The way customers do business has been fundamentally disrupted over the last decade, as seen by the rise of VRBOs and Ubers around the globe. Instead of utilizing social media for enjoyment or to see what their friends are up to, users are using it to make shopping decisions, and they frequently buy based on what they see others buying.

Kimberly Olson feels that in order for a company to be successful, it must not just comprehend but also embrace social media. She says, “We need to understand our potential customers’ buying behaviors and where they are spending their time.”

Kimberly Olson founded The Goal Digger Girl in March 2018 to teach female entrepreneurs fundamental sales and marketing techniques and internet strategies. It’s simple to want to start an internet business, but really knowing how to do it is a completely different mountain to climb. Furthermore, most of the women she works with have extremely little time, so they want automation in their companies as well as technologies that can be readily implemented into their enterprises rapidly.

The Goal Digger Girl enables small business owners to expand, which means they may increase their monthly earnings while working the same number of hours. She claims that The Goal Digger Girl has pupils that start out making a couple thousand dollars per month and end up making five figures per month as a result of what they learn. Kimberly asserts, “We have women that are beginning their first coaching businesses that have never coached before, discovering their passions but also learning how to actually get clients.”

The company has students from all walks of life and from a number of sectors, which is extremely inspiring. It featured an artist who was previously selling solely in galleries and was able to pivot to selling her paintings primarily on Instagram. Another student, a university professor, was able to resign her job and manage her network marketing firm full-time. The techniques she teaches are transferable to any business, which is tremendously liberating.

Kimberly had the foresight to begin with video marketing all those years ago, and it is without a doubt the way of the future. As everyone can see, Meta (aka Facebook) is doing everything it can to fight with TikTok. Goal Digger Girl’s current internet marketing approach is short-form video content, commonly known as micro content. Instead of holding hour-long webinars all the time, how might the same content be condensed into a 15-second Instagram Reel?

 “The ability to reach new followers in a shorter amount of time has never been more viable than right in this moment,” says Kimberly.

Founding Her Calling

Kimberly’s first strategy for increasing her online presence was to go live on Facebook every week, so she just started sharing everything she was learning about social media and developing a company online at the time. She shares, “My following started growing really quickly because a lot of my audience, upcoming mompreneurs, wanted to also quit their jobs to be home with their kiddos or to build a side business to contribute financially to their families.” She continues, “They didn’t have time to go to in-person events or living room locals and travel all over the country, which was what those who weren’t on social media were teaching us.” Kimberly immediately recognized she had a gift for teaching, and everyone praised how bite-sized and simple her training was to apply. “I knew I’d found my calling,” says Kimberly.

Kimberly grew up in a tiny village north of Detroit and was responsible for her younger brother at the age of 11. She began working evenings and weekends to save money for college and was able to cash flow her undergrad at a private business school. This was the first time she established a goal and didn’t allow anything to get in her way. She went on to get two PhDs in Natural Health and Holistic Nutrition and began appearing on TV and speaking all across North America. She asserts, “I was completely hooked on educating and inspiring others to live their best life.”

Because of Kimberly’s marketing expertise, she went online in 2011 and started her first company, FitKim, which monetized Kimberly’s YouTube channel and sold nutrition plans. She hobbled around for a few years, attempting to expand it into something massive, but it eventually failed. Later on, she recognized she was only failing ahead, but she was distraught at the moment, and a lot of self-doubt came in.

Kimberly felt the draw to create online again after having two babies back to back, and her driving motivation was much greater now – to be able to quit corporate and stay home with her two beautiful children. She returned to the internet in 2017, but quickly found herself self-sabotaging and sliding back into old habits. She had battled with alcoholism for over a decade and decided to seek professional help to end it once and for all so she could be free. Everything changed for Kimberly that summer when she finally conquered such a nasty addiction and she was on fire. She recalls, “I decided I was going to finally figure out this whole “social media thing” and monetize my brand. It was my time to show up as me, authentic, passionate, vulnerable, genuine, and with no apologies and that’s what I did.“

Advice for Emerging Leaders in the Sector

Kimberly’s best tip for people just starting out is to think about what you’d want to talk about on stage for three hours if you weren’t selling anything. Who would be in the audience, totally engaged and hanging on every word you said? She sees far too many new enterprises that jump onto social media with no plan. “You go to their social channels and have no idea what they do and who they serve,” says Kimberly.

She advises defining who you are, what you want to be recognized for, and who you are primarily helping. She also suggests that entrepreneurs join a coaching program so that they may be surrounded by others who are starting their own firms and have the support and accountability they’ll need to navigate the ups and downs of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurs frequently swing from concept to idea to idea, or give up totally, only to feel that tug again and return to it months or years later, losing all momentum. That may be extremely disheartening and frustrating.

She opines, “Get super clear on why you are building this business. Envision it, feel what it would feel like to have accomplished it. Hold that vision in your mind, day after day, and remind yourself constantly why you’re doing what you’re doing. What are you going to put in place to keep you going when the excitement has worn off? Develop grit, tenacity, and perseverance to stay the course and see it through.“

Focusing On Value Addition

Kimberly’s key responsibilities as CEO of her company are vision and strategy. She is responsible for not just creating the vision of the company’s future and what the team is focused on, but also communicating that vision with her workforce and helping them catch the fire as well.

Kimberly’s strategy is largely focused on how the team will bring a new or existing product to market. She heads with questions such as “How frequently are we going to launch an offering? Where are we going to deliver the content leading up to it? What does our audience currently need most from us?” She loves continual improvement and she leads the way for the company on how it can show up better every day for its followers.

According to Kimberly, the Goal Digger Girl has always been debt-free, but one of the main skills she has learnt through time is the significance of establishing regular revenue. She believes that many businesses fall into difficulty when everything is dependent on one major event or one significant customer. The firm stays current by periodically introducing new items to its audience, after which it evaluates whether or not it will remain as a primary service. She says, “We constantly adjust and improve and work extremely hard to spend just as much, if not more, time on client experience and retaining them versus just focusing on acquiring new ones.”

Kimberly also wishes someone had told her early on to have three to six months of cash reserved, in addition to putting money aside each month for taxes. She opines, “As you grow your company, you will naturally have more overhead, but you will also want cash on hand to be able to make big investments when opportunities arise or to weather a storm that may come along.” She further adds, “At the end of the day, my business plan has been to trust my gut. As my confidence has grown over time, so has my ability to make quick decisions, and I know that is definitely a long-term indicator of success.“

Kimberly’s Message for All Female Visionaries

“Don’t wait for someone to tell you your idea is good or wait until someone else has done it. Go do it. Fail forward. Test it out. Pay attention to what works and what doesn’t work. As you go along, be really aware of the thoughts you have about yourself and the stories you tell. If you tell yourself you can do it and that you are going to figure it out, you will. There will always be naysayers and people who doubt you, but that’s because you’re doing something they themselves could never be brave enough to do. Don’t let others decide for you, you decide.”

“You will see others ahead of you, seemingly successful overnight, but no one can show up the way that you do. Be yourself, completely; don’t hide, play small, or worry about what others think about you.”