Elma Beganovich has reached the upper ranks of social influencing, commanding as much as $20,000 for a single post. How did she do it? With intention, every step of the way. Gloria interviewed her and this week offers key insights from their conversation about how Elma, with her sister’s support, fashioned a powerful brand.
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Annotated transcripts
Gloria Feldt: Like I always say, there is ambition and there is intention. Ambition is, “I hope, I wish, I want.” Intention is, “I will. I’m doing it. There was never a question.” Listen for a moment to an example of Elma Beganovich’s big intention.
“In the marketing world, there are four large agency networks, and they basically dominate the advertising world, so my intention is to win the contract that any of these large agency networks has, and I think that there’s still room to do just as good of a job as they do on any given campaign, and even better.”
Hello, and welcome to Power to You. I’m Gloria Feldt, here with secrets and tools to prepare and propel you with training and coaching to harness your incredible power to in your professional lives. I cofounded Take the Lead because I figured out how to crack the code that has been holding women back from equal leadership and pay. My mission is for women and men to hold equal power, pay, and leadership positions by 2025. At the end of each podcast, I’ll share specific tips that will help you lead and succeed.
Now, the voice that you heard on the audio snippet was Elma Beganovich. She’s 35 years old, the exact age that I believe is the perfect point in life. You’re old enough that people respect you and young enough to do just about anything you want to do if you have the intention to do it. She and her sister, Amra Beganovich, the two of them seem to have a symbiotic relationship, have made a multimillion dollar digital media business, having been early adopters to social media. In fact, they were among the first to join Instagram, because this studious lawyer saw the power of its visual attraction to promote brands.
The daughter of Bosnian immigrants, she is the ultimate American dream. An entrepreneur whose social media posts fetch $20,000 from brands who want to be seen on and spoken of by millennial influencers. Here’s a relevant stat to put this into perspective for all women and let you know that Elma and Amra are not just an aberration. Women are starting entrepreneurial businesses at a rate twice as high as men right now, and women of color represent almost 90% of the new women-owned businesses.
Amra and Elma founded A&E, a digital agency with an impressive client portfolio of Fortune 500 companies, like J&J, Procter & Gamble, Netflix, and Wells Fargo. They are mega influencers with over 2.2 million social followers. I had the opportunity to interview Elma Beganovich and find out about how she and Amra built their company that, as you’ve heard, has the lofty intention of matching the big four agency networks in the size contracts they garner.
Now, I am obsessed with the concept of intention, so much so that I’m writing a book about the power of intention. I realized in talking with Elma that I had found my archetype of the intentional woman. Now, my next book is, yeah, kind of a sequel to, or more properly an extension of the last book I wrote, called No Excuses: 9 Ways Women Can Change How We Think About Power. I realized that as I was helping so many women to know and embrace their power at a deep level, and as we shifted the power paradigm from an oppressive narrative of power over to the generative and creative idea of the power to, the inevitable next question is, “Power to do what?” What is your intention? And more importantly, is your intention big enough to encompass all that you bring to the table? Or are you limiting yourself by not fully using your power to envision and then reach your biggest, boldest intention?
So, I asked Elma when she and Amra knew they had the power to, and whether there had been any one defining moment on their journey. She said it was the day that they went from making $99 per post to $20,000 per post. Now, just let that sink in. $20,000 for one single post on social media. Yet it was earning that very first $99 per post that gave them wings, Elma said. It let them know that they could build a business from being social media influencers.
I thought that that was really significant, because it was that they had to start somewhere, just like we all do. By that time, they had amassed a large audience. They had over 100,000 unique visitors who came to their blog in the first three months, and they started posting on Twitter when it was brand new. So, timing, like so much in life, was key. They saw the opportunities of that moment and they took them full out.
Here’s how it happened: So, Amra was running in Central Park when she got an email with this news. She stopped and she immediately texted Elma, and that was the moment that they knew they had the power to scale their business quickly. Now, these two sisters clearly have lots of drive. It’s that unquantifiable characteristic of immigrants and first-generation Americans. Elma credits her sister with being the more creative one. It was Amra who first recognized the opportunity to provide women with more attainable, more reasonably priced fashion and relatable travel, cosmetics, and other lifestyle advice than they were seeing in the major fashion magazines. And Elma creates the business systems to make it all work.
Growing up, Elma said her older sister gave her courage. Amra, she said, was the more beautiful one and the more social one. Elma, the more studious one. But Amra told Elma that her studies were paying off. Elma wryly observed that you always admire what you don’t have or you think you don’t have. She said that her parents also encouraged her, but it was her sister’s peer influence that was stronger. Sisterhood was a powerful bond, and Amra also got encouragement from Elma in return. At Take the Lead, we call that #SisterCourage.
Now, brand marketing is one thing in a stable economy, but what about now? I asked how they were coping in the coronavirus pandemic and whether or how it had changed their business. In an optimism that is typical of successful entrepreneurs, Elma said that you have to see opportunities in any situation. “There is a shift in consumer mindset now,” she said. It’s usually hard to get people to shift a habit, but right now, people are forced to grow accustomed to online shopping.
For Amra and Elma, this is an opportunity that they were already well positioned to maximize. It has become easy to spread a brand globally instead of market by market, and to go direct to consumers rather than get people into stores. Digital marketing is also less expensive, so A&E can make a compelling case for companies to shift budgets from other more traditional ad spends.
There are also challenges due to COVID. Budgets are on pause as companies pull back, waiting to see what will happen with the economy. And also social responsibility is now a bigger part of what brands want to prioritize, and there’s more appetite for collaboration between brands to leverage the value that they get from their ad spends.
Here are some tips from Elma Beganovich, intentional woman, that I want to share with you. I really agree with each one of the things that she said, so here are our tips from Elma and me:
Let me know how it goes for you by sharing with me on social media @gloriafeldt, or emailing me at powertoyou@taketheleadwomen.com. Until next week, Power to You.
Power to You is produced by Lantigua Williams & Co. Cedric Wilson is our sound designer. For more about my work, please visit gloriafeldt.com, and follow me on social media @gloriafeldt. To learn more about Take the Lead and our courses and coaching services, go to taketheleadwomen.com and follow Take the Lead on social media. You can also send me comments about the show and questions on leadership and power to powertoyou@taketheleadwomen.com. I might even use them on future episodes. Be sure to subscribe or follow Power to You on your favorite listening app, and you’d make me so happy if you would leave a review on Apple Podcasts, as those really help us get to know what you like about the show. Thanks.
CITATION:
Feldt, Gloria, host. “An Intentional Woman.” Power to You, Take the Lead Women, June 15, 2020. https://www.taketheleadwomen.com/podcast