Empower U Spotlight Series

About: Humble Lion Consulting specializes in branding, social media management, content creation, PR, and marketing strategies tailored for small businesses, startups, and young entrepreneurs. Our slogan says it all, “Silent Successes Leads to Loud Roars…” We help our clients build strong brands, grow their online presence, and achieve their marketing goals. From social media management to PR campaigns, our team provides personalized, hands-on support to bring your vision to life. Whether you’re launching a new venture or looking to refine your existing brand, we’re here to help you stand out and succeed in a competitive market.

Interviewed: Katelyn Sethi, Owner Humble Lion Studios 

Specialty: Social Media Consulting

Interviewer: Well, Katelyn, thanks so much for joining us today. Tell us a little bit about you and your company.

Interviewee: Sure. Yeah. So obviously, Katelyn, I am the president of Humble Lion Consulting. We are a consultancy that focuses on small businesses, startups and young entrepreneurs. Our main focus is helping bringing their vision to life through content gathering. A big way we do that is through branding. So you have to build that foundation of the house first, make sure that they have a good, solid brand that can be marketable and can show an roi. Once we get that going, we think of the house, the framework, as social media marketing, because organic reach is where you actually get good leads.

Interviewee: If you’re just putting money into ads, you can see spam, you can see a bigger exposure and more reach, but not much roi, not much engagement. And that’s where you actually get your clients and you build relationships with your current clients as well, for sure. So that kind of framework is that social media and marketing. And then how I feel like filling in the house is operations.

Interviewer: I love it.

Interviewee: So I was in staffing for four years and helped out quite a bit with onboarding, training, all that great stuff. And yeah, so, I mean, and my gosh, I’m a little breathless here.

Interviewer: Okay.

Interviewee: But yeah, so I helped out a lot with staffing and I was a franchisor as well. So once we kind of build that framework of the house, we need to fill it in with the furniture and see how we can make your operations automated, see how we can actually spend less time on operation and more as an owner and business development and then eventually talk about franchising opportunities.

Interviewer: That’s amazing. So your passion for marketing, have you just kind of always had an interest in it or how did it begin?

Interviewee: Oh, gosh, it just, it was fate. Honestly, it just came. Came to me in my last role at DES Employment Group, I founded their marketing department, led a couple interns in there, and then eventually found a full time assistant for that department. And I don’t know, I just thought of it as, you know, gaining more exposure for the small business. And how can we be more relatable to not only our clients, but to also the employees that we worked with. And social media was a big answer for that and I didn’t know how much I loved it. But once I realized that other small businesses are struggling and they can’t reach outside of their own network, and that just creates a whole entire wall for them for growth. So if we can bring their presence, their culture, who they are and what makes them different online into a digital presence, then they can expand their reach.

Interviewer: I love that. Well and in today’s day and age a small business owner, you do so much, you have so many tools and accessibility pieces but it’s often overwhelming a boardwise start to and especially in the marketing world, there’s Instagram, there’s Facebook, there’s TikTok and so of all those three platforms, what do you say is most important or that you enjoy the most?

Interviewee: Ooh, meta. Definitely. Facebook and Instagram is where most of my companies lie. However we do have TikTok, we have Twitter, we’ll X, I hate calling it X Twitter. And then we also have a gamer on our clientele as well. So we have trovo, Twitch, YouTube, all that great stuff. But Facebook and Instagram is where it’s at especially for ROI for businesses.

Interviewer: Okay, that’s good to know. So then within your guys services you offer obviously a full realm of marketing relative to social media. What are some of the specific services that you offer?

Interviewee: Well, besides social media management, we also help out with pr. So radio advertisements, billboards, yard signs, mailers, all that great stuff as well as paid ads, anything that you know the client really needs. We tailor our package and tailor what the vision is to what the client really needs at the time and then we focus quarterly goals.

Interviewer: Okay, yeah, that’s good to know. So if I was an inquiring small business looking to work with you, what’s the typical starting process with you?

Interviewee: Of course. Yeah, well setting up a one on one, I need to figure out if we’re good together. If I can see your vision too and I can market it a lot of ways that I do that is a holistic approach. A lot of my clients, I am their clients as well. If I can market to myself and I can sell it to myself, then I don’t see an issue selling it to others for sure. It actually works out very well. And then also I’m promoting them too. I’m proud to work with them.

Interviewee: It’s a two way street. But after sitting down when I actually meet with you, I’ll do a full on digital evaluation. I’ll look you up, see your social media, see what’s going on with your insights and give you even a few tips just for free then and there. That’s one of the biggest things that makes us different from other marketing agencies. We’re not afraid to tell you what’s going on and show you a roadmap.

Interviewer: I love that. That’s awesome. So how long do you generally work with clients? Whether it’s just A one off project or long term commitment. What are the packages that you share?

Interviewee: Sure, yeah. So for social media, which is our primary, primary bread and Butter, we have three different packages that we use. One is 5 to 10 posts a month, another one is 15, 20 posts a month and then the other one’s 20 to 30. Also with those packages, you know, more meetings come with, of course, the higher package. So we want to work together a little bit more and make sure that we’re coming up with a solid strategy. Because you don’t want to just post a post, you want to work along their campaign and their goals to actually reach their ROI that they’re looking for.

Interviewer: Yes, absolutely. Well, and drive in the new business but retain the previous business.

Interviewee: So yes, social media is about relationship building. It’s not a sales technique. It’s about working with the people, people that you currently know and then finding new people that will relate with you and your business.

Interviewer: I love that, I love that. So tell us about the team that you work with. Is it you or do you have support? How does that look like?

Interviewee: Yeah, so it started off just me, of course. Love that, no overhead. However, we started growing so much, I had to take on some amazing members onto our team. So we have a lead designer and a few other designers on our team as well as a few virtual assistants. However, we’ve noticed lately that they’re not really virtual assistants, they’re more business support professionals. So it’s more than your average virtual assistant. For example, my lead one helped me out with our anniversary as well and our client appreciation event where we handed out awards to our top performing clients. And just getting a group of leaders in the same room was so amazing.

Interviewer: That’s excellent.

Interviewee: Yeah.

Interviewer: So tell me a little bit, how long have you been in business?

Interviewee: Yeah, so this started last year just, you know, just as a. I mean like I said, everything happens with me for fate. It just happened out of nowhere. I was sitting with a friend, my first client, and you know, in his brand new shop, he had a lot of overhead, bought a brand new shop, had one part time employee he only could afford, you know, once a month. And he looks at me, he’s like, Katelyn, I don’t know what to do. This is a lot of expenses. We’re about to enter our slow month and I want to keep this guy. I can’t lose him.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Interviewee: So gave him some advice and he used that and worked and you know, sat down again a few weeks later and we were just talking about his business model and how can he make more money. We completely switched his business model and money just started coming in. And during his off season, it was, it was unseen for him. And he started with one part time employee with me and now he has eight full time. So that’s incredible.

Interviewer: What a transition. And especially in a year too.

Interviewee: 100%. So he technically fired me as of May, but that means I’m doing my job right. Of course I’m still here. You know, I’m on retainer for him whenever he calls me and doesn’t, you know, sometimes after that when that period happens, you know, our clients are looking for a friend, someone that can understand what they’re going through. And you can’t always tell your employees what’s going on in the business. They don’t really have the skin in the game. But we do. We see your vision.

Interviewer: I love that. Well, and it’s so important to have that greater purpose to work for within a business. Not only for the employees, but the client and the people you’re serving to.

Interviewee: Yeah, 100%.

Interviewer: That’s amazing. So let’s say I’m a new business owner. I’m looking to maybe connect with you. How can I get in touch?

Interviewee: Yeah, of course you can go to humblelionconsulting.com or you can give me a call directly at 402-819-8062. And yeah, just reach out. I do have that free digital evaluation I’m still offering. We are growing, like I said, so I don’t know how much longer we’re going to offer that, but we’re definitely honoring that till the end of 2024. So if you’re interested and just want to sit down for a free digital evaluation, 100% recommend it and see if we can work together.

Interviewer: Well, I love that. Thank you so much for sharing about your business and the support that you offer for small businesses.