June 21, 2023
With Special Guest Madi Paige
When I interviewed Madison Paige, I knew some of the basics before we started our chat: Madi is a Business Growth Specialist a Top Rated Business Podcast Host & Public Speaker – and she helps brands build a ride or die online community so they can stand out & sell out using social media… all while striving to create freedom in your business.
What I didn’t know was that underneath her genuine spirit, high energy, & impressive resume (hello 8 years of experience in the social media world supporting over 150 businesses) is a drive to create freedom, through the lens of her own experience. Her passion for the Freepreneur lifestyle comes from a not-so-happy place.
Driven to Freedom From A Young Age
At the age of 14, Madi started working in her family’s adventure resort business. The long days, and seasonality molded Madi into someone with an admirable work ethic, but with a resigned acceptance that burn out was a part of life. Creating a freedom driven lifestyle, that prioritized her personal needs was not something that was handed to her.
While many of us entrepreneurs suffer from burnout, Madi and I connected on something not so common: both of us have been diagnosed with PTSD from burnout. Here’s where our passion intersects.
From working herself to the bone and understanding the cause and effect of her PTSD diagnosis, Madi did not want fellow businesses to follow those blueprints. She didn’t want to be married to her business or have her employees be worried about the business or their jobs, ever.
Madi learned the hard way: You need to be able to check out and enjoy life in order to run a truly successful business.
In our two part interview, we dive into what this looks like for her to model the Freepreneur lifestyle for her community, and how to build a freedom fueled business by design.
Listen to Part 1 on the Small Business Growth Podcast here.
Create a Freedom Driven Product
Creating a product is hard enough, but to make that product marketable can feel like too tall a mountain to climb at times. This is where entrepreneurs lose their freedom along the way.
Madi says to tackle this from two fronts in order to put freedom at the center:
- Create a community of ride or die followers through creating meaning behind your marketing.
- Consider the strategy first in creating a freedom based business. Sound operations are the foundation of a highly impactful client experience and it doesn’t need eyes on it every step of the way.
Hiring From A Freepreneur Perspective
In Part 2, we dive into the role that being a team leader, manager, and employee has contributed to Madi’s own entrepreneurship journey.
Madi has 4 key tips for her hiring advice:
- Hire for personality because you have to be around those people and freedom doesn’t mean just a lack of work, it means loving the time you spend at work.
- Look for the whole picture when hiring: You can’t have all the same type of personalities on your team
- Trust: one bad egg that can ruin the chemistry of the team AKA act swiftly when faced with friction.
- Company culture makes or breaks the operations. Embrace the culture that drives the operations in every decision.
- Read the room and seek the authentic energy that the people you are hiring can bring to your team.
How to Pivot When What You’ve Learned Isn’t Converting
Like many entrepreneurs, Madi housed her community through a Facebook group. Although Madi’s Facebook group is highly engaged, she didn’t see her devoted community becoming buyers of products she created just for them. And this was a problem.
She just kept releasing products in hopes that something would catch, aka the quantity over quality approach to connecting with the group. Madi learned that it doesn’t work that way, you have to build your community first around things that really mattered, not just product purchases and marketing to them. Then, she switched the meaning of her product releases to her community and tripled her sales because people related with the reason behind the products and why and how she was creating them.
Creating Freedom in Business: Defining Freedom For YOU
Have you defined what freedom means to you? Do you know what freedom is in business? Madi suggests defining this by looking at the reason you started your business in the first place.
Who are you when you are not working?
Every decision you make contributes to your company culture. It is in those second nature, “did it without thinking” moments that you define what freedom means to you.
Listen Now!
Links Mentioned
Connect with Madi: www.instagram.com/thisismadisonpaige
