The Blogger Genius Podcast

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#023: How to Start a Business by Solving a Problem for Moms (Part 1) Jun 27, 2018

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Today my guest is Laura Fuentes creator of MOMables, food plans to moms. Our discussion was all about how to start a business by solving a problem for moms, and I thought the interview was so good, I didn't want to cut anything out. So I've split it into 2 parts. Part 1 is about how Laura has worked hard to build a community of like-minded moms by creating content they will enjoy, and Part 2 is about how she sells to them. I think you're going to be impressed with how Laura has turned herself into a YouTuube influencer, that her community trusts. Resources: MOMables LauraFuentes.com Catch My Party MOMables - Laura Fuentes YouTube MiloTree Subscribe to The Blogger Genius Podcast: iTunes Google Play Stitcher Transcript –How to Start a Business by Solving a Problem for Moms (Part 1) [00:00:03] Welcome to the Blogger Genius podcast brought to you by MiloTree. Here's your host, Jillian Leslie. Jillian: [00:00:12] Hello everybody. Welcome back to the show. I'm recording this intro in my new city of Austin, Texas. I'm recording it in my Airbnb, so it sounds kind of echoey but the interview will sound much better today. Jillian: [00:00:40] My guest is my friend, Laura Fuentes. The interview went long, so I am splitting this one into two parts because I think it is that good. Jillian: [00:00:46] Let me tell you a little bit about Laura, where she is the creator of momables.com. She sells food plans to families to help them eat healthier, fresh foods. Jillian: [00:00:55] She's a cookbook writer. She is a YouTuber, she's been on TV shows like Good Morning America. I think you're going to really like this. So here is Part 1. Jillian: [00:01:04] So welcome to the show, Laura. Laura: [00:01:06] Thanks so much. I'm so excited to be here with you. I am a listener of your podcast. I love how helpful your emails that you send out are, you know I'm a fan. Laura: [00:01:16] So what am I going to say. The ones are listening it is such a pleasure to be here. Jillian: [00:01:19] Yes. And OK so we met as I said yep gosh maybe four years ago, and I went to your session, you did a session on email and I was blown away by what you were doing. Jillian: [00:01:31] And I went up to you. We started talking and we became friends, and then we've seen each other I guess at other conferences and we're going to be at a conference together. Momables started with a blog for her family Jillian: [00:01:38] Mom 2.0 very soon so we'll get to hang out IRL. So will you share your journey and how you started creating recipes food plans all of that? Laura: [00:01:51] Sure. So in the blogging age, I'm a dinosaur, seems like nine years ago now I started with a personal blog. It wasn't really even what we see today at momables.com or LauraFuentes.com. Laura: [00:02:08] I really started blogging because after I came to the south for my MBA, I married a southern man. I live right outside of New Orleans, and my whole family is in Spain. I was born and raised in Spain and my mom was in California. Laura: [00:02:23] And you know like we used to have these megapixel phones that took photos, and like my mom wanted me to share all the things that we were doing, and I just found it so tedious to tell my mom the things that we were doing, and my aunt and my friends. [00:02:40] I was a newish mom at the time, and a friend of mine said, Why don't you start a blog? And I'm like, What is that? Laura: [00:02:47] And she's like a blog is really just like a website, but instead of sending everybody an email with things that you're doing, or your mom, she's like you can just put it out there. It's called a blog post and you can put the pictures in the post and you basically say shared this story for everyone to read. Laura: [00:03:04] So you don't have to customize an email to your mom and your aunt and your friends. And I was like wow that's brilliant. Right? Because moms didn't have a lot of time. So actually if you go to my blog, years ago, I still have old blog posts where the pictures are a tiny tiny tiny. Laura: [00:03:21] And you know this was before DSLR cameras and stuff, so I started really just by sharing what I was doing with my family, and my mom wanted to know the recipes that were working for me, and the things that I was trying. So I started putting all that on the internet and on my blog. Laura: [00:03:43] And I found out that at the time, you know nine years ago, eight years ago, you know there was no Pinterest, it was Facebook, and it was really in its infancy. People weren't sharing and consuming content like they are now. Laura: [00:03:56] So the posts that I shared recipes that my kids enjoyed, or school lunches, or you know the things that were working. It really resonated with people and people started coming to me as a resource. Laura: [00:04:08] So it really started shifting towards the documenting of my life into a place where I could just I realized that I had this creativity with food. And I could help other people make fresh meals possible for their family. Jillian: [00:04:23] So you started this just for your family and then were other people coming to your blog? Were you surprised? Laura: [00:04:30] Yeah I mean, we had the early Google you know I was one of the few people that shared a healthy school lunches. Laura: [00:04:36] And my school lunch idea was, you know, and I am super practical by nature so of course like when I wrote something or created something it was all about, OK it's not just a recipe but it was like, "How do you pack it so it doesn't get soggy in a lunchbox?" "How do you store it for later?" "How do you prep ahead?" Laura: [00:04:55] So I would answer all those questions even how to boil an egg, you know. I think that's sort of what defined my type of content. And then started creating later on, more strategically but really being a helpful resource of how to make it happen when you're a really busy parent. Jillian: [00:05:17] How many kids do you have? Laura: [00:05:19] So I have three kids. Currently they are 6, 10 and almost 12. Jillian: [00:05:23] OK got it. So you were solving your own problem and then sharing about it. Laura: [00:05:28] Exactly. And what happens when you do that is you actually really connect with people that are like-minded. I don't try to appeal to the masses. I try to appeal to people that are going through what I was going through and and still am in the world of parenting. Laura: [00:05:46] And that's really how I realized and I connected with people and then we know as we've evolved I really created a whole business of sharing my ideas with momables, cookbooks, video, like all that stuff. At the the end of the day I really love connecting with this community that I built over email. Solving a food problem for other mothers as a way to start a business Jillian: [00:06:11] OK. So you start emailing, you start blogging about food and about being a mom and how to kind of solve the food issue. As a mom with kids. Laura: [00:06:24] Picky eaters. Jillian: [00:06:25] I have a picky eater so I so relate. You know, literally I will still to this day go, "I don't know what to make you because you are a picky eater." Jillian: [00:06:37] So then how did you start to think about this as a business, like you ultimately make most of your money via meal plans. Laura: [00:06:49] Right. So yes. So I started thinking about scaling what I knew. So if you don't know me very well. You're listening. My background is really on strategic like strategy global economics. Laura: [00:07:04] I think about scaling and you know if you were a blogger and you're listening you know that you start very passionately about something and then, it's almost like your life and your time gets consumed with creating and promoting your content. Laura: [00:07:20] And then you begin to think about, "my time is worth something" right and I need to figure out how to make money out of this. Laura: [00:07:31] And ad revenue was really in its infancy and I didn't really have like millions of page views at the time that would really make a significant impact in the revenue that I was bringing in. So I had to think about it I was like, "How can it create something that solves the problem that my community has that I can be authentic relatable helpful and make money." Jillian: [00:08:01] Love it. Solving what moms should pack for lunch [00:08:02] So that's where the meal plans were originally born and my original meal plans were just school lunches. I solved the what to pack for lunch. Jillian: [00:08:13] I need you. Okay. And then, so you started you created let's say a prototype or a template or something, and you started putting it out on your blog and saying, hey guys if you want to buy this? Laura: [00:08:28] Yup, I learned really quickly that if you don't ask no one will buy. But I also had to learn how to create the ask. Laura: [00:08:42] I knew that on social media people would share my content. So I started creating content around the meal planning and solving problems. I started creating content that would attract the kind of customer that was seeking. Laura: [00:08:57] So this is a really early say 2012-2013 before I think I might have just gotten a Facebook page at the time and it would be definitely before Instagram and Pinterest. So I knew that it was up to me to think about content in a way that people would share it. Why building a relationship with your community is key Laura: [00:09:19] But then I thought okay it's great that people share it but I can't put a Facebook post that says, "Hey buy my plans!" People are like "that's spammy." You know so I knew that building a relationship with people was key. Laura: [00:09:33] So about a year earlier I started really studying online marketing and I realized that bloggers or content creators. I wouldn't even say bloggers, like really content creators of all walks and niches, they really weren't focusing on email strategy. Laura: [00:09:53] They were just like in the days when we had RSS feeds, Feedly, you know. People felt that their content was so good that people would just come to their blog, or maybe subscribe to their feed. But I just thought gosh, that is just such a passive way of like, "Oh if you like it, grab it grab the feed." Laura: [00:10:23] But the reality is that the readers at the time, like they weren't so educated in how to do all that right. And I knew that there was one thing that would never go away. That's email. The importance of email marketing in starting a business Laura: [00:10:34] I wake up in the morning at 5:00 a.m. or 5:30 I check my email. I sort my inbox. I mean I've been doing that for years so I knew that my customer avatar or people that I wanted to attract really primarily gather their information sorted their inboxes subscribe to things you know. Laura: [00:10:53] And I remember people telling me like OK so you're capturing their email and now what? And I'm like oh my gosh, that's my opportunity to build a relationship with these people via email every single week via newsletter. Laura: [00:11:07] So that's, you met me four years ago. You know probably a few years in speaking about how to create that newsletter that people would want to open and read. So I had already been doing that for about four years. Laura: [00:11:21] I've been sending out a newsletter on Sunday nights at 8:00 p.m. Central for the last seven years now. Jillian: [00:11:30] Yes. In fact you opened my eyes to email marketing, email funnels and I was blown away when you talked about it, because it was so intentional. And it was so not spammy. It was going to provide value. Jillian: [00:11:47] And if you like it buy my product. If you don't just come along for the ride. Laura: [00:11:52] Totally and that's what you want. You know you want to build a relationship that people see you as a resource a trustworthy person. Your customers need to see you as a resource Laura: [00:12:03] And sometimes they're not buyers. I have customers who I've had on my list for like five or six years when they just had babies and they wanted to eat healthier themselves, and now their kids five years later are going to school and now they're buying my meal plans. Laura: [00:12:16] Right. So it's really not about that instant sale. I would rather have a community of engaged people that are like-minded. That also finds the rest of my content that I produce that it's free helpful and they're going to share that online with their network and therefore attract other parents who might be at the right time to purchase my meal plans or any of my other programs. Jillian: [00:12:42] So in your newsletter what do you write every week? Laura: [00:12:47] So in my newsletter I write a personal story about my life. The person that I am, what happened that week, my traveling, How did I pull it together to jump on a plane and still left my family with food. You know it's basically an email from me to a friend. Laura: [00:13:10] And I literally write an email I know it goes out to thousands of people but I imagine that I'm just writing to one person. Jillian: [00:13:34] Oooh. yes. And do you always put a recipe in your newsletter? Laura: [00:13:43] So I do it a bit differently now that I used to but my newsletter is built around the new content of the week. So whatever items were published Monday through Friday that week go in my newsletter. Jillian: [00:13:56] Okay. And one thing we haven't touched on is you create amazing video. Laura: [00:14:01] I love video production. Jillian: [00:14:05] Yeah, and like you have your own studio that you built. And you like you have this amazing process where you like have a team come in and shoot a bunch of video a bunch of recipes, and this is how you also work with brands. Right. Which is you'll create video for brands. Jillian: [00:14:22] We'll come back to to your newsletter and to your email strategy. But could you just quickly talk about that. Like how many videos a week are you making? Laura: [00:14:30] So my newsletter includes no only blog posts but it also includes video content that I release every week. Laura: [00:14:36] So I've made a commitment to release a new video every single week. I've been doing that for three years. So since Fall 2014 I believe. Jillian: [00:14:52] And are these always recipes? Laura: [00:14:54] They are mostly recipes. So what happens is that I taught myself how to cook and you know I feel like cooking is something that anyone can do. If you have a good process and recipe. Laura: [00:15:07] So back in 2014 I realized that video was the direction that people were consuming content. This is really early on and of course look at where we are today. Having a video production process to make lots of video content Laura: [00:15:22] And so I had never been in front of a camera in my life and I competed on Food Network that year. Jillian: [00:15:30] In what? Laura: [00:15:32] And won! Jillian: [00:15:34] What show? Laura: [00:15:35] Oh it was called Rewrapped. So it was a show at the time recreating recipes. You know you just showed up and you had to recreate a popular snack item or something from the grocery store. Right. Jillian: [00:15:48] OK. What did you recreate? Laura: [00:15:55] I recreated this old snack called cheese wise/wise cheese. I can't even remember the name of this thing. But it's like these cheesy waffle things. Laura: [00:16:05] And you know what's interesting about that is that it's not even winning or creative, I honestly learned that I could create on my feet and I…

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#022: How To Grow A Successful Ecommerce Business with Cristina Auffant Jun 20, 2018

Show notes

Today my guest is Cristina Auffant from the online party supply store, Via Blossom. In this episode we talk about how to grow a success ecommerce business, and all the ups and downs she's faced along the way. Resources: Via Blossom Catch My Party Shopify My Wife Quit Her Job Ecommerce Influence Simple Pin Media MiloTree Some of these links may be affiliate Subscribe to The Blogger Genius Podcast: iTunes Google Play Stitcher Transcript – How To Grow a Successful Ecommerce Business with Cristina Auffant Host: [00:00:02] Welcome to the Blogger Genius podcast brought to you by MiloTree. Here's your host,Jillian Leslie. Jillian: [00:00:10] Hey everyone. Welcome back to the show. Today I have as my guest, Cristina Auffant. Jillian: [00:00:20] Cristina and her sister Maggie own a online store called Via Blossom. They sell some of the most beautiful party supplies I've ever seen. So welcome to the show, Cristina. Cristina: [00:00:39] Thank you, Jillian! And what a beautiful intro. Jillian: [00:00:42] OK so a couple of things. We met by sharing a cab late at night. I was flying into a conference. I was in my sweat pants. I looked horrible. Jillian: [00:00:56] And I'm waiting on the taxi line. And all of a sudden you come up and say, "Are you Jillian?" And it turns out we were going to a party conference called Bash, which no longer exists. Jillian: [00:01:13] And you're like, I totally know who you are, in fact I advertise on your site. Cristina: [00:01:20] Exactly. Jillian: [00:01:19] And we became fast friends and now cut to probably five years later. Cristina: [00:01:27] I don't know if I think it was 2015 when we went to that conference. We were lucky to see each other again the next year, that we had time to become friends again. Cristina: [00:01:41] You were the Rock Star of the rock stars in the conference. You were one of the guest speakers. But it was like the best cab ride I could ever. You know it was incredible. Cristina: [00:01:52] I never remember people's faces and for some reason, I saw you in the line and I was like that has to be Jillian. I hope I'm not mistaken but if I am I don't care, because nobody knows me here in Phoenix, Arizona. Cristina: [00:02:08] And I said, "Jillian!" and then you kept on walking and then I said, "Jillian!" And then we ended up sharing the cab and it was like half an hour of you know entrepreneurial talk. So I loved it. Cristina: [00:02:22] And we hung out for the whole conference. Jillian: [00:02:27] And then you guys, you and your sister Maggie reached out to me because I started doing some business coaching. And you guys have been working with me for a year year and a half. Cristina: [00:02:41] Yes. I reached out to you because at the conference, like every piece of advice you gave me was on point. Cristina: [00:02:50] After coming back you know it's true that when you go to a conference, like a lot of things change in your life, and you feel like brand new, and you want to implementing everything you learn. Cristina: [00:03:00] But out of every single piece of advice I received during the conference, I think your advice was what I started implementing right away. And I have always trusted you. [00:03:18] You've always been such an inspiration to me and my sister, Maggie. And everything started working when we start implementing those strategies. Of course like the business coaching, yeah I was thinking, oh I have to call Jillian. Inspiration behind Via Blossom, your party supplies store Jillian: [00:03:41] So let's let's talk about Via Blossom and what inspired you and Maggie to start it. Cristina: [00:03:47] Well it was a very organic. We both had children. I have two, a boy and a girl, and Maggie has two girls. Cristina: [00:03:59] And it was more like when we were planning those birthday parties, especially the first birthday party, is always so important. You want everything to be perfect. It's your dream. Cristina: [00:04:08] You know it's something new. So I started looking for party supplies. And also I remember when Maggie was doing her birthday parties for young girls. She was so frustrated. Cristina: [00:04:20] And I then lived that myself. You know, I was so frustrated looking for everything. [00:04:27] I had to basically DIY a lot of things, took a lot of time late nights, and I was like, "This is not what I wanted." I wanted to find things that were ready to go and were absolutely beautiful for the theme that I was planning for my son in that case. Cristina: [00:04:43] And it took me like maybe five or seven trips to different stores, all kinds of stores not only party stores but all kinds of stores to find what I wanted. Cristina: [00:04:53] And in the end it turned out very beautiful but it was a lot of hard work. And as you know, Jillian, we don't have a lot of time. And our hands are full. Cristina: [00:05:02] We don't have a lot of time time you want something beautiful for your children, but at the same time you don't want to spend hours or trips and gather and like gas driving here and driving there. Cristina: [00:05:14] And I told Maggie. Maggie maybe we should start. And at the same time I saw a big trend in the world, as you know if you go to Catch My Party you're going to find huge inspiration when it comes to parties. Cristina: [00:05:27] The world was changing in terms of the party scene and moms were having more attention to detail when it came to celebrating their birthday parties. Cristina: [00:05:37] So we saw this new trend of like more curated parties, and Maggie and I would say like, OK we're jumping into that wagon and we're going to do a very curated store with like handpicked party supplies and offering amazing party themes. Jillian: [00:05:56] OK. And then you thought were going to start Shopify store? Starting a Shopify store Cristina: [00:06:01] No. Jillian: [00:06:02] OK. Tell us. Cristina: [01:58:08] Unfortunately, no, Jillian. We had every single bump in the road. You know when you hear stories you think that everything was perfect then they're so successful. And it's not the case. It was hard. Cristina: [00:06:16] Jillian, we were inexperienced when it came to ecommerce and platforms. So we we followed the advice of people that we hired and they put us in a very bad platform. Cristina: [00:06:31] Or maybe those were the times maybe Shopify was just starting. I don't know. And we were on a platform that was very limited. Cristina: [00:06:41] Everything was hard on that platform and we decided at some point maybe when we were like a year and a half in business even though we were selling parties pretty well. Cristina: [00:06:51] We were selling from the beginning. So that was a good thing, but the platform was very very outdated and even like printing shipping labels was a mess. Like everything was very hard. Cristina: [00:07:09] So we wanted something more you know up to date. And we hired a graphic designer and a new programmer and they migrated us to Shopify. Jillian: [00:07:18] And how like how was that? At first it was a disaster Cristina: [00:07:21] The migration was a true disaster. And we lost basically all the traffic that we had worked hard for. Cristina: [00:07:29] You know we were working really hard to build traffic and you know to work on our social media and everything and suddenly we had a store that was beautiful but it was in the middle of the desert. Nobody could see the store we were penalized by Google and other algorithms. Cristina: [00:07:51] That's exactly when I met you. Jillian: [00:07:53] Yes. Cristina: [00:07:54] And I told you the whole story and you took a lot of interest in us because we were a little down to be honest, because we were selling pretty well for the first year and then seeing our sales go down, our traffic go down. That was not fun. Jillian: [00:08:11] When you guys approached me you were even thinking of closing the shop. Cristina: [00:08:15] We were yes. We were not going to quit, somehow, but when we were down. You know when we met, when I saw you, when I saw you for the second time, I'm going to say yeah we're a little down. Cristina: [00:08:27] We're down because it was like, wow we have a nice store right. Beautiful graphic design, and a beautiful platform like Shopify which is like right now the Ferrari of the e-commerce platforms and yet what is going on? Jillian: [00:08:44] How did you start crawling your way out? How Pinterest starting bringing sales to their e-commerce site Cristina: [00:08:48] Well you were one of the ways. I'm going to give you credit for that, Jillian. And also I think Maggie and I were like quitting was never like an option for us. Cristina: [00:08:59] We were down but we were like, OK it's going to come up again and we improved the design of the website. And the one thing that we did from the advice that you gave me on the at the conference was like, "Christina, work on your Pinterest." Cristina: [00:09:18] You're going to see the fruit of your work. If you you really really put some time in that. And I only had probably like 600 followers on Pinterest when you gave me that advice. Cristina: [00:09:31] In a matter of a year. It grew to probably 3,000 followers. And not only that, it started producing sales like crazy. Jillian: [00:09:40] Right. Cristina: [00:09:40] And now we're almost reaching 6,000. And you know you don't grow Pinterest as fast as maybe in 2010. You know it's very different now. And still it's working very well, and it's not like we have a hundred thousand followers. We only have about 6000 and they produce sales every day. Using MiloTree to grow your Pinterest following Jillian: [00:10:04] And you have MiloTree on your site only growing Pinterest. Cristina: [00:10:08] Exactly we have it on the blog. And we have Pinterest now, maybe in the future we're going to switch it around and alternate between Instagram and Pinterest. For now, We really want to have it on Pinterest. Jillian: [00:10:23] And I think that the thing that when we started working together my my one piece of advice to you guys was to really figure out who your customer was and what they were coming to your site for. Jillian: [00:10:38] And what we decided was, you are not just a general party supply seller. Cristina: [00:10:45] Yes. And I think that was liberating because when you have a party supply store or any kind of store, you think you have to sell everything you know like everything there is in this specific market. Cristina: [00:10:58] And I think it was liberating to know that we don't need to sell ninja party supplies or we don't need to sell boy party supplies or even a holiday. Cristina: [00:11:10] Like, it was ok. And actually you know as you see our growth we've tripled sales selling girl party supplies and focusing on that beautiful market of very curated girly things and elegant things. Jillian: [00:11:28] Right, yes. And the thing that I kept saying to you guys is set yourselves up as tastemakers. Cristina: [00:11:35] Listening to our customers and what they want and what they like. We decided to sell tissue paper flowers in bundles. And it's been a total success so far. Cristina: [00:11:48] And the same thing with other collections for example are tea party collection. Now we offer a tea party in a box, and we also offer that in other other party themes, and it's become very successful. Jillian: [00:12:05] Right. Because again it's like in the world of e-commerce today, you've got this juggernaut like Amazon and you can find anything on Amazon. How to win in ecommerce against Amazon Jillian: [00:12:16] However why you come to your site to Via Blossom, is because you're going to tell me what I need. Cristina: [00:12:23] That's absolutely correct. Like if you land on our party themes you're going to see that they're very complete and you will find everything that you need. Cristina: [00:12:32] And on top of that we offer bundles which cuts the time to think and combine and coordinate this with that, like it's so simple and the party lines are so beautiful that it's hard to resist. Cristina: [00:12:49] Our customers when they buy. And this is something that makes me feel very proud. They truly put their trust in us. Cristina: [00:12:56] And when you see the average order has increased, the average order value has increased so much in the last year. Because people when they buy, it's over a hundred dollars sometimes and sometimes we've had orders are like ranging in the seven hundreds for parties where everything is from Via Blossom. [00:13:23] And that makes me very proud as a store owner to see like the average price order value going up like crazy because they're finding everything they need they don't have to drive to 700 places. They don't have time. Moms are busy. Cristina: [00:13:39] So you find the place where you can find what you need and see a selection that we're it's coordinated for you and curated for you. We're making their lives a little easier. Cristina: [00:13:53] And at the same time it's so cool to see that the birthday parties are going to be beautiful too. Jillian: [00:14:00] OK so if you were to be talking to somebody who says, "I want to start a Shopify store I want to sell stuff. "What would you say to them? Mistakes people making running an online store Cristina: [00:14:14] Our road has not been straight. And I think for most entrepreneurs that's the road you're going to have it's the hard road. It's not an easy path. You have to work very hard. Cristina: [00:14:25] But the one thing I'm going to tell them that they have to be strategic and they have to start step by step. They cannot do everything at the same time. Cristina: [00:14:35] I think when you start a store you are so overwhelmed and you're wearing every single hat, but you need to prioritize. Cristina: [00:14:42] Say OK if Pinterest is working, you know you need to focus on it. This is something that we've learned from you, from day one is to focus on what works. Cristina: [00:14:51] You know if Pinterest is giving you sales, so why are you wasting your time on Facebook. When that's not probably producing all the sales that Pinterest is producing. Cristina: [00:15:01] So focus on this and give all your efforts to this platform for some time. And then when you feel like you have mastered this platform then you can move on to implementing for example, email marketing. Cristina: [00:15:20] It takes a lot of time for you to become skilled in every single aspect of the business. So you know it takes a lot of thought to become an expert in email marketing. Cristina: [00:15:31] I'm not an expert yet, but we're working towards that goal. Same thing with social media. I'm not going to be the queen in Instagram for now. Cristina: [00:15:40] That doesn't mean that one day we're going to though. You know we're going to double, you know we have like 6000 followers. Maybe one day we'll have much more. Cristina: [00:15:49] But for now Pinterest in our case is the platform that works. Cristina: [00:15:54] People make the mistake when they start, they want to be in every single platform they want to do email marketing they want to do Facebook advertising. They want to do it all. Cristina: [00:16:03] They listened to podcasts, they Google things, they read, they take courses and it's overwhelming. How to work smarter in ecommerce Cristina: [00:16:11] And I think in the end that drains you emotionally, and in the end that you're not productive you're not doing what you're supposed to do you're not working smarter. You…

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#021: How To Set Up An Easy and Effective Email Sales Funnel with Kate Doster (Part 2) Jun 13, 2018

Show notes

Today I'm back with Part 2 in my interview with email marketing strategist, Kate Doster. In this episode we delve deep into online sales. We discuss how to set up an easy and effective email sales funnel, how to focus on your product benefits, how to write your emails, and how to do an open-close cart launch. If you missed Part 1 of my interview with Kate where we go over why email marketing is exciting and easy, definitely check it out first. Now relax and enjoy how to sell anything through email! I think you're going to really enjoy this. Resources: KateDoster.com Love Your List Inbox Besties Podcast Teachable Thinkific AccessAlly Marie Forleo Todd Herman MiloTree Some of these links may be affiliate Subscribe to The Blogger Genius Podcast: iTunes Google Play Stitcher Transcript – How To Set Up An Easy and Effective Email Sales Funnel with Kate Doster Host: [00:00:03] Welcome to the Blogger Genius Podcast brought to you by MiloTree. Here's your host, Jillian Leslie. Jillian: [00:00:10] Hello and welcome back to Part 2 of my interview with Kate Doster, email marketing guru, were we get really deep into online sales. Here we go... Jillian: [00:00:20] Let's talk about sales emails. How to start setting up an email sales funnel Kate: [00:00:22] OK. So when we're actually selling selling stuff. OK. So we had our list of our 200 people we've been talking to, the people who would talk to us. Kate: [00:00:30] We have registered the fact that I use this checklist every time I have to organize my house, because that's what people were really intimidated by that, their whole house was full of clutter and they couldn't get rid of it all. Kate: [00:00:44] Some of it was some kind of mental, some of it is they start going and then they lose steam. So we listen to everyone's problems. We got all of our stuff and run. Kate: [00:00:51] You know what, I'm going to create just a room by room checklist. And it is going to say what to do and how often. So that someone can just say, oh it's Monday, like I need to do this, or I can do this once a week. Kate: [00:01:04] So that's what we're going to do. So we have throughout our email and on our social and on our blog we've been teasing it out, so we can just start with an email and really just explaining the problem. Kate: [00:01:17] And since you talk to your audience or even a friend that's not on your email list, about it. Kate: [00:01:22] "So I was talking to Cindy the other day and she was saying that one of the biggest things that is really dragging her down is that every single time she cleans her kitchen table, it just gets cluttered again, can you relate?" Start by telling the story of the problem you're solving Kate: [00:01:33] It's so frustrating. Like, I just cleaned that and now there's no space to do anything! Which means now they're eating in the living room. So you're literally just like telling a story, guys. Kate: [00:01:43] Which is why I've decided to create, and we can talk about naming things. But The Quick Clean Serenity House Checklist. And tomorrow I'm going to tell you how you can get it. Kate: [00:01:55] Now, this is if you have not been talking about it at all before you sell. I always like to send one of those like pre-sell emails to kind of get the juicing going. Kate: [00:02:04] You know, you've read this story. It was really really interesting. They definitely relate to the main character. You're not necessarily selling, you're selling the fact that you need open tomorrow's email. Kate: [00:02:14] So then tomorrow's emails come and again you shout back from yesterday because sadly not everyone reads all of our emails. We wish. Kate: [00:02:22] So yesterday I told you about Cindy and a kitchen table dilemma. Can you relate? Like a very short summary. Kate: [00:02:27] Well today, I'm going to introduce you to your new best friend, The Superclean House Checklist, which will give you day by day and person by person handouts, so that your house is always as clean as it can be, and you can stop yelling at your family to pick up their mess. Jillian: [00:02:43] Can we pause for just one second. I fall into this trap all the time, especially let's say with MiloTree. Jillian: [00:02:50] Which is, we've rolled out a new feature and I want to tell everybody about the feature, and where I am going wrong is I need to talk about the benefit, not the feature. How to sell the benefits of your product and not the features Kate: [00:03:05] And what's really nice, and we're going to use MiloTree because again, I'm a user and I love it. Kate: [00:03:09] So you know, what you can start with, and this is like in your pre-writing so if you do a Google doc. So say that you can name a new feature and we can actually role play this in real life if you want. So we have this ability where people can do... blank. Jillian: [00:03:27] So people get it, we'll do it in real life. People can pick pages on their site and either turn off their MiloTree pop-up, like let's say it's a sales page and you don't want this pop-up showing up. You can enter the URL and MiloTree won't show. Jillian: [00:03:42] Conversely, let's say you only want to show your pop-up on a certain page. You can have it not show on every page of your site except for the pages you want. OK so that is the feature. Kate: [00:03:56] I actually use this feature. OK. So guys, do this with your own stuff too, especially before you sell. Like OK so we can hide it from appearing on certain pages. Kate: [00:04:16] So that means if someone is on your sales page they don't get distracted. Yes so what. So that means that they stay focused. Yes, right. So that way they buy. OK. So if they buy now, you're going to make more sale. People want more sales and you can keep going and going. Kate: [00:04:33] It's like OK so they get more sales and again you can go like that they get more money and MiloTree is like, paying for itself, like it understands that you don't want someone to join your email list if they're on your sales page because we want to keep people directed right now. Kate: [00:04:50] So maybe, because I'm sure you've gotten this request or you yourself have noticed this as a blog owner and a business owner. Kate: [00:04:57] And why would people want to have it on certain pages. So maybe they have their MiloTree set to a certain freebie that they have to join their email list, and say it is for healthy eating. But they also blog about exercise or like mommy tips, so stuff that's not so relevant. Kate: [00:05:20] So this is really great for our lifestyle bloggers. It's like are they really going to want my healthy eating stuff when they're looking for the best deals on fashion? Probably not. Kate: [00:05:28] So this way you are not annoying the people on your site with things they don't need. Kate: [00:05:33] Now you're showing that you're caring so that you're actually getting targeted people on your list. So that when you have a product to sell, you will be able to sell more because you are actually serving the need they have. Kate: [00:05:45] So literally both times because we deal with usually people who are pro bloggers, and want to make money and not offend their audience. Both of those features now will help you sell more. Jillian: [00:05:56] By the way I love the way you're talking through this to the: "So then what. So then what. So then what." Jillian: [00:06:04] Because I will literally write something and then I'll go back and go. Oh my god, I didn't talk about the benefit at all. Jillian: [00:06:13] And I like that you're pushing me to go deeper, go deeper, go deeper. You know, "well, then what?" Jillian: [00:06:19] And then I do this with my daughter, like she'll have a fear and I'll go. "And then what would happen? And then what would happen?" to show that there aren't really monsters. If that makes sense? Jillian: [00:06:31] But it's that idea of like. "And then what?" And that I don't think I dig deep enough to the benefit. Kate: [00:06:37] Well, and a new way that you could do it. And this way I think would actually love is then like flip it. So in your email you would probably start off with: "New feature, You can now decide which pages MiloTree shows up on!" Kate: [00:06:52] So instead, you could literally be like,"We know how hard it is for you to get people on your sales page and you want them to stay focused, intent and ultimately slap your buy button, which is why now with MiloTree you can decide what pages it's showing up on so we can keep people on track. And you can better serve your pocketbook and your audience. Jillian: [00:07:11] Love it. I mean it by the way I'm going to go back and I will literally write that down. How to figure out the core benefit of your product Kate: [00:07:18] And it's the same with anything, guys, like why does it matter that you have a checklist? So that you don't forget anything. Well so that everything gets done so that you don't have that lingering feeling in her head. So that way you don't think you're done and then have to go back and actually start again. Jillian: [00:07:38] I find it can go even deeper so that I have more time so I have more time with my family so I have more time for myself so that I can be happier in the world. Kate: [00:07:49] That checklist is going to make it so you're not arguing with your kid constantly about picking up. Jillian: [00:07:52] Exactly and in fact at the core is love. Kate: [00:07:56] Exactly. Jillian: [00:07:56] So I can love my kid more. Kate: [00:07:58] Exactly. There's no tension and you can blame a checklist. They're like, "Mom I don't want to do it," then you can be like: "Well the checklist on the wall says you have to so sorry honey." Jillian: [00:08:06] Exactly so. So again it's like going back, going deep to those core things that we all want. We all want to love our families. We all want them to love us. Jillian: [00:08:17] We want to have enough money so that we can be loving our families and not worrying. You know, so it's like I feel like personally I need to push myself further and to really get at what is the benefit behind the benefit. Kate: [00:08:36] Exactly. Or again with the MiloTree feature, we're going to talk a lot about it because we both love it so much. Kate: [00:08:42] To the subscriber, like functionality you don't want it to show on your thank you page because it makes no sense. That you are asking them. To subscribe when they've already subscribed. Kate: [00:08:51] So that's their avoiding embarrassment by not being on the thank you pages. Jillian: [00:08:54] Yes. OK. I love that. This is terrific. Kate: [00:08:58] We can always come back for a whole copyrighting episode. Jillian: [00:09:06] But by the way you are also a coach. I feel like I'm getting free coaching right here. So thank you. Jillian: [00:09:14] OK. So let's go back though to our organizer were where you got into the second email where you're starting to talk. Your second email in your sales sequence Jillian: [00:09:21] You did a recap of the first email that you sent. This is the first time you're introducing your product and you're talking about the benefits. Kate: [00:09:30] Exactly. So again it doesn't have to be like a huge mile long email but you do want to highlight some features. Kate: [00:09:37] So what are they going to be able to avoid. What are they going to be able to gain. How is it actually delivered. That's actually usually like the end of the fact. So it's like you know this is an electronic download so it's instant you don't have to worry about anything on the mail. Kate: [00:09:50] You know you purposely made it printer friendly because while you love those pretty printables you do not love wasting money on ink. Kate: [00:09:59] So a couple of times throughout that email. Usually I'd like to link to the sales page probably about three times. Kate: [00:10:04] So usually when I am saying the product's name because it doesn't need a fancy schmancy name. I will have that just linked directly. Kate: [00:10:13] So like I have my course "Love Your List" so anytime I set an email it's linked. Jillian: [00:10:17] Okay got it. How to set up your call to action Kate: [00:10:18] I have what I call a blatant sort of call to action. So what do you want them to do next. Kate: [00:10:23] Where it's actually like the link and you're like, "Click here to snag your copy." Kate: [00:10:27] Now if this is the first time that you're releasing something. I always encourage people to start a little bit slower. Kate: [00:10:34] So I know everyone is like "Oh don't discount your stuff" but you want to give the people that have been around you the longest. The benefit of like you know guys in two weeks is going to be $19 but since you're already on my list you guys can get it for $10. As a nice reward. Kate: [00:14:00] So the first time you're rolling something out. I always say put it for a little less and then you can raise the price because then it also adds in that urgency. Kate: [00:10:59] So the next email that you send will go right into the series like you first introduce that, the next one maybe you want to answer some frequently asked questions. This can be like a couple of days apart guys. Kate: [00:11:09] I mean it's not because it's just a $19 ebook but you don't have to sell it as hard as you would for like a two thousand dollar program or my five thousand dollar coaching package. Kate: [00:11:18] So what you would then do after that is answer some frequently asked questions that people have. How to speak to someone's buying objections or yeah, but Kate: [00:11:25] It can be a little bit about the printer but it's more so you want to think about your frequently asked questions on how you can disrupt that, "Yeah, but" pattern. Kate: [00:11:35] Yeah but I'm a clutter bug. So you want to answer any frequently questions like. So guys I've been getting a lot of questions and you know your industry about our fancy cleaner set. Kate: [00:11:46] So question: "I'm a complete clutterbug and cannot stay organized to save my life, is this honestly going to help me?" and then you explain about how your system is specifically made for people who do not have the cleaning gene anywhere in their chromosomes. Kate: [00:12:01] Okay so what's another like "yeah, but" question you have? Yeah but, I can't get my family to cooperate which is why we do have as an extra bonus -- the colorful printer copies -- that you can put up in every section of your home to remind you and your children. Did you check off your item for the day? Kate: [00:12:17] And there's even spots for stickers because now we've added that, "my kids won't do this." So this is where you want to use as opposed to like "How much does it cost?" "How many pages is it?" Kate: [00:12:29] That stuff can be at the very bottom of your frequently asked questions. Do you have a return policy? You know, how do I actually get it? Kate: [00:12:36] So you know that's towards the bottom but we want to answer those like key "Yeah but" objections first. Kate: [00:12:46] And the next email after that again depending if you decided to do price increases or not. I always like to give people a free sample of what they'll get because in the…

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#020: Why Email Marketing is Exciting and Easy with Kate Doster (Part 1) Jun 05, 2018

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Today I'm talking with Kate Doster, email marketing strategist and very fun guest. Kate is here to explain why email marketing is exciting and easy. And I promise that after you listen, you will think so too! The interview was so good, I've broken it into two parts so you don't miss anything Kate has to say. In Part 1 we talk all about how and why to grow your list, and the best ways to create a real relationship with your subscribers. In Part 2, we'll get into actually creating a sales funnel with emails. I think you're going to really enjoy this! Resources: KateDoster.com MiloTree Subscribe to The Blogger Genius Podcast: iTunes Google Play Stitcher Transcript – Why Email Marketing is Exciting and Easy with Kate Doster Host [00:00:03] Welcome to The Blogger Genius podcast brought to you by MiloTree. Here's your host, Jillian Leslie. Jillian: [00:00:11] Hey everybody. Welcome back to the show. Today I'm swimming in boxes. We are moving from Northern California to Austin. Jillian: [00:00:21] If anybody is listening to this from Austin, please reach out. I would love to meet you in my new city. Jillian: [00:00:29] OK. For today's interview. It is terrific. It's with Kate Doster. It is all about email marketing. Jillian: [00:00:37] It went long so I'm splitting it in two. You will learn so much. So here is part 1 today. Jillian: [00:00:46] My guest is Kate Doster. Kate is an email marketing strategist and I'm excited to have her on the show because I want to talk all things email marketing, and when I mentioned that to Kate her eyes lit up and she's like, I could talk about it for days. Jillian: [00:01:05] So welcome to the show, Kate. Kate: [00:01:08] Hi. It's true. It's kind of a sickness, guys. It's kind of a sickness. How to make money in the early days of the internet Jillian: [00:01:11] So we have to get into how you started in this space and how you got into email marketing. Kate: [00:01:20] OK. So it's one of those much like yourselves. I had been actually making money online since like the Geocity and Live Journal days so like, we're talking like Netscape browser guys. Kate: [00:01:34] So like roughly forever. So back in that day it was more like a diary thing just kind of see what's going on. Kate: [00:01:41] Almost the way, like social sort of morphed now and primarily the way I was making income back then was I was doing a lot of what's called retail flipping. Kate: [00:01:48] So like I would buy things at discount department stores, usually more higher end, and then I would sell them on eBay. So that's where I first made money online. Jillian: [00:01:56] So what kinds of things were you doing that with? What what kinds of product? Kate: [00:02:02] For that, and I think you'll find this with most blogging in general, the riches are in the niches. So I actually did it with handbags. So it was purses. Kate: [00:02:11] It's really nice. You're not looking for a whole bunch of stuff, like you know the brands that sell really well, you know how much you're going to sell for it. Kate: [00:02:17] So that way when you do see them, and discounts you know at different stores like you know, a T.J. Maxx or Marshalls. Like, is this a good buy to then go and flip. Jillian: [00:02:26] So like a Kate Spade bag? Kate: [00:02:28] Exactly. Jillian: [00:02:29] OK. And was that lucrative? Kate: [00:02:34] It was. I was in college at the time. So for me that it was OK. And I was doing it part time and I made more there than I did at my actual part time jobs so, yes. Kate: [00:02:44] I sourced most of my purses from my part time job. So that is fun. Kate: [00:02:50] And then I was in college and my parents were not very entrepreneurial at the time, and like very like anti-sales and all of that. So they're like you know, go to college. Kate: [00:02:59] They wanted you to get like a 9 to 5 job, like to be a teacher or something of that nature. Kate: [00:03:03] So I went and I got my degree in communication. But like I was the kid that had like 80 million majors and I was in social services for a while, and then I ended up in the banking industry. Kate: [00:03:15] And so along that sort of path, it would just sort of became more like sporadic. And it wasn't my main source. Kate: [00:03:22] So what had happened is back in 2012, when I was at my banking job I became pregnant with my first daughter. And at the time in the United States they could fire you for going on maternity leave. Jillian: [00:03:36] What?!? Kate: [00:03:36] And they did, because it wasn't considered full time and I wasn't there for a year. So like I had been there something like 11 months. Which is why I'll never work for anybody else ever again. Kate: [00:03:49] They would have you work just enough hours where you weren't considered full time, but you were maxed out in your part time hours. Kate: [00:03:57] I believe it's changed in the United States since then, that pregnancy was considered an illness or an injury. And they're like you have three days to come back to work or you're fired. Becoming a stay-at-home mom not by choice Kate: [00:04:10] And I'm like not like laid off, oh no no. It will go down as a termination. So we worked out an agreement, that's why I'm not going to stay the company. So it worked out that way. Kate: [00:04:21] So I was kind of forced into being an at home mom, which was kind of nice but it wasn't what I had expected. Kate: [00:04:28] And then we had our other kid, and you know, life sort of happens and I'm like, I need to use my brain again. Kate: [00:04:34] So I got back online, I started blogging, we started flipping. At that time I had done like a minimalist living blog about how I started to dip my toes back in there. Kate: [00:04:45] My heart really wasn't in that. Jillian: [00:04:49] What is a Minimalist Living Blog? Kate: [00:04:50] So it was a lot of, mindfulness get rid of a lot of your clutter. This is actually pre The Magical Art of Tidying Up. Kate: [00:05:00] You got a little bit before then. And then her book came out and it blew up huge. But, and I'm sure you guys know this, with bloggers, it is one of the topics that my audience wanted me to talk about that I didn't like. Kate: [00:05:13] It's like they all want to talk about like organization and things like that. Kate: [00:05:17] I'm like "the whole reason why I got rid of all my stuff was so that I wouldn't have to do all this." How to become an online copywriter Kate: [00:05:22] And something that I had always really loved and you can just tell from me, I've always been a talker, a communicator. I loved it and I'd stumbled upon a different blog when I was trying to sharpen my writing skills. Kate: [00:05:33] And I found this thing called copywriting, and if you guys had ever watched Mad Men. That's what they did, like back in the ad agency days and I fell in love. Kate: [00:05:41] So I found a really prestigious copywriter and I apprenticed under her, and then my business just like blew up. Kate: [00:05:48] So I took freelance copywriting clients forever, and that's how I made my money and then now I transitioned more into the coaching. Jillian: [00:05:55] By teaching people. Kate: [00:05:57] Exactly. Particularly email marketing because I just I couldn't write another "about" page ever, that just didn't light me up. Kate: [00:06:03] But anytime I had to write an email series for somebody, whether it was selling or just in general, I'm sure we'll talk about that just like that was my medium, and like oh my goodness, I love this. Jillian: [00:06:14] Why? Why do you think it lit you up? Kate: [00:06:17] I think it was because it's a lot of storytelling. Even though you can have long emails and I'm sure we'll talk about the length a little later. Kate: [00:06:25] It was just sort of shorter, and honestly it was more personal to me than even like a general blog would be. Kate: [00:06:32] You could actually let your client's voice show through and tell a story you even have pictures. And I just really loved like the friendly intimate atmosphere of it. Jillian: [00:06:44] Got it. So Ok, then let's now dive into email and what you think. Like if I'm I'm a blogger and I want to sell a product. Jillian: [00:07:02] Let's say I'm collecting a list and by the way, when I ask other bloggers on this podcast what is the one thing that you wish you knew back then, what is it. And I can't tell you how many say start collecting emails start creating a list. Why you want to create a email list as a blogger Jillian: [00:07:21] But a lot of people go, "Well, I'm creating a list but I'm not exactly sure why." Kate: [00:07:27] Exactly. And the way that I like to think of it again copywriter background, is there's a very famous copywriter and he asked all of his students; "If you going to start a hamburger stand what would you want?" Kate: [00:07:40] So everyone's like all the best location, Kobe beef, you know artisanal buns, a sponsor that would shout us out. Now the only thing you need is a hungry crowd of people. Kate: [00:07:53] And that is what your email list is, it's a hungry crowd of people. Kate: [00:07:57] And primarily especially for us bloggers, that is what I consider myself now. I will be pumping out all these blog posts. But so is everyone else out in the world. Kate: [00:08:05] And so what have happening is somebody could end up binge reading like 5 articles on how to plan the perfect party for their five year old. and they might not remember which one was even you. Kate: [00:08:17] But when you get them on an email list. You give them more party advice and we'll talk more about what to send people later. Kate: [00:08:22] You're going to be able to stick in their minds so they remember who you are and they keep on coming back. That's why it's so important. Kate: [00:08:29] And this is why most bloggers end up struggling, because people will land on their site if they're lucky, maybe they'll read one other article. But there's no staying power. Kate: [00:08:38] There's no way to be remembered. Your email list helps you be remembered Jillian: [00:08:40] And one thing that has really changed back from when when I started, which is like 2009, I would go to blogs and I would read them. Jillian: [00:08:49] I'd read them every day or at least once a week and I'd leave comments on the blog. Jillian: [00:08:54] And then with social media and especially something like Pinterest, people are popping into your site and then popping out of your site. Jillian: [00:09:02] I'm looking for a recipe and I end up on a random blog and I like the recipe, but I don't have a relationship with that blogger and chances are I'm going to pop off and maybe pop on to somebody else's. Kate: [00:09:19] Exactly. And you might have really liked say her blueberry muffin recipe, but you might not be able to find that later even in your browser history to see what else she can offer you because you want her recipes so easy and delicious. From MiloTree you can collect email address and social media followers Jillian: [00:09:31] And one thing I just have to say about MiloTree, for example, is you can collect email addresses from it, but one thought is that giving up your email address today is a big ask, so you can start with MiloTree by connecting with people on say, Instagram. Jillian: [00:09:50] But then, if you can get them to follow you on Instagram, you know, that's like a small ask, then ultimately if they come back to your site chances are you can then ask for their email address, and you know build the relationship that way. Kate: [00:10:06] I completely agree. I think first of all, I love MiloTree. That's how we connected guys. I'm a fangirl of MiloTree. What it has done for my Pinterest account, that's primarily how I use it, has been just bonkers. Kate: [00:10:18] I'm sure we'll talk about later. I love MiloTree. Jillian: [00:10:24] But, do you agree that asking for an email address can be a big ask? Kate: [00:10:31] See part of me is torn. If you're just offering updates and a newsletter. Yeah that's a huge ask because nobody wants more I even call it junk mail now. People don't want that. Kate: [00:10:53] But, they might follow you on Instagram because they've got some scrolling to do. Kate: [00:10:48] However, if you are actually offering them a piece of valuable content, something that is a problem solver, we call those either an opt-in gift or lead magnet, that actually solves an immediate problem they have. Kate: [00:11:02] It's not a big ask at all, they are literally so excited to give you their email address because you're solving some type of pain that they have. Jillian: [00:11:09] I love that. Yep yep. So. Okay so I'm a blogger I'm collecting emails. What do I do? Jillian: [00:11:19] And I don't yet know what product I'm selling. But let's say I am let's pick a niche. I am a organizer. Organizing blog like your favorite right. I teach people how to organize. Kate: [00:11:41] Ok, so the very first thing that you would need to do, I think people get very almost obsessed with their list number, but what they don't realize is that just your email list is only one part of like a six part ecosystem that is email marketing. Kate: [00:11:57] And I think that's where a lot of disconnect tends to be. So I just want to make that clear. How to figure out your opt-in bribe or lead magnet Kate: [00:12:02] So once we have decided on a free gift, so say probably some type of printable, so maybe like organizational labels or even like a game plan for people to tackle clutter in their kitchen, like a nice checklist that would be really great. Kate: [00:12:17] So what you would want to do is of course, you can go and look on your blog and see where are people landing on there the most. So what types of post are really popular, that sort of the first set to go. Kate: [00:12:30] Then you'll sort of have an idea in the back of your head, like you know what I'd really like to create something actually around like conquering kids clutter. Kate: [00:12:37] Because all of the posts that are really popular, and where I'm getting all my sign ups tend to be on these posts. Kate: [00:12:44] So what you can do in your emails is just ask people like you know, "What rooms are you really struggling with?" Ask them questions to start feeling some answers. How to presell a product on your blog Kate: [00:12:53] So then, before you actually spend time and sometimes money to create your paid offer, you can do what I call pre-selling. Kate: [00:13:02] Now some people it gets them little nervous. If you're like me, where you're like queen of the procrastinators you kind of need to. Kate: [00:13:10] So what you do is you've been interacting with your email list, you've been checking your analytics. Then, send a message like, "Hey guys. So I'm thinking of creating this ultimate tool kit all about conquering kids clutter so that way we don't have to yell at them constantly picking up their toys and things are nice." Now as you noticed, right there. So we don't have to yell at them and things are nice. That's a benefit of having a clean room. Kate: [00:13:35] Why do people want a clean room? For me, as a mom so I don't have to tell my kids and work out a deal with the hassle. Kate: [00:13:41] You know, "Is that something that you guys would be interested in?" and then if you just g…

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#019: How to Get Started with Promoted Pins on Pinterest with Alisa Meredith May 30, 2018

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Today I'm talking with Alisa Meredith, Content Marketing Manager at Tailwind, and owner of Alisa Meredith Marketing. If you were wondering how to get started with Promoted Pins on Pinterest, this is the episode for you! We go deep and explain everything! You will learn exactly how to set up your first promoted pin campaign on Pinterest and why it's such a powerful platform to drive sales. Resources: Tailwind Alisa Meredith Marketing DevaCurl MiloTree Some links may be affiliate. Subscribe to The Blogger Genius Podcast: iTunes Google Play Stitcher Transcript – How to Get Started with Promoted Pins on Pinterest with Alisa Meredith Jillian: [00:00:03] Welcome to the Blogger Genius Podcast by Milo Tree. Here is your host, Jillian Leslie. Jillian: [00:00:10] Hey, Everyone. Welcome back to the show. Today, my guest is Alisa Meredith. Jillian: [00:00:16] Alisa is the content marketing manager at Tailwind, which is a company we've talked a lot about on the show. She also has her own marketing agency where she focuses on promoted pins that is called Alisa Meredith Marketing. So Alisa, welcome to the show. Alisa: [00:00:35] Hey, Jillian. Thank you so much. So happy to be here. It was so great to meet you in person finally. Jillian: [00:00:41] I know. We were friends online and then obviously, we meet people in real life. Jillian: [00:00:45] I Remember we talked about hair because your curly hair looks so good. You gave me all your tips, you showed me all your products and we bonded over that from the beginning. Alisa: [00:01:00] We did. But I have been neglectful in following up on this. Jillian: [00:01:03] In terms of how my hair is going? Alisa: [00:01:06] Yeah. Jillian: [00:01:07] Well, I'm getting my hair cut and then, I'm going to launch into the products. I'll send you a photo after. Alisa: [00:01:15] I thought your hair was fabulous anyway. I think that's how the whole conversation started, but I'm anxious to see what you think if you try this method. Jillian: [00:01:22] Yes. Yes. But if anybody wants to know the special curly hair method, just email me and I will share it. I'll share what Alisa shared with me and the special products. Alisa: [00:01:33] Now, what are we talking about again? Jillian: [00:01:35] I know. I know. So let's talk about Pinterest. Pinterest comes up a lot on this show, and you were saying that you discovered it back how long ago? Starting to use Pinterest in the early days Alisa: [00:01:48] It was 2012 or 2013. Jillian: [00:01:50] Okay, and you, like me, loved it from the beginning. Alisa: [00:01:53] Oh, my goodness. Yes. I used to be a terrible bookmark hoarder in my browser. I just found that I never knew where anything was and of course, you never name them properly. Alisa: [00:02:08] Having this visual system to keep all these articles I want them to refer back to or wanted to read when I had time later, I loved it from the second I found it. Jillian: [00:02:18] Totally, for us, my husband is my partner, he's a technologist, I kept saying to him for Catch My Party, please build me something where I can bookmark stuff because then, I would use the content from our own site and blog posts. Jillian: [00:02:32] I never had a place to save stuff. All of a sudden, Pinterest showed up, and I was able to bookmark all of our own content for myself. Jillian: [00:02:39] And then what I realized was it was driving us traffic and then we were like "Whoa, this is weird. This is awesome." Jillian: [00:02:48] That's also why we then built Milo tree because we need to double down on Pinterest. We need to grow our following. We need to grow this because this is a juggernaut for us. Alisa: [00:03:00] Yes, indeed. And you must be really excited by some of the new stuff that came out from Pinterest recently. Jillian: [00:03:06] Like? Alisa: [00:03:07] Like the following tab that's rolling out to everybody. Jillian: [00:03:10] Yes. Can you explain what that is? Alisa: [00:03:13] Yeah, sure. A couple of years ago, if you went to your Pinterest home feed, you would see the pins from just the people you follow in the order like in reverse chronological order so the newest stuff first. Alisa: [00:03:25] Then when smart feed came in, they added all these filters because there was just too much content coming out, and Pinterest wanted to make it a great user experience.They kind of tried to prioritize what they show, when and to whom so the feed changed up a lot. Alisa: [00:03:39] A lot of people love it because you can discover new stuff but on the other hand, some people really miss the option to have that curated follower feed where you could decide what people and which boards to follow so you could really choose for yourself what you want to see. And now, we can do both. Following tab on Pinterest Jillian: [00:03:58] Yes, yes and there's a little tab on mobile. I haven't explored it on desktop but there's a little tab on mobile that says "following," I think, and if you click it, you will see the pins from only the people you follow. Alisa: [00:04:12] Yeah, I don't even have it on mobile yet. I have it on desktop. Jillian: [00:04:15] Oh, interesting. So weird how they roll stuff out. Alisa: [00:04:19] Yeah. And then there's a page on the Pinterest site that I have bookmarked, and I check all the time because they're always changing it. Alisa: [00:04:26] It's Setting Yourself up for Success on Pinterest page, and they've just changed it to let us know that they are sending out our content to our followers first and then based on the reaction of our followers, that's how they decide what should be seen more. Jillian: [00:04:41] Yes. In fact, I was just at a conference and a woman from Pinterest was there, sharing best practices. She said this interesting piece which is Pinterest tests your content. Jillian: [00:04:51] What they do is they show it initially to your followers to see what kind of response it gets. And if it gets a good response, that's content then that they will show to other people. First five pins of the day on Pinterest get priority Jillian: [00:05:04] The other piece of information this community manager from Pinterest shared is your first five pins of the day are prioritized and show to more of your followers. So if you're going to be optimizing your pins, focus on those five pins of the day. I would recommend that that be all of your content rather than pins from other people. Alisa: [00:05:31] Yes, that's a great idea. There are a lot of questions that came up after that was shared. I love that they're sharing more of that kind of deep dive tactical information. Alisa: [00:05:40] But of course, everyone wanted to know what are the first five? What time zone? So I did contact them, and I got a message back from support that it is midnight UTC. Jillian: [00:05:51] And what is UTC? Alisa: [00:05:52] GMT. Jillian: [00:05:52] It's Greenwich Mean Time. Alisa: [00:05:58] Yeah. It's the same thing. Here on the East Coast, we're on Daylight Saving Time. So I think now, we're four hours behind that. So for me, my first pins of the day start at 8 p.m. Jillian: [00:06:11] Got it. OK. So here in California then, it would be 5:00 p.m. Look, I could do that math really quick. Alisa: [00:06:18] Yeah, I did. I'm impressed. Jillian: [00:06:18] So one thing that you focus on is promoted pins. I feel like promoted pins do not get the same kind of attention that ads on Facebook do, and that people don't quite know how to start with promoted pins or what promoted pins will get them. How to get started with Promoted Pins on Pinterest Jillian: [00:06:39] Can you, in a nutshell, explain what promoted pins are, and what the value is behind them? Alisa: [00:06:49] Sure. I think that there's a good reason for that. On Facebook, if you don't pay, you don't get reached. On Pinterest, that's not the case. Alisa: [00:06:55] Pinterest is very generous in giving us exposure for our content. So I think a lot of people can get really great results on Pinterest without promoting. Alisa: [00:07:04] But If you're on a time crunch or you just want more, promoted pins are the way to go because all it is is just an ad but it is a pin that you've already pinned. Jillian: [00:07:16] So it's taking your clientele and kind of accelerating it. Alisa: [00:07:21] Exactly. It has fewer options in Facebook which, to me, is a good thing because it's not so overwhelming. But it does have one really cool feature which we can talk about in a bit but I don't think any other ad platform has. Alisa: [00:07:38] It is absolutely worth a look especially as you know prices start to rise on other networks as it gets more crowded. Fewer people are using promoted pins so there is room to get started. Alisa: [00:07:49] It Is the way it converts too. We know that 97 percent of the searches on Pinterest are non branded which means that people don't come into Pinterest with a preconceived idea of exactly what they want to buy and from whom. Alisa: [00:08:03] You have the opportunity to get into their minds at a much earlier stage in their decision making process which does mean that you have to be a little bit more patient with your ads on Pinterest, but it also means that you have a better shot against the people with the big ad budgets on Pinterest than you may somewhere else. On Pinterest you can get into the mind of the shopper earlier Jillian: [00:08:21] And what do you mean by that, that you can get into their minds earlier? Alisa: [00:08:25] So, when you're on Google or Amazon, you pretty much know exactly what you want. If you're on Pinterest, you're probably a lot of times in the beginning stages of planning for something. You may be planning a house remodel, and you might be looking for ideas on refreshing mid-century modern bathroom. Alisa: [00:08:46] You're not necessarily searching for a Moen faucet. You are searching for those bigger ideas. You can start to get people into your site, learning about your content, get them on your email list long before they're ready to pull the trigger. Alisa: [00:09:01] I mean people do buy from Pinterest promoted pins quite a bit. 1 in 2 have said they've purchased from a promoted pin but you can get in much earlier which is a huge benefit for smaller business. Jillian: [00:09:14] Got it. Let's walk through. Let's say I have an Etsy shop and I sell jewelry. Talk to me about how you would recommend, I used promoted pins. Jillian: [00:09:24] Let's say I'd take a bunch of photos of my bracelets and rings, and I'm pinning them to Pinterest. What would you say to me? How can I increase sales using Pinterest? Alisa: [00:09:40] The first thing to know is that lifestyle images convert at a much higher rate than do straight product shots. Jillian: [00:09:46] Right, so you don't want just that white background. Alisa: [00:09:48] If you look at the fashion pins on Pinterest and especially take note of the ones that are promoted because people are probably spending more time on those, you'll see very few faces. Alisa: [00:09:57] If it is a product like that, you do want to zoom in on it so people can see exactly what it is. You don't have to put the text on the image. Should you add text on your Promoted Pins on Pinterest? Jillian: [00:10:06] Got it. Would you recommend text on the image? Alisa: [00:10:09] It depends on what it is. In this example, we're talking about a piece of jewelry. If it's obvious what it is, no, you don't need that. I think it could be distracting and take away from it. Alisa: [00:10:19] If it's a service offering or something, absolutely, texts on images are really important. For products, not necessarily. Jillian: [00:10:27] Okay, so I've got this photo or this pin of a bracelet that I made, and it's doing well. It's got a bunch of free pins. And people seem to like it so I'm going to say, "That would be probably a good pin to promote." Jillian: [00:10:44] Would you agree with that as a strategy like put it out there first, see if it gets any kind of organic traction and then, choose that as a pin to promote or do you recommend "I'm going to start fresh, new pin and promote it then"? Alisa: [00:11:00] You can do either but I would say that we're probably not looking at the right thing. I would back up a little bit and see which products are converting from Pinterest. Alisa: [00:11:10] I'm not really familiar with the backend of Etsy. I've done quite a bit in Teachers Pay Teachers so I would want to know which products convert well when people come from Pinterest. Jillian: [00:11:21] Like let's say your Teachers Pay Teachers Page. Alisa: [00:11:25] Yeah. And that you can tell pretty well. But if we're talking about Etsy, hopefully, there's a way to do that. Is there? Jillian [00:11:35] I think there is, that you can see which products of yours are selling. Alisa: [00:11:38] Yeah. Okay. And hopefully, you can tell what source they come in from. If not, you kind of probably have to give your best guess. Alisa: [00:11:47] Generally speaking, I think the lower priced items do better on Pinterest promoted pins if you're looking to get sales immediately. Of course, little impulse buy. Alisa: [00:11:58] But instead of starting from the pin, I will start with the product. Think about what's going to convert. If you then can look at your pins, you have one that leads to that, it gets great engagement, it gets a lot of re-pins, then that's the one I would do. The real value of Promoted Pins on Pinterest Alisa: [00:12:13] The great thing about promoted pins of course is that it's already an existing pin. You promote it. You show it to tons of people. It gets a ton of re-pins. Anyone who clicks on any of those re-pins, you don't pay for the traffic to your site. Jillian: [00:12:27] Wait. Say that again. So explain that. This is where I think the value of promoted pins is really obvious. So explain. Alisa: [00:12:38] If you like a bargain, you want to hear this. When you promote a pin, you are paying to have it shown to many, many, more people. As many, many, more people see it and those many people re-pin your pin, if others then see those repackaged versions of your promoted pin and they click on it, you don't pay for those clicks. Jillian: [00:12:59] Great. So I've got this pin of my bracelet. You like it. You pin it. So it shows to you. I pay for it to show to you. Then you re-pin it. Jillian: [00:13:12] It's now in your Fabulous Jewelry board. And then somebody, your friend or whomever is following you, sees it there and they click on it. And they even end up on my shop. I'm not paying for that. Best bargain on Pinterest is Traffic Campaigns Alisa: [00:13:26] If you're using a traffic campaign, though that's where you get your best bargain that way, yeah. Jillian: [00:13:35] Okay, so versus what is it like, conversion, like where there's actually a purchase. Alisa: [00:13:40] No. The other options are you can pay for awareness. That one, it can generate re-pins but I find the best bargain overall is with traffic campaigns. Jillian: [00:13:52] Got it. Alisa: [00:13:53] Yes. Awareness really is just to get it in front of people. You're not paying for any action on it. You're just paying per impression. Alisa: [00:13:59] You c an pay for an engagement ad which I thought this will be good because I thought maybe I can increase the number re-pins for very little money and then, get clicks from that. . Alisa: [00:14:11] In My experience, and please try everything because it might be different for you, but in my experience, what I en…

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#018: How To Be Successful On Social Media With Maggy Woodley May 23, 2018

Show notes

Today I'm talking with Maggy Woodley, founder of the blog, Red Ted Art.This is a fascinating conversation where Maggy shares how to be successful on social media. Maggy has built an enormous presence with over over 2.2 million Facebook followers, 406k YouTube subscribers, and 376k Pinterest followers. She also shares the pros and cons of each platform, and why even with such large followings she still cares a lot about (search engine optimization) for traffic. Resources: Red Ted Art AdThrive Kid Blogger Network Group Bloggy Buddies MiloTree Subscribe to The Blogger Genius Podcast: iTunes Google Play Stitcher Transcript – How To Be Successful On Social Media With Maggy Woodley Intro: [00:00:03] Welcome to the Blogger Genius podcast brought to you by Milo Tree. Here's your host, Jillian Leslie. Jillian: [00:00:10] Hey guys. Welcome back to the show. Today, I'm excited. My guest is Maggy Woodley from the blog Red Ted Art. Now, she's been blogging since 2010. She is also an arts educator. Welcome to the show, Maggy. Maggy: [00:00:28] Thank you so much for having me. I love your podcast. I've been listening to it recently. It's really, really informative. Thank you. Jillian: [00:00:35] Oh, thank you. So we've met about a month ago. We've known each other online. I was just looking through one of my Pinterest boards, my group boards and we're on group boards together. Jillian: [00:00:50] We just met in person at the AdThrive conference. I got to sit next to you. You were so lovely. Maggy: [00:00:57] Thank you. It's so nice to have a long chat to you. I love the conference. It was great, and it was so lovely to meet people in person and connect. That's brilliant. Jillian: [00:01:07] Yes. You flew all the way out from the UK to Austin, Texas. Maggy: [00:01:13] Yes. It was so worth it. Nothing beats face to face contact and kind of, like you say, we've known each other for a while online and then suddenly, the penny drops like "Oh, yes. Of course.". Jillian: [00:01:24] Right. Maggy: [00:01:24] Yeah. That's brilliant. Jillian: [00:01:25] Thank you for being on the show. And I want to hear about your story because I'm going to say it, you are a big blogger. You have a big successful blog. Jillian: [00:01:38] To start off, I want to hear your story. How did you get into this? How to accidentally fall into blogging Maggy: [00:01:43] I guess like many bloggers, eight years ago, I was home with a toddler and a baby. I kind of knew that I didn't want to go back to my day job but I knew that I needed to do something to keep myself busy and keep my mind stimulated. Maggy: [00:02:07] I needed something that belonged to me and also something that brought in a little bit of money, not lots of it, so I could contribute to the household and feel like I didn't have to go back to work. Maggy: [00:02:16] I would not have that pressure to go back to work. I actually started off with selling kids' pop art. That's actually where the name Red Ted Art comes from. The blog actually came second. Maggy: [00:02:27] It was this pop art I was selling first. One of these pop art pictures is actually a red teddy . That's where the Red Ted Art comes from. The art was tacked on because redted.com was already taken. That's how the name came about. Jillian: [00:02:48] And were you selling these things on Etsy? What were you doing? Maggy: [00:02:53] It was mainly through word of mouth or going to local craft fairs, that kind of thing. To be honest, I was competing with things like Ikea. It's wonderful, but there's something handmade vs Ikea selling it for five pounds, $10 or whatever it is. Maggy: [00:03:11] It's quite a lot of pressure if you're kind of trying to sell something handmade because you wanted to be really good but by definition, handmade is never going to be what you think is perfect. For other people, it might be. Maggy: [00:03:24] I set up the blog because I was told at the time that if you wanted to sell anything, you needed an online presence. I was building a website. That actually never went live but I was putting a website. Maggy: [00:03:37] Whilst I was building the website, I decided to do the blog. It was quick and easy. It was a really quick way to go online. I thought "Wow. I can't just talk about here's another painting, here's another picture, here's another drawing." It's really boring. Maggy: [00:03:51] There's a sales mantra that I'm sure everyone's familiar with which is in order to sell something, you have to give something away for free. Give them something for free and then, in return, try and sell to them. Maggy: [00:04:02] I was just doing little craft posts because that's fun, it gives me something to do with the children, it's easy, I enjoy it and I've always love crafts. I kind of created my first two, three craft posts. Maggy: [00:04:18] This is much more fun than doing pop art paintings where it's stressful, and you're trying to sell, I need to get it perfect, that kind of thing. I kind of quite quickly saw that actually, the blog was more fun and less pressure. Maggy: [00:04:33] It involved my children because I was working with them at the time. When I was a child, I used to love crafting. As a young person, I was a crafter and as a young adult, I crafted as well. Maggy: [00:04:47] I kind of found my way back to a passion of mine without even realizing that that's where I was going to go with it. Also, very quickly, my hits are slowly going up. This could be something. Maggy: [00:05:02] That's basically how the concept of the blog was born. It was probably a good six months or maybe three months into blogging that I realized I like blogging. I didn't go into blogging thinking I want to blog to make money. Maggy: [00:05:17] I kind of went into blogging as a sort of a bridge to a website. I never launched the website because it is rubbish, and I didn't want to sell the pop art anymore. I just stuck with the blog and haven't looked back since. Jillian: [00:05:30] Wow, I love how, again, you went in one direction and discovered a whole passion that was kind of sleeping. Blogging advice: Just start! Maggy: [00:05:40] Yes, for me, I mean it was just amazing and perfect. Whenever people ask me now, "How do I start off? How to do this? How to do that?" I always say "You know what? Just start. Just go to where life's going to take you." Maggy: [00:05:52] And in the early days of blogging, I did do like a lot of other parenting bloggers, I did have some book reviews and some days out. It was always many crafts. Maggy: [00:06:00] I've kind of experimented with other things but I always came back to crafts. That was very clearly my strength and my passion. Maggy: [00:06:09] I think those people who are trying to start out, just start because you'll quickly find what you like and you'll quickly enjoy that you do this. Does that make sense? Without trying, you're not going to find that part. Jillian: [00:06:23] Absolutely. Maggy: [00:06:23] And I'm so grateful that I tried, and I found this. Jillian: [00:06:27] Yeah. I mean I think it is all about discovery. It is all about putting it out there and then seeing how you respond to it and how other people respond to it. Maggy: [00:06:40] Exactly. There's no shame in starting something and changing direction. It's just I think especially in the early days, you have to give yourself some time to experiment, maybe for six months to experiment. Maggy: [00:06:50] After that, I do think you have to start knocking down though, and going for it because I've seen some very talented people over the years, starting blogs and then rebranding two years later, rebranding two years later. Maggy: [00:07:02] That's quite difficult because you're always starting afresh. I do think once you get going, it's good to stick with it. Jillian: [00:07:09] Okay, so now that you have been at it and you've grown this big business, how similar is it today? How often are you creating crafts, and how do you stay motivated? Maggy: [00:07:21] Yeah, it has changed significantly. In the early days, it was about my children and it was about me and obviously my children featured it in a lot. Maggy: [00:07:33] Then they started school. They came home from school, they were tired , they didn't want to craft and I didn't want to make them. Maggy: [00:07:40] So I'd wait for them and then, I'd wait for the weekend. They still didn't feel like it and then something like, "Oh no. I need that next blog post. What's going on?" Maggy: [00:07:49] For me, it was a transition period from having always had my kids in it and it being about us. And in that sense, being a personal blog about crafts. Transitioning into a craft blog Maggy: [00:07:56] I did make that transition into being a blog about crafts but not always child-made. That was difficult because up until then, I always felt that children should be driving it and then suddenly, it became this whole adult-made versus child-made. Maggy: [00:08:16] I don't know if you're aware of the debate but people often debate "is it alright for an adult to share a child's craft that no child has ever made before?" Once you kind of rap your head around that, then it just kind of took off from there if that makes sense. Maggy: [00:08:30] So it has changed but just because my family life has changed. I think this is what a lot of blogs do because we changed and our children change. Maggy: [00:08:38] Our home changes and in some ways, our story is still wrapped up in that even though it's much more about me now than it is about the kids. I don't think that's a bad thing. I just think it's different. Jillian: [00:08:51] Right. Again, I think that when you are a blogger, your blog is part of your life. I always say, "I'm so curious. In five years, what our businesses will look like?" Maggy: [00:09:05] I have no idea. No idea. Things changed so quickly on the Internet as well, don't they? Jillian: [00:09:13] You discovered social media pretty early so you are very big, for example, on Facebook, YouTube and Pinterest, I'm assuming. So how did you then get onto social media early? Maggy: [00:09:30] Okay, I'm glad you think I got on early because I remember when Facebook first came about, I was a bit baffled by it. I confess. I didn't understand why you would have a page on Facebook. In some ways, I was slow to make that switch. Maggy: [00:09:47] And then when suddenly, again, the penny dropped about how you use social media, then when other things come along like Pinterest and Instagram, I was like, "Oh, actually, you just need to go and run with it." Maggy: [00:09:59] And then also when you then start seeing the traffic coming from the social media platforms, you suddenly saw why somebody saw the value of social media. Maggy: [00:10:08] Now, mostly, I am a massive social media convert. I totally get it. I totally get that you need to do it. That's such a huge traffic driver. But if I'm being really honest, in the very, very early days, it took me a little while to kind of get it. Maggy: [00:10:24] I was lucky enough that that was a long time ago. I mean, it was 8 years ago. How to grow a followings on social media as a blogger Maggy: [00:10:29] I do agree that in some ways, it's much harder now to grow your presence on, say, Facebook but otherwise, it's easier because there's more information out there, and people understand sort of the tricks of the trade a bit better. So I guess, again, it's just different. Maggy: [00:10:45] But to anyone starting out, my tip would be to focus on one platform and really work that platform and not neglect the others completely. I think you need to kind of dabble in all of them but you can transfer a lot of it. Maggy: [00:11:00] So let's say, Facebook's the main one. Do all your work for Facebook whether its video or crafts. And then you just quickly edit it for Instagram or Pinterest. Maggy: [00:11:11] I do think it's important not to neglect any platform completely. You want your eggs in more than one basket. Maggy: [00:11:19] For example, I've had a problem with my Facebook page this week. People might be aware of Facebook just randomly kind of dinging pages and there's no reach. Maggy: [00:11:27] For a week, I couldn't basically use it and then luckily, because my Pinterest is in place, my SEO's in place and YouTube is in place, it was annoying but it wasn't a disaster. Maggy: [00:11:39] Social media is so powerful, it is amazing and I love it but at the same time, we don't own it. We have no control over it. You have to have not all the eggs in one basket. I think this is the sort of the bottom line. Jillian: [00:11:58] What is your biggest traffic driver right now? Maggy: [00:12:02] Right now, it's Google and SEO. That's because I put in a lot of effort in the last year to tidy up my SEO strategy, so to speak. Maggy: [00:12:16] I think it's really important to never forget Google because again, this thing about using Facebook as an example, I had a week where I can't use it, and that's my traffic down. At least I had Google taking over and Pinterest. Jillian: [00:12:30] Could you just say how many followers do you have on Facebook? Maggy: [00:12:34] Just short of 2.4 million. Jillian: [00:12:37] Wow. Wow. Maggy: [00:12:39] And yeah it's crazy now because two years ago, when I had 400,000, you'd get the same sort of traffic. It's a great number but you have to take with a pinch of salt and kind of remember how Facebook behaves unfortunately. Why Facebook is like a bad boyfriend Jillian: [00:12:54] Right. Facebook is like a fickle boyfriend but I feel like Facebook is becoming a worse and worse boyfriend. Maggy: [00:13:03] And unfortunately, we can't get rid of that boyfriend just yet. Jillian: [00:13:08] We're in bad relationships. Facebook never, and I have said this on my podcast, Facebook isn't our sweet spot for Catch My Party. Pinterest is. Jillian: [00:13:20] And so I would meet bloggers like you who are getting enormous amounts of traffic from Facebook. We tried everything and yet, it's just there are certain blogs where it just is a perfect fit. Maggy: [00:13:36] Yeah, I agree. I definitely can't knock anything else. I agree with you. Pinterest is so important, is such a valuable platform and put it into context. Maggy: [00:13:47] I mean my Pinterest following is much smaller. I think it's about 360,000 . I spend a lot less time on Pinterest, and it's driving the same amount of traffic. If not, even a little bit more. Maggy: [00:13:58] But I find Facebook quite useful that I can get something going on Facebook and then, it gets pinned a lot and then, it just becomes stronger. So Pinterest has got that long midterm game, isn't it? Maggy: [00:14:12] If you got a new blog post out, Pinterest won't really pick it up for about three or four weeks. I mean it will but you won't necessarily see a huge difference in that particular blog post whilst Facebook is kind of now. Maggy: [00:14:24] I think that's sort of quite the difference between the two for me. Maggy: [00:14:26] You kind of start off with Facebook now, it kind of gets things going, it goes on to Pinterest, it slowly kind of dispersed amongst Pinterest and then further down the line, it's Pinterest that's giving you the traffic and not Facebook. Maggy: [00:14:39] It's kind of like a little lifecycle of your blog post. I think Pinterest is a really importan…

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#017: How To Use Facebook to Really Grow Your Business with Rachel Miller May 17, 2018

Show notes

Today I'm talking with Rachel Miller, viral marketer and founder of Moolah Marketing. She teaches people how to use Facebook to really grow your business, because if there is anyone who has cracked the Facebook code, it's Rachel! You definitely want to hear her genius advice on how to get Facebook to work for you, instead of you working for it! Resources: Moolah Marketing QuirkyMomma One Crazy House Crazy Cat Lady MiloTree Some of these links may be affiliate. Subscribe to The Blogger Genius Podcast: iTunes Google Play Stitcher Transcript – How To Use Facebook to Really Grow Your Business Intro: [00:00:03] Welcome to the Blogger Genius Podcast brought to you by MiloTree. Here's your host, Jillian Leslie. Jillian: [00:00:11] Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the show. Today, I'm excited to introduce my guest who is Rachel Miller. Now, Rachel started as a blogger and has turned into, check this out, she is an organic traffic specialist or as she calls herself a "viral marketer." Jillian: [00:00:30] So really, in truth, she helps you understand social media, especially Facebook. So welcome to the show, Rachel. Rachel: [00:00:39] Thank you so much for having me, Jillian. I really appreciate it. Jillian: [00:00:42] We have to just say that we met randomly about a month ago at a conference but really, at a restaurant where I walked up to you and I said, "I know you." Rachel: [00:00:52] You recognized me. It was awesome. Jillian: [00:00:55] I know and then, we ended up having lunch together which was so nice. Rachel: [00:00:59] It was fun. Jillian: [00:01:00] Talk about how you started because I knew you back in the day as a blogger. How to make a post go viral on Facebook Rachel: [00:01:06] Oh, yeah. It's so funny because I feel like it was a lifetime ago. But it's only been like a year and a half, a year since I've started my second business. Rachel: [00:01:18] Probably 10 or 11, 10 years ago, I guess, I started QuirkyMomma. I started that because I quit my teaching job. I had two babies at that time. I couldn't go back to maternity leave with two babies with Texas teacher pay. It didn't make sense with childcare and everything. Rachel: [00:01:38] I was home with my kiddos, and I was going bored, crazy, out of my mind. I started QuirkyMomma. That was my first website. I wrote over 30 posts that went to over a million. I can't remember the exact number between each site but in total, 29 posts that got to over a million page views each. Rachel: [00:02:00] I had tons of posts that went to millions and millions on Facebook. We wrote a book and it went on to a best seller, sold over 100,000 copies. I was just like having the time of my life, making content, seeing how many people I could get on it and be really excited at drawing eyeballs to an action. Jillian: [00:02:22] And the action was come to my site. How to sell products through viral Facebook posts Rachel: [00:02:25] Well, that would be come to my site. Some of it was purchase something. I made rainbow loom bands go viral on my website and then, we sold a lot of rainbow loom kits so kids could make their own rainbow loom bracelets, or selling pins or whatever it is that I'm selling at the time. Jillian: [00:02:44] And you're selling them. If you're affiliate, you're doing an affiliate link. Rachel: [00:02:48] Originally, I started as affiliate links, but as I grew in my venture, I began creating my own products and filling my own products. You make a lot more money selling your own product than you do as an affiliate. Jillian: [00:02:59] So with these online products, are these physical products? Rachel: [00:03:02] Both. I have seven private label products at one point, and then also where you white label or where you have. Let's say, you go to your Walmart and you find that they have Star Wars. This literally happened. Rachel: [00:03:16] They had Star Wars toothbrushes for like a dollar each. Light sabers, they light up and they make a funny noise. I'm like, "These are worth a lot more than a dollar." So I bought all those toothbrushes that Walmart had at the time which was like 250 of the toothbrushes and sold them for seven dollars and 85 cents on Amazon like two weeks later. Jillian: [00:03:40] Wow. I love that. Rachel: [00:03:43] That almost immediately. Jillian: [00:03:46] Did people pay shipping on top of that? Rachel: [00:03:49] No, I just sent them in Amazon and they send them out, however they send them out. Jillian: [00:03:55] Wow. And how did you get the idea to do that? Rachel: [00:04:02] I had heard about people selling on Amazon and so I got an amazon account but I didn't know what I was going to do with it. Rachel: [00:04:08] And then I saw my son playing in a grocery store with this toothbrush and I was like "Star Wars is coming out in three weeks. These are really cheap. This is the time. Let's make a video of him playing with a toothbrush. Make it go viral on Facebook and sell off toothbrushes. Let's see if we could do it." Rachel: [00:04:25] So $250 dollars later, I bought all the toothbrushes. That was my one of my first venture into selling physical products on my own. Jillian: [00:04:33] Wow. By the way, QuirkyMomma was kids activities or it is kids activities, is that right? Rachel: [00:04:42] Kids activities but yes, I sold it. Jillian: [00:04:43] Okay, so then, you just started working on Facebook for kids activities or for QuirkyMomma. Rachel: [00:04:52] Yeah, I helped QuirkyMomma grow from 13,000 into multiple millions. So I left the site when it was at 2.2 million. Jillian: [00:05:01] And then, I guess, you fell in love with Facebook. Rachel: [00:05:05] Yeah, I fell in love with attracting an audience. It could be anywhere. I actually also grew my Pinterest account by over 100,000 in one year. I grew up it to 80,000 over the course of like two or three or four years and then, in one year, I put a lot of effort into it and bumped it up to almost 190,000. Jillian: [00:05:23] That's terrific. Rachel: [00:05:25] The same love of people is in every social media platform. Jillian: [00:05:29] Unpack that a little bit. Tell me what you mean by that. Rachel: [00:05:33] If you love people, you're going to serve them with specific content that's going to help feed their bucket, like everyone has the desire to feel affirmation, to feel successful or to feel smart and fun. How to create social media content that makes people feel good Rachel: [00:05:49] We create content that makes them feel those ways, fill those needs in your audience, your audience will grow and as your audience grow, you ask them what they want and need and then, you deliver it to them and then your revenue in your pocketbook grows as well. Jillian: [00:06:06] I love that because it's all about serving others. It's not about, "I think this is cool." I mean it's a little bit about that, but it's really about, "I know my audience will think this is cool." Rachel: [00:06:21] Exactly. I don't care so much about what I think is going to be cool. People have asked me do you think you're a trendsetter, where you can see if something's going viral, and sometimes I can, I can tell this is good content or this is not good content. Rachel: [00:06:34] But at the same time, it really depends on the people that you're serving as to whether some of the content is going to do well. It's not about us. Jillian: [00:06:42] I totally agree. In fact, for Catch my Party, people will say, "You say what the trends are going to be in the world of parties, kids parties and stuff" and I go, "No. I just see what people are responding to and then, I create more content like that." Rachel: [00:07:00] Exactly. That's it in a nutshell. Jillian: [00:07:04] Like I can't tell you what the new trends will be. I can amplify a trend or I can identify it. Rachel: [00:07:12] But all you do is serve our audience. Jillian: [00:07:15] Yes. We're not soothsayers. Rachel: [00:07:21] So essentially, I left Quirky Momma and then I created One Crazy House. And that's my second blog to a Facebook page of over 500,000 in 18 months. We had our third year anniversary, and we have 51 million page views on it. That's so cool. Jillian: [00:07:37] Oh my God. Rachel: [00:07:38] And we have two more websites. I've got Crazy Cat Lady, and I've got the One Pot Crock-Pot. Jillian: [00:07:44] Okay. Explain the idea of why you create different websites. Rachel: [00:07:54] Well, it was kind of a joke actually, a little bit. I started when Quirky Momma and then One Crazy House, and I was at a conference. I was speaking at the conference about how you can go viral and everything. Rachel: [00:08:08] I was in the bathroom afterwards, and I was hearing two people talking and the one girl was saying, "These big bloggers, I can never be like Rachel. She just said she did this and this and this. Like how is that even possible?" Rachel: [00:08:22] And the other girl goes, "Don't worry about it. They're doing that because they're so big so they had a big budget when they started, and they had these big pages that they all share from. So we can never become big because it's all the big pages are a cliche. Rachel: [00:08:34] And I was like, "Oh my word." And I left. And it was like almost like I failed the entire conference because of that like one little conversation they didn't know I was listening to. They weren't trying to be rude. To them, they were just simply having a conversation. Jillian: [00:08:44] It's like a scene out of a sitcom. Rachel: [00:08:50] I know. I went home and I'm like bawling because I take things way too personally. I'm like, "They're right. They're right because I did grow with budget. Nobody else has that kind of budget. I had these big friends, when I was growing One Crazy House, I could contact and say 'Hey, can you share for me?' They're right. I couldn't do it the right way. Building organic Facebook pages from nothing Rachel: [00:09:13] So my husband's like, "Do it the right way. What's your problem, Rach? Just go do it." It's like "Well, I can't," and he's like, "Okay, whatever." You could do it with cats. Come on, everybody can do it with cats. So like literally at the kitchen table, we made a cat page and we put up viral cat content. And then, it went viral. Jillian: [00:09:30] So you made a Facebook cat page. Rachel: [00:09:33] Yeah, I made a cat page because my husband said, "Well, hello. You could definitely do with cat. Come on." So yes, I made a viral cat page and it was like, "Well, everybody can do it with cats. What's something that's really boring? I got to deal with that too." Rachel: [00:09:49] And so then, I did crock pots because I thought crock pots were boring. I don't ever cook really. And so I thought crock pots were these boring things. But no, there were a very passionate group of people that love, a set or group of people that love their crock pots. And so yeah, I got to love and serve crock pot people next. Jillian: [00:10:11] I love that. So you were able to grow these pages organically. Rachel: [00:10:18] It was more just to prove to myself like I did it with Quirky Momma, I did it with One Crazy House but I also did it with two other pages without a lot of money, under five dollars a day and without tons of friends sharing. I didn't have any friends sharing. Nobody knew I was doing it. I was able to replicate my success again. Jillian: [00:10:39] Great. Can you break down just the elements of what that success means? Rachel: [00:10:46] Well, most importantly, it means I get to help people. When a lady's cat dies, I'm an audience where she can share her cat, a video of her cat, photos of her cat and the people there will rally around her and support her when she comes home in those dark, dark moments. Rachel: [00:11:06] We get to help rescue cats in different areas which is important to those people. I'm like giggling about it a little bit, but at the same time, this is a huge community of women who are loving and supporting each other that I am honored to get to be a part of that. It's most important. That's bigger than the dollar amount, but the dollar amount of my other audiences, it's a hefty income each year. Facebook data collection, targeting, and privacy Jillian: [00:11:35] Great. Facebook is in the news. Facebook is everywhere, and it's kind of negative. Rachel: [00:11:43] It is. It is so funny because like they're talking about this whole tracking thing, and I'm sitting there like you guys had robo vacuums, and you connected them to Alexa and you could tell Alexa that "can you vacuum my floor please?" Rachel: [00:11:58] The vacuum walks around your house and it picks up data like there's a chair here, it sends that information back to Amazon, and Amazon's targeting you with new products when you move a chair. That same data is being shared everywhere. All the data places share their information with each other because they're all data hungry. We have privacy. This is not new to us. This is like normal. Rachel: [00:12:23] I've been using Facebook targeting for ages to find my die hard fans and then to love on them more. It could give them more information. But yes, it has changed. Yes. Is it going to continue to change? Definitely. I do think having more transparency is a good thing. Rachel: [00:12:38] So when you have your Robocop robo-vacuum, if I'm going to vacuum my floor, it now has a layout of my home. It's sending that information back to Amazon. Am I cool with that? We aren't cool with that but we all want Alexa to have access to your vacuum cleaner. So you've got to understand that when you're giving Alexa access to your vacuum cleaner, what that means for you. Rachel: [00:13:02] I know what that means for you because I'm a marketer who target people to buy their furniture. People are a little bit like, "Wait a second. You've been stalking in my house. You know what my layout of my home is. For real? Isn't that intrusion?" Rachel: [00:13:16] They're like, "Well, no because now, we know if you're looking for new furniture because you're rearranging the room multiple times. We know what that means. It means you're hunting for furniture so we keep sending more furniture ads." Jillian: [00:13:28] Right. Now, do you think that Facebook will ultimately change and that you won't be able to grow these audiences so they won't be as valuable? Rachel: [00:13:39] Well, in some ways, it has changed a little bit. You're not going to be able to make as much money off of affiliates right now because you have to create your affiliate content. Rachel: [00:13:48] So my son, with the toothbrush, I had him brushing his teeth and playing with the toothbrush. I didn't just use somebody else's picture of that toothbrush to sell it, to create the content. Rachel: [00:14:00] We have to be more active as content creators. So does that mean it's harder for people to join in if they're not going to put in the time to be a good content creator? It will probably then thin out the number of people that are in the market. Why you want to be a content creator Jillian: [00:14:18] Right, but if you're one of those people who will make content, you can have a leg up because you're not competing with stock photos from Amazon. Rachel: [00:14:30] Exactly. As long as you are the content creator, there is a need in the world for content creat…

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#016: How to Start a Successful Online Business with Leslie Samuel May 09, 2018

Show notes

Today I'm talking with Leslie Samuel from the blog, Become a Blogger. Leslie and I break it down step-by-step how to start a successful online business. If you follow the advice Leslie shares, you'll be able to cultivate an audience, understand their needs, create trust, and sell products to them that make their lives easier. It's not rocket science, but it is about authenticity! Resources: Become a Blogger Social Media Marketing World Learning with Leslie Pat Flynn MiloTree Some of these links may be affiliate. Subscribe to The Blogger Genius Podcast: iTunes Google Play Stitcher Transcript – How to Start a Successful Online Business Intro: [00:00:03] Welcome to The Blogger Genius Podcast brought to you by MiloTree. Here's your host, Jillian Leslie. Jillian: [00:00:11] Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the show. Today, my guest is my friend, Leslie Samuel. Leslie is a blogger, a podcaster, a business coach, and he is the creator of Become a Blogger, which is a blog focused on how to start and grow a profitable blogging business. Welcome to the show, Leslie. Leslie: [00:00:34] Well, thank you so much for having me, Jillian. I appreciate it. Jillian: [00:00:38] So a couple of things. One, I met you in real life at Social Media Marketing World. I went to your session, and I came up to you afterwards and sai,d "I wish you had been my science professor." Leslie: [00:00:54] Yes, we did meet there in real life for the first time. I was very flattered by your comments. Jillian: [00:01:02] Because you were a professor. Leslie: [00:01:05] Yes, I used to be a professor. Jillian: [00:01:07] You just have this lovely way that you teach, that I was so happy you were teaching me at Social Media Marketing World. Leslie: [00:01:16] I'm glad to hear that. Jillian: [00:01:17] And also I was a guest on your podcast. Leslie: [00:01:20] Yes, you were. Jillian: [00:01:21] Which was called Learning with Leslie. Leslie: [00:01:22] Yeah, your audience should go on and listen to that episode because you killed it. Jillian: [00:01:26] Oh, thank you. I'll put it in the show notes so you can hear that conversation. Leslie: [00:01:31] Awesome. Jillian: [00:01:31] And the other thing that you taught me, which I've taken to heart, is I was so impressed with your setup. We just recorded the episode, and it was over. I had just started recording episodes for my podcast. I was spending so much time editing each episode. And you said, "I just record it, and I post it." Jillian: [00:01:54] And I said, "What if a dog barks?" You're like, "Well, so? It's just part of life." Leslie: [00:02:01] Yeah, dogs bark in real life so that's all good. I've had episodes where someone's child would come in and they were like, "Oh, I'm so sorry." I'm like "No. Don't be sorry. That's what we do. This is a part of our lives." I just leave that all in. Jillian: [00:02:15] I love that, so I've started to do that. And I have to say, i t's helped me embrace imperfection. It's made my process that much easier and faster. Leslie: [00:02:28] And what you'll find is that you get better because now, there's no editing. If you mess up, you mess up, and that's OK. But I find that by pushing myself, I actually become better at what I do. I think it's good overall. Jillian: [00:02:44] I think you're right. I absolutely think you're right. So anyway, I have to thank you for that because you've saved me so much time, and you've helped me, I don't know, embrace the fact that this is live and that mistakes are going to happen, and that's okay. Leslie: [00:03:00] Part of that, when I started my podcast, I was a high school science and math teacher at a boarding academy, doing that full time. At a boarding academy, full time is no 40 hours. Perfection is the enemy of a blogger Leslie: [00:03:12] I mean, you work whenever you work. I knew that if I didn't do it this way, I would never get my podcast going. And I figured that done is better than perfect. Jillian: [00:03:23] I love that. Leslie: [00:03:24] It's going to be imperfect but people are going to find value in it. So yeah, that's the way I started and then, I just kept with it. Jillian: [00:03:31] I love it because you've inspired me. Hopefully then, we can inspire our audience that if there's something you're scared about or something you're thinking isn't perfect, just put it out there. Leslie: [00:03:42] Exactly. Jillian: [00:03:43] Okay, so you are a blogging expert. We talked right before this, and I thought that it might be interesting to discuss the idea of why start a blog. How to monetize your blog Jillian: [00:03:56] Back in the day, we used to start blogs, and we think we would somehow make money off of them but we weren't exactly sure how, and it was a way to get our voice out there. Jillian: [00:04:06] But if my goal were eventually to quit my day job and create something online and somebody will say, "We'll definitely start a blog," what would you say to that? Leslie: [00:04:20] Yes, that's a great question. When I look at a blog, a lot of people say start a blog so that you can have a business, and I tell people that a blog really isn't a business. Leslie: [00:04:33] What a blog is, it's a way for you to build a platform. Your blog is a platform where you can grow an audience of people that are interested in a specific topic. Leslie: [00:04:44] Now, if someone wants to make money online, they want to build a business, quite frankly, they're going to need people to sell to. They're going to need an audience and a lot of people, they create these awesome products and they want to sell it and then after they have gone through all this effort of creating the product, it's like, "Okay, so now, who do I sell this thing to?" That's where blogging comes in. Jillian: [00:05:11] People kind of have this idea like, "I know. I'm going to just run Facebook ads." Leslie: [00:05:18] Yep. Jillian: [00:05:18] "And that's how I'm going to do it." Leslie: [00:05:20] And while Facebook ads can be effective, if you want this ongoing audience of people to sell to, you need to actually build an audience. That's why blogging is so important. Leslie: [00:05:38] That's what it allows you to do. It's not a business but it can be built into a business because you have an audience of people that are interested in a specific topic. They have specific pin points that they need solutions for. If you can provide them with a solution, they are willing to part with their hard earned cash in order to get that solution. Jillian: [00:06:00] Right. Okay, so let's say, I have this idea for a product. Let's say it's a new mop. And I'm going to fly to China. I've got to get a factory to build my awesome mop. How would you think about a blog in that scenario? Leslie: [00:06:22] Oh, that's a good question. So you have an idea for an awesome mop. Now, what makes this mop awesome? I want you to think about what about this mop does the world need, and I want you to think about who needs this mop. Think about who needs your product Leslie: [00:00:00] Who is this person? I want you to get into all kinds of detail about what their day looks like, what they struggle with, when it comes to cleaning and all those types of things. You want to know that person because if you know that person, you can do what you need to do to attract that person. Alright. Jillian: [00:06:59] So it's that idea, remember, like fill the dreams, like if I build it, they will come? That is not true. Leslie: [00:07:08] That is not true. It's true in Field of Dreams. It's not true in reality. Alright. In reality, you have to actually understand who you're trying to attract. You need to create the kind of content to attract that person, and you have to go out there and actually start finding that person. Jillian: [00:07:30] So would you recommend that before I fly out to China and I have this dream of this mop, and I've made like a prototype in my garage, that I actually start my blog before any of this? Leslie: [00:07:45] Oh, most definitely. Because once again, if you have this mop to sell to nobody, you're going to sell it to nobody. You need to have that audience. You have to build that audience. How do you even know that the person that you are trying to target wants that mop? Leslie: [00:08:03] Do you have a relationship with enough of those people to be able to determine, "You know what. This is the solution that they actually want." I think a lot of us think about this ideal solution in our minds without knowing that people actually want to buy it. Leslie: [00:08:18] And by having a blog, by attracting that audience, by nurturing a relationship with them, by providing valuable content consistently over time, you can start getting feedback from them. Leslie: [00:08:32] Now imagine this, I'm assuming we're going to get into all of this even more, but imagine now, you have a blog of women that are passionate about cleaning, and they're passionate about cleaning not just because they're trying to be anal or something of that sort, but there's something significant in being in a place where you feel rested, you feel at ease, you feel comfortable because your home is well taken care of. Leslie: [00:09:02] Imagine, you have that audience of women, and you are providing them with valuable tips and then now, you have this idea for a product. Now, you can even get their input on some of the things that they would like to see this product do. Leslie: [00:09:18] Now, you can refine that over time and make it better and better. They're involved with that process. I guarantee you that when you release that product, they're going to want it because they have some input into it. There are all kinds of things in that that we can talk about but having that audience gives you a significant amount of leverage. Jillian: [00:09:39] Okay. I listen to you, and I go, "Yep, I need to start a blog, and I need to attract an audience." How do I do that? How to attract an audience with your blog Leslie: [00:09:49] Very good question. That's the million dollar question right there. How do I do it? The strategy, the tactics behind setting up a blog in 2018 and beyond, it's actually relatively simple. Leslie: [00:10:04] With WordPress, it makes it very easy. WordPress is the platform that I recommend for people to get started with their blogs because of how well-developed it is and all of the plugins, and so on that you can use. Leslie: [00:10:19] You can literally go to YouTube and just search for how to set up a WordPress blog. You can go to my blog, becomeablogger.com. I have tutorials to show you how to do that. So the setting up of the blog is not really a big deal. Jillian: And it's not expensive. Leslie: [00:10:38] It's not expensive. You can get hosting for like five bucks a month. You could pay someone, quite frankly, 20, 30 dollars and have them set up your blog for you. Of course, you could pay significantly more depending on what you want to do, but it's not a very technical process. Jillian: [00:10:56] Okay, so I can get one up in an hour or two. Leslie: [00:11:00] You can get one up in an hour or two easily. Alright, so let's get that out of the way. It's easy to actually set up. Now, what's a little more complicated is to understand how to blog effectively. Alright? Leslie: [00:11:19] Now, this is going to go back to really understanding the person that you are trying to attract. It comes down to understanding what kind of content they are looking for so that you can create that kind of content. Who is your customer avatar as a blogger? Leslie: [00:11:32] Now, what I recommend for people to do when they're getting started is to kind of write out a story of, some people call it customer avatar, of who this person is, what are they trying to accomplish, what are their goals, what are their struggles, will they encounter as they are trying to accomplish these goals. Write that story out so that you can have a clear idea of who that person is. Jillian: [00:12:00] And I would say that if that avatar could be similar to you, that's probably a good place to start. Leslie: [00:12:10] Yeah, most definitely. One of the people that you should know is you, even if it's an earlier version of you. When I'm creating content right now, I am creating content to attract me when I was in college, because I wish someone exposed me to this kind of content back then. Jillian: [00:12:32] I like that. Leslie: [00:12:33] So that concept of having an earlier version of yourself that you are trying to help, and that earlier version might be 10 years ago, it might be a year ago, it might be a few weeks ago because you are learning this process that you're teaching to people. Leslie: [00:12:50] I think that's one way to get started. So that's one thing you want to be clear on. You want to also be clear on, and I should have said this first but, what is your niche? What is your topic? A lot of people will say things like, "I want to do a blog about personal finances." Leslie: [00:13:14] Okay, that's a good place to start but there are so many personal finance blogs out there. Why should I come to you? Well, now, I'm just dealing with someone inside my coaching club right now that literally just posted this, and I just responded to this. She is now looking at personal finances for homemakers from a Christian perspective. You've niched down. Advice: niche down Leslie: [00:13:42] Now, if I'm a Christian homemaker, a woman between - I forgot the ages that she mentioned, but if I am that person and I'm struggling to get our family finances in order and I come to that blog, all of a sudden, I feel like, "Man, this blog is for me because I'm a Christian homemaker, I'm a woman, and she is talking about a topic that is of interest to me right now." Leslie: [00:14:11] So rather than being very vague, get specific. That has to do with the first part that I mentioned in terms of understanding who you are trying to attract. There's another guy in my coaching club. He's a woodworker but he's also a home-schooling dad. He's doing a blog about woodworking projects that a home-schooling dad can do with their kids. Now, if I'm a home-schooling dad that is interested in woodworking, when I come to that blog, I feel like this is the right one for me, and that's exactly what you want. Jillian: [00:14:51] Do you think you could ever get too small in a niche? Leslie: [00:14:54] Absolutely. If you've niched down so, so far that there are hardly any people in your niche, you have a problem. Now, at what point is that? I think it comes down to testing and also knowing the people that you are trying to attract. Leslie: [00:15:13] If I know that there are tons of homeschooling dads and that they would be interested in doing those kinds of projects with their sons and with their daughters, it makes sense for me to explore that as an option. Leslie: [00:15:28] Now, how do you know if it's not going to work? Quite frankly, you can do some research. You can kind of look in your niche. You could look on Amazon to see what kinds of products are for sale and look to see what kinds of books are selling in that industry. You can do some of that research. You can go to the Google keyword planner, and you can see, "Are people searching for these phrases that I'm interested in talking about?" Leslie: [00:…

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#015: How to Hire the Right People to Grow Your Business Faster with Kevin Espiritu May 02, 2018

Show notes

Today I'm speaking with Kevin Espiritu from the blog, Epic Gardening. Kevin and I discuss how to hire the right people to grow your business faster, the importance of SEO for bloggers, how to monetize your blog if your mission is to teach 10 million people how to grow their own food, and how you can really make a living as a poker player. Resources: Epic Gardening Book in a Box The eMyth Revisited Catch My Party MiloTree Some of these links may be affiliate. Subscribe to The Blogger Genius Podcast: iTunes Google Play Stitcher Transcript – How to Hire the Right People to Grow Your Business Faster Intro: [00:00:00] Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the show. Today, my guest is Kevin Espiritu from the blog Epic Gardening. Now, Kevin is a gardener, a website owner and a student of life. He is teaching 10 million people how to grow their own food. So welcome, Kevin. Kevin: [00:00:22] Hey, welcome, Jillian. Thanks for having me on. Jillian: Okay, I was reading up on you, and you have had a very interesting path, and I'd love you to share how you got into gardening and building online communities and an online business. Kevin: [00:00:40] Sure, yeah. I guess it depends on how far we want to go back, but it is kind of a long story. I was in school. I went to University of California, Santa Barbara, and was kind of on the track to become an accountant out of all things. Yeah, I know that's the reaction I have now. Jillian: [00:00:58] Well, just meeting you, I just don't see that. Kevin: [00:01:01] Yeah. And I don't know why I ever saw it myself. I think it was one of those things where you're asked to choose what you want to do for your life when you're 18 and you just pick a generic major and sort of see where it goes. Kevin: [00:01:14] I ended up playing actually online poker in school, and that started paying the bills. It got to the point where I was making more than I would make as an accountant so I said obviously the next question would be why would you be an accountant then. How to go from professional poker player to professional blogger Jillian: [00:01:28] So you were making real money playing poker. Kevin: [00:01:31] Oh, yeah. Yeah, I was studying the game because it's unlike many other gambling games. There's actually an element of skill in it. You're playing against other players and not the house. You actually can win long term. Jillian: [00:01:46] That's funny. I had just read that, that it's not exactly a game of chance. Kevin: [00:01:51] It's a mix so everything else in the casino is going to be a pure game of chance. Obviously, like blackjack, there's a strategy but you still can't beat the house unless you're counting cards. Kevin: [00:02:02] With poker, you're playing against other human beings. The House is making its money by taking a small percentage of the pot but if you're better by a significant margin than other people, you can actually win long term. Kevin: [00:02:12] If you're good, you can actually do pretty well for yourself. Anyway, to get back to it, that sort of put me off the path of maybe what you might say is just a traditional career. And then, I got into building and designing websites but that sort of became a bit stale. Kevin: [00:02:33] I wasn't really a designer at heart. It also was one of those things that you had to just keep selling websites month after month after month because once someone paid for a website, they were gone unless they needed some repairs or something like that. Kevin: [00:02:44] So that got me into marketing online, which sort of put me on this hybrid path of doing some consulting for other people like small businesses in my area, which is San Diego. Kevin: [00:02:55] At the same time, I realize maybe it makes sense to show these clients, "Hey, I actually know what I'm doing." I started a website myself, and it was right about the time I was getting into gardening. I just pick gardening as the test site to start. Kevin: [00:03:11] At the time, it was called something completely different. I hadn't really thought about the branding of it at all. That began the journey. That was maybe, I want to say 2010, but really, I hadn't touched the site at all in any significant way. It's certainly not as a business until the summer of 2016. So that's the short abridged version, I guess, of how I got into the whole thing. Jillian: [00:03:36] What made you want to turn it into a business? Kevin: [00:03:40] Yes, so I had seen just in doing consulting work and marketing work. I tried my hand at a startup as well. I'd seen that I could reach a certain point in business stuff. I really was having a hard time cracking past that plateau. I was making money. I could pay my bills. Kevin: [00:03:56] I wasn't really making what I would want to make to consider doing it full time. And so, I joined this publishing startup as a company called Book in a Box. The reason I joined, first of all, there are some cool people working there, but I also wanted to learn why can I not crack this plateau in business. Kevin: [00:04:17] I can't really get past a certain point, and there must be something I don't know. I joined that company, spent a year and a half there, building that out. It was a rocket ship so I contributed in some small way to it just blowing up. Kevin: [00:04:32] When I quit, I felt I had the tools to turn the gardening thing into a full time business. And that's what I did. And the reason why is just simply because I'm just not a good employee. Why become a gardening blogger Kevin: [00:04:43] I'm good at doing things I'm really interested in. I'm very, very bad at doing things I'm uninterested in to the point where at the most extreme, I just won't do them. I wanted to just do something that was fun, interesting to me, was valuable to people. Gardening is definitely helping people around the world. Kevin: [00:05:03] It could fund the lifestyle that I want to live, which is a relatively simple life. But I wanted it to throw off enough cash that I could invest it in gardening projects, different websites, or things like that just to kind of further the mission of the site. Jillian: [00:05:17] Now, what was the secret sauce that you were missing previously that you might have gained at this startup? Kevin: [00:05:23] Sure, yes. I think I come from a little bit different background than the average, maybe, listener to the show, where I noticed in the blogging world, a lot of these bloggers are bloggers first. I kind of never was that. Kevin: [00:05:37] And so I didn't have a good understanding of building communities and getting kind of people invested in what you're creating. I was always thinking of it from more of like a search and SEO perspective. That's a strength in itself because that's going to be free traffic forever and ever. Jillian: [00:05:55] I almost feel like we met at a conference relatively recently, and I was doing the SEO track. I felt like as bloggers, it's not how we think first. Kevin: [00:06:10] Right, exactly. So that is the biggest thing I noticed actually at that conference, and speaking with bloggers in general. Basically, my group of friends, who there are some bloggers, who are more I guess, in my way of the world. Kevin: [00:06:25] But yeah, a lot of bloggers are so good at social media. They're so good at creating and building cool things that people sort of organically talk about. The danger, at least, that I saw, and I will get back to your initial question, of what was the secret sauce, the danger that I saw was a lot of these people are relying so much on a platform so let's say Pinterest or Facebook. What is platform risk for a blogger? Kevin: [00:06:48] We've all seen before. I call it platform risk. If a significant amount of your traffic or revenue is coming from a certain platform, that's great because it's obviously working for you but it's extremely dangerous if that number is too high. Kevin: [00:07:04] So let's say you're getting 80 percent of your traffic total from Pinterest, one or two algorithm changes can absolutely decimate your entire business. Kevin: [00:07:12] And so that's why I focused on SEO at the start because as long as you're doing it with good practice, you're not sort of scamming, spamming or anything like that. That's essentially free traffic forever that only gets better and better over time. Jillian: [00:07:24] Yep. I totally agree. Like I plan in this podcast to talk more about SEO because I think it is, it's not sexy. Kevin: [00:07:34] No. Jillian: [00:07:35] It's not really fun, not like posting on Instagram, especially if that's kind of how you got into the world of blogging, whereas SEO is like straight up. We will talk about it but it's just like learning how the process works. The importance of SEO for bloggers Kevin: [00:07:55] Yeah, I agree. SEO has gone through a lot of different iterations and adjustments over time, as well as Google, and other search engines have gotten smarter. The best strategy fortunately these days is actually to just do what most bloggers are already doing which is create really good stuff. Kevin: [00:08:14] The only difference is a lot of bloggers are really good at thinking about things from the lens of what their community will think about it, whereas you kind of have to put on a different shade of glass and kind of think about a piece of content the way a search engine might look at it, because they're not human beings. And so it's really simple. It just takes a different sort of hat that you wear. Jillian: [00:08:39] You're so right. It's about how could people search and find my content, what questions are they asking instead of, "They already know me. They get my jokes." It's like what is the way into my content if I'm on Google. Kevin: [00:08:59] Totally. Yeah. There's things that are very simple. I was just talking with a blogger. She had a post about birthday party ideas for kids. She had showed me the original post. Amazing ideas, great photos, great content for a human being. It could have been better for a search engine and also better for a human being. How to optimize your blog posts for SEO Kevin: [00:09:22] So that's kind of the thing to think about. If you're going the SEO route and trying to improve your posts for SEO, it's really not going to degrade the experience for a human. It's actually going to improve it. Kevin: [00:09:33] She did things like added headings for the different themes for kids, birthday party ideas. So maybe under 1 or 5- 7, things like that, just formatting the piece better. And remember, if you're formatting it, that's better for the human eye, because we were attention-starved people these days. But also when a spider is crawling that, now it actually knows the structure and the importance of different sections of the piece. Jillian: [00:09:58] Absolutely. Kevin: [00:09:59] Yeah. I have a couple different things that I've done to extend upon that. Headings obviously are a core part of any article, in my opinion. One thing I've done is since my SEO strategy sort of relies on really comprehensive post so let's say, I'm doing a piece on how to grow spinach, I need to talk about everything you could run into when you're growing spinach which is a lot of different things. Kevin: [00:10:23] There's sort of a flow to that article, so there's how to plant it, what kind of light does it need, what kind of water does it need. What I'll do is install a table of contents at the top as well, so someone can just jump to whatever section they want by just clicking on that heading, kind of like how Wikipedia does it. Kevin: [00:10:40] Yes. That's pretty helpful on mobile. I'll always, like you just mentioned, I'll add an FAQ section at the bottom. One helpful tip is actually Google already sort of tells you what people are asking. Kevin: [00:10:52] Let's say you were to grow or you were to search how to grow spinach in Google, you scroll to the bottom. Usually, there are those question and answer boxes that they'll include there. Just answer those questions in the post. Very, very simple strategy that will pull in a little bit of extra traffic for you. Jillian: [00:11:09] Absolutely. Okay, so let's go back though. You were talking about the special sauce. Kevin: [00:11:15] Special sauce for me, that I learned at that company, Book in a Box publishing company, among many other things was that I was not building the right systems. I was thinking of my website as a one man operation. I wasn't thinking of it as a little mini business. Kevin: [00:11:34] It's a very common problem, I think, that most entrepreneurs would have is where you're working in the business and not on the business. I'm sure you've heard that phrase, right? Jillian: [00:11:42] No, I haven't. Explain. Kevin: [00:11:44] There's a book called The eMyth Revisited, I think. That particular book is mostly about people who run a small business like an actual brick and mortar, let's say a pie shop or something like that. But the idea is that you get into pie making because you like making pies. Kevin: [00:12:04] This would be the same for bloggers. You get into craft blogging because you really like making crafts. However, you quickly find that making the crafts is not really most of what you do. Most of what you do is everything else. Kevin: [00:12:19] The joy of making the craft actually starts to diminish a bit or making the pie. So you're working in your business, right? You're an employee for yourself which is not bad. And I think that's you. You absolutely have to start there. Kevin: [00:12:31] But what I wasn't realizing is like after let's say, I've written 300 articles on my website. Maybe I kind of know how those need to look from now on. I'm not saying you have to do this, but maybe I could use some help on that part of the business especially for me. Kevin: [00:12:50] I went into podcasts. I went into videos. I went into doing some live stuff in person. I can't be writing all the articles, doing 100 percent of the social media, all the podcasts, all of that. I would literally be working 100 hours a week. It's impossible. How to hire the right people who are intrinsically motivated Kevin: [00:13:06] And so as the site grew, I started to dedicate at least a little bit of that money towards an assistant, and not just getting a VA and telling them, "go do this," but really thinking about the processes and saying, "Okay, here's what I like to do on Instagram. Here's what's working. Write it out step by step." Kevin: [00:13:25] Train someone on how to help me out with that. Have checks and balances in there so they're not just posting willy-nilly, and you can make corrections here and there, but just really building up processes and then training people to help, that was the biggest thing for me. That's what really let me scale the site up to the point that it's at today. I just wouldn't be able to do it otherwise. Jillian: [00:13:46] So how many people do you have helping you? Kevin: [00:13:49] So right now, I have one writer. I found this wonderful woman who lives up in Northern California. She loves gardening, loves writing about it. She helps me out with a lot of the written content on the site these days. Kevin: [00:14:02] We kind of team write on that. She does a lot of the writing. I do a lot of the researching, editing, formatting, and a lot of like, "Here's what kind of needs to be co…

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#014: How to Build a Successful Business with Your Boyfriend with Kate Erickson Apr 25, 2018

Show notes

Welcome to episode 014 of The Blogger Genius Podcast. My guest is Kate Erickson, from Entrepreneurs on Fire. In this episode, Kate and I discuss how to build a successful seven figure business, which is what she did with her boyfriend, John Lee Dumas. Kate calls herself Implementer in Chief at Entrepreneurs on Fire, the podcast and business she started in 2012 with John Lee Dumas. Kate and I discuss the benefits and challenges of working with your significant other, how to start a podcast as a way to start a business, and the value of mastermind groups. Even with all her success, I love how down-to-earth she is. This episode is definitely worth listening to! Resources: Entrepreneurs on Fire Kate's Take Smart Passive Income The Rise to the Top Asana MiloTree Subscribe to The Blogger Genius Podcast: iTunes Google Play Stitcher Transcript – How to Build a Successful Seven Figure Business Intro: [00:00:03] Welcome to the Blogger Genius Podcast brought to you by Milo Tree. Here's your host, Jillian Leslie. Jillian: [00:00:10] Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the show. Today, my guest is Kate Erickson. She is the Chief Implementer at Entrepreneurs on Fire. For those of you that don't know, Entrepreneurs on Fire is a podcast Kate and her significant other, John Lee Dumas, has started this podcast, I think, back in 2012, and they have grown it into a seven figure business. So welcome to the podcast, Kate. Kate: [00:00:41] Thank you so much, Jillian. I'm excited to be here. How to start a podcast as a way to start a business Jillian: [00:00:43] So I want to say that I met you at Podcast Movement last year, and I took your course. You had a day-long course. You and John taught people how to start a podcast. It is because of your course that I now have a podcast, so I feel like I need to say thank you. Kate: [00:01:04] That's so incredible. You're so welcome. I'm so happy that you were able to be a part of that. That was the first time that we've ever run a workshop like that at Podcast Movement. So I'm really happy to hear that. Congratulations on your podcast. Jillian: [00:01:15] Thank you. And I'm loving it. I'm really loving it. So would tell us how you and John started Entrepreneurs on Fire, and did you think it would turn into what it has turned into when you initially came up with the concept? Kate: [00:01:31] So we started Entrepreneurs on Fire in 2012. So you nailed it right there in the intro. Actually, John and I were both working corporate jobs. Kate: [00:01:43] He was in commercial real estate, and I was working in advertising and marketing at the time. He actually came up with the idea to start a daily podcast where he would interview the world's most successful and inspiring entrepreneurs. Kate: [00:01:56] He wanted to do a daily. He came to me with this idea. He told me that he wanted to quit his job to pursue this dream. I wasn't really too sure what a podcast was. I wasn't super entrepreneurial so I don't really understand like the vision of how this would become a business. Nonetheless, I was very supportive. Kate: [00:02:17] I told them that I thought it would be such a cool idea. And knowing John's drive and his work ethic, I knew that he was going to make this a success so he quit his job. He started the podcast, and I continued on in my corporate job because we weren't generating revenue from the podcasts. Kate: [00:02:39] Within six months, he had kind of gained some initial traction and momentum. He started having a lot of listeners. He started having people reach out to him and ask if he offered one on one coaching. He started inviting sponsors on the podcast. Kate: [00:02:56] At that point, I think that he had a vision for what this could become, and he invited me to join the team. That was about month six that I came on board, that I joined the team. We started talking about creating online communities. We started with a mastermind that was 100 people. Jillian: [00:03:21] So people signed up for the mastermind or...? Kate: [00:03:26] Exactly. That was the very first thing that we were like, "Can this work? Are these questions and these things that people keep coming to us with saying that like they wish that they had a community of people who understood the journey that they were on, and they wish that they could ask others for feedback?" Kate: [00:03:47] Just these recurring things that people kept reaching out to us with was kind of like our first delve into, can we create a community that solves this pain point, this problem for people. Kate: [00:04:01] And I think that maybe even then, I don't know that we thought that Entrepreneurs on Fire would be what it is today but we certainly, day by day, were checking back in with our vision, our mission and being like, "Okay, we are on a path that we want to be on, and we should keep going. We should continue doing this." What is a mastermind group? Jillian: [00:04:23] And so when you started your mastermind series, for people who don't know, can you explain what a mastermind is? Kate: [00:04:29] Sure. So it could take many different forms. I mean a mastermind could be as few as two or three people, or it could be as big as like hundreds of people. It's essentially you and a group of people who have the same vision, the same mission, the same type of goals. Kate: [00:04:47] For us, it was bringing entrepreneurs together so that they can bounce ideas off from each other, get feedback and support from one another. In our case, we also provided some tools and resources, a membership site with some video tutorials and stuff like that that could help people on their entrepreneurial journey. Kate: [00:05:07] So depending on what industry or niche you are serving, the mastermind could look very different but in essence, it's people coming together to support and hold one another accountable. What is it like working with your significant other? Jillian: [00:05:18] I like that. So I have to ask this question which is what has it been like for you working with your significant other? For people who don't know, my partner is my husband. Jillian: [00:05:29] We started Catch my Party together back in 2009 and now, we've started MiloTree which is our app to help grow social media and now, the podcast. So my husband, he's got my back. I was curious what it has been like for you guys working together. Kate: [00:05:50] Yeah, I love that you say that he's got your back, because I feel like that is definitely kind of a foundation. It's really amazing to be on this journey together with John. Kate: [00:06:06] Before we started working together, we had an amazing relationship. We're very much in love with each other but there was always sort of like we would come home at night, and he would talk about his job, and I would talk about my job. Kate: [00:06:21] There are just certain barriers that are gonna be there regardless because I don't understand his world the way that he does, and he doesn't understand mine the way I do. And starting a business together or becoming partners in our business, sharing a vision, sharing goals and sharing a mission, it has really brought us so much closer together than I think we ever could have been otherwise. Kate: [00:06:47] It's such a cool experience to have with your significant other, to be excited about the same things and to know exactly how each other feels. I think it's been a really amazing experience in that. It certainly comes with its own set of challenges for sure but every single one of those is so worth it to me to be able to share that with each other. What are the challenges of working with your boyfriend? Jillian: [00:07:09] What would you say the biggest challenge is? Kate: [00:07:12] I would say turning it off. Jillian: [00:07:14] That's what I would say. That's exactly what I would say. What do you mean by that? Kate: [00:07:19] We're just both so passionate about what we do. We love our business and our audience so much that sometimes, it can be hard to not want to make sure that you're there for your community. Kate: [00:07:34] I mean we have so many ideas, opportunities, and things that we could be doing so it can be kind of hard to say, "I've been doing this for 12 hours today. It's time to be Kate and John, boyfriend and girlfriend and have dinner together." Kate: [00:07:54] We talk about fun weekend plans or like a trip that we want to take together, like it's time to stop talking about business. It's just hard to do because we love it. I'm sure you can relate. Jillian: [00:08:05] Totally. It starts to kind of blur into stuff. We also share a daughter so that's a good way for us to get off of our business and to go, "Let's talk about her." Jillian: [00:08:21] I would say this which for us, like just checking in with each other from a more kind of emotional place rather than, "Okay, I need you to do this, and I've got to do this and that kind of thing," to kind of really have like an off switch. Kate: [00:08:36] Yeah, I like that. I think it's important to kind of have like those go-tos where you can say because that's kind of been like a thing for John and me since the beginning. Kate: [00:08:44] If I'm ever talking about business and you don't want to, it's like the cord that we pull that says, "No more. I don't want to talk about this right now. Let's be a couple and not business partners." Kate: [00:08:59] I think that kind of laying that groundwork, and I love what you had said. Maybe it's your daughter that you guys start talking about in order to make that transition back into a personal life. I think it's important to have those cues or to have those things that can help you shift the conversation. Why do you publish your income statement? Jillian: [00:09:16] Definitely. So one thing that I really like about you guys is how transparent you are. If you go to eofire.com, you guys show your income statements of how you guys are making money. Jillian: [00:09:30] You guys are making a lot of money. Can you share why you do that, what you guys learn from that and why it's important for you to share that with your community? Kate: [00:09:41] So when John first started the podcast and I was still in marketing and advertising, I was kind of in a place in my corporate journey, at the ad agency specifically, where I was helping one of our biggest clients with a re-brand. Kate: [00:09:59] A big part of that was like really zeroing in and narrowing in on what their mission was, and what they wanted people to say about them when they weren't around. I kind of brought a lot of that home and had asked John a lot of those questions when he was starting the podcast. Kate: [00:10:17] If you imagine 100 people listening to the podcast, what is the mission that you have through delivering this content and what is it that you want them to say about the podcast when you're not around? Kate: [00:10:33] We came up with the mission of inspiring millions. That really helped us as we grew the business to stay true to the fact that what we provide should be inspiring for people. That was our goal. For John, a big part of his inspiration was listening to others like Pat Flynn and David Siteman Garland and learning from them. Kate: [00:10:59] He saw it from Pat Flynn, that Pat publishes his income reports. For John, that was really motivating and inspiring that here's a guy making this happen. He's creating this business. He's creating freedom in his life. He's showing people how he does it. Kate: [00:11:17] Now that I see the struggles that he faces, the wins that he has, how exactly he's making and spending his money, that's really motivating and inspiring for me. We kind of took that cue from Pat and we said, "I wonder if we were to share this stuff with our audience, it would help inspire them to know that it is possible to run a seven figure business." Kate: [00:11:44] Lo and behold, that was absolutely the case. We got amazing feedback about it. From that day forward, we were like there's not a lot of transparency in the online world. Why don't we kind of carry that torch and be those people that our audience knows that they can come to us. Kate: [00:12:01] That we're going to answer their questions and we're going to be open and honest about what it's like to run a business because ultimately, that's what we're trying to inspire them to do. If we're not sharing the ins and outs, the pretty and the ugly there, then we're not really doing our job. How Entrepreneurs on Fire monetizes their business Jillian: [00:12:17] I was just looking at your site and you break it down. It looks like four different buckets. You guys make money via sponsorships so that, I'm assuming, is sponsorships for the podcast. Jillian: [00:12:29] You guys have an online community for other podcasters called Podcasters Paradise which is where you have like a bunch of tools and things like that. Am I right? Kate: [00:12:44] Yes, it's a membership site with video tutorials. Jillian: [00:12:49] Exactly. And then you guys do affiliate revenue. You guys have found companies that align with your audience, that you guys believe in and then, you sell. You get an affiliate fee if somebody buys that and then you guys created your journals. Can you talk about what your journals are? Kate: [00:13:09] Sure. So right now, we have two. We're working on our third which is really exciting. The first journal that we launched is called the Freedom Journal. Kate: [00:13:18] It's how to set and accomplish your number one goal in 100 days. A year after that, we launched the Mastery Journal which is master productivity, discipline and focus in 100 days. Both journals are very intentional. Kate: [00:13:31] It's a day by day guide and accountability partner for people who are trying to either set and accomplish their number one goal or become more productive, disciplined and focus. Kate: [00:13:45] What we've done through the journals is try to give people a daily layout that they can follow to start making a habit out of saying, "Okay, if I want to accomplish X in 100 days, what needs to happen in the next 10 days for me to be 10 days closer to that, or if I want to become more productive and disciplined and focused, how do I need to be setting up my days in order for that to happen?" Kate: [00:14:10] So these journals are really meant to guide people through that every single day to be able to accomplish things. Both of them were born out of struggles and questions that our audience was coming to us with. Jillian: [00:14:24] That's so interesting. Again, when I took your workshop, you guys gave a handout. It literally went step by step-by-step in terms of how to launch a podcast. All I did was go step by step-by-step, break it down and then ultimately, I was able to do that. Why small goals matter when starting a business Jillian: [00:14:41] I'm a big believer in small goals, small achievable goals everyday and then eventually, you look back and you're like, "Oh my God. I did it." It's just about sticking in there even when it's tough. Kate: [00:14:57] Yes, definitely. I think that that's just what a lot of people need. The online space can be really overwhelming when you're trying to start a business that there's a lot of things going on and different things competing for your attention. Kate: [00:15:12] Sometimes, people just need a guide to help them. That's what we tried to do in that workshop that you were in, Jillian. That is what we try to do with…

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