Join host Don Williams on The Proven Entrepreneur Show as he chats with Stephanie Nivinskus, the visionary founder and CEO of Sizzle Force Marketing. In this captivating episode, Stephanie shares her inspiring journey, from early influences and her first job to her entrepreneurial leap.
Discover how Stephanie has adapted to the ever-evolving landscape of marketing, particularly in the face of AI advancements. Gain valuable insights into the challenges and opportunities presented by AI and learn how Stephanie has navigated these changes with resilience and innovation.
Listen as Stephanie reflects on her entrepreneurial journey, offering advice to her younger self and sharing her perspectives on the future of AI in marketing. This episode is a must-listen for aspiring entrepreneurs and those seeking inspiration to overcome obstacles and thrive in today’s dynamic business world.
Watch the episode here
The Proven Entrepreneur Show: Taking Control: The Power of Becoming Your Own Puppeteer in Business by Stephanie Nivinskus
Hey, Don Williams here with today’s episode of The Proven Entrepreneur Show. I’ve got a great guest for you today. Lady I’ve known, I don’t know, eight, nine, 10 years. She’s from San Diego, California, Stephanie Navinskas. Welcome to the show.
Don't chase the money - chase the industry you love. It took me 10 years of understanding optometry to make my next business easy. Share on XHey, Dom, thank you so much for having me.
It is my pleasure, I assure you. Now I know that you’re the founder and CEO of Sizzle Force Marketing, but please share with us what does Sizzle Force do, who do you do it with, why do you do it, all that good stuff.
Yeah, Sizzleforce Marketing is a fractional CMO agency that is powered by artificial intelligence and perfected with human intelligence. We work with scaling companies typically that are doing about two to ten million dollars in revenue annually and all kinds both B2C and B2B and gosh I do this because I love it. I’ve been doing it my entire career.
started in 95 and as soon as I started, I was like, I found my thing and here we are.
There you go. Well, thank you very much. You must have been about five when you started. And so, well, just say yes and on we go. So, okay. So I’m going to take you all the way back to when you were five years old. So little Stephanie, okay, in the household where you were raised. And I know that takes a lot of different forms for a lot of different people. But what I want to know is in your school girl years, five to 18, was there an adult in your home?
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
Okay. Mm-hmm.
that was an entrepreneur that set an entrepreneurial example.
Hmm. My mother and my stepfather both kind of had side gigs as entrepreneurs, but they have the stability of the regular nine to five. Their side gig, they were both therapists. So they would do, they would see some patients like a little bit part time in the evenings and whatnot. But the real entrepreneur stuff actually goes back a few generations.
My great grandfather and my grandfather were both very serious entrepreneurs.
Oh, I love that. And so your parents were kind of like, um, what I would call W-2s with side hustles and, um, and, and love that. And, you know, I think everybody who lives in W-2 land ought to have a side hustle. And if you get really good at your side hustle, maybe that becomes your main hustle and, you know, you left the W-2 thing go and this show is all about helping entrepreneurs take the next step. And sometimes that’s W-2 taking that step into entrepreneurship. And sometimes it’s the entrepreneur.
Right.
going ahead and borrowing the $100 million and everything in between. Everybody has a next step and it’s always a little different. So, okay, love that. Tell me your first job and your first job, you may have been an entrepreneur, you may have been mowing yards or selling lemonade or whatever, but you also might have been working at Dairy Queen. Okay, it doesn’t matter, but tell us about the first time you traded. Time, effort, and.
elbow grease for dollars. What were you doing?
working at a store called Long Strug Store and I was a very proud cashier.
Oh, very good. Okay. And I’m guessing a drug store back at that time also was kind of a variety store. So it had more things than just, yeah. Okay. Very, very good. So after that, okay, you graduate high school, okay. You sailed around the world for a year. You hiked across Europe. You joined the Marine Corps. You went to university. What did you do?
Yeah.
Ha ha ha!
after your school girl years.
Yeah, I went straight to four year university. I went to San Diego State. So I moved about 500 miles away from home. And I made a decision at that point that I was leaving home and I wasn’t going back. And I, yeah, started studying journalism and four years later graduated. And three weeks after that landed my first job.
Okay.
Oh, that’s awesome. And so went out to San Diego State, fell in love with the weather, said I can’t live anywhere else. And yeah, heard that story once or twice before. And so yeah, love the weather in San Diego. Oh my gosh. I’m actually gonna be in Guatemala next week. And Guatemala, the year round high is 80 and the year round low is 60. And I was like, that’s almost San, to me San Diego’s like,
Mm-hmm.
You’re around low of 65, you’re around high of 75, and if there’s a cloud 30 miles out at the ocean, the natives are like, oh, it’s gonna be cloudy today. And I’m like, I’ll come to Texas, let me show you some real weather, okay?
Well, that’s what we get our like blizzards jackets on and our snow hats. And you know, yeah, clouds are scary.
Yeah. Understood. Okay. So got your first job, J-O-B, W-2, right? Okay. And, um, and how long did you do that before you started your, I don’t know if Sizzleforce is your first entrepreneurial venture, but how long were you at W-2 before you said, ah, heck with this, I’m going to start my own thing.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, it was just shy of 10 years. And I was one of many people who, this was during the time period where.com had already become a thing and now wireless was the big thing. And so I was working in the marketing department for one of the very first app development companies. And one day walked into work and they said, guess what?
AI isn't replacing marketers; it's empowering those who know how to harness its potential. Share on XWe’re not gonna be here tomorrow. We lost our funding, so go home and don’t come back. And indeed, the doors were indeed locked the next day. Nobody could get in. So I found myself in this situation of, well, now what? And at that point, I just decided, you know what, I know what I’m doing here. And I actually wanna start marketing for things that I really believe in and things that I really care about.
So I started my first marketing agency shortly thereafter and I ran that for a few years and then I got pregnant and then I became a reproduction machine and I continued spitting out babies. So I stepped away from that for the most part. I won’t say I completely hung my hat up, but I definitely scaled way back when I had little ones. And…
Then in 2009, I decided, okay, I’m ready to get back into this and here we are.
There you go. And so, um, reproduction factory, you have, how many children do you have? Had three children. Yeah. Love that. And, uh, yeah, that, that makes made your house a really busy place for a while.
Mm-hmm. I have three.
Yeah, I had three kids under the age of five. And then we adopted a son as well. Unfortunately, he ended up passing away, but at one point we had four kids, so yeah.
breath out.
Wow, wow, busy, busy house. Okay, so was your first entrepreneurial venture, was it Sizzleforce?
Mm-hmm.
No, Sizzleforce was my second one. The first one was called Spirit-led Marketing, and it was still a marketing agency, but it was just focused on a niche of non-profit Christian organizations.
Okay, I love that. I love that. And so then Sizzleforce came along. And so thinking back across your career, I’m going to ask you a question about, and typically when I ask this question, entrepreneurs are like, oh yeah, I got a lot of those. But I want to ask you a question about a hard moment. Okay, so something happens, an event happens, that at the time,
It was just crushing. It’s like, oh my gosh, that hurts. But the kind of hard moment I’m looking for is an event that while it was approaching devastating at the time, today, now that some time has passed and you have some perspective, you can look back on it and say, hmm, might’ve been one of the best things that ever happened to me.
and the difference being just the timing of that event. Because as we know as entrepreneurs, it’s not really what happens, it’s more about how we take it. But the problem is not the problem, the problem is how we react to the problem. So got a hard moment you can share?
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, I’ve got one that’s actually not too far in the distant past. Um, so as an AI marketing consultancy, let me back up a little bit and tell you that I made my living writing copy for the bulk of my career. And so when AI, uh, marketing tools came on this scene, I first heard about them in, it was probably about 2019 when I first started hearing.
the people start chattering about them in my industry. But nobody outside of my industry was chattering much about them. And so I tried them and I was like, eh, okay, whatever. Wasn’t really impressed, just kind of ignored it after I played with it. Well, fast forward to this past November, 2022, when ChatGPT came on the scene. And that was a game changer. All of a sudden it…
it really felt like an overnight shift, monumental shift in my industry, where at one point, you know, the bulk of my career, I felt like copywriters were revered. People were very respectful of my ability to tell stories using the written word in a really captivating way. And it’s almost as if
disappeared and people were like, well, I can do this with chat. GPT who needs you? And, um, yeah, I’ll tell you, that was really hard. It was really scary. And the more time that passed, I mean, I’m talking this, this shift was so fast that it happened like in days, weeks. Okay. Um, this isn’t something that went on for years and years, right? So.
Um, honestly, the change started happening so fast and I started hearing on, I’d be on calls with clients that I had for many years and people saying, so I heard about this chat GPT thing and I started playing with it and I realized I can do dah, dah. And these are all the things that I had been doing for them. I’m like, Oh no. So if I’m being completely transparent, I will tell you. I
got pretty scared and I got pretty ruffled over it because I’m like, what is going on? And ended up getting really anxious about it, like bad anxious, like the kind where you’re having like anxiety attacks and you can’t breathe, right? And I had never experienced that before, never. And
Mm.
That’s it.
went to a pretty difficult place for a good four to six weeks and was just really questioning, what am I doing? What’s next? You know, I felt honestly felt like an identity loss, if that makes sense. And then one day, you know, after a lot of prayer, I just woke up and I was like, well, I have a choice to make.
Sure.
I can either continue wallowing and continue living in a state of fear and just watch my business disappear before my eyes, or I can take the bull by the horns and I can decide, you know what, if we’re going to do an AI puppet show, I am going to become the puppeteer. And I’m going to learn how to use this tool better than anybody else. And that was the decision I made. And that was the pivotal point.
So here we are, that was sometime in February. Come March, I had already invested a couple hundred hours in my own training, I went all in. I like, I stopped doing everything else. And I just, I enrolled in all these different courses and I just played and played and played and played with every AI tool I could find, trying to crack the nuts and figure it, you know.
come up with the hacks and figure out all the things. And come March, I got an opportunity actually to teach somebody what I was learning. And I taught them and they freaked out at how awesome it was. And here we are in, you know, at tail end of summer of 2023. And now this has become an incredible gift to me.
I feel like all of these AI marketing tools have made me better than I’ve ever been at what I do.
Love that. That’s a great story. And many entrepreneurs, almost all probably, at some point, if they’re in the game long enough, find a time when they have to pivot or let it go. And so love that. It’s okay to be upset for a while. I mean, we’re all human, but then to reach the point of…
Entrepreneurship isn't about avoiding challenges, it's about turning them into rocket fuel for success. Share on Xyou know, it’s either going to get me or I’m going to get it, and I choose to get it. And so, turns out that what, for many copyrighters, has probably been their mortal enemy, okay, because large language models, which is the technology that Jad GPT and others function on, they’re, you know, I take a little exception with artificial intelligence. I don’t think it’s actually intelligent.
I do think these supercomputers with massive computing power and exceptional pattern recognition software, they can put words together a lot of different ways if you’re just smart enough to tell it how to do it. And if you’re not, it’s a little sterile, you know. And I know that you are expert in the field. And so…
Mm-hmm.
Thank you for sharing that. Okay, so now what about, I want a piece of wisdom. I want a nugget. I want something that you hold near and dear to your heart about entrepreneurship that maybe you share all the time or maybe you don’t share. You’re a pretty open person. But typically entrepreneurs have a couple foundational pieces of wisdom.
that have kind of helped them along their path. And so, if we knew what you knew, what would we want to know that you know?
Hmm, great question.
She who quits first loses. How about that? Ha ha ha.
I love that. I love that a lot. So many times, entrepreneurs are successful just because they don’t quit. They just keep going. I have a really good friend who is retired Marine Corps recon. So that’s the Marines version of the SEALs or the Rangers or the Green Berets or all of that. And as he’s telling…
Yeah.
stories about the training that he went through, like buds, you know, for the seals and all that. I finally asked him one day, I was like, you know, it sounds to me, I mean, you’re not the biggest guy, you know, you’re not, I’m pretty sure I could beat your arm wrestling, you know, you’re not the biggest guy, you’re, you know, you’re not a remarkable physical specimen, you know, you don’t look like Bruce Lee, you know, but…
Ha ha
I’m going to go ahead and close the video.
but you had this really high intensity job. I said, it almost sounds to me like the people who made it through were the people who just wouldn’t quit. And he said, you know, there’s something to that. He said, you know, 100 people enter the training, three exit successfully, then there’s another level, and about 50 enter that training, another three. And he said, the guy’s standing at the end, and today the ladies.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
You know, guys and gals stand at the end. They’re the people who just won’t quit, that just keep going. And I think the same is very true about entrepreneurs, because no matter who you are, you can go to the mountain and to the valley over and over and over again. And sometimes people who aren’t entrepreneurs, they hear that and they’re like, nah, I don’t think that’s right. Like, look, even, you know, General Motors went bankrupt.
Yeah.
After 9-11, every airline but one filed bankruptcy. It doesn’t matter how big you are, how long you’ve been around, how established you are. Every day is a new day and you have to be able to make decisions based not on what happened necessarily but on what’s happening. And so I love that. Okay. So here’s the tough one. Okay. This makes them cry every time. No, it does not.
Mm-hmm.
Uh oh. Ha ha ha.
No, it doesn’t. So I’m going to put you in a time machine, Stephanie, and I’m going to send you back, just like, what was it, Star Trek. I’m going to send you all the way back to talk to 20-year-old Stephanie. Okay, can you picture? Yeah, okay, good. And so I’m going to put you in the time machine, going to take you all the way back to 20-year-old Stephanie, and you’re going to get about 90 seconds.
Mm-hmm. Yep.
to share something with your 20-year-old self that you know now, but you didn’t know then, but had you known it then and had you listened to what you are going to learn, which many 20-year-olds won’t, or 40-year-olds or 60-year-olds, but had you heard it and had you listened, it would have eased your path, sped you along your journey to successful entrepreneurs.
So into the time machine you go.
There you are, there’s your 20 year old self. What do you tell her?
You are just as capable, just as smart.
and just as talented as all of those people that you look up to, and you can do anything they can do and more.
You are just as capable, just as smart, and just as talented as all of those people that you look up to, and you can do anything they can do and more Share on XI love that. Okay, you know, I’m a big fan, you know this about me, I’m a big fan of wise words. And every once in a while I have some of my own, but I don’t care where they come from. And so I don’t care if it’s Aristotle or Seneca or, you know, I don’t care where they come from. But one of my very favorite quotes, probably my favorite quote of all time, is you are far smarter.
you’re far better, far smarter, and far stronger than you think. I love that quote. And of course, that was the wise philosopher of Christopher Robin, who was relaying that to Winnie the Pooh in the book titled Winnie the Pooh. And so I think every entrepreneur at some point in time, maybe every human, probably every human, needs to hear, needs to realize you are more than enough.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Thanks for watching!
Mm.
You have everything you need to achieve whatever level of greatness that you want and however you define that greatness. And, um, and you know, the opposite of that, I think where many humans exist, you know, they carry around the little imposter syndrome where it’s like, am I good enough? I’m not good enough. I’m there’s so much better than me. Blah, blah, blah. But.
You know, what we know, psychologically what we know to be a fact is that it’s only an idea. It’s not the truth. And so, though sometimes ideas, you know, can be enslaving. And so, I love that. Thank you for sharing that. Okay.
I have that quote that Christopher Robin is famous for actually on a picture that my husband gave me and it is sitting on the table in my office right next to me right now, right over there.
What a great husband he is. Yeah, yeah, love that. So I’ll say that again for our audience. You’re far better, far smarter, and far stronger than you think. And that’s true of each and every one of you. And so tell yourself that. Your mind actually cannot tell the difference between what you imagine and what really happens. And so if you tell yourself that, your mind will believe that and…
He’s a good one, I got a good guy.
Hey, that’s an important piece right there. So, okay, Stephanie, couple years as an entrepreneur, started out when you were five, okay, went and did the journalist gig, worked for a company that was using outside capital, faucet got shut off, found out, hey, I need a job tomorrow. Started your own gig, started another gig.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Really accomplished copywriter, long career as a really accomplished copywriter. AI comes in, large language models and says, hey, anything you can write, I can write 17 ways better. Okay, and I can do it in Mandarin or Chinese, Spanish or backwards or Pig Latin or however you want it. And I remember the first time I was demoing
for some entrepreneurs that I was leading on a retreat in Cabo. And this was back about February. So, Chad GPT had come out, I think in November. I didn’t hear about it until December. And then it was just like, oh my gosh, this is like inventing the wheel. It’s like inventing fire. This is going to really take off. And so we were staying in this great house on the beach in Cabo.
in a neighborhood where they don’t have addresses, they just have names, you know, really nice house. And so I was demonstrating ChatGPT and I said, write a two paragraph marketing blurb, you know, about this house, the name of the house in Cabo. And, you know, it took it about a second to start and about five seconds to finish. And everybody was like, wow.
Mm.
That’s amazing. And I was like, oh, you think that’s good, watch this. Now please rewrite it like I’m Ernest Hemingway. And it takes it about a second to start and five seconds to finish. And there it is. So rather than running home and bearing your head under your pillow and saying, oh my gosh, the world is ending, you decided to master AI and add that, in my opinion.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
also important human component to AI-generated text, which also is a little clunky to me. I mean, it’s very good, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not like human interaction. And so you’ve started to do that. So what’s next for you, Stephanie? What’s on the horizon? What’s the frontier? When you get out there.
where you don’t know what’s gonna happen and what’s next.
Well, who knows what’s gonna happen with AI, right? You know, I mean, just, what was it? A couple of days ago, the Department of Defense put out a notice saying that they’ve started an AI task force. And how is that gonna affect things? I don’t know, none of us know, right? Might be great, might not be great for those of us that are using it for business. We’ll find out. So I think right now I’m very much
Yeah.
in the trenches of the new frontier as we speak, where, you know, every day there’s a new AI tool that comes out. Every day it seems like there’s a new standing that the media takes on this. Every day people have more opinions on this, and so on and so forth. And so I feel like I’m living the frontier right now. As far as what’s next?
Ask me in an hour what’s next, because I’m sure something new is coming in the next 60 minutes.
I love that. And so much of the time I think success as the entrepreneurs, we don’t know what’s coming next. We just know that whatever it is, we’re going to be able to handle it.
Yeah, that’s what makes it fun. Yeah. Yeah, that’s what makes it fun is like, I mean, it’d be so boring if everything was so predictable, right? I love, well, it does, you know, it gets me nervous sometimes. I will say there is something invigorating about walking in unknown territory and exploring something that
There is something invigorating about walking in unknown territory and exploring something that has yet to be truly discovered. Share on Xhas yet to be truly discovered. There’s something very invigorating and exciting about that to me and very hope giving.
I love that. And I know this to be true, that we all love our comfort zones because, hey, it’s comfortable. It’s like your favorite shoes, your favorite chair, your pillow, it’s just comfortable. So you just like it and you want to stay there, but the good stuff for you is outside of your comfort zone and AI is evolving so rapidly. There’s a thousand new applications every day. And…
Mm-hmm.
And so who knows where we end up, but as long as you’re ready for the ride, you’ll figure it out and it’ll be okay. Okay, Stephanie, how would a listener reach out to you at Sizzleforce Marketing?
Yeah.
Yeah, I would love to hear from any listeners. So you can find me at sizzleforce.com. You can also find me on LinkedIn. And if you’re interested in learning some of these AI marketing tips for entrepreneurs, check out what I’m doing on TikTok, which the handle is at sizzleforce.
Love that. Love that. Stephanie, I’m so glad you joined us today. Thank you for sharing your wisdom and your success story.
Thank you so much.
That’s today’s episode of the Proven Entrepreneur Show. We’ll see you next time. Thanks.
