I totally agree. Speaking what you think is so much easier than writing what you think. So just turn it on and blab away, and then you're gonna say, oh, I was pretty smart. That was a pretty smart thought. When we try to write it, I think we getall caught up in grammar and all that, all that good stuff, as opposed to just spewing out what we think. That's really good advice. Love it. Love it. Love it. My girl, this has been fun. I have to run and you need to get outta here too, and get back to your now you only have three more hours you can work today, so have at it. Thanks so much all of you for listening, make sure to check the link, check out CEO days. It's huge for you. We'll give you accountability. It will give you visioning and you'll have a very thoughtful genuine leader behind you.

[00:25:24] Dana Magnus: Aw, it's so amazing to be here, Kathi. I just love everything you do. If you're not already like following innately with all of your emails and your tips. I'm like every day I wanna reorganize my bathroom after seeing one of your tips. It's oh yeah, the little basket idea or the yard for your stuff. I'm like genius. Brilliant. So happy. Thank you for doing what you do too. I'm like always learning from you. And I really love what you do. Thank you everyone.

[00:25:49] Kathi Burns: Yeah, you guys take care and signing off for now. Thanks very much.

[00:25:54] Dana Magnus: Thank you.

[00:26:01] Kathi Burns: Hey, thanks for listening to this podcast. I hope you enjoyed this episode and if you wanna hear more, feel free to subscribe on the platform of your choice. Also, if you feel so inclined, I would truly appreciate a good rating from you to me, have a stellar day.