Gillian Cal­iste

To mark Glob­al En­tre­pre­neur­ship Week (GEW) 2021, an in­ter­na­tion­al ini­tia­tive where young peo­ple in six con­ti­nents gain ex­po­sure to new and in­no­v­a­tive busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ties, the Sun­day Guardian high­lights in­ter­na­tion­al­ly ac­claimed Me­dia Mar­ket­ing Spe­cial­ist, CEO and founder of Car­li Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Car­la Williams-John­son.

Be­ing recog­nised by top lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al pub­li­ca­tions and me­dia hous­es was not fore­most on Car­la Williams-John­son’s mind when she start­ed her mar­ket­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tions busi­ness in 2013. Ob­serv­ing that many small busi­ness­es and solo­pre­neurs (per­sons who set up and run a busi­ness on their own) were not get­ting a re­turn on in­vest­ment as they lacked mar­ket­ing and pub­lic re­la­tions knowl­edge, as well as, large bud­gets to spend in these ar­eas, Williams-John­son de­cid­ed to take on the chal­lenge. In sev­en years, she has been laud­ed as a me­dia and mar­ket­ing pow­er­house.

When she spoke with Sun­day Guardian, Williams-John­son said she had want­ed to pass on crit­i­cal strate­gies gained in ad­ver­tis­ing at big com­pa­nies like Co­ca Co­la, Unilever and Nes­tle to small busi­ness­es that were of­ten not tak­en se­ri­ous­ly in their re­spec­tive mar­kets.

“One of the things peo­ple al­ways told me was that I had not just an un­der­stand­ing of the me­dia land­scape, but how to cre­ative­ly use the me­dia land­scape to help busi­ness­es grow. Ad­ver­tis­ing agen­cies would make room for big­ger com­pa­nies, but not give small­er busi­ness­es sim­i­lar at­ten­tion. I de­cid­ed I would be an ad­vo­cate for the small man,” she said.

Ini­tial­ly found­ing Car­li Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and of­fi­cial­ly reg­is­ter­ing her com­pa­ny in 2013, she made the bold move to ful­ly ven­ture out on her own a few years lat­er when her po­si­tion at a pri­vate com­pa­ny was made re­dun­dant. She went about de­vis­ing meth­ods to iden­ti­fy clients for the brands of most­ly small busi­ness­es, en­sur­ing that these busi­ness­es be­came more vis­i­ble on­line and of­fline and cre­at­ing in­ven­tive mar­ket­ing cam­paigns to boost their rev­enue.

By 2017 she was named in Huff­in­g­ton Post and Thrive Glob­al as one of the 99 Lim­it Break­ing Fe­male Founders. Forbes ap­proached her two years lat­er and through­out the pan­dem­ic, she has been fea­tured in nu­mer­ous pub­li­ca­tions and on pod­casts like Buz­zfeed and Home Busi­ness Mag­a­zine. Her­ald­ed as one of the Mar­keters to fol­low for 2020, she was the re­cent win­ner of Best Pro­mo­tions Com­pa­ny—West In­dies at the 2020 Me­dia In­no­va­tor awards ac­cord­ing to Britain’s Cor­po­rate Vi­sion Mag­a­zine.

The savvy me­dia mar­ket­ing spe­cial­ist and glob­al mar­ket­ing in­flu­encer ad­mit­ted that such ex­po­sure was be­yond any­thing she could ever imag­ine.

“It’s weird to see my­self in these big pub­li­ca­tions. If you had asked me: do you see your­self in Forbes in the fu­ture, I would have laughed. Who is this lit­tle black girl from this tiny is­land? How did I get there? It’s weird to see all these ac­com­plish­ments, but then I re­alised that I am fab­u­lous be­cause I’ve done all these things and I know what I’m talk­ing about. I’m proud that I can show oth­er busi­ness own­ers, es­pe­cial­ly from Trinidad and the Caribbean what is pos­si­ble,” said the pub­lic re­la­tions ex­pert who while grow­ing up watched her fa­ther Gar­net’s busi­ness prowess as he ran the fam­i­ly’s Of­fice Restau­rant Bar and Lounge in Barataria.

Al­though Williams-John­son had years of ex­pe­ri­ence, hav­ing launched her ca­reer with Mc­Cann (Erik­son) in 2004, build­ing her own busi­ness was an up­hill climb for the sin­gle moth­er of a teen at the time. She laboured be­tween mak­ing no prof­its and mak­ing just enough to cov­er her bills.

“There were days with long tears try­ing to prove my­self to oth­ers, ask­ing my­self if I was in­sane for do­ing all this,” she re­called.

Fi­nal­ly, Williams-John­son gained the at­ten­tion of the Huff­in­g­ton Post.

“They sent me an email telling me they had been watch­ing me and want­ed to add me to their list of 99 Lim­it Break­ing Fe­male Founders. I thought it was spam.”

She ig­nored the email and they wrote again, even­tu­al­ly mak­ing her one of the few blacks or Caribbean peo­ple on the list.

The oth­er in­ter­views fol­lowed even in the height of the pan­dem­ic when Williams-John­son had to re­vamp her busi­ness fo­cus and shift to pub­lic re­la­tions, pub­lic­i­ty and cri­sis man­age­ment. This time she leaned on her ex­pe­ri­ence of jug­gling her busi­ness with her then two-year-old son, her sec­ond child, to of­fer ad­vice.

“I had four clients can­cel with­in a day in March when the pan­dem­ic struck. When there’s a down­turn, mar­ket­ing is usu­al­ly the first to be cut. So I said: we’re not in con­trol of a lot of things, but I am in con­trol of who sees me and hears me,” she re­called.

“I de­cid­ed to jump on the PR train and I showed up every­where; to mom­pre­neurs who were strug­gling with pro­duc­tiv­i­ty be­cause they had tod­dlers at home. I de­cid­ed I could show up to busi­ness own­ers and give them tips on how to piv­ot and im­ple­ment new strate­gies. I was able to show up to black women.”

Forced to choose be­tween work and their at-home re­spon­si­bil­i­ties due to the pan­dem­ic, many of these busi­ness­women, it was re­port­ed, had been pack­ing up their com­pa­nies. Williams-John­son said she tried to ad­vise as many as pos­si­ble how to keep fight­ing.

Though some of her big­ger clients have been in the US and more re­cent­ly, in the UK and New Zealand, Williams-John­son main­ly ad­vis­es au­thors, coach­es and small busi­ness­es with one or two branch­es who wish to ex­pand lo­cal­ly or are look­ing to grow their busi­ness in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

“Some­times we en­tre­pre­neurs tend to think we need to stay in Trinidad or what­ev­er is our home coun­try. But there is a whole mar­ket out there that may not live in your coun­try and may buy from you if they know you ex­ist, so you need to find a way to put your busi­ness out there so more peo­ple know about you.

“We grow up some­how be­liev­ing that peo­ple in first world coun­tries look down on us. We feel that they are bet­ter than us, but that is not true. For a long time, I was afraid to put my­self in the for­eign busi­ness land­scape be­cause I look dif­fer­ent, sound dif­fer­ent. Then, the day I de­cid­ed to em­brace what made me dif­fer­ent—the same sing-song voice, the same Tri­ni lin­go, our beach­es that we take for grant­ed—once I em­braced these things that me unique­ly Tri­ni, unique­ly me, that’s when I start­ed to blow up. That’s when peo­ple from abroad want­ed to know more about me be­cause it was my dif­fer­ence that made me spe­cial,” she said.

Q&A with CEO and founder of Car­li Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Car­la Williams-John­son

Apart from be­ing quin­tes­sen­tial­ly Trinida­di­an what makes you a pow­er­house, es­pe­cial­ly as a fe­male in this field?

“I think it’s mak­ing clients com­fort­able be­cause peo­ple can tell when you’re hold­ing back and not be­ing truth­ful. I think what makes me stand out is that I am my­self; I make jokes laugh at my own mis­takes. I’m re­lat­able be­cause when peo­ple hear about the things I have done they re­alise that if I could re­cov­er, they can too. When I first start­ed I thought I knew it all and could do it all my­self, but I re­alised that what makes me pow­er­ful is al­low­ing oth­ers in­to my space to bounce ideas off of, be­ing able to ac­cept crit­i­cism, knowl­edge, in­for­ma­tion and do some­thing with it.”

Is there any­thing you want to sug­gest to small com­pa­nies, es­pe­cial­ly in terms of mar­ket­ing via so­cial me­dia?

“When it comes to so­cial me­dia, I re­alise many com­pa­nies have a love-hate re­la­tion­ship, es­pe­cial­ly with Face­book be­cause some­one told them you need to have a page and that was it. To me, more busi­ness­es need to put the so­cial back in so­cial me­dia. They need to use so­cial me­dia to build re­la­tion­ships with their cus­tomers. Stop post­ing just the prices, you need to be more un­der­stand­ing. Peo­ple are go­ing through a lot be­cause of the pan­dem­ic. You need to know your tar­get so well that when they see you, they feel as if you know them. So cre­ate con­tent that is en­gag­ing, give tips and help­ful in­fo to see them through what­ev­er they might be go­ing through and be as au­then­tic as pos­si­ble. Peo­ple would buy and be ad­vo­cates for your brand once they feel you un­der­stand them.”

What are the best lessons that you’ve learnt?

“You are on your own jour­ney, so don’t try to grow too quick­ly. Like any oth­er small busi­ness, I took time to prove my­self to show that I’m not a fly-by-night but that I am ac­tu­al­ly us­ing my knowl­edge and ex­pe­ri­ence for good.

“Look­ing back, I can see some of the er­rors that I made; one of them is try­ing to grow too fast. By that, I mean think­ing that I knew every­thing or that peo­ple were just go­ing to ac­cept me be­cause I worked at y x, y and z and that wasn’t the case. You have to take time to grow. You have to try dif­fer­ent things, do the re­search, see where your clients are and nur­ture them, build re­la­tion­ships with them. When I start­ed back in 2004, it was a dif­fer­ent kind of mar­ket­ing. It was that we were speak­ing to you, where­as now, it’s we’re speak­ing for you; we want to form re­la­tion­ships. So I had to un­der­stand that clients are not just go­ing to come to you.

“The sec­ond les­son I learned was not every­body is go­ing to be part of your jour­ney. This is friends, past col­leagues, fam­i­ly; peo­ple who would have said: you can do this, but when you ask them for help they bail on you. There were a lot of dis­ap­point­ments over time where I thought peo­ple would be more sup­port­ive, but they made room for me to meet new peo­ple and those new peo­ple be­came my rocks.

How do you feel about many women feel­ing that they have to sac­ri­fice jobs, busi­ness­es for fam­i­ly com­mit­ments, es­pe­cial­ly be­cause of the pan­dem­ic and what ad­vice would you give to them?

“It re­al­ly broke my heart to see this be­cause some were silent, but some were vo­cal and you heard the an­guish, saw the tears. I felt bad that it came down to that, but there are many times when you as a fe­male en­tre­pre­neur can lean on your sis­ter in busi­ness to help you through.

“We keep think­ing that be­cause we have a busi­ness we have to do every­thing our­selves. We feel like we can­not tell peo­ple what we’re go­ing through, that we can­not af­ford for peo­ple to help us. But when I first start­ed, I bartered. A lot of us small busi­ness­es bartered to get the ser­vices we need­ed. Times are chang­ing. Women are un­der­stand­ing that we’re over this whole woman against woman and work­ing with too many women in one place is too much ‘comess’.

“We have groups specif­i­cal­ly built to help women en­tre­pre­neurs grow and build their busi­ness­es. If it means that you have to barter or slow down then do it. It would help you keep go­ing. Williams-John­son will part­ner with two Trinida­di­an en­tre­pre­neurs to present the Busi­ness in Dig­i­tal sum­mit from No­vem­ber 10-12 which aims to as­sist Caribbean en­tre­pre­neurs through on­line in­ter­ac­tion with suc­cess­ful en­tre­pre­neurs from Ja­maica, St Lu­cia, Turks and Caicos and oth­er Caribbean re­gions. Join in at www.your­busi­nes­sis­dig­i­tal­sum­mit.com. She will al­so do work­shops through GEW, St Lu­cia and has a fe­male en­tre­pre­neur­ship pro­gramme through the US Em­bassy teach­ing women busi­ness own­ers how to sur­vive in these times.”