Kimberly Afonso: International Digital Marketing Consultant

Welcome to the Business Blast Podcast. I'm your host, Tyler Wagner. This episode is brought to you by Authors Unite. Authors Unite makes the process of becoming a published bestselling author as simple as sipping your morning cup of coffee. You can learn more about Authors Unite at authorsunite.com. Now let's jump into the episode. All right everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Business Blast podcast. I'm your host Tyler Wagner. Today I have Kimberly Afonso with us. She is an international digital marketing consultant. In addition to strategy work, she owns a remote digital marketing agency and her clients are in the startup sector. So welcome to the show.

Thank you so much, Tyler. It's really great to be on, especially now that I know we're both from the Philadelphia area but have moved away. So thanks a lot for having me on.

Yes, of course. So for everybody listening, if you hear our Philly accents, that's why. So we'll jump in, Kimberly. The first one that I have for you is what is the best story from your life that has an underlying valuable message?

Yeah, so I have two interesting ones. One is that when I was younger, when I was a kid, I was very introverted and shy, and I consider myself I'm still an introverted person on the introvert-extrovert spectrum. But I remember when I was younger, some teachers wanted me to do a public speaking class, and I completely refused. I said, like, there's no way I'm going to do it. And this is something that I just remembered the other day because my dad reminded me of this story about how I refused to go to this public speaking class. But now looking at my life, like, 10 years later, I love to do public speaking. I love to get to know different people. And I really always am looking for speaking engagements. I will speak at two in Milan this month, actually. And I think this just shows that you can really change. And when you have the opportunity to really grow, you really should accept that and that people in general can change over the years. I think if I look back at my younger self, I would be surprised at how much I've changed over the years, but I think that's just a natural part of life and something we should really embrace. And then another funny story I wanted to share was one about— so I went to college in New York, and my best friend reminded me of this story a little while ago that we were just having a girls' brunch, maybe like— now this is 6 or 7 years ago, and we were talking about what we would like in the future. And I always wanted to live abroad. So I was saying, I want to live in Barcelona. I want to be by the beach. I would like to have my own business. And then she reminded me, I completely forgot that we were just like sharing our future thoughts during that brunch. But it was really funny because when she reminded me about it and she reminded me of her, what she said there too, looking ahead at the years, that's actually what we ended up doing. At the time I was living in Barcelona, starting my own business. So it just really shows the power of what we can manifest and the power of our thoughts. I really am a big believer in our mindset and how far that can really bring us in whatever we want in life. So I think those are two really valuable stories I could share.

That is awesome. And I'm a big fan of Barcelona as well. Barcelona is a lot of fun.

It's an amazing city. I completely agree. Now I live in Milan, but it's an incredible city.

Yes. And I'm excited for your answer on this next one because I know a lot of our listeners are definitely interested in digital marketing. So what is the most valuable piece of information we should know that's within your expertise or industry?

So I would say that your personal brand and your professional brand online is everything. And I think some clients in the US perhaps know this a bit more. But as I now live in Europe and I've lived there for the past 4.5 years, I've realized that a lot of people in Europe do not invest so much in either their company nor in their personal brand online. And why do I say this is the most important thing? Well, you can just take a look at my personal business. I have a remote digital marketing agency. I live in Milan, but I travel really often. And basically I find most of my clients online. I invest a lot of time doing LinkedIn videos and creating content with a lot of marketing tips. And that's how clients find me or I find them. So without my personal brand online, I would never have been able to build this, you know, network of remote clients in my sector of expertise. And this goes the same with building your professional brand. So I see a lot of startups that say we don't want to invest in digital marketing yet. We want to hold off. And I just think this is the wrong way of going about it. In general, social media marketing and digital marketing is a long-term investment. So the sooner you start investing, the better. So even if you're just creating content with a low budget, it's better to start creating that content now than 2 years from now when you say you have a large budget to put towards that. So really your personal brand and your professional brand online is everything. And every year, if we look at the data, All of the social platforms are growing, engagements on the platforms are growing. The sooner you get on those for your personal use and your professional use, the better.

I could not agree more. And then what's your best piece of overall business advice? So not necessarily industry specific.

So I think first, your business mindset is just as important as your business. And why do I say this? So as an entrepreneur, when I started my business, I'm sure like you've had similar experiences and a lot of people out there have that have their own business, is that you have a lot of hurdles every day that you have to get through. And if you're not ready to say that you're all in and you believe in your business, I really think it's easy to give up early on. So you have to invest time in building this long-term business mindset and believing in your business and yourself from the beginning. So a lot of people, I tell them how I really invest time in doing positive affirmations, doing mindset work. And a lot of people say that maybe it's just common sense to hear that, okay, you should be positive. Okay, you should think that you believe in yourself, but it's really not common sense. I think that you have to invest the time there because if you start to have negative thought patterns, this will really sabotage your business. I mean, there are reasons that businesses can fail anyway, But if you don't from the beginning believe in your business very strongly, I think it will really fail or it will be more difficult to succeed from the beginning. And along with that, I would say when you decide to launch a business, so if you've been doing something as a side project or something like that, and then you finally decide to really launch it, you have to go all in. I think you can't, at that point, you can't continue to look for other jobs on the side. I've just seen a lot of people do this and when they do, they end up failing. You have to really go all in or at least set a time period for yourself where you say, okay, I'm going to now go all in on this new idea for the next 4 or 5 months and see what happens. But during that time, you just have to focus on your business because that's really what's going to help you succeed during those first few difficult months during the beginning of any business. That's when it's more difficult. So you have to really prepare for that time.

And if you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would that be?

I'd say to know that I can accomplish whatever I would really like to and to be more open to everything around me. So one thing I mean by saying be more open to things around me is that since I've lived abroad for a while now, I've learned just to accept things how they are. Sometimes when you live in a foreign country, things don't work the same way that they do as they do in the US, where things are pretty easy just business-wise. But by being more open to everything around me, it's allowed me to really seamlessly integrate into different environments. And I actually think this is a personal and business strength now, looking back on, you know, my younger self, because I'm able to understand and be more empathetic to different people and also to, you know, just be able to adapt to any different business situation that may be a bit difficult.

And kind of going a little bit down a different path, but in your opinion, what is the key to happiness?

So for me, it's being able to do what I want to do every single day. This is something I've really reflected on over the past few years and especially something I reflected on moving so often. So my ideal life and my ideal day revolves around working in a field that I like, working with nice people, and still having time to do other things outside of work that I like to do. My favorite hobby is doing yoga, and I also like to have time to have meals with either friends or family or loved ones. And those meals I like to eat without being in front of a computer or anything like that. So I try to build my days around those things. I love to work in digital marketing, so I'm lucky that I was able to to launch my own business in that field. That's one pillar that is contributing to my happiness and is there every day. And then on top of that, I make time to do yoga every day and to share a moment with friends or family. So I think everyone just needs to kind of figure out what it is that makes you happy on a daily basis and then incorporate more of those things into your life. So like I said, yoga is the part of my hobby sphere of life that I like the most. So I always make time to incorporate yoga into my daily routine.

And, uh, what is the best book that you've read and what was the number one thing you learned from that?

So this book is— I read a lot of business books and I always try to incorporate both fiction and nonfiction into my routine of reading, but I would say the best book I've ever read is by Louise Hay. She is— she was one of the pioneers in your thought patterns and positive thinking, and she wrote a book many years ago called You You Can Heal Your Life. And in this book, she really explains in depth how our mindset affects our entire life. So if you're a positive person and you change your mindset to think positively, things around you change as well. And if you're more negative, she explains where those thought patterns may have come from, maybe from things you saw earlier in your life or something like that. But she really explains it in a way that you can understand where your thoughts come from and how you can change them. And that's really changed my life in all areas. I think since I've it like 4 years ago, I just overall have become a much more positive person. And in going in line with that, I was able to believe in myself enough to launch my own business and to be successful now in my digital agency.

And what is your favorite quote and why?

This is kind of a funny quote. It's like a really basic one, but it's one that really resonates with me all the time. It's— someone once said it to me, I think like a year ago, and they said, don't have a bad moment. They have— it's just that they said, sorry, they said, just have a bad moment, not a bad day. And I think this is something really useful for entrepreneurs as well, because if something goes wrong in your day, it can be one of a million things. Just say, okay, that's just a bad moment. It's not the full day, and I'm going to turn around the day. And when you think of it like that, it doesn't ruin your entire day. Whereas before, if something went wrong, maybe I would say, okay, this is like a terrible day, I'm not going to get anything done. But just by saying to myself, okay, if I have a bad moment, okay, that's just the moment of the day. It's not the full day. Now I'm going to move on. It's really helped me accomplish more in tough moments.

Yes. Thank you so much for coming on. Very insightful episode. The last one I have for you before we let you go is where is the best place for our listeners to find and/or connect with you online?

Yeah, I would love to connect with anyone interested also in digital marketing. Or any of the other things I talked about here. And you can find me on LinkedIn. So just LinkedIn.com/KimberlyAlfonso or my website is KimberlyAlfonso.com. So thank you so much, Tyler, really, for having me on. I love listening to your other episodes. I really think it's great how you interview so many people from different backgrounds and what you're doing for us by, you know, letting people share their stories. So thanks a lot for having me on today.

Of course. And thanks again for jumping on.

Thanks. Have a great one. The podcast you just heard was made using Anchor. Ever thought about making your own podcast? Anchor makes it really easy for anyone to get started. It's a one-stop shop for recording, hosting, and distributing podcasts. Best of all, it's 100% free. Sign up now at anchor.fm/new. That's anchor.fm/new to get started.