Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | RSS
Cami Travis Groves is a transformation coach who wants to stop all those self-limiting beliefs you have so you can run that business like a champ. You want a marketing tip? This week we talk about the importance of investing in UX – the way a user experiences your brand
Transcript:
Jeff Randolph:
Welcome to the Small Business Miracles Podcast, I’m Jeff Randolph. This small business podcast is brought to you by EAG Advertising and Marketing. We are going to talk about marketing. We’re also here to celebrate entrepreneurs. We have marketing news and advice that business owners can use to keep moving forward. This week we sit down with Cami Travis-Groves. She’s a transformation coach, recovering graphic designer, keynote speaker, author, publisher, and so much more. But first, we’ve got another small business marketing tip to talk about. Here it is.
It’s time for a marketing tip. You know, one of the biggest changes in marketing’s focus so far in 2024, besides artificial intelligence, is in your user experience. More companies are finally looking at giving your clients and customers the best experience possible with your brand. And those who don’t focus on the best user experience are losing prospects, and those who do are gaining.
What this means is you absolutely have to factor user experience into your marketing plan. We live by data and everything is about data. And it’s not just the numbers. It’s understanding how people use your website, when they use it, where they stop using it, how often they return to it, what other websites are they visiting afterward, what are they doing when they aren’t engaging with you, and so much more. We can watch website users, and sometimes it’s the little things like seeing that people are trying to click on something that isn’t clickable, letting you know that they have interest in those words or that subject and want more information, but they can’t get that information.
So the more you learn about how people are engaging with your brand and making it easy for them, the easier it is to find like audiences of those same people and target them with your marketing. It used to be that small businesses couldn’t really afford this kind of research. Now, it’s being done so much more affordably, and the reality is that you can’t afford not to if you want to adapt to this big shift in the way that marketing works. That is today’s marketing tip.
Welcome back to the show. I am here with Cami Travis-Groves. That’s Coach Cami. She’s a transformation coach, a recovering graphic designer, keynote speaker, author, publisher, and so much more. Cami, welcome to the show.
Cami Travis-Groves:
Thank you, Jeff. Thanks for having me.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, happy to have you. I mean, I know we’ve seen each other so many times at Marketing Club-related activities around town for, I don’t know, more than a decade. Let’s just leave it at more than a decade, and we’ll go with that. So it’s good to have you where we can just kind of talk and hang out with microphones.
Cami Travis-Groves:
I agree.
Jeff Randolph:
Well, let’s talk about… Because you help creatives and entrepreneurs identify the cause of self-limiting beliefs like imposter syndrome and get into more of a growth mindset. Talk about the work that you’re doing with coaching, because if we’re watching on the Zoom screen for clips, for video, you’ve got this great Coach Cami logo in the back. I mean, talk about a great screen grab for this episode, so thanks for doing that. But yeah, tell us about Coach Cami.
Cami Travis-Groves:
Oh, I love, absolutely love what I do. After 30 plus years, I just stopped counting at 30 years, I recognized that designing only checked two of the boxes for me to feel fulfilled. The first one was that it comes easy, the second, people pay me for it. But the third thing it was missing, and that was at the end of the day of designing, I was exhausted. At the end of the day of coaching, I am alive, and thriving, and excited. I can take on the world.
Jeff Randolph:
It says quite a bit, doesn’t it?
Cami Travis-Groves:
Yeah, and I didn’t know. I didn’t know, I had no idea. So the work that I do with coaching is I mainly help creatives, but I also help, like one of my clients I met with yesterday as a business owner in Chicago, and it has nothing to do with creativity, but the work that we do, I use creativity as a tool, because everyone is a creative, and creativity helps heal. It helps heal those inner wounds that are causing us to be on autopilot, that make us miss the things that can be seen from an objective, outside viewpoint. That’s what a coach’s job is, is just to provide that objective outside viewpoint.
Jeff Randolph:
“I’m a neutral third party with all kinds of information that can help you get where you need to go, but you’re too close to the situation.”
Cami Travis-Groves:
Exactly. It’s really hard to read the label from inside the jar.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I like that, I like that. And so some of the topics that you’re tackling are self-limiting beliefs, like imposter syndrome. So tell me a little bit more about that and a typical person that you may run into.
Cami Travis-Groves:
Most of the people who come to me for coaching say, “I need better clients,” or, “I need a better system,” or, “I need to access more creativity.” And some of those problems are external. They’re out there, and they’re usually a direct reflection of what’s happening inside you. And I don’t like dealing with those outside things, because those are symptoms.
It’s like going to the doctor and saying, “Yeah, my foot hurts,” and he gives you pain medicine. It’s like, “Well, that’s nice, but what’s causing it?” And I deal with causes, so that they don’t come back. I give people tools to manage those limiting beliefs, like imposter syndrome, and help people see how their own operating system, their own default thoughts and behaviors are usually what’s holding them back. It’s not an external force, it’s the inside stuff, and you can’t fix what you can’t see. So I help people see those things and I help them transform themselves.
Jeff Randolph:
That’s valuable work that needs to be done, and we could all learn a little something from just taking a look inside. I want to keep going on that line of thought, though, of improving people and getting the most out of human body, human mind. And talk about your speaking career for a second, because one of the speaking topics that you present on is about burning out. Hard work brings success. And a lot of business owners do just that, and they do that to the nth degree. We work hard, but there may be a fine line between working too hard and burning out. Talk about that fine line, and what an entrepreneur should be on the lookout for as we continually push that limit.
Cami Travis-Groves:
Kind of what I brought up in the beginning is that the three boxes that your career, your entrepreneurship, your job, your whatever should tick are does it come relatively easily or is it a constant struggle? Will people pay you for it? Will they pay you well enough for it? And then at the end of the day, how’s your energy. If you are still excited, and I’m not talking about just, “Whew, that was a long day. I’m tired.” But at the end of the day, if the thought of going back and doing the same thing tomorrow makes you want to cry or makes you want to stay in bed, there’s some things that need to be evaluated there, that if you still love what you’re doing, but you’re not refueling your tank, you’re running on empty. You cannot pour from an empty vessel.
Jeff Randolph:
And so really paying more attention to the gauges, right, in our own body and understanding a little bit more about, “Are we running in the red here?” Yeah.
Cami Travis-Groves:
Yeah, it’s important to pay attention to what your body is telling you. Our cranial brain is not our only source of information. We have 40,000 thinking neural cells in our heart and we have 100 million thinking neural cells in our gut, the same amount as a cat has in its brain. And it’s so common that we dismiss gut feelings or second guess what our heart is telling us. But when our brain, our heart, and our gut are in alignment, snap decisions are possible and they’re right. So it’s really imperative that you follow the energy. If doing what you love is bringing you energy and you’re finding a way to refuel your tank daily, weekly, monthly, then it’s sustainable. If your business is at the center of your life and you’re not taking care of your body, you’re not taking care of your spiritual, emotional, creative, social, all of that wellbeing, you’re going to burn out. So I help people identify those signs and work on themselves. They do the work to refuel themselves.
Jeff Randolph:
And is refueling, is that as simple as, “Hey, I’m aware of these signs and symptoms. I know that I’m at a point where I need to do something different so that I can give back again, I can pour from a full pitcher,” is that as simple as saying, “Looks like it’s time to go play golf,” or, “Time to go fly fishing”? Is it as simple as just recharging like that, or is there a lot more that an individual may need to do?
Cami Travis-Groves:
Well, there are six different categories, and I cover this in my latest book. It’s physical: Are you sleeping enough? Are you eating colorful, nutritionally-dense food? Are you moving your body? Those are the three big pieces of the physical piece. Emotional: Are you allowing yourself to feel your emotions as you feel them or are you taping down the negative ones to deal with later? Well, they don’t go away, and chances are you’re not dealing with them. The creative piece: Are you allowing yourself a creative outlet that doesn’t require anything to look a certain way or to be a certain way? We are creative in nature and that creative expression helps us heal.
The social piece of it is are you spending time with people who adore you? We are social animals and any more our isolation is costing us our health. And it’s really, really important that we get all of our facets reflected back to us, not just by one person, but by people who are older than us, who are younger than us, who are more experienced, less experienced, so that we understand what value we bring to the world. Back when we lived in hunter-gatherer societies, we got this all the time, and we just don’t now. But social is really important, and the pandemic just exacerbated that.
Jeff Randolph:
Yeah, you-
Cami Travis-Groves:
The spiritual piece of this-
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, go ahead.
Cami Travis-Groves:
I’m almost done, this is the fifth piece, the spiritual piece of it is spending time in stillness and sitting in the discomfort of whatever it is you’re feeling or in the comfort of whatever it is you’re feeling, getting in tune and really familiar with your inner landscape, because that’s where a lot of our decisions are made, right? So it’s good to tend that landscape. And then the last piece is the mental piece. If your best friend talked to you the way you talk to yourself, would you still be friends? So these are all areas of self-care that should be at your center of your day. Anything else in the center has to be temporary.
Sometimes, your kids are sick or your business takes precedent, and that takes center stage, which is fine for a short time, but you’ve got to put yourself back in center stage, so that you have the capacity to take care of your loved ones who then support you, and the paying work, which then supports you. And then the final circle outside of that is your community, your volunteer work, your friend circle, whatever then which supports you. So it has to stay in that order. And a lot of business owners, entrepreneurs, especially in startup phase, the business takes center stage and they think, “Well, I’ll sleep later.” Yes, but no, that’s not sustainable.
Jeff Randolph:
It’s not enough, yeah. And I just wanted to make sure that we jumped in and were able to talk about your book afterwards. Since you mentioned the book and you mentioned the pandemic even, I wanted to talk about that, because you have three books available on Amazon right now. The one I wanted to focus on is the Inner Growth Workbook for Creatives: Journey from Scarcity to Abundance. And you started that workbook because of the pandemic and you said, “If my days are numbered because of this, what will I regret not having done?” And I thought that was, man, if we all paid attention to the kinds of things that we think like this and took action on it, what couldn’t be done? Tell us about the book. And I know we’ve already gotten into a little bit about it already. So yeah, origin story, what’s going on with that book?
Cami Travis-Groves:
Yeah. I started doing volunteer mentoring with this amazing worldwide group called ADPList, stands for Amazing Design People List, and it provides free mentoring worldwide. We’re up to over 22,000 mentors now. It went viral, grassroots, viral, and we’ve crossed the threshold, well over 100 million minutes of mentoring. So I started doing these one-on-one mentoring, and I noticed after a while that I was having the same conversation over and over again. And I thought, “Hmm, I want…” And it was impactful, and I want to be able to give people this information on a larger scale.
So I approached the founders, Felix and James, and I said, “Is there any way I can do this instead of one-to-one, one to many?” And they said, “Yes, we’re working on it,” and they were working on group sessions, “And in the meantime, here’s a webinar.” And so I did a webinar for six months, and I realized this is kind of what I want to do. And actually, that’s how the podcast started. I asked if I could re-release all that audio, and they said, “Sure, do whatever you want with it.” So I thought, “Well, dang, now I’m a podcaster.”
Jeff Randolph:
Yeah. “Now I have a podcast, man.”
Cami Travis-Groves:
But all the conversations that I had, the foundation of inner work, which most people are just not familiar with, they’re like, “Inner work, what is that, like meditation? What is that?” Like I was saying earlier, it’s about getting really familiar with that inner landscape. So all those conversations I had turned into the book. I wrote it in two months, in June and July of 2021, and I thought, “If I die tomorrow, this is the legacy I want to leave. I want to provide people with a foot in the door to inner growth, and peace, and happiness, and freedom, and the sense of wellbeing that coaching can provide, that inner work can provide that most people are just not familiar with.”
Jeff Randolph:
That’s fair. I want to have gone back in time and have done exactly the same thing, well done. And good job listening to yourself and what needed to come out of… How much of that is just the creative’s job, is just saying, “Hey, this is inside me and it’s got to get out somehow. It’s got to be on paper, it’s got to be in a sculpture, it’s got to be somewhere”?
Cami Travis-Groves:
That’s a good question. I am not sure. For me, it was my son exposed us to COVID, and I thought, “What if I get this and die? I will really regret not-”
Jeff Randolph:
It’s sobering, yeah.
Cami Travis-Groves:
Yeah, and I thought, “Okay, what else do I want to do? I don’t want to wait to get sick and I don’t want to start all this.” I thought, “I just need to get this done, and it doesn’t have to be perfect.” My inner critic, I had an inner critic attack soon as I sat down to write it. My inner critic said, “Who do you think you are writing this book?” And that’s normal. Having that voice is normal, but my inner critic is male, go figure. And his name is Cruella. We’ve had long, long conversations on paper, but I understand his value is in picking things apart, finding flaws. He’s really good at that.
So as soon as I sat down to write this and I hear this obnoxious voice, I say, “Wait, when the manuscript is done, I need you to really look at it and tear it apart if need be. Flesh out things that are wimpy, and cut things that are too wordy, and make sure that there’s clarity.” And that’s exactly what that part of me did. So that’s kind of what I teach people is how to utilize all of the parts, understanding why you have an inner critic, why that part of you is questioning you, what value is there, and then accessing all the other parts of yourself that are usually subconscious, that you are not aware of or are fighting to suppress.
Jeff Randolph:
You’re an experienced entrepreneur, you’ve built your own business, and you’ve contributed to the visual success of so many other businesses as well. You’ve contributed to success in getting people’s brains, and minds, and everything aligned, and focused, and ready to move forward. What’s something that you may have done in year one of the business that you wouldn’t do today if you had it to do over again?
Cami Travis-Groves:
I’ll talk about the graphic design business first, because I made a pretty awesome kerfuffle in the beginning. There was a company that hired me that created radio jingles, and they needed a logo. They wanted their sound file to be in the background of their logo, the visual of the wave file.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah.
Cami Travis-Groves:
And the very first proof, I knew I nailed it. Very, very first idea. And he kept saying, “Well, can I see this? Can I see that?” And I didn’t limit the number of proofs. I was young and naive, and I started numbering the proofs. And on proof 81, I thought, “Okay, this is ridiculous. I’m just going to, that first one that I love, I’m going to put that back in,” and that was proof number 82. And he said, “Oh, finally, this is it.”
Jeff Randolph:
“Got it.”
Cami Travis-Groves:
And I didn’t know what I didn’t know, I had no idea. So the mistake I made was not trusting my gut, not standing up for what I knew was good, not believing that I knew better than he did when it came to logos.
Jeff Randolph:
That is great advice that we should apply across the board to so many things. Cami, I’m taking you into the lightning round. Are you ready for the lightning round?
Cami Travis-Groves:
Let’s go.
Jeff Randolph:
All right, so you have no previous knowledge of any of the kind of topics that we may talk about here in the lightning round. We’re going to look for shorter sound bite answers, but if we need to, we’ll dive into it. We’ll talk through those. Our first question in the lightning round, you have a podcast as well, it’s called Deep Dive: Coaching for Creatives. Who’s been your favorite guest on the podcast so far?
Cami Travis-Groves:
My mentor, Peleg Top. That’s an easy one.
Jeff Randolph:
Yeah, and give us a little bit of why that… So mentor for sure, so there’s that connection.
Cami Travis-Groves:
Yes, he’s my mentor and coach. I met him at a design conference, and we can’t figure out which one, because we kept going to it years and years. It feels like I’ve known him for decades. He used to own a small boutique agency in LA called Top Designs, and he had tiny, little clients like the Grammys, so he knows what the creative path is like. He realized, kind of like I did, after how many years of being in the industry, it’s not fulfilling, and that people kept coming to him for advice and asking questions, and he thought, “I just need to follow my gut on this.”
So he developed a course called The 100 Days of Creative High Growth, and it’s receiving coaching every day, an hour to two hours a day, for 100 days straight. No weekends off, no holidays off. It’s intense, it’s amazing, it’s not for everyone. That’s the coaching that I went through that changed my life, that changed the trajectory of my career, that made me realize, “This coaching thing is what I am really passionate about.” I’ve been coaching people my whole life, now I get paid for it and I ask permission first.
Jeff Randolph:
Now it’s defined, now it’s a thing that you’re doing.
Cami Travis-Groves:
Yes.
Jeff Randolph:
I’m going to stay on your podcast for a minute. What is your dream or who is your guest as a podcast, dream? This is like the big get, you could be happy because, “I’ll point to this episode the entire time.”
Cami Travis-Groves:
Oh, gosh. The first name that comes up is Mel Robbins or Oprah, because she’s done so much work in the trauma field.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Cami Travis-Groves:
There’s a great book called What Happened to You? by Dr. Bruce Perry and Oprah Winfrey that really defines how anything that happens in your childhood could be defined as trauma, and how that trauma could still be operating and still be in an unclosed loop in your system, that makes your default behaviors and thoughts go away, that’s not as helpful to you as they could be. So I myself, I was traumatized as a kid. And on the ACE test, which is the Adverse Childhood Experience test, it’s a score from zero to 10, most people score a zero or a one, maybe a two, things get serious when you score a four or more, I scored an eight.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Cami Travis-Groves:
Yeah, very intense, and understanding and processing that has healed me. I’m a functioning, happy, healthy grownup now, as opposed to someone who is struggling. When people ask me how I’m doing, I say, “I thrive.” So this book, and Oprah Winfrey would be freaking amazing to have on my… Or Dr. Bruce Perry, either one would be amazing to have on my podcast.
Jeff Randolph:
Those are both good picks. I’m going to keep going on this concept of changing the world for a second. If we give you the power to change the world by changing the way that people think, or act, or other big change in the world, how would you change the world to make it a better place?
Cami Travis-Groves:
Well, first of all, I would keep the things that are already working well. So many people-
Jeff Randolph:
First, do no harm.
Cami Travis-Groves:
Yeah, well, and so many people think we would need to change everything. There’s a whole lot that’s working really, really well. And an abundant mindset focuses on what you can do with what you have. And it’s the opposite of a scarcity mindset, which is focusing what you can’t do because of what you don’t have. And if I could just have everyone just gaze a little bit more towards that abundant mindset, to notice where they are in any given moment, and to choose to operate from a base of love instead of a base of fear, the world would improve itself.
Jeff Randolph:
There are a lot of youth development people out there who see that growth mindset and abundance mindset kind of thing and go, “Yep, you’re right. That’d do it, if we just did that.”
Cami Travis-Groves:
The only people we can heal is ourselves. The only person who is inside of our control is ourselves. That’s the only thing. And if everyone just focused a little bit more on that, on operating from love, paying attention to fear, deciding, observing it, and then making decisions based on who they want to become, who they are becoming, instead of who they used to be, the world would, like I said, just improve itself.
Jeff Randolph:
Much better place. Let’s talk about your creative work for a minute, because you have what we’d call a strong career in design. Is there a project that you look back on and say, “Yep, that’s my favorite. I did that.” I’m literally asking you to pick your favorite child right now.
Cami Travis-Groves:
Ooh, probably my latest book.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, really? Yeah.
Cami Travis-Groves:
Because it was so fun. I don’t normally do watercolor, and the cover and all of the inside art is all watercolor that I did by hand.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, that’s nice. And it’s a passion project as well. It’s something that you felt very strongly about, had to come out, and that is the Inner Growth Workbook for Creatives: Journey from Scarcity to Abundance. I’ll throw the plug in, sure.
Cami Travis-Groves:
Thanks, thanks. Yeah, the act of designing books is amazing. When you’re faced with just a plain old black and white manuscript, and you understand its content, and you just design the cover and the inside pages that sings its content, that is a victory to me. And my friend, Terri Trespicio, she’s like, “You know, Cami, isn’t that what you do with your coaching clients?” I’m like, “Whoa, mind blown.”
Jeff Randolph:
There it is. Coach Cami, you have survived the lightning round. Where can people find you? If they want more information, if they want to learn more, if they want to get in touch with you, how do they find you?
Cami Travis-Groves:
Well, my website’s ridiculously easy to remember: My name, C-A-M-I, and it’s iMac backwards. What did I work on? Okay, so Cami, and then dot what I do, coach. www.camiimac.com/.
Jeff Randolph:
That’s too easy. That’s a too easy place for people to find you. Cami, thank you for being on the podcast today. We appreciate you being here.
Cami Travis-Groves:
Thank you for having me, Jeff. I appreciate you.
Jeff Randolph:
And that is our show. Thanks to our guest, Coach Cami, and thank you for listening to the Small Business Miracles Podcast. Remember to subscribe, leave us a five star rating, and review. Drop us a line on the website at eagadv.com, if you have any thoughts. Until then, we’ll be out here helping entrepreneurs with another small business miracle.