I Make a Living

Latest Episodes:

Do Good, Make Money: Podcasting with JJ Ramberg Jun 21, 2021

Show notes

If you’ve ever started your exercise time by standing there for 20 minutes choosing a podcast, know that you are not alone. You are in the company of JJ Ramberg, who launched GoodPods to help curb that endless search for great podcasts by tapping into what your friends and favourite influencers are already listening to. “It’s like Goodreads for podcasts,” she explains, channelling the energy of the popular book recommendation site.

Before launching GoodPods, JJ—who was already a podcaster herself, with Been There, Built That—talked to more than 700 people about their experiences with podcasts. Those folks ranged from established producers and hosts to the casual listeners who tuned in a few times a month. At the end of those conversations, she had a wealth of knowledge and used it to release something special. “We launched a product that people liked. These were people who really enjoyed the app and realized that there was nothing else out there like it.”

JJ’s focus has long been on products that improve your life, but also give back. GoodShop, another project of hers, combines coupon codes for more than 7000 popular retailers with a chance to donate the difference to national and international charities (they’ve raised over $70K for the ASPCA alone). And SearchKibble’s mission is to feed pets living in shelters—each search on the site is worth two bites of kibble. JJ startedSearchKibble in large part because of the COVID-19 pandemic, when shelters saw a serious dip in donations. “It’s a way for people to do good while they’re doing what they’re already doing, which is search the internet.”

Her early days hosting Your Business made her a trailblazer in the small-business world. “Back then, there was nothing else like it. There was no Shark Tank.” She helped bring stories of entrepreneurship into people’s living rooms and shared the good, the bad, and the ugly with viewers. “I was hosting the show at the same time that I was building my other company, and I was as much the audience as I was the host.” Over the years, she saw patterns of successes and missteps.

Which leads us to failure, an entrepreneur’s biggest worry. “The number-one thing that successful people can do is deal with failure.” She tells us the story of a soapmaker who saw half his business disappear overnight, and how he dealt with it. We know that failure, by itself, is not fun; it’s the moving-forward process that brings in the learning.

Speaking of learning, JJ’s entrepreneurial education has taken some unexpected swerves. Sure, she’s a Stanford MBA graduate, but she’s also learned a lot from her family, many of whom started and grew businesses of their own. Her mother was a special inspiration: she capped a long stint of staying home by launching her own successful business with JJ’s brother in her 40s. “I watched, firsthand, how incredibly fun it could be.” JJ has since taken up the mantle, and partnered with her brother on both of her companies. “It seemed natural, when we had this idea, to try it.” Their previous experience dovetailed and diverged in interesting ways: she knows the media and marketing side, and he brings the tech expertise.. She says the fact that they care deeply about each other’s lives—outside and inside the business—”makes it all work for us.”

JJ is now passing on her entrepreneurial spirit to the next generation with her children’s book The Start-Up Club. She likes the idea of familiarizing her kids with the language and ups and downs of the business world. “They can see sometimes things work brilliantly, and sometimes things do not work as you’d planned them to be.” She wants to see them experiment, try new things, and yes, fail, with her same fearless approach.

Resources

To learn more about our guest, go to https://www.goodpods.com/

To learn more about FreshBooks and take advantage of an offer exclusive to our podcast listeners, go to freshbooks.com/podcast

Nerdisode #6- Pitching Your Business Like a Boss With Lisa Song Sutton Jun 17, 2021

Show notes

Everyone’s story matters! Lisa wants to know everything about the people pitching to her, from their business background to how many pets they have. And if you’re not the one running the day-to-day business, make sure to bring that person into your pitch strategy: she wants to meet them too.
Where do you want to end up? From passing on the business to your kids to selling in five years, make sure every co-founder is working towards the same long-term goals.
Stability is attractive. If your work history doesn’t show a lot of commitment to a role, company, or profession, investors might be less interested in committing to you.
Market research and proof of concept mean you’re coming in with knowledge and fans! Show your investors you’re armed with knowledge and customers.

Building a Diverse Portfolio with Lisa Song Sutton Jun 14, 2021

Show notes

Lisa Song Sutton describes herself as a “serial entrepreneur,” and her portfolio is proof. From Sin City Cupcakes—a boozy bakery she co-founded in 2012—to Ship Las Vegas, her mailbox and shipping stores across the city, Lisa’s portfolio is a truly diverse set of business assets. Add in her real estate sales team, not to mention a women’s swimwear and accessories e-commerce store, and we are wowed. Her goal is to build up lifestyle businesses to eventually graduate from running the day-to-day and take on new projects. “I’m big on legacy building,” she says.

You may know Lisa from her 2014 stint as Miss Nevada. Lisa’s mother is a former Miss Korea who encouraged her to go the pageant route. Lisa got a late start in the pageant scene, making her debut at 29 (right before she aged out of the competition altogether). As part of her training, she worked with established pageant coach Bill Alverson, who focused less on what she looked like in a bathing suit and more on what she had to say. “By the time I competed, I was done with grad school. I was a business owner by then. I had a different lens and perspective on the title.” Lisa saw her time as Miss Nevada as a way to step up her involvement in the local community. “Why not get further ingratiated?”

After the crown comes the community service: Sutton made nearly 500 appearances as Miss Las Vegas and Miss Nevada. She volunteered in schools, read in hospitals, and made personal connections with people in her community. “It was an incredible experience.”

Her knack for connecting to others has made her a natural at business partnerships. She took on her first founding role in 2012 with Sin City Cupcakes, a business she launched with a friend while still working as a lawyer. Lisa is a fan of teaming up with her friends. “There’s value in partnering with someone you really know. You know what they’re like when they’re angry when they’ve had a bad day when they’re stressed out. You know what happens.” (And Sutton’s partners know her personality as well!) Her advice for a successful partnership is to “make sure everything is papered up.” But treating business agreements like a living document is also key because as the company grows, your roles will change.

Lisa is currently on the board of StartUp Nevada, an incubator supporting entrepreneurs in that state. As an angel investor, her advice to female entrepreneurs is simple: ask for the money! “It’s never perfect, but you have to take action.” She suggests female entrepreneurs give themselves a boost by following successful business leaders like Sarah Blakely (the founder of Spanx), who share resources and encouragement with their followers. “Who are you following? What kind of data and messaging are you consuming as a woman, a female founder and an entrepreneur?” Unfollow the accounts that don’t add value, and chase the ones that give info and encouragement. She also encourages female entrepreneurs to familiarize themselves with their local networks of female angel investors, who are often eager to work with women. But, she says, think carefully about where your business is going: do you have an exit strategy to ensure your investors get paid?

In the nitty-gritty, she encourages women to focus on metrics when pitching—storytelling is a bonus, but focusing on OKRs gives investors a peek at your gameplan. Taking a business’s goals quarter by quarter communicates a long-term vision in a way that is concrete and accessible to the folks considering a pitch. She says that, compared to male entrepreneurs, women wait longer and are further down the pipeline before they start pitching for investments. “We talk ourselves out of being ready. We have to get out of our own way.” As she puts it: closed mouths don’t get fed. Especially not cupcakes!

Resources

To learn more about our guest, go to https://www.lisasongsutton.com/

To learn more about FreshBooks and take advantage of an offer exclusive to our podcast listeners, go to freshbooks.com/podcast

Nerdisode #5- Growing Your Social Media Audience with Nai the 'LABeautyologist' Jun 10, 2021

Show notes

On this week’s Nerdisode, Nayamka Roberts Smith, aka Nai, the labeautyologist, gives us her tried-and-true methods for building an authentic and engaged social media audience.

Choose a social media avenue that plays to your strengths, and make sure you enjoy it. Want to blow up on Twitter? “You have to like tweeting! You have to talk a lot.”
When the creative juices are flowing, do a brain dump; stash your great ideas for a day when you’re not in the mood to create.
Repurpose your content to help your audience absorb it in different ways!
'Mine' other data sources for content ideas: when you search your topic ideas online, make sure you answer those Google auto-fill questions in your video or on the blog.

Growing a Business on Social Media with Nai, aka LABeautyologist Jun 07, 2021

Show notes

Nai Roberts-Smith might be the mega-popular skincare expert labeautyologist these days, but like many entrepreneurs, she started in a dorm room. She was an amateur nail technician, complete with a wall of polish colours, and she would do nails for less than the price of lunch. “I had a group of friends who all did beauty services,” she says a barber, a few pals who did hair, and a league of friends acting as low-key brand ambassadors across campus.

When she left college, she joined a salon as a nail tech but has aspirations of becoming an esthetician—a licensed professional who does facials and other skin-care treatments, usually at a spa. “I was good at nails, I liked doing it, and I felt kind of stifled by that.” But her hometown shop was full of estheticians, and they were unwilling to add Nai to their roster. She debated bringing her skills onboard cruise ships before realizing she would likely find work anywhere that was beautiful—Jamaica, Hawaii, Miami, or her new hometown, Los Angeles.

In LA, Nai was “broke,” but she knew the demand was there: she could stand on a busy street corner and see three spas on a single block. As she launched her business, she made a strategic decision to grow her social media presence as well. “I knew I had to reach people who weren’t just right in front of me.” She launched her YouTube channel as soon as she moved to LA. “Being on social media has completely advanced and changed my career trajectory;” she now has almost a half-million subscribers.

Sometimes entrepreneurs get tripped up on how to translate online impressions to actual sales, but Nai has a knack for it. When she started, Nai would demo her treatments on Twitter and YouTube and encouraged LA locals to book in with her; at the time, 45% of her clients came from that sales funnel. She examined her analytics for out-of-town interest—like the viewers watching from Atlanta and New York—and headed to those cities for pop-up skincare treatments. “Fifteen people made it worth the trip,” especially after she factored in word-of-mouth promotion and local hype.

It might seem counterintuitive to give away knowledge that she could be charging for, but Nai says it’s actually a sales driver when she does. Maya Elious taught Nai that if she wasn’t able to give away her knowledge for free, “you’re not even knowledgeable enough to be an expert in what it is you’re doing.” Nai estimates that, though she’s shared plenty across various platforms over the last five years, it only represents about 10% of her body of expertise, and her interactions with fans and clients make the trade-off worth it.

She’s also a master of the thoughtful pivot. When COVID forced her to shutter her spa last summer, her collaborations with brands like Fenty and Target became much more important. She also launched her own line of merch, a spa-inspired line of garments including robes, turbans, and scrunchies. “I’m still talking to the same people.” Her third line of defence against COVID losses was launching a virtual consulting stream.

Nai sees herself as filling an important gap in esthetics: as a darker-skinned Black woman, she brings knowledge about melanated skin and its unique needs to an industry that doesn’t always cater to them. “When I went to esthetics school, there were very few women of colour who went to the school.” Working with different skin tones and types is a key factor in successful treatments, and Nai says, “I felt like my presence made the other estheticians better.” Through some of her content and partnerships, she’s started filling the gaps in esthetic’s typical service and knowledge. “I’m here to talk to people who weren’t spoken to before.”

Resources

To learn more about our guest, go to http://labeautyologist.com

To learn more about FreshBooks and take advantage of an offer exclusive to our podcast listeners, go to freshbooks.com/podcast

Nerdisode #4- Keep Your Clients On Budget with David Tutera Jun 03, 2021

Show notes

Earlier this week, mega-event planner and reality TV host David Tutera talked to us about his path to success; in our Nerdisode, he gives us the nitty-gritty on keeping his clients and team happy.

Which questions do you need to ask to get your client’s real budget? David uses his knowledge about wedding dress designers and DJs to strategically (and diplomatically) figure out how much his clients are willing to spend.
Keep your clients in the loop on expenditures! Going over budget isn’t a surprise for David’s clients.
Compartmentalize your projects. A messy desk can lead to client mix-ups!
Stay on top of your staff and vendors—since delays can be hard to overcome, David keeps an eye on deadlines and deliverables, and steps in where he needs to: “I know when someone’s not about to meet the goal.”
When mistakes happen, don’t punish your staff: look for productive, positive solutions that fast-track success.

Building a Resilient Business with David Tutera May 31, 2021

Show notes

We know that certain industries thrived during COVID—home renovations and online shopping, anyone?—but there’s no denying that some sectors took a major hit. We got a call from Eve, an event planner wondering how she can move forward post-pandemic. Well, we brought in the capital-E expert to answer Eve’s question.

David Tutera is best known as an event planner for the stars and reality TV show host. His full business is much more diverse, including industry training events, a partnership with Macy’s, a bridal boutique, and more. David’s work focuses on “the art of celebrations. Any celebration should be about joy, and that’s how I make a living.”

David is the grandchild of an Italian immigrant, an entrepreneurial flower shop owner who taught David some of the basics of running a business. At the age of thirteen, David worked the phones at the shop, listening in as his grandfather ran the show. “He was giving me these nuggets of information” about the importance of respecting staff, profitability, and paying attention to details. His grandfather also invited David to watch the floral designers at work, sparking his interest in creative industries.

After a brief foray into law school, David took an unexpected detour into singing telegrams (!!), where he decided, “If I was going to leave school, I knew I needed to make money.” Dressed in anything from a gorilla suit to a barbershop quartet, he wrote and performed ditties for clients. When the telegram business owner decided to sell, David was first in line with an investment from his grandfather.

His first event-planning client was a woman who had passed his office window display—very silver lame and ostrich feathers—and asked him to “do” her son’s bar mitzvah. Despite not being 100% sure what a bar mitzvah was, he said sure, a moment he credits as teaching him “the power of yes.” He slowly transitioned from telegrams to “little parties,” and ultimately found his footing in events.

While he initially passed when reality TV came calling in the early 2000s, David has now been a media personality for more than 17 years. One twist to the early days of his fame was that his biggest and most lucrative clients didn’t want to deal with David’s busy TV schedule, leading to an unexpected business drought. “I literally thought, did someone cut my phone line?” He eventually started to attract new clients interested in both his fame and his skills. The experience made him very aware that all projects have their own life cycle, and will have the best moment to launch; anticipating those ups and downs will help smooth out turbulence in cash and client flow

It wasn’t always easy and luxurious: he danced with the IRS, couldn’t meet payroll, and grappled with some pretty serious business setbacks. He made a point of protecting the people he worked with, and fixing his mistakes. While it was fifteen years ago, he says “when you go through those large problems, significant amounts of them, you learn quickly what to do.” After those hurdles, he put his support network in place—the folks who can do his taxes while he takes care of the creative side. “You build this puzzle around you. Those people allow anyone in this business to elevate themselves.” By freeing up his administrative tasks, he can focus on keeping his creativity juicy.

During COVID shutdowns, he started rethinking events and his business. He did a COVID-safe live event in March where the aim was to figure out a future for the events industry, which he sees reviving in full in 2022. “We have to figure out a way to continue our livelihoods.” He also recently discovered that his grandmother was a seamstress, and great-aunt owned a bridal boutique, adding a sense of destiny to his own bridal atelier inspiration. “Sometimes, the things that you do are really laid into the roots of your family.”

Resources

To learn more about our guest, go to https://davidtutera.com/

To learn more about FreshBooks and take advantage of an offer exclusive to our podcast listeners, go to freshbooks.com/podcast

Standing Out in a Crowded Field: Podcasting with Erica Mandy, The NewsWorthy May 24, 2021

Show notes

If you think television journalism is glamorous, Erica Mandy is here to set you straight. She started as a “one-woman band” in a small TV news market, where reporting on location often meant that she was the photographer, camera operator, writer, editor...all while also being the on-air journalist. “That weeds out the people who are in it just to be on TV,” she laughs, comparing her small-town news experience to “grad school” for TV journalists. Over the next seven years, she worked in successively larger markets, finally landing at CBS News in Los Angeles. She was there for three years, working on-air in the second-largest TV news market in the country.

But Erica’s passion wasn’t just the news—it was the news in a whole new way. In 2017, she left CBS to launch The NewsWorthy, a daily news podcast that offered a “fair, fast and fun” look at the day’s top stories, all delivered in fifteen minutes or less. When she started, audiences were tuning out the news altogether, saying it was too biased, time-consuming, depressing, and overwhelming. “Those were the four words everyone kept saying,” she says. She decided to solve the problem for people who didn’t want to be left out of the current-events loop altogether, but who needed a different avenue to consume it.

She knew she was on the right track when the heavy hitters started launching their own podcasts. From the time she conceived the idea to the day she finished her contract with CBS New, Erica watched a number of big players enter the arena with their own news podcasts. After a brief crisis of confidence, she decided to forge ahead. “I realized that the whole point of me starting this was that I brought something new to the table. I offered something unique, which was the vibe of the show.” Her credibility as a journalist allowed her to cultivate a more independent viewpoint on current affairs, allowing folks to trust her unbiased POV and her approachable voice.

Instead of competition, Erica now sees the bigger producers like NPR as allies. The big shops are an entry point for listeners, who might start with the biggest news shows, but then look around for what else is out there. That’s where The NewsWorthy lives.

After her first year, she looked back and asked two questions: “Did I start to make money? And am I moving in the right direction?” She had made her first dollar, and listeners were reaching out to say they felt more informed and more able to participate in civil life— she even inspired some new voters!

She’s also expanded her team so she can focus on growing the podcast “as a business,” taking a data-driven approach to advertising, as well as partnering with investors who bring not just money, but also visibility, credibility, and the ability to hire additional staffers. “Some of those resources that I got from the investment, were more important than the funding.” Her focus has switched from delivering daily content to the long-term, broad-scope vision for the show, and it was “so nice” to have time freed up for other parts of her business.
Lately, Erica’s pregnancy has underscored the need to ensure her business can run without her day-to-day involvement, including hiring a temporary host for the podcast. “It doesn’t have to be me all the time,” she says; it just proves that being a smaller player just means there’s always room to grow.

Resources

To learn more about our guest, go to https://www.ericamandy.com/

To learn more about FreshBooks and take advantage of an offer exclusive to our podcast listeners, go to freshbooks.com/podcast

Nerdisode #3- How to Find Inspiration with Morgan Harper Nichols May 20, 2021

Show notes

Mine your own life for inspiration! We bet you have at least a few photos on your phone that can prompt you to dig deeper into your own experiences.
What’s in your notes? Check your written records on WordCounter to reveal which ideas you keep coming back to. (Morgan checks her phone’s notes app monthly!)
Write your to-do list by hand. It’s an authentic record of what you’re thinking about, and sharing that with your community helps folks recognize themselves in you (and your four loads of laundry).
Listen to yourself! Literally, that is: Morgan uses Otter to verbalize her ideas and to keyword her ideas for easy tracking.
Write about what makes you angry! That will help you get to the heart of what you care about. Start making a change there.

Resources

To learn more about our guest, go to https://morganharpernichols.com/

To learn more about FreshBooks and take advantage of an offer exclusive to our podcast listeners, go to freshbooks.com/podcast

Creativity as a Way of Life with Morgan Harper Nichols May 17, 2021

Show notes

Morgan Harper Nichols might be the rarest bird in the entrepreneurial aviary: she was actually looking for a nine-to-five job when she started as an internet sensation. After a half-decade on the contemporary Christian music scene, she was tired of hustling. “It’s a hard industry to be in,” she says. She was looking for something more stable, but, she laughs, with an English degree, “there aren’t a ton of Indeed posts out there.”

In 2016, she put her frustration into words, shared her personal poem on Pinterest, and then forgot about it. But in a few short weeks, that poem had been repinned over 100,000 times. She had gone viral without really trying to.

From there, she’s launched herself as a visual artist and poet, been picked up by publishing company Zondervan, amassed more than 1.7 million Instagram followers, done collaborations with Coach, Adobe, Vogue and Aerie, and launched The Storyteller App, where, for $2.99 a month, subscribers receive a daily infusion of her poetry and art.

She credits her followers for the push that got her where she is today. Back in 2017, a DM in her inbox requesting an illustrated poem netted her fifty dollars—her first commission—and the sense that this was something she should pursue.

Coming from the music world, a “gig” often meant shelling out her own money to perform: a flight here, a venue rental there. Of course, Morgan would get paid eventually, but she discovered that poetry doesn’t have that same cash-flow issue. She continued to share online, and her audience grew. That first commission had given her the confidence to believe, “There’s gotta be at least a few other people out there who are willing to support me in this way.”

She was also, for the first time in a long time, able to experiment. She is delicate in saying so, but the Christian music world doesn’t always reward innovation. Channelling her creativity into these new outlets was something she could do from home, and that didn’t cost her money to produce. “I was investing time, but I wasn’t losing thousands of dollars by sharing something on Instagram. If it didn’t work, try something else the next day.” It gave her permission to craft her own voice and the freedom to explore.

Morgan was also diagnosed with autism in her early 30s. Understanding neurodivergence as a creative working with other brands has been tough but necessary. “I’ve had to ask for a lot of help in areas where I was pushing myself.” (She admits to getting bogged down in admin tasks because she believed that she had to do it on her own.) Her diagnosis forced her to grapple with the parts of her day where she struggled (that inbox, for instance), and pass those over to her business partner and husband so he could support her more effectively.

While the traditional work world might reward the most neurotypical, entrepreneurs get to create their own work settings and figure out what makes them really thrive. For example, Morgan’s hypersensitivity to colour and stimulation might make grocery shopping a problem, but it makes her artwork richer and more resonant. She then shares that with her collaborative partners and followers. She’s created a work-life that supports her entire life—a way of operating that makes the world more beautiful indeed.

Resources

To learn more about our guest, go to https://morganharpernichols.com/

To learn more about FreshBooks and take advantage of an offer exclusive to our podcast listeners, go to freshbooks.com/podcast

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected