Bianca S Robinson has helped major corporations, startups, and SMEs shape their businesses, address global audiences, and establish momentum with predictably scaling revenue.

Located in greater Chicago, Robinson’s Cayden Cay Consulting specializes in setting companies up with strategies, tech stacks and the know-how to create digital businesses. Robinson calls herself a “business architect,” and the title seems fitting.

We had the chance to talk about the importance of digital products and diversifying revenue streams, which are Robinson’s twin passions, and how COVID-19 has affected the business ecosystem.

We’re hearing a lot of talk about how COVID-19 has really decimated the small business world, but there’s also the old adage that “one man’s crisis is another man’s opportunity.” What impact are you seeing COVID-19 having on the business ecosystem?

A lot of our major collaborations were hit bad due to COVID, but a lot of us small businesses, we weren't hit as bad because we are very niche-specific. I’ve already had to figure out how to make things work in a time when things weren't working. We already know the technology and the situation, so it just really gave more time for my clients to focus on education collateral.

Now everybody is on their computer, on their phone, and so they're looking for resources on how and now. They’re saying, “Okay, maybe I can start that business now, or maybe I can help my son or my daughter to start this business.”

So a lot of my clients, even though they were doing it, they had other things that weren't allowing them to be consistent with going live. For small businesses, just from the businesses that I work with and the people that I've been in business with, it's been a good time for us. It's like a blessing in disguise for us.

A lot of thought leaders are saying that COVID-19 only accelerated digital transformation processes that were already underway. What changes do you see for today’s startups and small businesses that are going digital?

When you do service one-on-one, you can only impact the person that you have in front of you, but we're in a social media, digital age where you can get on your computer like this and reach all of these people – but you have to have the plan in place.

You just need to think about it differently and just go back to the drawing board and figure out how you can productize yourself. Because a business that is dependent upon the CEO is a business that is doomed to fail.

I learned that when my son was sick a few years ago, and he was having multiple brain surgeries, and I was stuck still doing services, still meeting with clients, and I wasn't able to be fully there because I had all of this other work to do. And so if I would have had my digital products together, if I would have had my funnels together and all of those things, I would have been able to just click a button and have it run on autopilot.

As your clients go through their own digital transformation, how are you helping them cope and staying on top of all their questions? 

As a new business, you don't know what you want on a website and what's the products and what's the service, and that's one thing that holds businesses back.

I have the ability to give my clients my business in a box and all of the systems and tools that I use. I work with primarily professional service providers and so they need a CRM system. I’ve been a vcita reseller for a long time, and they have this thing where you can integrate email and text marketing sequences with your payments and appointment booking, which is great for businesses selling services.

A lot of the setup I’m doing for clients involves integrating many tools, though. Here’s an example – we would put content in a Gumroad or like a Thinkific, where we're taking the Zoom that we did and we're taking it down and we're making a worksheet or a workbook to go with it, and making a landing page and then slapping a price on it so as soon as they purchase it, they automatically get it.

So we're taking your area of expertise and then we're putting it into where you launch something every single month.

What about your own business? Have you been making changes as the pandemic continues?

We've added our new membership program, and so I'm putting a lot of my time and energy there.

We're doing these two-day trainings where I used to do them in person, but now they are two days, Saturday and Sunday, online, eight hours a day, answering all questions, comments and concerns, and showing you exactly how to go from A to Z with a definitive scope of work. That way, when we finish, you can actually have this tangible thing to add.

And so since I know that I've been adding more process and systems in my business, I also hired more people.