Note: This transcript was automatically generated and may include typos.

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Dollar Sprout Podcast, where it’s all about building a business that offers consistent income and flexibility so you can live life on your terms. And now your host, Megan Robinson.

[00:00:18] Megan: Hey there. Welcome back to the Dollar Sprout podcast. This is the final episode of season two, and I’m gonna wrap up this season by giving you a little bit of an update on my business. I think this is the third business update I’ve done. So if you wanna go back and listen to the others, there’s one at the end of Season one and one at the beginning of this season, season two.

[00:00:47] So today I’m gonna share about my business in three parts. I’m gonna share about the past, present, and future of my business. So for the past, I’m just gonna share a short review of what’s happened with my business since January, 2022 through now we’re in, you know, mid May 20, 23. Um, then I’ll share with you the current state of my business, including revenue and revenue projections, what I’m selling and what my day-to-day looks like in my business right now.

[00:01:21] And I’ll wrap up by telling you about the future of my business, including lessons that I’ve learned, um, since taking my business full-time. Many lessons coming from, uh, the. Guests that we’ve had on this podcast, uh, all of our amazing guests have taught me something about business, and I’ll also tell you what my plans are for the rest of the year and what I want to change and do differently in my business.

[00:01:49] So starting with the past. If you don’t already know, I’ve had my business L l C since 2017. I started out with personal finance. Um, I studied personal finance in college, so it really was just a personal finance website or blog, which turned into financial coaching and freelancing. Then in December, 2021, I decided that I wanted, wanted to change my business entirely, so I went from financial coaching to business operations.

[00:02:23] I found a certification program, signed up in January, 2022, and became a certified online business manager. Through the International Association of Online Business Managers, and I got that certification in like May or June of 2022 is when I graduated from that program. At that point, I had zero clients in my business and zero zero revenue mainly because I had always kept my freelance work separate from my L L C.

[00:02:58] So all I ever did under my L L C was financial coaching and my personal finance website revenue. And at that point I had. You know, ended my engagements with all personal finance or financial coaching clients, and I was doing freelance work and I also had a part-time job doing business operations for a small company.

[00:03:22] So in July, 2022, I moved my freelance work and my part-time employer under my L L C. Then I got one more client, which gave me three clients in total and barely enough revenue to take my business full-time. Um, so just a little sidebar there in case you’re wondering, uh, more detail about where those clients came from.

[00:03:49] One of them was Dollar Sprout. That was the one that I was doing project work for in freelance work. Um, I’ve talked about this before, but I met Ben and Jeff, who are the co-founders of Dollar Sprout back in like 2017 or 2018. I found them online, realized that they lived near me and asked them to meet me for coffee.

[00:04:10] That turned into me freelancing for them, which eventually turned into a full-time job, which then turned back into me freelancing for them later on. Then, like I said, the other client was a small business that I was working for part-time, and I just asked them if they would mind moving to a retainer agreement, or, I’m sorry, moving to a, a contractor arrangement through my business.

[00:04:33] Um, Which they were happy to do. And the third client found me through a direct directory that I’m listed in because of the certification program that I had just taken. So that program, once you graduate, you get listed in a directory and business owners just come to that directory looking to find an online business manager, an om and um, you can put your information in there and they can reach out to you.

[00:04:59] So that’s how I found that third client. Uh, in the episode we did an episode with Kelly Jamieson in this season, season two, I think it was episode six, and she talked about how she built a successful online business without a website or social media. And my business really is an example of that as well.

[00:05:22] Um, so far none of my clients have come through social media, so definitely go check out that episode with Keldi. Um, And if part of what’s holding you back from starting a business is that you don’t wanna deal with the tech of setting up a website or you don’t want to have to post on social media, that conversation with Keldi will bust right through the narrative that those are things that you have to do to have a successful business.

[00:05:52] Okay. Back to business updates. That brings us to August. So from August to December, I had one retainer client who was my former part-time employer. And I did one off projects for two different clients. I did several projects for two clients, both of which found me through the directory that I was listed on from my certification program.

[00:06:18] Um, sidebar, just for anyone who doesn’t know or needs a refresher, a retainer client is someone who pays a set amount of money per month, usually for a specific number of hours or very specific deliverables like. Right now, one of my clients pays me the same amount of money every month for 65 hours of my time per month.

[00:06:43] So the project-based work wasn’t very consistent. Um, some months I would make $1,500 from a project, and then other months would be $0. And in December, I think I got paid up front for half of the rate of a project that was scheduled to take three to four months. So that was $2,500 upfront and $2,500 again at the completion of the project.

[00:07:11] On average, I think I was making about 5,000 to $5,500 a month in total revenue. That was enough to cover my salary and payroll taxes and the software that I use, um, mainly QuickBooks for Accounting. I used zao for my CRM and Convert Kit for email marketing and a few other pieces of software, but, I definitely did not have a lot of money left over from month to month.

[00:07:43] I also did some other discovery calls during that period of time, um, from like August through December. I think I did three, all of which found me through the, um, directory that I was listed in, and I ended up not getting any of those roles that I did discovery calls with. And then in October or November of 2022, I signed up for a coaching program.

[00:08:13] Even though I said I wasn’t going to sign up for any more co courses or coaching for the rest of the year, I did and I regret that one so much. It was like, I’m almost embarrassed to say this. It was, it was $10,000 upfront and an additional thousand dollars per month after that. And like I said, I didn’t have a lot of money left over in my business month to month.

[00:08:40] So I paid for it using some of the savings that I had from my freelancing. Um, cuz I just saved up a lot of my freelancing money. And, um, yeah, I, I ended up canceling my membership to that coaching program like four months later. So. Anyway, that pre, that pretty much brings us to 2023. Um, if you wanna hear the details about 2022, I cover a lot of that in the last business update where I gave an update on the seven things I decided to do differently in my business the second time around.

[00:09:15] So switching from financial coaching to business operations, and in the last update, I left off by telling you my two goals for 2023. My first goal was to reach six figures from retainer client work alone, and my second goal was to launch a digital product and get my first 10 sales. So let’s talk about how those goals are going.

[00:09:44] It’s currently May 14th, 2023. We’re a little over a third of the way through the year, about to start week 20 of the year. Um, I said I would update you on my revenue and my revenue projections, what I’m currently selling, and what the day-to-day of my business looks like. So let’s start with what I’m currently selling.

[00:10:08] I’m wrapping up the last of my project work for non retainer clients, and for the time being, I plan to only work with clients on retainer. Um, that means no v i p days, no system setups or anything like that. I’ll just be working with two to three clients, all paying me a set amount per month for a set number of hours or specific deliverables.

[00:10:34] And I do still want to launch a digital product this year, but the reason I am focusing on retainers for now is twofold, right? The first reason is that the financial stability is really nice. Um, having retainer clients provides consistent revenue, and given that I jumped full-time into my business, Probably before it was smart to do so.

[00:11:03] Um, it’s nice to have the consistency and to know that I can pay myself my full salary, which really isn’t that much right now. Um, and that I’m building some savings in the business. And the second reason is that it allows me to get experience in a bunch of different areas of each business that I work with, because depending on the client, I do everything from.

[00:11:26] Working with the CEO to create the business’ vision and goals, managing projects, setting up backend systems in the business, managing the team, hiring, creating documentation, and a lot more. So this experience is good research for me to figure out what kinds of digital products I might be able to create later on.

[00:11:53] In episode eight this season, Whitney Hansen talked about switching her business model to do what’s not scalable. So I definitely took a page from Whitney’s playbook on this one. Um, eventually I would like to have more scalable options and business offerings. And I’ll talk about that in the future part of this episode.

[00:12:17] But for now, I’m taking the less scalable route and just focusing on serving two or three great reti retainer clients and serving them really, really well. Um, so that’s it for what I’m selling now, for the part that I’m sure you’re curious about, which is the numbers. So as of today, I have made almost exactly $40,000 in revenue in my business this year.

[00:12:48] Um, now that’s revenue not profit, so that’s all the money my business has earned before expenses like my salary, software, subscriptions, taxes, all of that. So after expenses, my current profit is about $10,000, and my current retainer revenue is about $9,925 a month. So if I only maintain my current retainer clients for the rest of the year, then I am projected to make about $110,000 in revenue.

[00:13:27] In 2023, and since most of my revenue so far in, in the year has been retainer clients that I think that would end up putting me at like 105,000, uh, in revenue from just retainer clients this year. Now that’s if I continue on the current trajectory that I’m on with my retainer clients. If they don’t drop me for any reason or if I don’t have to drop any of that work for any reason, and again, that’s only revenue, that’s not profit.

[00:14:00] And trust me when I say that it is. Hard earned revenue too. Um, I don’t wanna give off this false impression that it’s been easy for me to get to this point because I do work hard and I work what feels like a lot to me. Um, and yeah, I just, I think that you see so much online about having your own business being like you only work.

[00:14:27] 30 hours a month or whatever, you know, and that is definitely not the case for me. I have a lot of friends, and I’ll get to this in a second, but I have a lot of friends and people that I’ve spoken to that have full-time jobs and definitely work fewer, at least productive hours, quote unquote, which brings me to my day to day, right?

[00:14:51] So, I’m always curious how much people work, whether they have a full-time job or they run their own business. And I ask my friends and people just like random people this all the time. I always ask people, how many hours a day do you think you’re actually productive at work? How many hours a day or how many hours a week do you think you’re really, truly productive?

[00:15:15] And so many of them say like three or four. Maybe five or six hours a day on a really, really productive day. But most people tell me they, they think they’re productive like three to four hours a day, not counting meetings. Right. And it’s different for every job I know that I know. Um, I come from a family of, you know, nurses, police of police officers, um, all kinds of blue collar workers.

[00:15:45] Uh, and I know that like those jobs can often be different. But, um, I don’t think most people who work in an office setting are really productive for even close to eight hours on most days. So the way my retainers are set up right now, I work about 30 hours a week for. My retainer clients, um, plus another five to 10 hours a week for non retainer client projects, which as I said, I am wrapping up with the last of those this month.

[00:16:24] So that’s about six hours a day, and I only log time when I’m actually working. Like if I get up to grab something or get a snack, um, then I turn off my timer. And depending on the industry you’re in, that might not sound like a lot. Like I said, I know that there are plenty of people, gosh, teachers, all kinds of people out there who are overworked and who would probably look at this and be like, huh, that’s laughable.

[00:16:51] You work six hours of productive work a day. Um, and I’m not complaining, right. I’ve been doing coffee chats with people who are interested in becoming OBMs. Um, or, you know, taking the program that I took and when I tell them about my business, a lot of them are like, wow, that sounds amazing. I’d love to work 30 hours a week and have control over my own schedule.

[00:17:16] Um, and that’s totally valid, and I’ll say that to me. My business right now feels very much like a regular, full-time job. Um, only instead of having one boss, I have like two or three bosses because all of my clients are my boss. Um, so I’m still sitting down at my computer for like a minimum of eight hours a day, often closer to like 12 hours a day.

[00:17:45] And on top of the 30 hours I spend working for clients a week, I also have to do, and yeah, that’s roughly 30 hours sometimes, you know, 35 hours or 40 hours doing client work. Um, I also have to do work in my own business, so I do my own bookkeeping and admin work, like sending invoices and contracts. Right now I’m taking a course on marketing and digital product design.

[00:18:13] I’m researching ideas for digital products, so that’s on top of, you know, what I would do for clients. So altogether I end up working like 30 to 40 hours a week for clients most weeks, and then an additional 5, 10, 15 hours a week. Um, For my own business, D depending on the week and depending on what needs to be done that week.

[00:18:40] Right? And that is, all of that is like productive time. Like I said, that is all like using my brain or producing work that’s not just like sitting in my home office scrolling on TikTok, cuz I don’t log those hours. Right? So, I don’t know about you, but I usually can’t sit down and crank out seven to nine hours of work at a time.

[00:19:07] Sometimes I can, but usually not. So my actual day-to-day varies depending on the client and the meetings that I have that day. Some days I have six to seven hours of client meetings in a row, and on those days my workday usually ends around 5:00 PM or 6:00 PM because after that many meetings, my brain is pretty fire, Fri fried, woo, I can’t even talk.

[00:19:30] Um, but on days when I have like. One client meeting in the morning, and that’s it. I’ll usually work off and on throughout the day, so I’m really bad at sticking to a routine. Um, so I might work from like 9:00 AM to 1:00 PM and then take a break from one to three, then work again from three to seven, then take a break, and then work again from nine to 11, right?

[00:19:56] So that’s like 10 hours of productive work over the course of 14 hours in a day. And then other days I might work straight from 8:00 AM to noon and take an hour break and then work from one to 5:00 PM and be done for the day. So I wish I could tell you I had a really great work routine down, but I don’t, it varies so much for me.

[00:20:18] But in terms of hours worked, I would say my business is currently very similar to a regular nine to five job. Um, which again, like I said, is not, that’s not a terrible thing, and I know that there are a lot of people who would love to have a business like that, but that brings me to the future of my business.

[00:20:41] So before I go any further, let me just say that I am grateful for my business and I am so, so grateful. For my clients. All the clients that I’ve worked with in my business so far have really been great. I’ve enjoyed most of the work that I’ve done, um, at, you know, like with anything, they’re always certain tasks that I don’t love to do, but I’ve enjoyed most of the work and all of the clients and I have very much appreciated all of the experience and the new things that I’ve gotten to learn.

[00:21:16] It’s all been amazing and. I feel like the way my business has been going is not sustainable for me long term. I’m finishing up the last of my project work, so things should get a little bit more calm once that’s all done and I can just focus on my retainer clients and I don’t plan on dropping my retainer clients in the near future.

[00:21:45] But now that I know what it feels like for me to be at capacity with clients and how much money I was able to make, you know, being at that capacity. I realize how important it’s going to be for me to create more scalable offerings, whether that’s digital products, service packages that are delivered, you know, the same way to every client, every time, like the IP day or something.

[00:22:10] And a really big reason for that is because I’m currently the only way that my business makes money. My business’s revenue is directly tied to my hours and my ability to show up and to do the work, which there’s nothing inherently wrong with. Like I said, um, I know plenty of people who would love to have a business like that, and I know plenty of OBMs, um, and virtual assistants who have.

[00:22:41] Uh, some of them have been guests on the podcast who have, or have at some point had a similar business model to what I have now, and many people love it because it provides flexibility for them to work, you know, largely on their own schedule from wherever they want and, you know, be able to work their schedule around their family time, around their kids, around whatever.

[00:23:09] And I also love that about my business, and I love that with retainer clients, I have to do virtually no marketing. That is an amazing part of having retainer clients because unless I drop or lose a retainer client, then I don’t have to go out and find new ones. They just pay me the same amount every month and it’s, it’s very consistent.

[00:23:34] It’s very predictable. And from my experience, retainer clients tend to stick around for many months, sometimes years, and I love that about my current business model. It’s fairly flexible, it’s simple and it requires little to no marketing. But what I don’t love is that if I decide to take a week off during the month and I can’t make up.

[00:23:58] That time, like in the, in the rest of the month, if my schedule is just too packed and I can’t, you know, switch things around so that I still get the normal number of hours, then I don’t make as much money. Because typically what I do is I offer a discount on my retainers if they’re hour based and I expect to take off a week or more during the month.

[00:24:20] Right. So what I’m saying is that I would prefer a business model where I can take time off. Like truly unplugged time away with zero work without having to dip into my savings account or worrying about how I’m gonna pay the bills. I started out in this business doing retainer clients and project-based work.

[00:24:46] Now I’m switching to just retainer clients and the next iteration of my business that I’m trying to communicate here is it’s gonna be retainer clients plus some undetermined, scalable offering, like I said, probably a digital product of some sort. That’s still, um, what I have the most ideas for and what I would really like to do.

[00:25:13] So I’m taking inspiration from guests like Casey Ackerman, who started out with retainer clients and then narrowed down on click up with v I P days, of course, and templates. And also Adrian Johnston, who built a wildly profitable business by raising her rates for her clients and scaling with an online course.

[00:25:38] So I’m taking after some of those guests, which by the way, definitely go listen to those episodes if you haven’t already. But unlike retainer work, these types of offerings, courses, templates, v i p days, all require marketing to bring in new leads and customers. And I’ve never been great at marketing and selling.

[00:26:03] So that’s gonna be a big focus for me this year, is learning the skills and the strategy of marketing, but in an ethical way. So part of the reason that I’ve never been great at marketing before is because I’ve always. Just felt like marketing was sleazy. The way that I saw it done online, it, it just felt disingenuous and it felt manipulative.

[00:26:31] So this year I’m learning from Lexi Merri about designing products that people actually need and selling them in a way that’s ethical and doesn’t use the scarcity marketing tactics that we’re all used to seeing online, like fake countdown timers and fake program caps and things like that. Um, Lexi was actually a guest on season one of the podcast.

[00:26:55] She is a launch strategist by a trade, and her episode is about how to launch your first online course in the simplest way possible. So again, go listen to Lexi’s episode if you haven’t already. So in summary, the next iteration of my business is going to be.

[00:27:15] Serving and maintaining my current retainer clients while building and selling my first scalable offering, probably a digital product of some sort. And that’s it for my business update. Um, I’ve been full-time in my business now for 10 months and. Man, I feel like I’ve learned a lot about business and about my industry and really about myself and what I want, and.

[00:27:47] Yeah, I really appreciate you listening. I hope that this was helpful for you in some way today. I know it was a little rambly. I kind of, I appreciate your listening ear because I feel like part of this was just me processing everything that’s happened in my business and, you know, processing through, um, how, where I’ve come from and what’s going on and what I wanna do next.

[00:28:12] So I hope it was also helpful for you in some way and. At the very least, I just, I hope it encourages you to get out there and start the business that you’ve been dreaming of. So yeah.

[00:28:24] I hope you got something out of today’s show. If you’re enjoying the show, don’t forget to follow, subscribe, and leave us a review if you feel so inclined. That would be much appreciated. Thanks so much for being here, and I will see you next time.

[00:28:38]

Note: This transcript was automatically generated and may include typos.

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Dollar Sprout Podcast, where it’s all about building a business that offers consistent income and flexibility so you can live life on your terms. And now your host, Megan Robinson.

Introduction

[00:00:18] Megan: Welcome back to The Dollars Found Podcast. Thanks so much for being here with us today. Our guest today is Adrian Johnson, who is a freelance presentation designer and whose clients include household names.

[00:00:32] You may have heard of a couple of them, um, companies like Samsung, Microsoft Meta, you know, small little businesses. Um, Adrian shares with us today how she built a wildly profitable service business as an introvert with a strong aversion to networking and cold calling, which. I can relate to, can’t most of us relate to that.

[00:00:56] Adrian did say after our call that this was one of the best podcast interviews she’s ever done. And I don’t say that to brag on me because I’m definitely not the world’s greatest podcast host. I think it was all because Adrian had so many good and interesting things to say, and her story is just so compelling.

[00:01:17] Um, so you’ll learn a lot today. You’ll learn the marketing strategy that worked best for Adrian in her business, in building her business to over $300,000 as an introvert in a way that didn’t require her to get on sales calls or feel like she was constantly selling and pitching herself. You’ll also hear about the epiphany that Adrian had early on in her business that really pushed her to raise her rates.

[00:01:44] She talks a little bit about how she avoids sales calls and still lands huge corporate clients. So what she does, sort of, instead of a sales call, uh, and why her niche is so wildly profitable, because as you’ll hear in this episode, it is a very, very profitable business model. Um, and she gives a few tips for how you can find your own profitable niche.

[00:02:08] So yeah, I’m just so excited you have so much to look forward to in this episode. So I will let you get to it. Please welcome Adrian Johnston.

Interview

[00:02:18] Adrienne Johnston: Hi, Megan Grip. Glad to be here.

[00:02:20] Megan: Yeah, great to have you. Awesome. Um, so would you mind to just introduce yourself a little bit, tell the audience what it is you do in your business and what products or services that you offer.

[00:02:33] Adrienne Johnston: Absolutely. Uh, so I am a freelance presentation designer. That’s the main component of my business. So I help businesses like Microsoft, Samsung, Marriott build their presentation decks in PowerPoint specifically. Um, and then I have another component of my business that is a course for other presentation designers who are maybe really good in PowerPoint and with design, but are struggling on the business side of that, how to get clients and how to retain them.

[00:03:00] And so, uh, that’s really my business in a nutshell. It’s all centered around PowerPoint, as shocking as that may be for a lot of my, a lot of people.

[00:03:08] Megan: That’s very cool though. Yeah, I follow, um, I don’t know if, I love people who have like, Specific, very specific offerings. You know, I follow this, uh, lady on TikTok who is like the, I forget her name, but she is like, her entire business is built around Excel and building Excel spreadsheets and I love that so much.

[00:03:27] Adrienne Johnston: It’s Katherine something. Yeah, she’s amazing.

[00:03:30] Megan: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s great. Um, so did I hear you say that you have Microsoft and Marriott or like companies that have been clients in your business?

[00:03:41] Adrienne Johnston: Yeah, regular client, Samsung. It’s really remarkable. Um, so what I see from my perspective is that a lot of these like really big companies and like Microsoft, right, they built the product.

[00:03:53] They have their product people that manage the product who are not designers. They have their designers who are more traditionally trained in the Adobe Suite, and so they don’t have this overlap. There are some internal resources is my understanding from a lot of my clients. Who tend to be kind of at the executive level, but they’re, you know, running really tight schedules.

[00:04:12] They’re like, we’re going into a meeting with the board tomorrow, and so we need this turned around quickly. And they can’t really fight for some of those internal resources that even exist, so they just outsource it. So it’s really neat to like this really interesting niche that so many designers and we all laugh about it, right?

[00:04:31] It’s PowerPoint is not a design tool except that. People need to use PowerPoint and it needs to look good. So it kind of has to become a design tool over time. And that’s what’s happening as people’s expectations, I think, around social media. And you’ve got tools like Canva now allow people who maybe don’t have great design skills to do better than they ever have been able to do before.

[00:04:52] And so expectations are rising and you can’t go into a meeting anymore with the death by PowerPoint, bulleted slides and your stock graphics with watermarks on them.

[00:05:01] Megan: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that’s, that’s so true. Uh, yeah. I have definitely, even using Canva though, I feel like my design skills are so lacking. Like even using a Canva template, if I don’t use it exactly the way that it’s set up, it’s like, I’m just pitiful.

[00:05:21] I’m completely lost. So I, I want to know how you found out about, I guess, this niche, but also like, how do you get clients like Microsoft and Marriott and Samsung? Like, I was not expecting you to say that.

[00:05:39] Adrienne Johnston: Yeah. So, um, let’s start with how I get clients. Um, I invested in SEO in my business really early on, so, um, I’m a huge introvert.

[00:05:50] I’m a talker, but I’m an introvert, so I will never go out and seek the need to interact with other people. Which, you know, when I went into my business, I really thought was, you can’t have your business if you’re not a salesperson and you’re not an extrovert. Um, but I was really committed to, I didn’t wanna be in an office environment anymore, and I wanted to have more control of who I worked with and, um, my schedule and how much money I made, all of it.

[00:06:14] And so I got on Upwork of all random things, and that was really how I discovered presentation design. So I was, I was doing everything under the sun, like Shopify sites and building websites and changing swatches on fabric curtains. Like, it, it was crazy. And I wasn’t efficient at anything. So my background’s marketing and operation.

[00:06:34] So the way I think is both from a design, but it’s also from a process standpoint, right? And so I was like, I’m able to get clients. I, I’m able to do the work, but me trying to learn every single thing isn’t gonna work, right? If I’m just one person, I really have to like, niche down and focus on. What I can do well and what pays really well.

[00:06:54] And so when I looked at it, the, the projects that I was winning the most easily because there was so little competition and that paid really well for presentations. Um, and when I really dug into that, it’s, so many designers won’t use PowerPoint because it’s not the, but so many clients want it, but the clients who want it also want it for things tied to revenue generally.

[00:07:16] So pitch decks and sales decks. So they’ve got a marketing dollars to spend and so they have better budgets than someone who is, you know, maybe just trying to get graphics up on their website and things like that. So I just really quickly streamlined, um, I was about three months into my business and I said, okay, this is where I need to be and where I can play and really stand out.

[00:07:38] But now how do I become an expert in this? And I said, I’m never gonna go out and network. I just won’t do it. There will be no business. So what do I have to do to make this work for me? And I was doing some research, um, around kind of how to be an expert and I Googled freelance presentation designer to see who other freelance presentation designers were.

[00:08:02] And I found one guy on this page and his website was, it was okay, right? But it was really highly SEO optimized. But I was like, he must be like an expert in the industry. And now, five years later, I realize that he’s not really at all. He just knew how to optimize his page. Um, and that’s not a slight on him at all.

[00:08:20] But, uh, there were a bunch of other pages on that site and when I was looking at them, they were ranking for this, this term, but they weren’t freelance presentation designers. They just happened to have the right code on their website. And so I said, well, I can do that. So I bought a course on seo, which ended up being far too robust.

[00:08:38] It was an amazing course, um, built for bloggers, um, and being way more than I needed, right? They’re trying to get millions of page views and I need to get a couple of hundred a month with keywords that are not. Very difficult to rank for. So within three months of optimizing my website, um, and building some back links to it, I was ranking on the first page for Freelance Presentation designer.

[00:08:59] And over the years, you know, I’ve continued to get back links and kind of continued to manage that. It’s not a lot of work, but those leads keep coming in. And what I rank for continues to expand and into more d more difficult keywords now. Um, and so it’s been really fantastic as an introvert who’s never gonna go out and get business to really, um, I’m also what I call a servant spirit.

[00:09:22] Like I love helping people, but I don’t ever wanna ask people for things. Um, and so it’s really fantastic for me because people come to me and they say, Hey, can you help me? And you say Yes. And it’s big name brands, right? I mean, there are plenty of smaller brands and smaller companies, but there are people who I always laugh too.

[00:09:39] Like, they’re like me, right? These aren’t people who are going to a network or going to LinkedIn and saying, Hey, who would you use for a freelance presentation designer? They’re people who are gonna go Google it. Cause I don’t wanna bother somebody else. They’re my people. And so I found a way to attract my people to me in a way that was really comfortable for me.

[00:09:56] Um, and what I always tell people about that is, you know, there’s such advantages to being in that position where I have three or four leads a day. I mean, far more than I can manage. So I have like a network of people that I refer leads to. Um, but that ability, I got a message from TikTok and I was like, well, I’m taking this one right?

[00:10:16] Like it’s TikTok. You know, it’s, and not all of them pan like TikTok didn’t end up panning out. Um, but a lot of them do and like big name brands that need help and you get in there and you’re helping one executive and it’s always funny because they’re like, oh, you know, we don’t wanna tell anybody about you cuz you know what they’re competing with internally is the resources.

[00:10:35] So they don’t wanna be competing with that with their freelancers they found. Um, but they always end up like making introductions and you just kind of expand out from there. Or clients, uh, go to new companies, they get hired someplace else and they call you up and say, Hey, I’m here now. And so you now have those relationships as well in these new companies.

[00:10:51] Megan: Wow, that’s amazing. First of all, that you were able to find a way as somebody who’s introverted and doesn’t like to network, which I can super empathize with because I am the same way. I’ve talked about this on several episodes of this podcast where I’m like, ah, I need, I know I need to be doing more like cold outreach or whatever.

[00:11:10] Cuz that’s what so many people say. Um, but yeah, and I just like love that you found a way to. Get business that doesn’t involve networking and doing the things that you don’t like to do. Um, and this is off topic for where I planned to go for this next part of this conversation, but I wanna know, like, are there other things that you’ve done, uh, in your business to optimize for that?

[00:11:35] Like for your personality, your introverted nature, um, for example, like do you do sales calls with potential clients or have you found a different way? Um, yeah, anything that comes to mind there.

[00:11:50] Adrienne Johnston: Yeah. So, you know, I think, and the side effect of the SEO that I didn’t anticipate early on was that I was gonna be attracting people like me, right?

[00:11:57] Who didn’t wanna bother, people who weren’t talkers, who, you know, they don’t wanna get a phone call all the time. Um, so that was huge and an unintended benefit, but I would say that, um, You know, the whole way I approach it is my website is just built out for like, here are all the questions. Here’s what I can do.

[00:12:15] You know, let me know if you wanna talk. But when they send me a message, I respond back With rates and timing, right? We don’t need to get on a sales call. I don’t need, I’m not gonna sell you on anything. Like this is what it costs and this is what my timeline can accommodate. If that works for you, let me know.

[00:12:31] And I send them a link to my Calendly so that they can book a time to chat. But at that point, it’s already, there’s no selling you on the value of me, right? Like, you’ve got my testimonials, you can see my body of work, um, you know, I’ve been responsive to your message. So, you know, at that point it’s a matter of let’s get on a phone call if you are okay with all of that.

[00:12:49] Um, and so it’s not a sales call at that point. It really becomes an informational, Hey, here’s how I work. What do you have? Would you like to share what you’re working on and see if I can help? Um, and it really becomes a lot more consultative. Than a sales call. So that’s super huge. Um, and I would also say just social media.

[00:13:08] I’m not a big social media person. I don’t know if it’s somewhat age. When I was younger, I was all over it. Like I was out, I was doing things, you know, um, and I’m just, I don’t do that anymore. Um, and I don’t enjoy it for my business because it does feel so salesy. Um, and it feels, so I’d much rather have that one-on-one connection than like this kind of, I’m just talking to anybody and everybody.

[00:13:31] Um, and so I have a lot of that scheduled so that I have that social media presence and I’ll respond to messages of people comment. Um, but I don’t use it for lead generation though. I have gotten messages through that platform, through those platforms just as a function of being active. But what’s really interesting, the number one people, the number one place people click off of my site after they’ve gotten to it, is to go to my Instagram.

[00:13:54] So I’ve gotta keep that active. Right? And I think as part of it, as, you know, you find a website and you’re like, how active is this? Right? When like, is this person really around versus when they go to your social media, they can see that you’re like still doing this. Right? Um, and it kind of builds more social proof.

[00:14:12] So I would say those are the big things. But in many ways, I mean, I, I’ve built my whole business around kind of what I wanted. And there was this time period, I was about nine months into my business and I, it was like six o’clock at night and I still had a ton of work to do and I wasn’t gonna get paid wet well on this project.

[00:14:30] And it was a client who was kind of needy. He was one of those, like, you’re on version 30 of a document and you’re like, Ugh. It’s just painful. I remember going, you know, you used to blame the job, right? It was the bosses. It was, it was always something else. But you’re the lowest common denominator in this situation.

[00:14:49] So at some point you have to realize you keep building this around you and so you have to build what you want. And so I took care of that client’s stuff that weekend and then told him like it wasn’t gonna be a good fit and that we should move on. And I’m a really big proponent of like, when you’re running your own business and you want it to be something that you enjoy, you have to make, like be really diligent about that.

[00:15:14] And so you don’t always know, right? Like when you meet a client for the first time, if it’s gonna be the right fit, you generally kind of get a sense. But every now and again, somebody slips through and you have to be, I think, authentic with yourself and with them to say, Hey, we are not the right fit, right?

[00:15:29] I’m not enjoying this work. If I dread every time you send me a message, I’m gonna take longer to respond to your phone calls. I’m gonna take longer to get to your work just cuz I don’t wanna do it. And that’s not fair to you. Um, and the outcomes that you want and need. And so, um, since I’ve been really diligent about that, and then just really diligent about, excuse me, um, you know, kind of the timing and the compensation and all of it, like, is it what I want?

[00:15:53] Um, does it create the lifestyle that I set out to create? And if it doesn’t, then it’s just not the right fit. And there’s no hard feelings in that. And, you know, we can go our separate ways, um, kind of get them where they need to be, solve whatever problems we currently have on the table, and then make a referral to somebody.

[00:16:09] I know plenty of people in the presentation design space, and so I’m always like, oh, you know, I’m a sensitive person. So like, if someone’s just kind of snippy or like, not what I would consider kind of warm. So they’re also usually people who are introverts, but they’re also nice introverts. You know, they’re like warm pe introverts.

[00:16:27] Then I’m like, Hey, I know somebody who totally is not gonna be phased by this in the way that I’m like, Ooh, do they like me? Did they do, did I do a good enough job? Like, and other people who are just like, it’s fine. Like, I don’t, it doesn’t even hit my radar, you know? And that’s a better fit for them.

[00:16:41] Megan: Yeah, I, it’s, I’m, I love hearing you talk about this, like building the business around what it is that you want, the lifestyle that you want.

[00:16:49] Obviously we talk about that a lot on this podcast. Um, but it’s something that I’ve also been thinking about really in the last couple of weeks in my own business because, um, I just went full-time in, in my new version of my business, um, like a few months ago. And a couple weeks ago I was staring at my calendar and I had like four packed days of meetings.

[00:17:14] Four out of five weekdays were just packed with meetings. And I was laying in bed looking at my calendar for like, that Monday morning. And I was, I was just so sad because I do not like having that many meetings. It’s exhausting for me. And I had that thought of like, I. How did I get here? How did I, like, I thought I was building the business that I wanted, but apparently I’m not.

[00:17:37] How did I get here and what do I do to, you know, turn it around? So, I’m curious, like, when you were in that position with that client, like how, how did you, how were you able to make that decision to do something different? What did you have to have in place in terms of like, I don’t know, maybe revenue in your business, um, at the time, or like, what, what allowed you to make that decision and how quickly did it happen?

[00:18:05] Adrienne Johnston: Yeah, so, you know, when I started, I, we talked about, I was on Upwork, um, that was January of 2018. I was working probably 80 hours a week and making like $5,000 a month, which not terrible. But obviously way out of balance, especially considering I was probably working 70 hours a week in my full-time job and I was at one 30, so closer to 10, eight, probably eight by the time you’d plan clear taxes and everything.

[00:18:30] And so, but I was working just as much, but making less, right? That wasn’t gonna work out for me. That’s not what I was trying to build. And so, um, I did the SEO thing in April was when I realized I really needed to hone in on presentation design. By that July, I had started to get leads through my website, but by September, um, all of those leads were starting to close and ramp up.

[00:18:54] And so I went from those $5,000 months working 80 hours to, I was still working in my business right on the s e o and getting back links and, and really I was writing blog posts. I was doing all these things to establish authority, um, in those summer months, but my revenue dropped down to like $2,000 a month.

[00:19:12] And then by September I got up to $10,000 months by January of 2019. So a year in, I was starting to hit $15,000 months. And aside from like Christmas, I don’t drop below that. Like I have to try to, to not hit that. Um, and so what I think about that, that was, you know, a lot of people didn’t have, wouldn’t have had the luxury I had, which was my husband.

[00:19:37] We both had very comparable jobs and we made good money and so we had dual incomes. And so when I said I’m really miserable, he said, it’s fine. Like we can figure it out. Like you do what you need to do. And so I definitely had that luxury in those months that I think if I had been the single and one income, I never probably would’ve been able to take the leap.

[00:19:57] I would’ve had to do the side hustle route instead of just being like, I’m done. I’m quitting my job, which is more dramatic. I gave them four months lead time. People are always like, you just walked out and no, it’s not that dramatic. Um, But then I also, you know, in that kind of, those, that three to six month period when I was doing a lot less work, more on the business, that wasn’t revenue generating though obviously was an amazing investment to make long term.

[00:20:23] I probably wouldn’t have been able to be as strict there, which probably would’ve actually slowed my growth. Um, because what I did is I said, Hey, in this period I’m not working for less than a hundred dollars an hour. And what I quickly realized is the a hundred dollars an hour, um, kind of brought up a lot of pain points for other individuals around how much money they made and things like that.

[00:20:41] And so that’s when I went to project-based pricing. Um, that was easier for people to kind of quantify and say, okay, if I’m doing 15 slides, and I think at the time I was like $33 a slide. Um, and for context now I’m at 75. I have students who are way past that. So it’s, there’s quite the span there. But, um, at $33 a slide and 10 slides, you know, I can say I know exactly how much that’s gonna cost me versus hourly.

[00:21:05] People feel like, okay, but is it three hours or is it 30? I don’t, I don’t know what to expect on that hourly rate. So I really got really diligent about that and said, I’m not working for less than that. If not this time needs to be spent on blog posts and Maio doing all that work. So I think that, you know, to really get to that position, it was, I had the backup of my husband and then, um, kind of knowing that there was this long-term plan coming, but by September when I was starting to have, like the client in particular that Friday night, my first client, literally my first freelance client, right?

[00:21:41] You know, and you’re so excited for, to do six hours of work for $200, you’re just like, yes, someone wants to hire me. So thrilled. But just nine months later you’re like, I’m, you know, making a couple of dollars an hour on your thing, doing 30 revisions, which for any designer is just painful to keep tweaking the same thing over and over.

[00:22:02] Um, and so, you know, I kind of got there and it’s. He didn’t fit in anymore, he was at the bottom. And another thing I’m really, really passionate about with my students and everything is you’re gonna start out in one place and you’re gonna end up in another. And hopefully that happens quickly if you do the right things and make the right investments in your business.

[00:22:20] And so you have to kind of go into it knowing that like, I may charge you $30 an hour and in six months I’m gonna be at a hundred dollars an hour. And you’re gonna have to have those conversations. And it’s only fair to the client. Right? And the client in particular for me, I knew that he was very fiscally responsible and conservative, and that’s just where he needed to be in his business.

[00:22:41] Um, and there’s no fault in that. But that wasn’t where I was in my business anymore. And so it worked out for a period of time for him. And, um, There have been times that he’s come back to me and said, I just need you to do it, and I know what your rate is and just, but I need you to do it because I don’t have time, or I don’t, like, can’t find anybody else to do this thing for me.

[00:22:58] Um, but that’s not the case for him on a day-to-day basis. Right? He can find somebody to do it cheaper and that’s more comfortable for him and for his business. Um, long story short, I just think that you have to be really diligent about raising rates and like giving your clients the opportunity to compete with new clients as you’re raising those rates.

[00:23:15] Um, and they can choose and say, and I always, the way I I frame raising your rates is, Hey, you know, effective, especially now we’re coming up at the end of the year, uh, starting in January. You know, I, my rates are going up to this. Um, let me know if that works for your budget. If not, I’d be happy to make some introductions to other people who may be a better fit in terms of budget and who I trust, right?

[00:23:38] And so then it’s not a matter of selling them on it, right? It’s, you can either say that I’m worth it and or it fits into your budget or not. And nine times outta 10 clients come back and say, Yeah, that’s fine. It’s not worth it to them to try and go source somebody else. Maybe have to go through five people, miss some deadlines and all of that.

[00:23:56] So, um, but having that conversation allows the new clients or the old clients who probably love you, they’ve been with you for years, like to compete with those new clients who are paying higher rates now.

[00:24:08] Megan: Yeah, absolutely. I never asked you this before, but um, what is the story of like, what you were doing?

[00:24:15] I know you said you, you quit your job cuz you just weren’t happy. Um, what was that job? What were you doing before you started in your business and, and what was kind of like, I mean, I guess it sounds like maybe the motivation was that. You didn’t like your job and you wanted to do something you liked, but what’s the story there?

[00:24:34] Adrienne Johnston: My, my background’s kind of weird, but I promise it all does come together. I majored in chemistry. I thought I was gonna be a pediatrician. Um, as it turned out in college, I very quickly realized, um, yours truly does not have the stamina for anything less than eight to nine hours of sleep a night. So getting through residency in med school was never gonna be an option.

[00:24:52] Just couldn’t do. And then as an introvert, like what was I even thinking? That what an exhausting job. And I only ever had one child. So like, clearly maybe pediatrics wasn’t the way to go either. Um, but I worked like three years in, I mean, I was almost done with my chemistry degree when I really realized that that was the case.

[00:25:11] And my advisor said, well, you could go to law school. And I was like, oh, that doesn’t sound appealing at all. Um, I did some undergraduate research and so I was in the lab and I was like, I really just don’t wanna be in the lab. Even as an introvert, it was the same five people every day doing the exact same thing.

[00:25:26] It wasn’t enough stimulation. But it’s a really process driven thing. And incidentally, where I first use PowerPoint for my lab reports, and I always say I should have known that I was more of a designer and I still struggled to consider myself a creative because of that analytical background. Um, I spent more time making my lab reports look pretty than caring about what the results were, but they had to look good, you know?

[00:25:48] Um, so after school I started working for Starbucks, very process and marketing driven. And there, um, I was working at the Starbucks at Tech Square in Atlanta. So we had a bunch of startup founders, you know, coming through every morning for coffee. And so I just got to know a lot of people, um, and eventually was recruited to work for one of those companies.

[00:26:07] I was a healthcare startup. Um, it was, this was 2007, 2008. So during the recession it was like, not great times, but it just happened to be the perfect market and they had capitalized on it perfectly and it was just like riding a rocket ship in the midst of everything else kind of crumbling around you, you know?

[00:26:24] So it was really rapid growth. Um, And I was there for six years. And then I went to work for a spinoff of that company, um, which never really got traction. And then from there, I went to work for the wealth management firm, uh, the BC firm that had, uh, invested in the first healthcare startup because I’d known them for a really long time.

[00:26:46] As it turned out, and I didn’t know this, I’d never had an experience before, um, in a job where I couldn’t make it work. You know, I, it didn’t even occur to me that you couldn’t just make anything work. Um, and it was, so, it was a wealth management firm. So it’s financial services, it’s very conservative, unlike your startup space, right?

[00:27:07] Which is like fun and trips to Vegas. And, uh, it, it was conservative, right? You didn’t spend money. There was nothing. Um, effectively the way those wealth management firms make money as they’re. Taking a percentage of the gains from their clients, right? So you can’t be flashy with that. Cause some people say, we’re paying you too much.

[00:27:26] So the office environment and dynamics were just more conservative. And then, um, the other thing that I didn’t appreciate going into it is I don’t really care about finance. And so I was just like, oh, it’s an operational job. Like I care about clients and that’ll be enough. But so much of it was strategy around, hey, I, you know, how are, you know, we executing and getting more clients and doing all these things, which I learned a lot, but I just realized I was, I’d been there three years and I realized I was working myself like to the bone and I.

[00:27:57] I was like, I need to get my C F P. I don’t know why I thought that I needed to do that, um, in the role that I was in, but I was like, to be really serious about this, and I opened up the book, I got to like page seven and I was like, I just don’t care. And it was really this moment I can remember sitting at my desk in my office this epiphany, like, I just don’t care.

[00:28:15] Like they were amazing people. It was certainly maybe not the best office environment for me. Um, but there were also other things, you know, I kind of look back going on in my life at that time. Right. My daughter, um, she was four or five. I remember there was one day, like I had a meeting I had to be at and she was sick and I had to go pick her up and bring her back to the office with me.

[00:28:37] And I was just like, this just kind of, you know, nothing’s really working here. Everything was kind of broken all at once. And I think that, you know, ultimately led to. The decision, it was time to leave. And I met with an old mentor, my former boss, and he said, you haven’t been happy there ever. Like, you always thought you were gonna figure it out at some point.

[00:28:55] And he’s like, but maybe it’s just time to like call it. And I was like, I can’t just quit my job. And he’s like, you would make it work. Like you could figure it out. You won’t be unemployed that long. You don’t work. Contribute to 401K for a few months, you’ll be fine. And uh, I came home that night and I said to my husband, I’m gonna think about it for a few days, but like, I think I just need to like rip the bandaid off and like quit.

[00:29:17] And he said, you know, I support whatever you think you need to do. And I was like, well, it’s financial services. And so for people who in that aren’t in that industry, um, especially on the client side, you know, you come in and you say, I’m quitting. Like th they walk you out immediately and send your stuff home to you later.

[00:29:34] Like it is not, I wasn’t in that client facing role and so it didn’t end up being that way, but I was like, there’s a chance that that happens. I think it’s slim. Um, but we ended up working out a four month transition plan and they were really great to me and still they’re a client now. Um, an amazing group of people.

[00:29:51] Yeah. Like they’ve been so supportive. And it’s funny cuz I was like, ah, my rates are probably too high. Cuz I knew what they were paying people and they were like, no, like we just need to get it done and we know you’ll get it done. And you’re like, okay. Um, so like a really amazing group of people and it’s been amazing to be able to, you know, continue to work with them and the way that was really meant for me to work with them.

[00:30:12] Megan: I’ve had that happen too with two former, uh, employers who ended up being clients in my business. And I think that that’s something that, um, I don’t know is talked about enough, but like, is a possibility. Just cuz you leave your job doesn’t mean that you have to leave on bad terms, you know, unless there are, sometimes it doesn’t work out.

[00:30:32] But like, my first and some of the best clients in my business have been businesses that used to employ me. Um, so yeah. That’s amazing. I’m glad that worked out well for you. And uh, also just very funny because I too was in, uh, my, my degree was in finance with a focus in financial planning. So I, the grand plan was to be a cfp, you know, and I had that revelation like my.

[00:31:03] S I don’t know, senior first semester of my senior year of school, I was just like, I really don’t care about, I don’t wanna do this. You know, like, I don’t wanna help people plan for retirement. That’s just not what I wanna do. Um, so yeah, I mean, here we are however many years later, that didn’t work out for me.

[00:31:22] So that’s just funny.

[00:31:24] Adrienne Johnston: A lot of people think of that like as a failure, and it’s just, I was talking to my old business coach the other day, um, and she was like, it’s funny how you’ve been kind of circling for years, right? On like, wanting to have like the flexibility and the freedom and start your own business, but you never could find the right way to do it.

[00:31:40] Um, and the right, and she’s like, it’s, it’s amazing to see the journey. And I think so many people think, oh, I failed at this, or I wasn’t thoughtful enough. I mean, you’re just, we’re always getting to know each ourselves better and better. And part of like the stops and starts is, That wasn’t the right thing for me, but what did I learn from it?

[00:31:56] What do I take to the next thing to get closer to where the right place for me really is?

[00:32:01] Megan: Yeah, I totally agree and I have, I’ve had so many failures, uh, many of which I’ve shared on this podcast, but like, I didn’t do financial planning, but I thought maybe financial coaching would be a better fit. Turns out I didn’t like that either.

[00:32:15] Did a bunch of different stuff in my business and yeah, I just, like, I’ve been also kind of circling, figuring out what is gonna be the business idea that I stick with for like six years, you know, five or six years. And I’m finally at a point in my business where like I feel decent despite like not having the ideal schedule right now.

[00:32:39] Like I feel decent about what I’m building. Um, and it took five to six years to learn what that would be and to kind of, Figure it out. But here it is. Um, and yeah, that’s okay. Failures are part of the process. Um, I do wanna go back to what you said. Uh, you were talking about being a chemistry major, I think, and how you never considered yourself a creative because you did have that analytical side to you.

[00:33:11] And I don’t even know that I have a question around this. I just kind of wanna hear you talk more about it cuz I feel the same way. You know, like there are these two sides of me that exist that I feel like we’re told can’t exist in one person. You know, like I am very analytical. I love spreadsheets, I love numbers, I love systems and processes.

[00:33:33] Like I love that side of what I do. In my business as like an operations manager, but I also love writing poetry and like being creative and yeah. I don’t know, I just kind of wanna hear your thoughts.

[00:33:50] Adrienne Johnston: Yeah. Have you, um, ever done like any of the personality tests, um, disk, Myers, Brigg, all of them. You’ve done them all.

[00:34:00] So on disk, how do you, do you remember what your ranking was or like were you…

[00:34:06] Megan: I think I was a high S and high I maybe. Okay. I can’t remember which one was higher though.

[00:34:14] Adrienne Johnston: And it, it almost doesn’t matter, but they’re both high. Yeah. And so they’re almost competing. Mm-hmm. So I’m a high I high C, which are like opposite ends, and it’s very interesting.

[00:34:26] I’ll send you a list. Uh, My old business coach, uh, she has a, a podcast called the Disco Chicks. I’ll send you a link to it. Cause we were talking about, she asked me to guess, she was like, you have a weird profile. And it’s, but there is this always struggle in my head between how high level do I go and how detailed do I go?

[00:34:43] And so I struggle e even sometimes like trying to articulate myself. Cause I’m like, well that’s too much detail. And so I’m always kind of like readjusting as I go, but it creates this busyness in my mind that it can be distracting. And I, I think it contributes to my, like, silliness when I’m talking cuz I just like start, you know, using my hands and I’m like, there’s a lot happening and it’s like trying to get all that energy out.

[00:35:08] But, um, I think in general, like for me, I guess I was always a little bit artist artistic. Like I liked coloring and drawing and sewing and all those things. As a kid, I. You know, my mom said, you need to be a doctor. I grew up in a small town and you were a doctor, a lawyer or a realtor, like if you wanted to make this money, she was like, you’ll be a doctor.

[00:35:30] And so like that was really kind of just the path I took. And because of that, I followed this really analytical path. I went to an engineering school. Um, everything’s very process driven, but my brain does actually work that way. And so, you know, the kind of mixing of the two and realizing I was, I was learning Photoshop on the weekends, I was like my hobby.

[00:35:51] But both things there and they, they coexist. And I still struggle to say I’m creative cuz I even think that the way that I approach design is very structured and process driven and methodical. I see something and I’m like, I like that. Why do I like that? Let’s break that down and figure out why that works and why it doesn’t.

[00:36:10] And when I go to design, like a slide for a client, like I, what is the point of this slide, right? Like there’s not just like trying to make it look pretty, it’s. What is the main point and how am I gonna convey that and then how do I structure all the content that they wanna have on this slide around that to make sure that that’s the focus.

[00:36:28] So it’s very engineering approach to design that. I dunno that a lot of designers, I think they’re creative and so they can approach it without maybe being that like analytical and process driven about it. Yeah. And cause they just feel where works. They don’t have to break it down that way.

[00:36:45] Megan: Right. Yeah.

[00:36:46] I’m so glad to hear you talk about that though, because I feel the same way. I’m actually, I’m working on an article right now. It’s the first kind of more creative article that I’ve written cuz I used to write a lot of SEO content, you know, with Dollar Sprout and with, you know, other websites. Um, and so I’m working on the first more creative article that I’ve done in.

[00:37:08] A long time. And I’m finding that like I’m almost enjoying creating the outline and the structure of the information more than the creative writing. I mean, I’m enjoying them both, but like, it’s just the way that my, yeah, the way that my brain works and like even doing something creative, I’m like very structured about it.

[00:37:26] So it’s just nice to hear you talk about that. Thank you for sharing and making me feel a little less crazy. Um, but yeah, I totally think like you can be that way, you can be a creative and an analytical person. Um, a hundred percent. And it sounds like in your business, that’s kind of an advantage.

[00:37:52] Adrienne Johnston: A hundred percent.

[00:37:53] Yes. Yeah. And I think, you know, um, I would say this like I built my business. Around the creative aspects, right? Like, even though I have a course in things, I can’t imagine letting go of, like the creative outlet of doing the design work. Um, I expect at some point that may take a little bit less time. Uh, the design, like doing the design work, you just have to kind of like feel it out as you go.

[00:38:20] But I can’t imagine letting go of that. But I get so much of that analytical stuff right, in QuickBooks and like, oh, the reconciliation isn’t working, so now I need to go step by step through this detail and figure out what happened. Um, or, you know, the strategy of like, what’s the next thing to do and how to grow and scale.

[00:38:37] And so there’s a lot of ways to get that, that aren’t even in the creative side, if that makes sense to, and there are days, there are days I’m like, Ugh, the thought of opening PowerPoint, today’s not a creative day. Today’s an analytic day, right? And just kind of like feeling that out and like trying to work it into your schedule so that you don’t.

[00:38:57] Burnout, right? Everything is all about like, just tap who into who you are, right? Like let it flow to the extent possible. And

[00:39:06] Megan: Okay. I feel like I super buried the lead because I meant to ask you about some metrics in your business early on, but whatever it was that you said in the beginning just took me in a totally different direction.

[00:39:17] So, sorry, I’m all over the place with like questioning. Um, but you talked about like where you were before you started your business and kind of how you got started. Would you mind to share where you are now? Like what does, uh, your revenue look like and what’s the profitability? And you also said that you were comfortable sharing your personal income paid by the business.

[00:39:40] Would you mind to just talk about those numbers a little bit?

[00:39:43] Adrienne Johnston: Absolutely. So, um, in terms of the business, there are two parts, right? There’s my freelance work and then there’s the course part. My freelance work, um, the last couple of years I, at two 40. Um, $240,000 a year total. So roughly 20,000 a month.

[00:40:01] That’s super profitable. Um, let’s see. I’m just looking at the numbers here so that in design services I have $16,000 in expenses, so that’s going, that’s not gonna include my salary, but that’s gonna include design, assets, taxes, that kind of stuff. Um, so you’re talking about like, that’s still over 200,000 net, which is just crazy.

[00:40:28] That can’t be all the taxes, obviously that wouldn’t include, okay, so this is what I’m looking at the numbers year to date. And so that’s not going to include some taxes anyway on the other side, the course side, um, that has made $66,000 this year, but this year has been a slower year. I think, you know, people are a little bit more concerned about the recession and things like that.

[00:40:49] It was, um, up almost a hundred last year, and I’m sorry. It’s at 92 already. This is a different number I’m looking at. So year to date it’s, it’s 92, and then the expenses though, on the course side are $42,000, so it’s way less profitable. I do have, um, an operations manager that is getting up to speed on all of that, so, you know, kind of helping with some of the logistics and answering questions and a lot of the marketing activities.

[00:41:17] Um, and so that’s impacted the profitability of that this year, but I expect that by next year, you know, we’re, we’re seeing the benefits and the upside of that investment. Um, so overall it’s over $300,000 in total revenue. Um, I have an L L C, um, that’s got an S corp election, so I, I am on salary. Um, I pay myself a salary of $60,000 a year, which is kind of in the average of what a presentation designer on staff makes.

[00:41:48] Um, and then the res distributed to me as a, um, Investor, a shareholder of the company. Um, and so that way I don’t have to pay all those freelance taxes. They, the account estimates it saves between 15 and $20,000 in taxes a year. So totally worth it. Um, in terms of total income, I come in right around 200 kind of net after you take out all the expenses and everything.

[00:42:14] Megan: I mean, that’s amazing. That is a wildly profitable business.

[00:42:19] Adrienne Johnston: It is, and it’s funny because it, I always, I’m like, it could be way more wildly profitable if I work tomorrow. So I work on average 25 to 30 hours a week. Um, the course ends up taking more time, um, on top of that. But in terms of like, when I look at my, the freelance side, it’s super highly profitable and flexible.

[00:42:40] Um, again, we’re going through an investment phase in the course, so it’s just kind of a matter of like that time and, and money investment, you know, starting to pick itself back up and offset it, but yeah. Yeah. It’s super huge. And I, you know, I told you I love talking about it because people will send me messages on social media and then they’re like, you’re lying about your revenue.

[00:43:01] And I’m like, I don’t need to lie about it. Like, but I, you know, it’s, I couldn’t fathom that when I was starting, like, I would listen to podcasts like Dollar Sprout and, um, entrepreneurs on Fire and just like listened to years for what other people were doing. And big businesses says small businesses and what, nobody ever talks about profitability, which drives me crazy.

[00:43:23] Um, cause that’s a big deal. There are expenses to running a business, even if it’s just your own salary and taxes. Like, um, and so I’m a big proponent of talking about that because, you know, a third, a third of money outta my business goes to expenses and taxes. Like it just is. But I mean, the reality is, is that it’s still really profitable.

[00:43:42] Um, I’m making almost twice what I made in my full-time job, working way less hours from home. Right. I make the decisions about what I’m gonna do. Culturally, it gave me an opportunity to put my money where my mouth is. Right? Like it’s very easy to judge, you know, when you’re working for other companies and you’re like, oh, why don’t they do this and why don’t they offer this benefit?

[00:44:03] And, and you know, and I’m like, if we’re gonna have a business, like it needs to be able to support having healthcare for people and dental and all of the things, and we’re gonna take time off at Thanksgiving and Christmas. And I was just looking at the calendar. The first, uh, new Year’s is falling on, uh, Sunday.

[00:44:20] So I was like, I plan to come back to work on the second. And I was like, no, we need to observe the first on the Monday so we don’t come back till the third. But like, you have to think through all of those things, you know?

[00:44:30] Megan: Yeah. Yeah. And that’s actually the article that I was talking about earlier is kind of, uh, is about like as basically about how like as a business owner, you get to choose, um, where you invest your, your money and how to like invest your money.

[00:44:47] Uh, In your business to align with your values and you know, like doing, doing business an ethical way, it’s about doing business ethically. Um, and yeah, I think that’s one of the huge perks of having a business is that you do get to choose like, what do you think an ethical business looks like? Or, you know, what does a good business look like?

[00:45:06] And, and that’s what you get to do is the profitability in your business because of your niche. Is it because it’s a B2B business? Like how, what makes this business so profitable?

[00:45:20] Adrienne Johnston: Um, you know, I think on, on the revenue side, you’re able to charge a premium for a couple of reasons. One, so few designers work in PowerPoint, right?

[00:45:32] Cuz they don’t like it. It’s not a design tool. So what you have is, the presentation design industry is remarkable and it’s the first. Design niche I’ve seen that is, so I call it blue ocean, right? It’s so not competitive as a function of the fact that all these really great designers wanna work in these other tools.

[00:45:53] And so in presentation design, you have a lot of presentation designers who maybe aren’t the best designers, but they know PowerPoint is a need. Um, they may struggle to charge premium rates, but maybe not just kind of depending on, they have that expertise, um, that other people don’t. And then, um, the other thing that I think allows for that kind of buffer in the pricing range isn’t just the competition, but it’s the, what are you building?

[00:46:22] There is a very clear revenue tied to, or income, you know, tied to if a pitch deck, if we’re gonna go raise $5 million, we can spend $5,000 on this deck. Right. And so that’s what you’re gonna pay. And then, um, same thing, sales decks. Like if we know that we’re gonna go out and sell this new product to all of our existing clients and we need to have a professional deck that goes out and does that, we’re gonna make that investment in order to go out and look professional and, and have this tool available to our sales team.

[00:46:52] And so I think that that tie to sales and marketing allows for a little bit more flexibility in, in the pricing of the product, but I would expect there really shouldn’t be, in my mind, too much of a difference in terms of expenses, um, that would relate to the profitability across design niches, um, for me as a freelancer, right?

[00:47:17] I don’t have overhead. I bill back, you know, a portion of my office space and things like that, um, as reimbursable expenses through the business. Obviously consult a tax advisor for information on that. Um, but obviously there are some expenses that I can deduct there. Um, but for the most part, right, I have stock assets.

[00:47:38] Um, I do have the Adobe suite, so I do pay for that just to be able to do photo touchups and things like that. Um, I pay for PowerPoint. Um, I have like some stock icon sites and things like that that I subscribe to, but overall, my expenses on the design side are really low. It’s a very efficient business.

[00:47:57] The course, obviously there’s platforms for hosting webinars and email and that gets crazy fast. And then just reinvestment into learning how do you build that side of the business? But yeah, I think that it’s being tied to sales and marketing and, but also not being afraid to charge a premium, cuz you’re not competing on price, you’re competing on your talents and abilities.

[00:48:19] Megan: Yeah. I feel like I’ve never been great at finding that blue ocean, you know, like, but you’re inspiring me so much to go look at what other people in my industry right now are doing and then looking for like the holes that I could fill. Like for you, how not many designers work in PowerPoint. Um, yeah, I feel like I’ve never been super good at that.

[00:48:44] I’m open to any tips you have on just like how to think about that if you have any, it’s okay if you don’t, but I’m definitely gonna go out and do some research after this conversation.

[00:48:55] Adrienne Johnston: Yeah, like I would go look at other people’s websites. I mean, we just did this activity, so, um, in my course we do weekly calls, um, and we have kind of a senior group of people who’ve been in the program two years, and then kind of people who started in the last year.

[00:49:08] Um, and on our kind of senior group call, we, we were talking about, uh, potentially starting our own podcast. There are some in the presentation design space, they tend to be really focused on more technical aspects and we love talking about the business side. And so we were talking about potentially doing that and we just started going, you know, who are the leaders in, in the presentation design space and going and checking out their websites.

[00:49:30] Um, and it was funny, right, because we were looking at it and we’re like, a lot of these, the design isn’t great. And then you ask yourself, is it that their design skills aren’t great? And they’re as they’re established, right? So they. Did your design skills ever have to be great? Is it that you’re so darn busy you didn’t have time to update your portfolio versus those that have sort, have started in the last few years are still kind of tweaking?

[00:49:50] Um, you know, and what leads to that? And then how do you stand out amongst that? Um, and so it, it’s, I think that’s a huge thing just to go and look and see what are other people doing, talking about, um, if you were looking at it from a customer perspective, like what would your perspective be like? Is this person an expert?

[00:50:09] Is this somebody I have to hire? Um, you know, we talk a lot about, and you’re a writer, you know, like will we talk about like having a blog? And your blog does not have to be something you’re writing every day, right? It’s not an s e o blog, it is not a advertising revenue blog. It is an expertise blog. So have some opinions, right?

[00:50:28] Five to a thousand, 500 to a thousand words about them so that your clients can see them and like gain that trust.

[00:50:34] Megan: Would you mind to talk before we get into rapid fire questions? Cause I know we’re getting towards the end of the show. I have so many things I could, I could still ask you, but, um, would you mind to just talk a little bit more about your course?

[00:50:44] I know you were talking about calls, um, so I’m curious how your course works. So maybe like, first off, who’s your course for, and then like what’s the structure of it, how does it work?

[00:50:56] Adrienne Johnston: Sure. Uh, so my course is called Six Figure Presentation Designer. And the whole idea is that there’s, we know that there’s this gap in.

[00:51:06] The space for designers to use PowerPoint. And I mean, it’s, when I say it’s Blue Ocean, I am not joking, like the number of people who get business and clients from other presentation designers because I’ve outgrown this client, or, um, they’re doing a big keynote and it’s 600 slides. And so like, come join me, like help me knock this out in the next two weeks.

[00:51:29] Like it’s super collaborative and even, you know, within our, our student group, we have people, like, we had a, a death in my family earlier this year and I called one of my students and was like, I trust you. Like I’m gonna refer you to this big name client and I need you to take care of it. And he was like, got it.

[00:51:45] And he called me, he is like, I’m going on a golf trip and I got an needy client. Like, can you take it? And there’s never this fear that I’m not gonna get my client back or I’m gonna lose them. Right. It’s so collaborative and it’s like bench strength for the client. So, Um, that’s really huge. But, so it’s really for designers and bringing them in, um, to the space saying, Hey, you’ve already got the design skills.

[00:52:05] Let’s teach you PowerPoint. And then you take those design skills and you use them in this space where we know what we can charge. And again, like I have students that are charging more than me, they joke on the call, they’re like, you’re almost charging as much as I am. But like, you know, like everybody has like their space and like what they wanna do.

[00:52:22] And so I think it’s fantastic. The way we structure the course is, um, we start with your marketing piece, right? We’re a big proponent of seo. We tend as a function of my nature to attract a lot of introverts as well. Um, and I think it’s really appealing the s e o piece. Um, and there’s something like 28,000 keywords.

[00:52:43] There’s some crazy number of keywords and searches for presentation related terms. So we, you know, When I first started the course, I was like, I’m gonna tap the market, right? Like, there’s gonna not be like, they won’t be able to rank or like, and it just still hasn’t, it’s been two years, it hasn’t happened yet.

[00:52:58] And every time I do the math, I’m like, it’s not possible. We go through all about the marketing, right? So like, SEOs the longest piece. And so as unintuitive as it is for a lot of people, before you even start touching PowerPoint, you build your we website seo, optimize it so that that can start to kind of get trust in Google’s eyes.

[00:53:15] And then, um, we teach PowerPoint through building the portfolio, and then we go into, um, client acquisition. Um, we primarily teach, um, LinkedIn. Obviously we teach the s e o piece, but that takes time to ramp up. So we teach LinkedIn messaging, um, and Upwork, I’m, I’m a huge fan of Upwork in that it allows you to really be the one that’s kind of controlling how much visibility you have to clients and you’re making an investment in that platform.

[00:53:44] Um, but there are some amazing people making and presentation design. Um, making really good money on Upwork, um, and getting a lot of clients from there, like making as much as I make, but on, just on Upwork. Um, yeah. And so we go through that. Um, and then it’s all about like client retention. So if you’re not getting, you know, one third of your clients coming back to you, even if it’s six months to a year down the road, something’s off, right?

[00:54:14] Are you communicating as effectively as they need? Um, are, is your design skill not kind of what they expected or your PowerPoint skills where they need to be? And so we’re constantly talking through that because it’s a, it’s a process of continuously growing that business, right? Where you start today is not where you’re gonna end up.

[00:54:30] And so, You know, even challenging myself, right? To be like, oh, I gotta raise my rates. So I went from $50 this year to 50 a slide to 75 of a slide, right? Because one of my students said, she’s like, I’m charging 85 a slide. Well, I guess I should just start throwing this out there. Let’s see what happens. Um, and so it, for all of us, it’s keeping in mind that you know what you permit, you promote, right?

[00:54:55] If I keep a bad client, instead of like saying, Hey, we wrapped this up, I don’t think this is a good fit. Here’s your packaged stuff, best wishes. Um, or again, even just referring it within our community to other students who would be a better fit. Um, So, yeah, it’s, it’s really, I think the community is, what people say ends up being like the best part.

[00:55:14] There was somebody who was struggling to get clients and her SEO hasn’t picked up yet, and she said, I’m really, I need work. Suddenly she had a $10,000 month from referrals within the community, from other people. Were like, I can’t do this. I don’t have time. Um, so it’s just really remarkable kind of what a group of people all kind of working towards the same goal can accomplish.

[00:55:36] Megan: Yeah. It sounds like a great community. Um, and that’s always my favorite part of like the, you know, courses and coaching programs that I’ve taken is like finding one with a good community.

[00:55:48] Adrienne Johnston: Yeah. And I, you know, as an introvert, like I’m really particular, um, And I don’t tend to go to a lot of like calls and other things, but I look forward to those every week.

[00:55:57] It’s my people. Yeah. My little fellow introverts. Yeah. Nice. Who care about PowerPoint.

[00:56:05] Megan: Right. Well I do wanna take you through some rapid fire questions just to wrap up the call. Are you game for that?

[00:56:13] Adrienne Johnston: Absolutely.

Rapid Fire Questions

[00:56:14] Megan: First rapid fire question that I have for you is, what is one of the best or most worthwhile investments you’ve ever made in your business?

[00:56:22] And it could be an investment of money, time, energy, or anything.

[00:56:28] Adrienne Johnston: A hundred percent the SEO aspect. Yeah. Um, and that was a financial cost and investment and, and a course, but it was obvious time too to take it, implement it, and then it’s a continuous kind of maintenance thing that doesn’t necessarily require a ton of time, but I can’t imagine where my business would be without it.

[00:56:43] Like it wouldn’t be where it’s today. Do you mind if I ask what the course was that you took? Oh sure. It was, um, the Stupid Simple SEO course by, I still go my Mike Pearson. Yeah. He was using a, a pseudonym though I can never remember his actual real name now that he’s left his job. Oh. But yeah. Great. And I bought his niche side academy too.

[00:57:07] I mean, his content is always incredible and mm-hmm. Really, when I was building my course, I was all about, like, I loved his courses and, um, Caitlin Cher’s programs, they’re very actionable and that’s how I approach it as well. Like, yeah. This is a checklist of things we’re doing. This is not just knowledge, this is execution.

[00:57:26] Mm-hmm. Because you can, you can absorb all this content and never do anything with it. So that’s not right. Gonna get you anywhere.

[00:57:33] Megan: Yeah. Awesome. Yeah, definitely very familiar with Mike’s work. I think, uh, I think Ben and Jeff of Dollar Sprout, uh, bought his course, like just to support him when he first started, like when he first launched the course or something.

[00:57:46] Um, yeah. And that’s a great community too. Stupid, simple seo that community is great as well.

[00:57:51] Adrienne Johnston: Absolutely. Yeah. Everybody’s collaborative and just helping each other. Yeah. Just outta the goodness of their hearts, you know?

[00:57:59] Megan: Yeah. Yeah. Um, okay, second question for you is, in the last five years, what new belief, behavior or habit has most improved your life and or your business?

[00:58:13] Adrienne Johnston: Um, you know, I, it would say it’s really revolves around this idea that you don’t have to be an extrovert to be successful or a salesperson. Mm-hmm. And I really thought that, you know, that was gonna be a reason I might fail. And so finding a way to make it work for me, um, as a non salesperson, as a non extrovert was just mind bending and still something that, like I’m, I talk about all the time because I just think there must be so many other people out there just like me or like, oh, but I’m not a salesperson, or I’m not an extrovert, or I don’t like networking, and so I can’t be a business owner.

[00:58:48] And that’s really not the case at all. You just have to find a way to market yourself that’s gonna work for you.

[00:58:54] Megan: Yeah. Awesome. And last, uh, rapid fire question I have for you is, what advice do you have for someone who’s just getting started or maybe toying with the idea of starting a business?

[00:59:08] Adrienne Johnston: I think it goes back to what we were talking about earlier, that you’re just, it’s a journey.

[00:59:12] Just go try something, you have an idea, go do it. Right? Like, don’t buy the highest end course, like, but like get some resources to help you and just try it out and see what happens. There’s been nothing in hindsight that like when I look back on my career, hasn’t got help get me here. Right? I learned something, I figured something out.

[00:59:32] Like even uh, the wealth management firm that I worked at, it was very, you know, finance heavy and all of that. One, I learned a lot about my own retirement, what I to do, and got myself a financial advisor for the first time. Cause I was always like cons concerned about the Bernie Madoffs. I didn’t understand all the backend stuff that happens to prevent me from getting robbed.

[00:59:50] So I just didn’t have an advisor. I just had stuff sitting in mutual funds. Um, So, you know, there’s that. But there was even just like, I learned so much about marketing and client service in that environment that I hadn’t picked up before. And I did a lot of design work there. Like I did video for the first time with that company.

[01:00:06] So, Hmm. Every single thing that you do, um, just try it. You’ll learn something. Um, each new job. Um, but don’t be afraid to start, you know, just an action. Taking action. Yeah. Thinking about it isn’t gonna get you anywhere. So just put up a website. Yeah. It started. Just change it. Yeah. Can always change it later.

[01:00:30] I like when I did my website, I don’t know what this is gonna be, so it’s gonna be adrian johnston.com and even today I say like, if I just decided to switch everything tomorrow, right. I could be something totally different. Like, there’s a lot of fluidity in, in being able to approach it. Yeah, that wasn’t a rapid fire answer.

[01:00:46] I’m sorry.

[01:00:47] Megan: No, no, you’re fine. These, I say rapid fire, but I’m like still experimenting with this part of the show. Last season I called it the slow round intentionally because like I’m never rapid, like these end up being sometimes like the same length as the rest of the episode. So they’re not true rapid fire questions, don’t worry, you’re in good company.

[01:01:12] Um, okay. Awesome. Well thank you so much, Adrian. Where can people find you?

[01:01:20] Adrienne Johnston: Uh, yeah, so I have links to all of my free resources on designing and thriving.com. Um, and then my freelance website is adri johnston.com.

[01:01:31] Megan: Awesome. Well thank you so much for being here. It has been a pleasure having you on the

[01:01:35] show.

[01:01:36] Adrienne Johnston: Oh my gosh. Thank you so much for having me. I think this is by far the best podcast I’ve ever done. Like it just came so naturally for Kindred spirit.

Note: This transcript was automatically generated and may include typos.

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Dollar Sprout Podcast, where it’s all about building a business that offers consistent income and flexibility so you can live life on your terms. And now your host, Megan Robinson.

Introduction

[00:00:18] Megan: Welcome back to the Dollar Sprout podcast. Thanks so much for being here with us today. Our guest today is Jenny Weg. Jenny is a full-time mom and social media manager, and today we talk about really the experience of going through different seasons in your business. Jenny has been a full-time freelancer.

[00:00:40] There have been times in her business where that supported her full-time. There have been times in her business where her course, which you’ll hear more about in this episode, has supported her business full-time. And um, now she’s in a season where she’s gone back to a full-time corporate job and she’s using her business.

[00:00:59] More really supplemental income for her family, for her and her husband and their three kids. And this was just a really good conversation, a really great reminder that there’s really no such thing for most people, a linear business journey doesn’t exist. It’s all about the hills and valleys and. That’s okay.

[00:01:20] It, your business journey doesn’t have to be a completely, you know, straightforward or, you know, straight up all the way sort of experience. Um, that hasn’t been the case with myself and that also hasn’t been Jenny’s experience. So I’m excited for you to hear her talk about what that’s been like for her business.

[00:01:39] You’ll hear about how she got her first ever freelancing client in this. And she also talks about some tips for networking and getting referrals, why she decided to go back to a full-time job and use her business as supplemental income. She also talks about how much profit her business makes per month now that she’s only doing it part-time, and I think she said only working about.

[00:02:03] Five hours a month. Is that what she said? I can’t remember. You’ll just have to listen to the episode for that. Um, but she is definitely doing it part-time and you’ll hear about how she made $20,000 with her first ever course launch with no training and no prior experience, which is just crazy to me. I mean, she did a lot of things right and you’ll get to hear all about that.

[00:02:29] So, without further ado, please welcome Jenny.

Interview

[00:02:33] Jenny Weg: Hi, Megan. It’s great to be here.

[00:02:35] Megan: Yeah, really excited to have you. Um, would you mind to just start out by telling everybody listening what your business is? So what products and services do you sell? Who is your business for? Um, and then upfront, if you don’t mind, to share, um, what your current revenue looks like.

[00:02:55] Jenny Weg: Yeah, you bet. So what my business looks like for me, there’s a lot of different avenues to it, actually. Um, it started out with me just being a freelance social media manager, and as I started doing that, I had so many people, especially local people, um, also some people reach out to me and say, how are you doing what you’re doing?

[00:03:11] You know, how do you get extra income working from home, having those flexible hours? Um, a lot of the people that I correlate with are other. And they’re saying, you know, how are you making this money while being a mom, while your kids are home? Mm-hmm. Um, and what, what does that look like for you? So at that point, I realized that there was an avenue for me to take where I could create a course and teach other moms how to do the exact same thing that I was doing.

[00:03:34] Just like the course that I took that got me started doing social media management. So I started that course back in 2018. Um, and that’s still available today. And then I also do freelance social media work for myself, for other clients. Um, and that mainly looks like doing like Pinterest management services for those people, um, which is something that I just have found that I really, really enjoy.

[00:03:57] So currently right now, my course brings in anywhere from a thousand to $1,500 a month for me, and my freelancing brings in about a thousand dollars a month as well.

[00:04:07] Megan: Very cool. Awesome. Thank you for sharing. Um, yeah. I love, uh, love that you’ve tried some different things. I’ve done the same thing in my business, you know, from freelancing to trying courses and, um, it’s all a dance of like figuring out what works.

[00:04:26] And so, um, yeah. So you said about a thousand to 1500 a month from your course, and then about a thousand a month from freelancing right now. Um, how much of. How much of that is profit? How much of that is your, um, or, I’m sorry, like personal income paid by the business, if you don’t mind sharing.

[00:04:48] Jenny Weg: Yeah, you bet.

[00:04:48] So right now I pack at about $1,500 a month. I put away a thousand dollars a month for taxes, for extra expenses. Mm-hmm. And my subscriptions, things like that. And that $1,500 a month is just kinda like a little bit of fun money for. Yeah, in addition, my time job. So it’s just nice to have that extra money for, you know, vacations or extra things that our family wants to do, and just to have it as you know, that extra additional income.

[00:05:13] Megan: Yeah. And $1,500 a month and like additional income, like, you know, just free spending money or vacations is like no joke. So, um, oh, without a doubt. Yeah. That’s great money to be stocking away every month from your business. Yeah. Um, what does it look like for you to make that $1,500 extra a month? How much time are you putting into your business at this point?

[00:05:41] Jenny Weg: So my course is fairly on autopilot. You know, I do a little bit of maintenance things with the course, a little bit of promotion of the course, um, you know, through publishing on Pinterest, on their social media platforms. But as far as like building the course, all that dirty work is done already for me.

[00:05:55] So that’s just kinda my autopilot. And as far as my freelance work goes, it only takes me about five hours a month to do my freelancing work. So sometimes it looks like sitting down on a Sunday afternoon and pounding it all up at once, or kind of spacing it out throughout the month. An hour here or there in the evenings.

[00:06:12] Megan: Hmm. Very cool. Awesome. So I know your business has kind of taken a a few different turns and is not exactly. Where it is not exactly today where it was when you started, of course. Um, so what did that look like when you were first starting your business? What gave you the idea to do social media management and what, what was the, what was the before picture?

[00:06:41] What were you doing before you started this and why did you.

[00:06:45] Jenny Weg: So when I started social media management, it was actually when I was pregnant with my first child, and I, in the worst way, did not wanna have to go back to work after maternity leave. And so when I was six months pregnant, I took my first course.

[00:06:57] Within a month, I had landed a client and I thought, okay, this is perfect. I had about six months of three months being pregnant, three months of maternity leave. So I thought in that time, I’m going to build this to match my full-time income. I’m gonna leave my job, and it did not happen. So how it looked for me was at that point I was making about $1,200 a month, which was not matching my full-time income.

[00:07:18] My husband said, there’s no way you can quit your job. So I sent the baby to daycare, and it was really the best thing that ever happened to both of us. She got acclimated to daycare. I continued pushing super hard in my business to get to that point. When she was 18 months old, I had built a business to where I was bringing in almost $6,000 a month.

[00:07:39] Wow. And I was able to leave my full-time job and stay at home with her. And I quickly, quickly realized that working full-time from home with her all the time was not sustainable either. Mm. Yeah. So a lot of just learning as we went. So we were able to find part-time daycare, and that was a really, really great balance to where I could still feel fulfilled in my.

[00:08:02] And be a hundred percent focused on my work when I was working, and a hundred percent focused with her when I was with her. So I was only working about 15 to 20 hours a week at that point to make that $6,000 a month, which was a really, really good balance. Wow. Yeah. Um, And as things went on, we had a second baby and we were able to get full-time daycare again, which was something that I felt like I needed, um, for myself just to kind of have that escape a little bit.

[00:08:32] And so with the addition of full-time daycare, I was able to join with an agency and do agency work and then also keep my freelance on the site so I could scale back and just work for the freelance clients that I absolutely love. And I’ve had super long relationships with. And kind of have that as just more of my fun side hobby again, and then also do the digital strategy yet within the agency, but have a little more stability with the agency side of things.

[00:08:57] Megan: Yeah. Yeah. I’ve done the same thing in my business. I think I started my like L l C for my business in 2017. Um, and. You know, I don’t have a family, I don’t have kids, but I knew that I wanted to start this business and it was so much back and forth. Um, I originally went into it full-time thinking like, I have enough savings to where I’m gonna figure this out.

[00:09:22] Same, kind of similar to what you said. I’m gonna figure this out in like six months and I’ll be good to go. But I ended up like living off my savings for a year and then eventually being. Okay. I should probably, you know, I was making money in the business, but not enough. And so, yeah, I think my journey has also been, um, full-time in the business and then back to like working a full-time job and doing the business on the side.

[00:09:50] And, um, yeah, it’s just, it’s been nice to have the business there for additional income. During those times when I’m like working full-time. Um, and also, yeah, just nice to, nice to know that you have that option kind of. So, um, it’s funny, the journey of like, Entrepreneurship.

[00:10:12] Jenny Weg: It’s so true. And you know, if you had told me, you know, even five years ago that it would be so back and forth, um, I think like a lot of times you hear these stories of people who just dive in and all of a sudden it scales super fast.

[00:10:22] Right? And that’s great that it happens, but it’s always nice to have that diversification of, you know, there’s times where the course has really sustained me. And there’s times where the freelancers really sustained me. Um, and my time commitment to both of them have been different at grade points in time in that, so it’s just really interesting to see how it ebbs and flow.

[00:10:42] Megan: Yeah. Yeah. And with that, what was, if you don’t mind sharing, what was your motivation or what really drove the decision to kind of go back and, you know, work for another company at this point? Because I think you said you’ve been doing that. For a few months now. Is that right?

[00:11:00] Jenny Weg: Yep. So I’ve been back with an agency now since July, and honestly, it came down to I really needed some adult conversation in my life.

[00:11:08] Um, I, my clients frequently, um, but a lot of that communications over email and I just miss the culture of being around people. And even now I’m only in the office, you know, a couple times a month, but just knowing that I have that. Kind of escape and that I’m gonna be able to collaborate and mm-hmm. Work with other people during that time.

[00:11:29] Um, really, really feels good. And I, I check in weekly with the team, um, where we have a lot of team meetings and those are all over Zoom if I can’t make it to the office. But we still get that human interaction without having to just have my little people around all the time.

[00:11:43] Megan: Yeah. Yeah. Honestly, I l again, I don’t have kids.

[00:11:48] I can’t imagine. Um, but I still. Like, I work from home all the time, and sometimes I’ll just go to coffee shops and hope a random stranger strikes up a conversation with me because I’m like, I never get to talk to anybody. Um, yep. Yeah. So I understand. Yeah. Um, so I wanna go back to sort of the beginning of your business again.

[00:12:11] Um, what made you choose social media management as you know, the thing that you wanted to do for your business?

[00:12:22] Jenny Weg: So in 2015, actually I started a blog just as a hobby. Um, and it was just something, I’ve always been a writer, I’d love to write and so I had already kinda had a little bit of experience, you know, building a website on the backend or promoting a blog, and that was all just for fun and, you know, kind of helping.

[00:12:39] And even in 2015 blogs were still, I mean, they aren’t what they are today. So it was just something that I was like, I have the expertise in this area. I know what I’m doing here and I can help other people do the same. So when you had somebody who was like, you know, I wanna have a blog too, but I just don’t know how to build a blog.

[00:12:55] You know, I could go in and design a website for them and have it ready to go, or they’d say, I already have an established blog and I love doing the writing part, but I just don’t wanna do the social media side of things. It does not bring me joy. It’s not something that I really enjoy devoting my time to, I know it’s my time is better spent just writing, so then I could just kinda hop in and help them out with that as well.

[00:13:14] Mm-hmm. Um, and so it’s just been a really, really. Balance for me to be able to help other people and be fulfilled in what I’m doing. Um, because honestly, I had zero education in marketing in, um, especially digital marketing. I graduated high school in 2010 before digital marketing was actually a thing.

[00:13:32] Hmm. So it’s just been a really, really good, um, transition for me into the digital world.

[00:13:38] Megan: Yeah. Yeah. Very cool. So how were you getting, when you first started your business, how were you getting those first few clients? Were they like people who were finding your blog and your website, or were you doing cold outreach?

[00:13:53] How did you make like your first few dollars there?

[00:13:58] Jenny Weg: So my, as soon as I finished that course that I had took on social media management, I randomly saw a blog that I was filing. She had posted, she was looking for a virtual assistant, is how she had listed it. Hmm. And I reached out to her and she hired me.

[00:14:13] And my first paycheck from her was $135. And I felt like I had won the lottery, like I had booked a client. Getting paid. Um, and I still, to this day, I still talk with her frequently. She actually doesn’t do blogging anymore. And that’s what’s been really beautiful too. I’ve seen a lot of other businesses that have evolved and changed.

[00:14:32] Mm-hmm. Um, but still have been able to maintain a really, really great relationship with them. Um, in fact, I even worked with Benette for a while when they worked with their pinch working on their Pinterest services. Um, yeah. And still to say, you know, I love seeing Ben’s kids on Facebook, and it’s, mm-hmm.

[00:14:47] It’s been a really relationship thing to watch those relationships evolve, even when it’s not a working relationship anymore. Yeah. So after I wanted the first client, um, almost 90% of my clients after that came from networking and. Um, there was maybe one or two other ones that I had reached out when I was really trying to scale and I landed on a cold pitch, but after that it was all word, mouth and, um, just building up with people they had connected with or people that they knew needed services.

[00:15:18] And I did always offer a referral discount, so if they referred me to somebody else, I gave them $50 off their monthly package. Oh, nice. Um, for the entire time that I worked with those people. So there was always a little bit of incentive for them to refer me as.

[00:15:31] Megan: Yeah. Yeah, I think that’s always, yeah, that’s always a nice motivation to get extra referrals, offering some sort of incentive.

[00:15:41] Um, when you say networking, do you mean like did you join any local networking groups? I know when I first started doing financial coaching, there was, oh, I can’t even remember. What is the name of, it’s like a really common, uh, business networking group that has like local. Branches everywhere. I don’t know.

[00:16:02] Did you join anything like that or were you going to conferences or just like messaging people?

[00:16:10] Jenny Weg: So a lot of my networking, I live in a very, very rural, rural area. I live in Iowa. Mm-hmm. And um, actually when our internet catching is little unstable. We get unstable internet anytime that the corn gets too tall, that it interferes with our signal.

[00:16:26] That’s so funny. I mean, our hometown has like 2000 people. It’s very, very small. So I didn’t have any book groups to connect with, but most of it was all through blocking groups online. Um, and different places that I connect with people, if it was other people who had taken the same courses as me. Mm-hmm.

[00:16:42] You know, it seemed like we were always into a Facebook group and there’s always somebody saying, you know, I need help with this, or, my expertise is in Facebook and I need help with Pinterest services. Is there somebody who can help me with that? So it was just a really good way to collaborate and build and expand my network.

[00:16:56] Megan: Yeah. So were you like when you were in these groups? I’m always interested in how people like do networking cuz I’m so bad at it. I feel like it’s the hardest thing for me, you know? Um, so when you were in these groups, were you just like responding to people and being helpful or were you like, you know, I don’t know.

[00:17:14] What did that look like?

[00:17:17] Jenny Weg: Without a doubt. So if people would ask questions, and a lot of times it wasn’t even specifically blogging groups, it would just be somebody had posted and said, you know, I tried to do this on Pinterest, it didn’t work, and I just share my expertise. You know, give out free advice.

[00:17:29] Um, and they’d come back and say, wow, like, how do you know how to do this? And at that point I’d say, well, you know, this is what I do for a living. You know, I help people with Pinterest. And then that would kind of open the conversation for, mm-hmm oh, maybe I should look into pursuing this because I can’t dedicate time to it myself.

[00:17:43] So that was just, I always free information. I and networking group is a great place to give free information. It’s a free, a great place to get free information. You know, those same people were returning the favor to me when I had questions on platforms that I wasn’t familiar. So always just looking at ways to be helpful before ways to be salesy.

[00:18:01] Megan: Hmm.

[00:18:05] Yeah. Um, yeah, and that makes a lot of sense. I, uh, Yeah, I should probably do more of that in my own business. Networking is so hard, though. It feels so time consuming. Um, but it, it pays off, um, is what I keep hearing again and again. It pays off. Um, that’s great.

[00:18:25] Jenny Weg: It was super helpful for me. What I really did is I just try to sit down for maybe about 15 to 30 minutes in the morning just to kinda review the groups that I was a part of.

[00:18:33] Mm-hmm. Out time, you know, to find the groups that I found were actually really engaging and helpful. Um, and then just kind of go through the questions that people had posted during the day and that, you know, 15 to 30 minutes instead of waiting for every notification to pop up that oh, so and so posted in this group or whatnot.

[00:18:49] Just taking that really dedicated time to focus in on those, review the stuff that I’ve been posted the past day, interject where I could, um, and then move on for the day and I have to go back to it.

[00:18:58] Megan: Yeah. Are Facebook groups still a good place for that, do you think?

[00:19:05] Jenny Weg: I, I go back and forth. It really depends on who you have in the Facebook group and the quality of people. I think people’s loyalty to Facebook groups have really changed lately, and I’ve seen even some more, uh, like apps being created more so where people are leaving the social platforms, where they’re mm-hmm.

[00:19:26] More so controlled to where they can have their own freedoms. So if you have groups like that where it is an app or more of like a, a group you would join in that way, those. Probably a little bit more effective. Um, but when you just get started, I really do Facebook groups. Yeah.

[00:19:43] Megan: Yeah. Is, is that still something that you do today or how do you get most of your clients or your work today?

[00:19:49] Or do you mostly just work with the same consistent clients and you’re not taking on any new work?

[00:19:56] Jenny Weg: Yep. So since I’ve started working with the agency, I, with the balance that I have right now between three kids, my agency work, and the freelance work that I do, I’m not looking to scale in this season. You know, there might come a time where all three of my kids are in school and I have ample amount of time and I’m looking to fill that space.

[00:20:13] But right where I’m at right now, my clients are so loyal to me. I haven’t had a lot of turnover with clients, so I’m not having to go out and find those clients again. Yeah.

[00:20:24] Megan: Yeah. And that makes a lot of sense. For the season that you said you’re in right now, um, are you still doing. Like, I know you mentioned Pinterest, uh, like you started out, I think doing Pinterest, social media management.

[00:20:38] Is that still kind of your specialization?

[00:20:41] Jenny Weg: It is. And actually that has really evolved since I started doing Pinterest. So originally Pinterest was just a traffic driver to get people to websites. And it was actually after I started doing Pinterest services that Pinterest went public, meaning they started offering advertising.

[00:20:56] So Pinterest ads were completely new, um, which was actually a really, really great boost for my business because I was willing to become educated in Pinterest ads, and people who had a good grip on Pinterest didn’t have a good grip on Pinterest ads. So even if they could manage their own Pinterest account, they couldn’t create the ads and get the same revenue.

[00:21:15] So it was kind of a good turning point for me to really become specialized in something very, very specific and be able to be that expert and help people.

[00:21:27] Megan: Very cool. Is that still, um, like I know you’re right, Pinterest has changed so much over time and I hear bloggers say it over and over again because there was like, you know, the golden days of Pinterest where uh, it was just so much easier for bloggers to like be on Pinterest and drive a ton of traffic to their blogs.

[00:21:47] Um, so I guess, would you say today that it’s still Pinterest management is still a strong market? For people who are listening who maybe wanna start that as a business or a side hustle?

[00:22:00] Jenny Weg: Without a doubt. So the shift that I’ve really seen in Pinterest is instead of it driving people to a blog, it’s driving people to products.

[00:22:10] Mm. And so, especially in a world where we have so many digital products, or even for online shopping, I mean, online shopping is huge and you don’t even notice it as a consumer, I don’t think, when you’re scrolling Pinterest, but there’s so many products, interject. And those are mostly all Pinterest ads. Um, and so that’s definitely the market that I’ve seen and the shift in the industry.

[00:22:32] Yeah. Very cool. Yeah, I know like nothing about Pinterest ads. Well, and my freelance clients, especially that I’m working on with Pinterest, they have physical products that are products that are shipped and the return that they get on Pinterest is so much more than what they get on Instagram. Mm. Um, and Instagram is just such an infiltrated market, I feel, and there’s so many ads on Instagram cuz they were there first.

[00:22:59] Whereas Pinterest is kind of this new land with the ads. So it’s, it’s been an interesting.

[00:23:05] Megan: Yeah. Yeah. Was there ever a time in your business that you offered something other than Pinterest management or, um, have you ever had any products or services that you tried out that were just like a total flop?

[00:23:20] Jenny Weg: So when I first started, I was, I had the mentality of I will do anything for anybody, anytime. Like I want clients. I, whatever job you give me, I will do. Um, and I remember one time I was working for a network marketer and what she wanted me to do as a virtual assistant was go through in cold message people on, like, if they had liked to post on her page, I had to take a script that she had and message them.

[00:23:44] And it was the most unfulfilling thing I have ever done in my life, and I didn’t. Mm-hmm. Think about it. And it was just one of those things that I like, this is not, what is it for me? Um, and that was when I really shifted my mind from thinking of things as a virtual assistant and more so a social media manager.

[00:24:03] Hmm. Um, and just saying, you know, I will come to you and this is what I offer and this is what I see. Like big picture strategy for your page. You know, it might not just be, I’m gonna come in and do posts for you every month, or I’m gonna come in and do this. I’ll do what you tell me what you’re doing.

[00:24:17] I’ll just do it. I would come to them as the expert and say, this is what I see you’re doing. I could be more effective if we did it this way. Um, I’m presenting myself that way. Just gave me a little bit more credibility as well instead of just saying, I’m here. Tell me what you want me to do and I will do it.

[00:24:33] Megan: Yeah. Yeah. I think. That was true of me when I first started my business and I first started freelancing too. I would do anything that you would pay me for. Um, some things I had no business doing whatsoever, like mucking in people’s website code thinking I was a web developer after I took like two online courses or something.

[00:24:54] Um, nobody’s a website ever failed. Don’t worry about that. Um, but, but yeah, I think that was such an important thing for me to go through. And I think a lot of people go through as like trying out a ton of different stuff to see what you enjoy, what you’re good at, and also like what’s in demand, um, and kind of finding the sweet spot there.

[00:25:16] Um, and speaking of sweet spot, I wanna talk about you coming to the decision to create your course. I know you said that, um, you had.

[00:25:29] A ton of people who were coming to you and asking how you were doing this, how you were making extra money while you had kids at home and all of this. Um, so that makes sense as to why you started your course.

[00:25:41] Um, had you ever done anything like that before though? Had you ever created a course or what was that learning curve like for you to launch that?

[00:25:52] Jenny Weg: Yeah, so I had been referring people to the course that I had taken, and there was a 10% affiliate commission for that. So every time I referred somebody, I was making, you know, 30 to $40 for them going to sign up and take that course.

[00:26:04] And it just kind of hit me like, wait a minute, you know? I have the expertise here, why don’t I create my own course platform and I can share it with them. So I did a lot of research on where I was gonna build my course, um, what platform to use. I ended up going with Teachable, and I spent, it was about three months, uh, creating my course.

[00:26:23] And at that time, looking back like hindsight, 2020. The way that I could have done it could have been probably a lot more efficient. But I started promoting my course before it was even built. Mm-hmm. I started building a list of people. I was, I was gonna say, this course is coming and it really, really helped in my launch, I didn’t really realize at the time that it was a launch strategy, but it really, really helped.

[00:26:45] The week that I launched my course, I had, um, list of like super engaged people that were just waiting to buy this course because I’d been talking. Um, and it’s been just such a beautiful thing to see, you know, that first group of people that actually took the course. It was in 2018 when I launched that.

[00:27:01] Um, I still talk to a lot of them today and one of ’em actually just reached out to me this summer and she’s in a totally different season of life than me. Her kids are grown. Um, high school, college age. One of her daughters just got engaged and he’s getting married, and she said, you know, when I started taking a course, it was to help pay for my college.

[00:27:17] Or my kids’ college education and now we’re helping pay for our daughter’s wedding with it. And it’s just been so like full circle for me to think, you know, my life 10, 15, 20 years down the road, what that’s gonna look like. And that, you know, it’s not just for a young mom who wants to stay at home after maternity leave, it’s for a mom who has other commitments with her kids who are older as well.

[00:27:39] Megan: Yeah. Yeah. That’s amazing. So you were doing this launch strategy that you didn’t know you were doing, um, and you said it paid off. How did it pay off, or what did your first course launch look like?

[00:27:53] Jenny Weg: Uh, So my husband and I actually made a little bit of a deal, and not that we like to gamble against each other, I guess.

[00:28:00] And he had told me, he goes, I, for the longest time I wanted this minivan. And he had like this huge ego issue with mini minivans. He mm-hmm. Was not gonna be a minivan dad. He was not gonna own a minivan. And I wanted that north, the sliding doors, like the convenience of everything was just my dream. Yeah.

[00:28:18] And so at this time, we had one child, And I told him, he said, you know how, how much money do you think you’re gonna make on this course? And I said, well, my goal for the time, I have invested into it so far. When I launched this course, I’m hoping to make $5,000. And he said, okay. He goes, if you hit that $5,000 mark, we will go and look at it.

[00:28:38] And at that point it was just, we are just gonna go and look at one. You’re not gonna buy one. But we’ll go and look at a minivan. Mm-hmm. And so my first month of launching that course, I made $20,000. And I mean, I, I, myself surprised myself, I couldn’t believe it did that well. And so, needless to say, we went to the dealership and the same day that we went to the dealership, they took Coleman a minivan.

[00:28:59] And the minivan is still here today. Four years later, three kids later, and it has been a very, very good minivan.

[00:29:06] Megan: That is amazing. Yeah. A goal of $5,000 and you made $20,000 on your first launch. You really blew that one outta the park.

[00:29:17] Jenny Weg: It totally, totally shocked me. And like I said, you know, that was a season where my freelancing, I was only working for a couple of clients cause I had little, little kids at home and I could do extra client work.

[00:29:27] So having that course as another avenue of revenue was just huge for us at that time.

[00:29:33] Megan: Yeah. Yeah. That’s amazing. So, Did you, I forget if you said, did you have any like courses you were taking on, like how to launch a course or was there anything, did you just kind of figure it out all out on your own?

[00:29:49] Jenny Weg: I did.

[00:29:50] So I’ve kind of done it backwards actually in 2021 I took a course on course launching. Mm-hmm. Um, and kinda more evergreen course launching. So it’s not constant hyping up and doing the course, launching all the time yourself. But I do always kind of wonder. How different it would have been if I had gone into it with a course launch strategy or preparing myself before I just jumped in and did it myself.

[00:30:13] I mean, I was very, very happy with my results, no doubt. But I kind of wonder if it would’ve scaled in a different way if I had set it up with the knowledge that I have now.

[00:30:24] Megan: Yeah. What, is there anything that you can think of off the top of your head that you might have done differently?

[00:30:31] Jenny Weg: Oh boy. I mean, I think more than anything building my email list would’ve been mm-hmm.

[00:30:36] A higher priority to me. Um, I know when I’m signing up for courses, it comes after I have received the boatload of emails from that person that I’ve really built more of a relationship with. It’s not because I saw it on their social channels, it’s because mm-hmm. They’ve been emailing me, they’ve been keeping me updated, and they’ve really been cultivating that relat.

[00:30:55] Um, and having that list that they have to be able to do that. So I definitely think email list building would have been more of a priority for me.

[00:31:03] Megan: Yeah. Gotcha. That’s still amazing though, like $20,000 four times what you were hoping for at, you know, your best. That’s incredible. Yeah.

[00:31:15] Jenny Weg: Um, so, and actually just for about a three month time investment, it took me about three months to build a budget.

[00:31:20] Oh wow. And it’s hard to say how much time I spent in that three months. It was, you know, after the kid got the vet night and working on things like that. So it was just really a, it’s hard for me to put down like what I made hourly doing that, but it was really, really fulfilling for me at that point time in my life too.

[00:31:37] Megan: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Um, so if there are people out there right now who are hearing your story and are like, you know, this sounds amazing, I would love to. A side hustle or like start playing around with the idea of, uh, doing social media management and getting paid for it. Um, what tips or advice or first steps would you offer them?

[00:32:04] Jenny Weg: So the biggest thing for me was I just did not give myself another option. Um, I was, I was going to do this and it was going to, I know that’s not a theory or a strategy that’s gonna work all the time. There’s been times in my life too where I have that strategy and things have flopped, but I kinda felt like I had my backup with him.

[00:32:23] So Wall with, you know, a timeline on maternity leave and I was kind of put forth as much effort as I possibly could to make this work. And so just kind of blindly jumping into it, and I don’t know, maybe the faith that I had when I was 25 years old has been more than what I had now. Or more of the confidence, but just going into it and saying, you know, knowing that you are capable to do it.

[00:32:44] There are so many online resources out there. If there is ever a question, I can’t tell you how many tasks that I’ve been given from a client that I have YouTubed my way through because I was unsure, right? Complete it, but I figured it out every single time. Just knowing that there’s free resources, there’s paid resources, there’s things you can invest in.

[00:33:02] And like I said, with the networking, there are so many people out there that want to help as well, and that are experts and they’re willing to. Give that information out. So getting in with the right people, putting over time and just knowing that it’s a very, very real thing today. Um, like I said, you know, living in rural Iowa, I even feel like when I’m out and about in town, I mean, it’s a very, very small community.

[00:33:23] So you know a lot of people, and if I try to explain to them what I’m doing, It doesn’t even seem really credible to a lot of people, but knowing that the online space is huge and it is just going to continue to grow, yeah. Um, with this for four years is even astonishing. So knowing what 5, 10, 15 years down the road looks like, And just knowing that the possibilities that are there to continue to grow is, is really, really encouraging.

[00:33:49] Megan: Yeah. Do you have any stories, um, of maybe when you bit off something that was a little more than you could chew in terms of like something that you, uh, like you were saying, a task that a client gave you that you were like, oh yeah, I can do this, and then you started to do it and you were like, oh, oh, no.

[00:34:11] Jenny Weg: So actually Ben and Jeff, when you’re listening, cover your ears. They were one of my very, very first Pinterest clients, and my knowledge on Pinterest was very, very base level. I mean, it was like I was a current blogger using Pinterest myself. Yeah, not even in the most effective way. I’d actually taken their course on Pinterest.

[00:34:31] Um, and so I started working with them and their account was huge. It was so much bigger than what I thought it was gonna be. So at that point in time, it was actually the assistant that I had hired to help me launch my course or with a lot of the backend things on building my course. She had taken a Pinterest course, and so she sat down with me.

[00:34:52] She helped a lot with the work with Ben and Jeff. I also, um, kind of jumped in that then, and she did a lot of the training that I noted on Pinterest, I learned from her. Um, and so it was just really kind of a good, a good way for me to grow in a really fast, uncomfortable way.

[00:35:08] Megan: Oh yeah. Yeah. You’ll definitely grow really quickly when you bite off more than you can chew like that.

[00:35:14] I’ve done the same thing where like, I mean, there’s a difference I think in biting off more than you can chew and just dropping the ball and, you know, screwing people over. Um, Versus like what we’re talking about, which is like biting off more you than you can chew, and like having to really learn and step up to the plate in a big way that you weren’t sure you could do.

[00:35:38] Jenny Weg: So, yeah, and it’s just kinda a really, really great way for growth I found, you know? Mm-hmm. At that time it meant, you know, I was taking on this client, it was this many hours, this is what I was gonna get paid, but I also had to devote extra hours to extra training, extra courses, going out and finding that information.

[00:35:53] And so now I can be a lot more efficient with it. When I take on a Pinterest client, I know I’m not gonna have to relearn all this again. So, mm-hmm. It’s just been a really good, a really good change for me and a good way for me to challenge myself. Yeah.

[00:36:06] Megan: Awesome. Well, before I let you go, I have some rapid fire questions that I would love to go through with you.

[00:36:13] Does that sound.

[00:36:14] Jenny Weg: Yeah, you bet.

Rapid Fire Questions

[00:36:16] Megan: First rapid fire question I have is, what is one of the best or most worthwhile investments that you’ve ever made in your business? And it can be an investment of money, time, energy, anything.

[00:36:29] Jenny Weg: So the best investment that I ever made was, the very first course that I took, it was a $249.

[00:36:38] And at the time it felt a little bit uncomfortable to pay that for an online course. Um, but the mentality that I had was what I paid per credit in college for college credit. And I’m like, okay, I paid more than $249 for every single college credit. Again, I can do this. So I had bought that course in June and by December that course had paid me back 55 times.

[00:37:02] Wow, I figured out. So just getting that start and that was really my start to what my career is today. Um, both agency work and freelance work. So that $249 course compared to my college education was such a better investment for me.

[00:37:18] Megan: Yeah. Yeah. What, what all did that course cover? Was it like how to, was it the, you know, entire how to of like setting up your business, getting clients or what, what was.

[00:37:32] Jenny Weg: It was, so, it was very, very, um, broad on virtual assisting. It kind of lets what you could do with virtual assisting, but definitely started with, okay, are you going to create an LLC for your business? Is your business big enough to do that? Um, how you’re going to invoice clients, how you’re going to find clients, uh, what services you’re gonna offer for those.

[00:37:53] So there was very, very small section on social media management, and that was just what really stuck out to me of what I wanted to do. Cause I felt like I had enough base level knowledge of that. Mm-hmm. So from that course, then I went on to take other courses that were more specialized in social management.

[00:38:08] Yeah. But that was really my first. My first step in just creating my business and knowing that this was where it was gonna take me.

[00:38:15] Megan: Yeah. I’ve talked to people about the idea of like, the difference between, like, there are different times in your business when you need a more general broad course like that versus when you need something that’s more specialized.

[00:38:27] Um, and getting started, I also found it very helpful actually. I think, oh God,

[00:38:32] I’m not, I’m not gonna.

[00:38:35] I spent too much money my first year in courses that were like very specialized in ways that I didn’t need, but I think I could have benefited a lot from like taking one of those broader, more general courses.

[00:38:47] I’m curious if you don’t mind sharing what the course was that you took.

[00:38:52] Jenny Weg: Yeah. At that time that was called Horkey Handbook. I don’t know. Okay. Yeah. Offered today, um, or you’re offered in a different way, but it was 30 days or less virtual system. Um, and it was just, yeah, really, really eye-opening for me.

[00:39:06] Megan: Yeah, yeah. Very familiar with Gina Horkey and all her work and her courses. Um, awesome. So second question I have for people too that, sorry. Sorry, go ahead.

[00:39:19] Jenny Weg: She’s too, that has, she has really, really ebbed and flowed over her business too. I mean, when she first started offering that course, it was, like I said, $249.

[00:39:28] Right. And I know now she’s gotten into even more specialized courses and, um, really scaled her business too. So it’s been interesting to see that.

[00:39:36] Megan: Yeah, it is so fun. Like really just watching people because there are people that I’ve followed for so many years and it, it is interesting seeing how people’s businesses change over time

[00:39:49] Jenny Weg: without a doubt.

[00:39:50] Megan: Yeah. Um, so second question I have for you is, in the last five years, what new belief, behavior, or habit has most improved your life and or your business?

[00:40:04] Jenny Weg: So for me, the biggest thing is definitely habit wise, knowing that I had to be super, super committed and being ready. To take on anything, any time. Um, for me it was schedule wise, it meant I was a lot of times waking up at four 30 in the morning to get worked up so the kids were awake.

[00:40:23] I had the, that I knew I needed to get tackled for the day. It had to be done before the kids were awake. Cause there was never a guarantee. That I was going to have the time during the day. Um, I worked a lot, a lot of nap times and there was times where I had a four hour nap time and there was times where I had like a, maybe a full hour.

[00:40:40] Mm-hmm. So just knowing that I had that commitment and if it wasn’t done after that, it was staying up until midnight maybe to finish up my work for the day. So yeah, I’m really, really being committed by time and knowing that I had to put time in.

[00:40:51] Megan: Yeah, definitely not an easy thing to do. No waking up at four 30 in the morning.

[00:40:58] Yeah. Um, okay. So last question I have for you is, when you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, you’ve lost your focus temporarily. What do you do to get back on track?

[00:41:13] Jenny Weg: So my biggest thing is I make personal development books. Um, I love, love Mel Robbins. Um, and just knowing that there’s so many people out there that, like you said, your business is gonna have highs and.

[00:41:24] And being able to just kinda read those personal development books just gives me that little bit of boost that I need. Um, to kinda drag me back to why I started in the beginning. You know, I started this so that I had the flexibility to be there when my kids needed me. And so knowing that that’s such a gift that I have and that it’s not time to give up on that.

[00:41:42] Megan: Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for sharing today, Jenny. Um, before we leave, where can people find you and connect with you?

[00:41:51] Jenny Weg: Yeah, you bet. So I’m my Instagram. I’m Mrs. Jenny Weg, and if you’d like more information on the course that I offer, that is www.workfromoma.org. Um, and the course is always open.

[00:42:06] I’ve gone through periods where I’ve, you know, open enrollment and shut enrollment. Um, but I know everybody’s at a different stage at like, at different times. So knowing that it’s just always there if you need it when you’re ready to happen, um, the doors will always be. Awesome.

[00:42:21] Megan: Well, thank you so much for being here today, Jenny.

[00:42:23] This was great.

[00:42:25] Jenny Weg: Yeah, thank you, Megan.

Note: This transcript was automatically generated and may include typos.

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Dollar Sprout Podcast, where it’s all about building a business that offers consistent income and flexibility so you can live life on your terms. And now your host, Megan Robinson.

Introduction

[00:00:18] Megan: Welcome back to the Dollars Sprout podcast. Thanks so much for joining me today. I’m so excited for you to hear today’s episode with Julie Berninger, who is a blogger, a podcaster, an Etsy seller and co-founder of Gold City Ventures, where she teaches others how to start successful businesses on Etsy selling printables, which.

[00:00:44] Very cool. It’s a very cool episode. It’s something I’ve thought about doing in my own business. Um, I talked in the episode with Whitney Hansen. I talk about, um, or we talk about like just having a bunch of different ideas in a business and wanting to do all kinds of different things all the time. And this is one of those things that I have wanted to do in my business for a long time, selling spreadsheets and printables on Etsy.

[00:01:08] So it was really, really fun getting to dive in and talk to Julie about her. Um, you’ll get to hear a lot of really good nuggets from Julie today, including the number one mindset trap that she says. For most people hold them back when they’re trying to start an Etsy shop or really most online businesses.

[00:01:31] You’ll also hear how she built a strong support community of entrepreneurs in the early days starting out in her business, which I think is such a good idea and something that I’m now looking at doing for my. And, you know, community. Um, so very cool idea there. Um, you’ll get some printable niche ni niches.

[00:01:53] Oh God, I can never, can never decide if I wanna say niche or niche, you’ll get some printable niches that you never would’ve guessed would be profitable, um, or maybe even possible. Um, Julie really opened my ideas in this episode to all of the different. Areas that it’s possible to create principles in.

[00:02:16] Um, and her printable shop is, or started out in the bachelorette space, she started out selling scavenger hunts for bachelorette parties, which like. What I never would’ve thought of that. So you’ll get a lot of really good ideas. Um, we’ll talk about some mindset stuff, and she also shares some really actionable dos and don’ts for starting your Etsy shop.

[00:02:38] A lot of good takeaways in this episode, so be sure to stick around for the whole thing. Please welcome Julie Berninger.

Interview

[00:02:46] Julie Berninger: Thanks for having me.

[00:02:48] Megan: Yeah. Excited to talk to you today. Um, this is a, a business that I used to think about doing. It’s like one of the many businesses that I was interested in, you know, putting together when I first got started out in online business and I never really pursued, but it’s been one of those in the back of my mind.

[00:03:06] That I’ve always been curious about and like had as a project that maybe I would want to start or add on to my business at a later date. So I’m really interested in hearing you talk about your business today. Um, but before I jump into the middle of things, um, can you get us started by telling people what is your business?

[00:03:25] What do you do? Um, what products and services do you offer? For who?

[00:03:31] Julie Berninger: Hi, I’m Julie Berninger. I am the co-founder of Gold City Ventures, and we help people start Etsy printables businesses, their first ever Etsy shop, selling primarily digital products. So that’s a side hustle that I’ve done for a few years now.

[00:03:45] It’s so creative and fun, like you said. It’s really a really good thing for me to kind of get that creative outlet at the end of the day, but that has sort of morphed into this bigger business for me. Gold City Ventures, where. I took all of the tips and tricks that I’ve learned over the years and then consolidated that into a course called E Principles, and that’s my main job now.

[00:04:06] Megan: Awesome. Very cool. Um, so I do want to talk about where your business is now, and usually I do start with that upfront. I like to ask a lot of questions and you were very open and what you said you’re willing to share on the podcast. Um, but I. I would love to hear more before we get into that, cuz you have built this business of like, you had your own Etsy shop and now you teach other people how to like, create their own Etsy shop and be successful with that.

[00:04:35] Um, and I would love to talk more about like, what was your first Etsy shop like what, how did you get started in your business even before that? What were you doing before you knew Etsy was a thing?

[00:04:50] Julie Berninger: Sure. So I used to work in tech in a typical nine to five office job, and I had just moved out to Silicon Valley and gotten a big tech job.

[00:04:57] But even though I was achieving my corporate goal, career success that I wanted, I felt like there was another part of me that always knew I was meant to be an entrepreneur and the way that I. Explored that was by listening to podcasts on my lunch break and when I was commuting to and from work. And I heard a podcast about someone that started an Etsy shop and they had started their Etsy shop selling very inexpensive to manufacture items.

[00:05:22] And that sort of lit a light bulb in my head of, okay, I’m gonna start a shop that. Doesn’t cost that much inventory to get started. Now, I didn’t think of digital products right away. I actually sold temporary tattoos and they were a great business because they were so cheap to buy. So I could buy hundreds for not that much money.

[00:05:39] And I made the designs myself and I niched them down to the bachelorette party space because at the time I was in my twenties, I’m in my thirties now. I was going to tons of bachelorette party events and for anyone who’s ever attended one. You have to shell out a lot of money to the maid of honor and the whole bridal party for do dads that are one night only and you’re never gonna wear them again or use them again.

[00:05:59] And getting started with a business that had a high profit margin like that. Like people pay a lot of money, they buy them in large groups. Usually there’s 15 or 20 women who are attending these events. Then it seemed like a good niche to get into, so I was doing that. On top of my day job, but shipping and worrying about inventory, like I made a couple bad design choices.

[00:06:18] So I still to this day have a couple hundred raunchy bachelorette party tattoos that no one’s ever gonna use in my closet. But I was, I was onto some things doing it right, but I didn’t do the whole package right. And that’s where I met someone that sells digital products on Etsy. And once I switched my shop to be a digital product shop where I sold bachelorette party scavenger hunts, then I felt like it was a perfect blend of, yes, this is a really good side hustle for me.

[00:06:42] I’ve made $10,000 in a year on Etsy, which is great on top of everything I do, but. It’s something that’s not gonna take up the mental bandwidth because before it was really like, okay, I have a day job, I have all this stuff going on, and I have to worry about shipping like three orders out and of six tattoos.

[00:06:57] Like it just, it wasn’t something that I wanna take on. So digital products so scalable, it’s been like wonderful ever since.

[00:07:04] Megan: I’m so curious when people tell me like they got started in like such a specific niche, I’m so curious, like what was the thought process? What was I guess the process of discovering this niche of like bachelorette party temporary tattoos and then scavenger

[00:07:22] hunts?

[00:07:23] Julie Berninger: I think today, now this was, is probably 60 years ago that when I got started here today, I would use keyword research and I would use free tools like Google Trends and I would figure out what the trends are. But then I didn’t necessarily know about all those tools, so I just did it based off of my life.

[00:07:38] And I look to see, okay, where’s a situation where I see people spending a lot of money on something that doesn’t cost that much to manufacture? And that was the only thing that clicked in my brain. And where do I see people spending a lot of money? In the orders because I also sold, uh, tattoos for individual people.

[00:07:57] Like for example, I had this one line of Wolf Pack tattoos and I was thinking of like the hangover, cuz that was really popular, the movie at the time. And I was like, oh, maybe you know, people going to bachelorette parties in Vegas will want something like that. But, It turns out that kids’ birthday parties for wolves were also really popular, but like people would, they wouldn’t buy that many, they’d buy like two tattoos.

[00:08:18] So that to me is not worth it having to go through the, the shipping and everything just to make like a couple bucks. Whereas in the bachelorette party space, people are buying 15. 20 of them at once and the average order size was really high. So that was something I was kind of, I was thinking through like average order size or is this something that I’m only gonna get a couple things, or am I gonna get like a big bulk order and it’s worth my time.

[00:08:40] But now I would use keyword research tools, but that’s kind of how my mind was processing it Then.

[00:08:44] Megan: Very cool. Um, would you mind, I guess, kind of take us through a little bit of the history of your business. So you started out with this, uh, selling temporary tattoos and then you moved on to selling, um, scavenger hunts for bachelorette parties.

[00:09:02] Where does your business go from there?

[00:09:04] Julie Berninger: So this arc of the business also was following a journey into financial independence. I don’t know if you’ve heard of the fire movement, financial independence retire early, but my husband and I were super into that. So we paid off like a hundred thousand dollars of debt.

[00:09:16] We were churn away, trying to save as much as we could start to invest, et cetera. So for us, these side hustles that we both did were like gravy. That allowed us to save even more on top of what we were doing in our day jobs. So we. Trying all the things, but Etsy I kept coming back to because it was just so much fun compared to the other side hustles that I was doing.

[00:09:37] I am a blogger. I’ve made money with blogging through display advertising and affiliate marketing, but it’s just not, it’s just not as fun as Etsy. I’ll just be honest. Etsy’s great. Right now, I’m. Shopping for presents for people on Etsy all the time, every month. I mean, I just really enjoy the brand and I think there’s great stuff on there.

[00:09:53] So for me, this type of side hustle in having it be passive is awesome. So I was doing that for a bunch of years and then, I also had started a podcast about financial independence, where I would interview people who had achieved this thing that I was trying to achieve. And I would interview people that happened to sell on Etsy because I was interested in that.

[00:10:13] And my audience was also interested because they were hearing every couple episodes I’d bring on an Etsy person and we’d get inspired. So I asked them at one point, would anyone be interested in starting this mastermind with me? I, I’m new to kind of doing this, but what if we joined it together? And for six weeks we’ll create our shops together and we’ll see where it goes.

[00:10:32] And I did that a couple times and then my shop even took off more when I was focusing on it every couple weeks. This was like six years ago now. But I had some success stories from students and I had sort of the proof of, Hey, PE people are also just as excited about this as I am. Everyone seems to think this side hustle is a hit for them.

[00:10:51] So from there I thought, why don’t I just turn this into a course? I was having my first daughter and I couldn’t run masterminds anymore. It would be too much, and I was getting really tired cuz I would run them at night, at the end of work and just being pregnant, I was like exhausted. I just needed to go to bed immediately.

[00:11:05] So I recorded videos of how I created. The principles in Canva, how I did the keyword research, how I listed them on Etsy and turned that into a series of videos that people could purchase for me. And then this side hustle became more scalable for me, I guess. So that morphed into Gold City Ventures, which I now have a business partner on, and, and that’s my main gig.

[00:11:24] I was able to leave my corporate job and just do that now.

[00:11:27] Megan: Wow, that’s amazing. And I love that you, I love that you started like a beginner’s mastermind. Would love to, you know, have something like that. It’s something I’ve thought about a lot, you know, throughout the years in my own business, because usually you see masterminds of like, you know, people who are already, they’ve already reached a certain level of their business.

[00:11:48] So I love that you found this group of people and you were like, Hey, we’re all getting started here. We don’t. Maybe necessarily know exactly what we’re doing, but let’s do it together. Um, how did, I guess, how did that work? I’m so curious what that looked like and how those ran and how you knew what to do together when you were all just getting started.

[00:12:08] Julie Berninger: Luckily, I had had my shop a little bit more and I had sold the tattoo so I could be a little bit of the ringleader, so it wasn’t completely like free for all. But the fun part about it is that every single person who joined, they. Their interest in other niches, like no one was interested in Bachelorette.

[00:12:26] I had someone that was more of a personal finance budgeting guy and he did his based on spreadsheets and he actually sold spreadsheets on Etsy and he had a lot of success there. I had someone else who was um, a mom of four and she was interested in creating quiet book patterns, so, I have kids now, so I know what they are, but at the time I was like, I have no idea what a quiet book is.

[00:12:46] And it’s something to occupy your children when you just need a couple minutes and has like a lot of different things that they can touch and play with. But she was creating patterns for people on Etsy. And then I had someone else, this was actually my co-host, she was selling cro, uh, no stained glass patterns.

[00:13:00] She makes these beautiful e. Wedding gifts for people like the Harry Potter keys and all these things. So she was selling the pattern behind some of those, not Harry Potter, obviously, because that’s trademarked. You can’t sell that on Etsy, but other types of things. Now, what we realized though, through all this, some things are just more popular than other things, stained glass patterns.

[00:13:19] She didn’t make nearly as much money as I did on bachelorette parties, and that’s probably obvious. It was really a good wake up call for all of us of like, Hey, if you wanna do this cuz you have something in your heart that you love doing, then you can, you can, and who cares whether you make 20 bucks a month or you know, $2,000 a month.

[00:13:36] But if you’re doing this because you’re trying to make money as a side hustle, you cannot skip the keyword research and making sure that you’re testing the market and doing all those sort of data-driven decision making things upfront, because otherwise it’s not gonna be as profitable as you kind of hoped it would be.

[00:13:51] Megan: Yeah. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense and uh, I would love to know more if you’re open to sharing this. Um, Definitely wanna get back and hear more about your story, but since you brought it up, would love to hear more about like, how do you figure out what you can sell on Etsy and what’s gonna be profitable?

[00:14:12] Um, are there any like niches, markets on Etsy that are oversaturated and that people should avoid? What are your thoughts there?

[00:14:20] Julie Berninger: I think the oversaturation fear is the number one mindset trap that any of us get into when we’re starting a new side hustle. I mean, I even thought it when I did the bachelorette stuff years ago, and I’m still selling to this day, some of the scavenger hunts I made back in 2017 when I was getting started doing all this, but.

[00:14:36] In terms of making sure that you are putting yourself in the possess best position to get return on your time. Think about a couple things and the benefit now. I was talking to you about back in the day when I got started doing this. Now I’ve seen myself heavy years of an ETSI shop as well as over 9,000.

[00:14:54] Students we’ve taken through our E principles course, so that’s quite a large sample set on beginners, making money and getting started. And the people that do make the most money, they are using tools like Google Trends to figure out what are people typing and searching for. I mean, that’s one of the easiest free tools you can use.

[00:15:11] Type in printable template. Digital, certain keywords and see what returns there. And then they’re also thinking about a seasonal product strategy. And that’s something that we really differentiate ourselves in our industry on, of helping people understand that Etsy is a huge marketplace. It has 97 million shoppers every year, and people think of shopping on Etsy to celebrate holiday’s, events, and special occasions.

[00:15:35] That’s just a fact of why people use that website. So if you can create printables for holidays, events, and special occasions, and you can create. Enough lead time that people are looking for those things. Sometimes you can do a last minute night of printable, like for example, Partner in all this, Cody, he created a letter from Santa and that sold Christmas morning up until like the final minute where parents were printing that thing out and giving it to their kids.

[00:16:02] That’s an example of a last minute printable that could do well. But for the most part, people are looking a couple weeks ahead of the actual holiday. So if you could get your, your shop stocked with those events in advance, you’re gonna put yourself in the best position to make sales.

[00:16:15] Megan: Hmm. Yeah. So are there any big holidays outside of, you know, like the winter holidays. We’re recording this in November right now, so we have Thanksgiving and Hanukkah, Christmas, all the December holidays, new Year’s coming up. Are there any other like holidays that maybe people wouldn’t think are. Big money makers, but can actually do really well.

[00:16:40] And I’m sure maybe it depends on the niche also, but

[00:16:43] Julie Berninger: Totally. We have seen people join the course from all over the world and sometimes they’ll tell me, oh, did you know that Father’s Day is in September in Australia? Or I, I think that’s what it is, but they’ll, they’ll tell you about what they’re celebrating, where they live, and there’s a market for that on Etsy.

[00:16:57] Now, not every country has a bunch of buyers on Etsy right now. Etsy’s been pushing hard to get new buyers internationally, but I think. UK, Australia and Canada seem to be where there are buyers beyond the us. So if you’re trying to think of international holidays, maybe focus on those countries right now.

[00:17:14] But we, we’ll see people make sales in the holidays that I didn’t even realize people were celebrating at a certain time.

[00:17:20] Megan: Yeah. What’s, uh, This is not entirely related to holiday stuff, but what, I’m curious, what’s like the oddest niche that you’ve seen somebody, maybe like somebody through your course create that you would not have thought would be successful but was?

[00:17:40] Julie Berninger: There are so many niches and whatever you do in your day job, someone might be shopping for a printable for that on Etsy, like for example, the doula. If you’re a doula, if anyone has gone through the childbirth situation, you might hire a doula. That’s a big niche for printables on Etsy. That’s so funny.

[00:17:55] They’re the witch niche. I don’t know if you are on TikTok. I’m not on TikTok. Yeah. But I’ve seen witch talk. Everyone thinks they’re witches now. Back when I was younger, it was a Harry Potter thing. Now it’s like literally a whole thing. Yeah. The witch industry has taken off on Etsy in terms of principles.

[00:18:11] So if, if you’re someone that’s into that or anything like astrology tarot, I’ve never. I will make products that I don’t myself use, but in that particular niche, I’m like, I don’t know if I know enough about what people want in this niche to make it. But if that’s you, you’ll find your people that are ready to buy stuff there.

[00:18:27] So I, I’ve seen all over crazy niches.

[00:18:30] Megan: Wow. Yeah. That’s so interesting. I, I am on witch talk, by the way. I do.

[00:18:35] Julie Berninger: Oh my gosh. So, you know exactly. I’m sure you’ve seen principles. I

[00:18:38] Megan: actually, I don’t think I’ve seen any on, like, on TikTok. I’m curious what, what do those printables look like?

[00:18:45] Julie Berninger: So what I have seen, I don’t know how the, these are use, but there’s a lot of people that do, um, Manifestation rituals or like witch spiritual rituals and they’ll get like a guided workbook for that.

[00:18:57] Um, there’s people that are like green witches, that’s certain subset of witches and they have different stuff than the people that are the regular witches. See, you should be telling me more about this, but that’s so cool. It’s a, it’s a whole thing and I keep seeing all these keywords and I look at shops that have done so well in this niche and I’m like, I don’t understand this, but it is blowing up.

[00:19:15] It is huge.

[00:19:16] Megan: That’s amazing. I feel like I need to go look into this a little bit when we get off here.

[00:19:22] Julie Berninger: Um, go check it out on Etsy. Just type in like, which, which printables and you’re gonna find there’s, there’s one shop, I think it’s the Almost Witch. She’s been like really crushing it and I’ve been following her for like, over a year now and looking at all this stuff and I’m like, wow, this is, this is so amazing.

[00:19:36] But for me at this point, I have my bachelorette party niche shop, but I, I like to just pass ideas onto the students and try to inspire them to come up with, you know, whatever the hot sellers would be. Yeah. Because that’s sort of my role now is like helping the students get success. So I, I love like, doing that research, but I don’t actually always make, I’ll find like a really hot niche, but I don’t make the products necessarily myself.

[00:19:57] I’ll like just tell everyone, Hey, this is a really good keyword. It’s going to apply to one of you. It’s not me, but it’s gonna apply to one of you.

[00:20:03] Megan: Yeah. Oh, that’s so funny. I never would’ve guessed. The witch niche would be so popular on Etsy. Yes. But that’s amazing because where else would you buy that?

[00:20:13] Julie Berninger: Right? Like some of it is if you’re looking for something customized, and I mean, you could go down a rabbit hole in this niche, like love potions are allowed on Etsy. Wow. And as long as you physically, as long as you physically deliver a product to somebody like. If the love potion had a, a digital component where you gave a printed version of someone, you can sell that on Etsy.

[00:20:33] So I have never explored these niches and someone, someone listening to this is gonna be like, I don’t believe in this at all, but I’m gonna make a love potion because I can make a lot of money here. I feel like there’s bad karma in this world. Like I wouldn’t get involved in any type of like spiritual things, right, that you feel like might come back to bite you.

[00:20:49] But for. Other people, where else would you get this? Except for something like Etsy, where you’ll get, you know, personalized, custom handcrafted things. So it, it just kind of aligns perfectly with some of these more, um, accessory niches, I would say.

[00:21:02] Megan: Yeah. That’s amazing. Are there any other, like, weird, not weird, but you know, like any other niches that have surprised you recently?

[00:21:13] Julie Berninger: I mean, I think just people, whatever you do in your day job, it is a niche. So people, let’s say that you are a occupational therapist that works with kids or even, um, right now, like health, health related things or mental health related things. So, A D H D is something that you might have heard people talk about in their circles, but if you have that or you have a child with that, where would you buy certain type of workbooks or daily schedules or planners?

[00:21:40] Those are really becoming really big right now, and there’s people that they help other people with that condition or with their kids with that condition. Um, Improve their daily life through printables and planners and organizers. So I’ve, I’ve seen that kind of, that like if you’re in the autism community, then you might find resources to help your kid and, and whether you’re, if that’s your day job or whether you’re just like a parent looking to help someone or you’re looking for yourself, those are niches that I see.

[00:22:07] Doing well that are related to like what people do in their day jobs, I guess.

[00:22:12] Megan: Yeah. You’re, I my mind is reeling right now with like my own personal ideas for things that I could create as you’re saying this cuz there are so many things like that I do in my business as an online business manager. You know, project management, uh, launching all kinds of stuff that I’m like, oh, I could create something here.

[00:22:31] So, Yeah, that’s, that’s great inspiration. I feel like I need a pen and a paper to write down all my ideas right now. I’m gonna go journal after we get off here.

[00:22:41] Julie Berninger: Um, okay. Buy the journal on Etsy cuz someone made that journal. Yeah.

[00:22:46] Megan: Um, very cool. So I wanna kind of jump back a little bit cause I know you mentioned earlier that you and your husband were doing, you were pursuing fire, you were paying off a lot of debt when you first started your Etsy shop.

[00:23:00] And you were doing other side hustles as well? Um. First of all, how quickly were you able to like build significant revenue with your Etsy shop and how much debt did it allow you to pay off?

[00:23:15] Julie Berninger: It took me a couple years to get to the $10,000, um, a year mark where I’ve kind of. Kept it at. And I think right now I couldn’t commit to more than that just because I’m also blogging and podcasting and I now, now, gold City Ventures is a massive business.

[00:23:29] Anyone who’s ever sort of undertaken this, it’s, it’s a lot sort of managing that. Um, but. I did do it with around four hours a week. Like every weekend I would go to a coffee shop, maybe like two hours Saturday, two hours Sunday, or four hours on Sunday or something, and I would just bang out printables and do the keyword research and get them listed.

[00:23:47] So that’s as much time as it takes. Now some of my students, they end up loving it. They wanna spend 15 to 20 hours a week, and I’ve had people like Rachel Jones, her website’s, money Hacking Mama. She’s made $150,000 a year. Selling principles on Etsy. After taking our course, there’s another wo woman, Sasha Hutchson.

[00:24:04] She has a six figure business where she quit her accounting job in the pandemic when everything was awful for everyone, and she traveled around the RV with her kids and she makes six figures now. She sells principles, she does some work. Helping us actually with our, with our students and what’s been cool.

[00:24:20] I’ve kind of retained a lot of my original students. Even Kevin Jones, the spreadsheet person I was saying in the original Mastermind. He’s still around coaching students. So that’s been kind of fun to build out this team of people that we just love helping new people succeed. But it took, it took a long time to to build that out and for my husband and.

[00:24:38] With having a hundred thousand dollars of debt that it probably took, it took 18 months kind of to pay that off. But we could, we sold some things. We downsized, we, we did other things to kind of chop that debt. It wasn’t just side hustling, but I also was bringing in like $30,000 on blog revenue and I had these other things that I was tying in.

[00:24:58] So my day job kind of went towards investing and. Our daily lives. And then anything extra that I brought in from the side hustles, we just used it to slash the student loans and then they were gone. And then we hit the next level of like, okay, well now we still have this side hustle revenue coming in.

[00:25:14] What do we do with it? And we’re learning. We learned about investing and that was a whole nother journey. Yeah.

[00:25:19] Megan: Very cool. Are you still on the fire journey today?

[00:25:22] Julie Berninger: No, I’m still, I still part of the community. I stopped podcasting in 2020 because, um, it was kind of crazy. I was supposed to come back from maternity leave and.

[00:25:32] Then that was March, 2020. So the world like went nuts and I just couldn’t do the podcast on top of a day job and, and this thing that was blossoming with Etsy and Gold City ventures and all that. But, um, I think what has changed in terms of my fire journey when you reach a point that you have saved over the, like a million dollar mark is sort of what the fire community wants.

[00:25:52] Or like what, what is the, the basic PHI goal for a lot of people, I’ve seen some people have different goals, but that that’s a kinda traditional goal and then you find something that you love to do. It becomes like, why, why? Why would I stop working? And I, and I’m just one of those people, I’m so passionate and even when we were just kind of playfully talking about the witch talk and stuff, this, I get paid to do this.

[00:26:14] This is what I do for my job. You know, how fun is this? So you kind of lose that desire to escape. When you just are excited about it. And I think for me, just having, I have one daughter and then I have another kid on the way, the time that I do get to spend in my business, I look forward to that. Whereas I used to, when I, you know, was working, I would kind of get the Sunday scaries and dread, but now I don’t have as much time.

[00:26:37] So now I’m like, I can’t wait till I can get on the computer and start working again. Not that I don’t love being with my family, but it’s just I don’t get as much time. So I really look forward to it and I think it’s creative and fun. So am I a fire person? I believe a basic level of financial security just in case.

[00:26:52] I mean, who knows? Well, what could happen. I always think of the doomsday scenario, but once you save up enough money, you could last enough time a couple years to figure out something else. And that’s kind of what my new, my new thing is and the new path for our family. Yeah, I like that.

[00:27:06] Megan: I’ve never, like, I’ve always admired the fire community and like people work so hard and it’s.

[00:27:16] People go hard in the fire community. Um, and I’ve always admired it, but I’ve also never pursued it myself. Um, cause I kind of feel the same way. Like, you know, my, my job, my work isn’t perfect, but I also enjoy it. And so, um, yeah. I’m glad you found that. I’m glad you were able to find that through your business.

[00:27:36] Um, so. You, when did you go full-time in, in your business? In Gold City Ventures. How long has that been?

[00:27:44] Julie Berninger: I made it until July, 2021. And then it became too much and that’s where the fire thing, what I’m saying, like reach that basic level. It’s the point where you don’t have to do the, the corporate grind anymore because, and having a young kid and right now illnesses, we, our daughter’s in preschool, she’s getting sick every week.

[00:28:03] If I had a traditional job, I don’t know how we’d fit in the doctor’s appointments and you know, we did sleepless nights and random stuff that’s sort of popping up. It’s a lot easier now. And my husband works from home too, and we, and he’s kind of pursued a more flexible job opportunity as well. So it, it just has made our life a little bit easier in this time.

[00:28:23] That’s very stressful for a lot of people. So there is that aspect to it, but we’re not like, oh, I, I wanna now supercharge it even more so that we never, ever have to do anything for money again. That’s not really our, our goal.

[00:28:35] Megan: Your story seems amazing and, uh, I love that you’ve tried so many things.

[00:28:40] You’ve done blogging, podcasting, um, you obviously Etsy. Are there any projects or even specific like Etsy products that you have tried in the past that you, that were not successful?

[00:28:59] Julie Berninger: Yes, and I have dabbled in all the things. I think and, and for some of this stuff, it could be that I just didn’t give it enough time.

[00:29:07] But I did try the print on demand for Etsy. And it’s funny, my husband and I, we kind of did it as like a competitive contest to see who could. Be more successful with this, cuz I wanted him to create a shop too. We don’t have time for these type of, you know, dates anymore where we’d do coffee shop dates, but at the time it was fun.

[00:29:23] But the print on demand, and if anyone doesn’t know what that is, it’s like you create an se shop and. You get the orders fulfilled with, whether it’s t-shirts or hats or mugs, you get them fulfilled by someone else. So you just make the designs. You set up the systems on these other third party websites, and when someone orders off of Etsy, it sends the details to the third party and they ship it to the person.

[00:29:45] But the issue with that is the margins are just so low. So my husband, he has like two products. He has. I think it’s a guitar like grandfather hat or something, and it sells every Christmas, and we’ve had so many issues with that where the hat, maybe he’s charging $25 on Etsy and then the actual third party is charging him $21 or whatever.

[00:30:08] So he gets the $4 in between. But if. You’re running ads or whatever reason you’re making like four bucks on the sale. Whereas let’s say that you sell a printable, and we talked about the witch planner. Let’s say that witch planners are going for $13 on Etsy. That didn’t cost you much to make except for your time.

[00:30:26] Maybe you bought some clip art that was fancy for like $3 or something like that, and then you can use it for all a thousand of the witch planners. It’s just, it’s just much more scalable, and then there’s no other systems really that have to be used because sometimes when someone buys those Christmas hats, The third party is getting so many orders that they can’t fulfill it in the timeframe that the customer wants, and, and we think we’ve all ordered from a website like Etsy and it’s taken a while and we’re like, Hey, when’s this thing coming?

[00:30:53] That is kind of a thing with print on demand. Now that being said, in my world, I talk to people that sell print on demand and they’ve done extremely well with it, similar to how we’ve done in our space. So I’m sure there’s people that have done well, but that’s just one example where for me, I never really got anywhere with it, and it just got a little frustrating.

[00:31:11] And I think like the business model, I’d rather just do a different business model.

[00:31:14] Megan: Yeah. Yeah. And speaking of, like, while we’re talking about numbers, um, would you mind to share, you said that you built your, oh, Craig, me if I’m wrong in any of this, but I think you said you built your Etsy shop up to $10,000 a year while you were working roughly four hours a week, um, mostly on the weekends, and that it’s, you know, you’ve sustained it at that level.

[00:31:38] What amount of that revenue from your Etsy shop is profit and what is typical profit for most Etsy shops? I guess if you have numbers for that,

[00:31:48] Julie Berninger: I don’t remember the exact number on that, but because I didn’t. As well in terms of like how much I spent on clip art and things. But I, I mean it’s, I would say 80, 90% profit, um, probably 90 in this industry.

[00:32:03] And you know, it could be less depending on if you are running ads and. A lot of newer people like to run ads, but they don’t have the rest of the shop set up quite right. So it ads are a very easy way to waste a lot of money at the beginning. It can once a year, products are looking good and they’re in demand, and you understand the keyword research in the seo then.

[00:32:23] By all means, run the ads and it’s gonna be worth it. But I worry when people turn the ads on too early, because now they’re, they’re usually only doing like a dollar, $2 a day, but that’s an extra like, you know, 50, $60 that you don’t need to spend every month until you’ve figured out the rest. And then what I recommend instead is get the shop going, get some organic sales, and then once you see, oh, people love this particular thing, then run the ad to that thing.

[00:32:45] But don’t do it from the beginning. But I just mentioned that because if you’re running ads, then you could actually cut into your. Revenue a little bit more. Um, Etsy also, you might hear people complain about Etsy that they have high transaction fees, but they totally don’t like, cuz I also, I did try to sell on Shopify and for Gold City Ventures, we have a Shopify store where we sell commercial use templates and that is a five figure additional revenue stream for our business.

[00:33:13] But we already have the whole system. We have an email list, we have a website that gets a lot of traffic. We have Facebook and social media and all that bringing leads. When I tried to do this years ago for myself, before I even had any type of community, there’s no traffic coming to that Shopify store and I had to build up all the traffic and it took a really long time just like it did with my blog, and you can totally do it.

[00:33:34] It’s just, it’s not like Etsy where you sell on Etsy and there’s 97 million buyers and they’re shopping every day and you just need to like cut in there and. Intercept some of that search traffic when you’re on your own trying to create your own shop or whatever you, you might need to pay for ads. So I’m mentioning this when you ask me about the profitability, because for most people this is gonna be a very profitable business.

[00:33:55] But there’s ways that you can make it not profitable if you air off and you try to do your own thing. Um, and don’t go the easiest route. And that makes sense.

[00:34:03] Megan: That makes total sense. You wanna make sure you have a successful product before. Put money into it. I’m sure people who are listening right now have heard me talk on other episodes about how, not, not like with an Etsy shop, but in other things in my business, I have fallen prey to that, uh, mistake of putting too much into something before it’s actually validated and selling.

[00:34:25] So, Words of wisdom. Um, so now that you have built out your business and you’re doing other things, you know, and you have your, your course and your programs and you’re helping, you know, your students build their own Etsy shops, how much time do you put into maintaining your shop? Are you still.

[00:34:44] Consistently publishing new products. Um, and I guess, is there ever a time when like you get to a certain point in your Etsy shop where you don’t need to be publishing new products? Or like, what is the upkeep once you’ve, you know, built something that’s bringing in money?

[00:35:02] Julie Berninger: So at the beginning it’s, I think it’s called the Pareto principle, where.

[00:35:05] Eight 80% of the outputs are from 20% of the inputs. That’s just the reality of almost any online business. So I say that because in the first year you’ll have to spend a lot more time because you’ll, you won’t understand what’s gonna be a hit on Etsy until you get a little more experience and. You’ll put up like 10 products and only two of those 10 will sell.

[00:35:24] And that’s just the way it kind of works. But for myself having a shop that’s five years plus old, I don’t have to do that anymore. And what I typically do is in Q1 I do my brush up and I re-put all my listings that I need, new listings, go through, see what is in selling for the old ones and what I wanna do with them, and then I can let it ride for the year.

[00:35:45] And I’ve had some crazy things the last couple of years. So last year we moved. 3000 miles across the country and I took six months, six months off from my se shop, but still was able to maintain that a thousand dollars plus per month just given the history of my shop, me understanding the keyword research.

[00:36:03] So I had, well the products that I put up had higher chances of selling, I think, than if you were just trying to DIY this on your own. Um, that there’s certain things that I do to make sure that I put myself in that position. And it’s just life. Like, for example, I couldn’t work, um, I’m pregnant now. I couldn’t work all.

[00:36:19] I couldn’t even use a phone. Like it made me so nauseous to do that, and I didn’t have touch my Etsy shop. It still kept selling. Every once in a while I get messages from customers, but that took five seconds and I would just try to batch ’em and do ’em all at once, so I wouldn’t throw up. It was, it, it was insane.

[00:36:33] But that’s what I kind of love about this and, and what I’m describing. I see that I’m mentioning we have the data set of all the students. People will take six months off and their shop still sells once they get, its selling in the first place. So you have to put the, there’s no. Easy shortcut. There’s no get to the end before you get to the beginning.

[00:36:51] You gotta just get through the beginning, and then once you do that, then it can become when, when people are saying quote unquote passive income, it’s the time they put in at the beginning. That’s what’s allowing them to step away and let it kind of ride with the sales.

[00:37:04] Megan: Thank you for sharing all of that.

[00:37:06] I would love to maybe get your thoughts or. For somebody out there right now who is jazzed about this conversation who’s like, oh my God, I need to start an Etsy shop. This is, that’s what I’m gonna do this weekend. What are the first few steps that somebody can take to set their shop up for success?

[00:37:31] Julie Berninger: Get familiar with canva.com, and that is, a lot of people probably know it.

[00:37:37] If you’re new to online business, you might not, but it’s a free online graphic design tool and that’s where 99% of us making printables, we make our stuff. And as I got more experienced, I started dabbling in the Adobe Suite and, and. More advanced kind of professional software. And there are some people that are really diehard about it and they’re like, oh, Canva’s not even close.

[00:37:57] And if you’re gonna be a principal seller, you should use the better tools. But the reality is it’s so easy to use Canva, it’s so fast. And unless you’re selling in the wedding space where you’re making this bride’s invitation and it’s gonna be in Boston Gold Foil, and she really cares about X, Y, and z.

[00:38:12] For the principles that we were just talking about in this episode. People don’t care. Like canva.com is gonna be en enough and they’re pumping out so many new features. It’s just amazing. So I would create that Canva account and start playing around with it, even just for your own, I mean, you can do fun stuff for yourself in Canva, for your own life, and you can get ideas.

[00:38:32] Um, I would do that and then, Obviously being a course owner, I’m all about courses, but like, just take some sort of paid training. Um, I spent so many years DIYing, and I mentioned the coffee shop dates, but my husband and I would sit in the coffee shop because we were trying to pay off debt and we would spend hours and hours just trying to piece together somebody else’s YouTube videos and they would tell me half of what I needed to know and then I’d listen to five podcasts and try to like piece it all together.

[00:38:58] And now being a mom and. Realizing the value of that, I would just get somebody step by. And that’s what I do now. So for example, how did I learn how to do my own, the Gold City Ventures business? I just paid other people that I know in this space to tell me what to do and they know what they’re doing and they wouldn’t have a successful business unless they had a track record of student testimonials.

[00:39:22] So I just do that now and, and I’m like, oh, they tell me to use this tool. Here’s why they said it. I’m not gonna spend a hundred hours trying to figure out what tool I should use because here’s somebody that is using this tool as success. That’s what I’m gonna do. So that, that’s me. Now, not everyone is in that place to invest, but my time is worth a lot of money.

[00:39:41] I’ve realized, and I’m not gonna like just waste it wa waste five hours of my time trying to save a hundred bucks. That’s just not me.

[00:39:48] Megan: Yeah. Yeah. I was just having a conversation with somebody yesterday and we were talking about like the different courses and coaching and like all the stuff we’ve bought in the years of.

[00:39:58] Being in business. And, uh, one thing we were both saying that we’ve learned is that it is so much better. Like there’s a time and a place for general business training, but if you know you wanna do something very specific, it’s so much better to like hire somebody, whether it’s a course or a coach or whatever, who has done exactly that and who can kind of show you like, The, the roadmap, you know, show you the shortcuts and, uh, yeah.

[00:40:27] I, I wholeheartedly, as a course and coaching person advocate, I wholeheartedly agree.

[00:40:34] Julie Berninger: And I had to let go of this because as a fire person, I didn’t wanna spend a dollar because that’s another year working and Oh my gosh. And in the community of the fire community, There’s a lot of pride in like even things like doing your taxes yourself.

[00:40:45] I mean, some of the other bloggers I was looking up to, they’re talking of all these complicated tax strategies and how they do it themselves and they do their own budgeting and bookkeeping and all this stuff. So I, that’s something I’ve had to, I don’t wanna say unlearn because. I, I’ve met a lot of them.

[00:40:59] I ended up going to conferences and networking and, and that’s a whole nother thing that’s helped me in my business. But, um, and I saw they were living the real life that they portrayed online, which was amazing, this fire life. But the act of like outsourcing actually is how people scale. So when, when everyone asks me like, oh, how do you, you know, you’re about to have two kids.

[00:41:18] You have all this going on, how do you do it? I outsourced literally everything. And the second that we started making more money, more stuff got outsourced. Now we have landscapers. We never did that. We have house cleaners. We never did that. A reality of how when you’re seeing people be really successful, um, that seem not like they’re losing their minds or like they have families or whatever, the reality is, they, they are investing back in themselves in their business and their life.

[00:41:43] That’s what I see. I’m sure there’s someone who’s some superhero in the situation I’m in that does it all themselves and bless them, but for me it’s just that’s not gonna happen.

[00:41:51] Megan: Yeah. Yeah. I didn’t even think about that in the fire movement, but you’re right. Like. Lot of DIYs over there and, uh, yeah. I’m also, I’m also an outsourcer.

[00:42:04] Like, I can’t be bothered to mow my yard right now, so, no.

[00:42:08] Julie Berninger: And like, I would even, I felt like with my husband, when he would go mow the lawn, I was like, oh, well that’s, you know, I, I don’t wanna say you’re getting a break, but it’s very difficult having a kid. And the last couple years with the pandemic, it’s been, you know, childcare shut down, like weird things happened.

[00:42:20] So I was thinking like this is a better family life for us. The more that we both outsource. This is more harmony. Absolutely.

[00:42:28] Megan: Um, well, I appreciate you coming on the show so much, Julie, this has been such a fun conversation. Um, I would love to ask you some rapid fire questions before we wrap up. Okay. Does that sound good?

Rapid Fire Questions

[00:42:39] Megan: Okay, awesome. Um, so first rapid fire question I have for you is what is one of the best or most worthwhile investments that you’ve ever made in your business? And it could be an investment of money, time. Any, anything.

[00:42:55] Julie Berninger: I hope this is a different answer, but when I started Gold City Ventures, I had a business partner and I still do, his name’s Cody Berman and he’s, he has his own podcast, the FI show, but he’s seven years younger than me and he is just a go-getter and just us together.

[00:43:10] Are like, we’re able to do so much more. We have a multimillion dollar business because there’s the two of us. If I had been trying to do this by myself during everything that I, I’ve sort of been through the last couple years, I just, I wouldn’t have got to the same place. And I don’t think enough people are willing to take the gamble to invest in other people in relationships.

[00:43:27] Most of my businesses, though, I did start with another person. Maybe not an Etsy shot, but something that’s a little bit larger, like a podcast or a blog or whatever. Um, if you can. Find the right person. You gotta be aligned. You have to think of it almost like a business partnership. I mean, like I mentioned, Cody and I we’re, we’re not even in the same demographic, but we, we have the same vision and the same drive and the same business acumen and desire.

[00:43:52] So that’s why we do well together. But I would say that’s the best investment I ever made.

[00:43:57] Megan: I would love to have a business partner sometimes. Sometimes it’s just nice to have other, other people there not be doing it alone.

[00:44:05] Julie Berninger: Yeah, it’s super fun. I mean, just have someone to like talk th things through with.

[00:44:09] Megan: Okay. Next question I have for you is, in the last five years, what new belief, behavior or habit has most improved your life and or your business?

[00:44:18] Julie Berninger: The outsourcing. I just mention. It’s everything to me.

[00:44:22] Megan: Awesome. Um, okay, last question. What are any bad recommendations that you hear in your niche or your business area of expertise with

[00:44:32] starting an Etsy shop?

[00:44:34] Julie Berninger: In terms of bad recommendations? I think there’s a lot of. People that can start a Instagram or a TikTok and put out content. Um, but it’s very difficult to know whether this person knows what they’re talking about or not. And in the case of Etsy and the Etsy Seller Handbook, Etsy’s very particular about certain terms and conditions.

[00:44:55] Like for example, don’t use trademark. Thanks. Never, ever make a Disney product. And some of you may say, Well, I buy all these Disney products on Etsy. They’re short-lived. Like for example, last week I was trying to find, there was this Disney Christmas sweater, and I was so pumped about it. I’m like, I can’t wait to buy this thing.

[00:45:10] I, I started shopping for something else. 10 minutes later, the shop shut down. They’re kicked out, they’re gone. And sometimes, you know, influencers, I just gave one example, but they might not necessarily know all the rules regarding what fonts you can use, what clip art you can use. Um, so I like to learn from people that they have products and they.

[00:45:30] Students and testimonials and just that ru that proof that there’s success because anyone can kind of start a TikTok, um, nowadays. So that, that makes me nervous.

[00:45:40] Megan: Yeah. I didn’t even think about what are, what are some other, like maybe rules of selling on Netsy or some, just some general things that people should steer clear of.

[00:45:50] Julie Berninger: There’s a couple I can rapid fire. Now, depending on the mindset of the person, some people they get really this, this conversation makes them nervous and they don’t start because of it. But I promise you this is like anything in business, I feel nervous every day cuz I’m entering some new arena and I don’t, that I’m learning in my business.

[00:46:06] And it’s like the ability to push past that because what you want is. A greater desire than like how you’re feeling anxious about it. So I’ll, I’ll caveat with that, but some things kind of no-nos don’t have your friends and family buy the product. Um, there’s something called shilling their rule where if you incentivize someone to leave a good review, then you could get a warning from Etsy for that.

[00:46:29] So if your family buys, they’ll be like five stars. I absolutely loved it, but like maybe they didn’t even use it or whatever. Etsy doesn’t like that type of stuff. Um, For Canva. A lot of people I see like the influencers, I’ll see them tell people to start with Canva templates. Canva has hundreds of pre-made designs that you can use as a personal business owner or as, um, you know, in your day life.

[00:46:54] Like, let’s say that your kid is having a birthday party, you can type in, in into Canva birthday invitation, and you can get a pre-made one. You can’t just like take that, tweak it slightly and sell it as your own design on Etsy, when you’re using Canva, you gotta start from the beginning. You can look at it and say, Oh, okay.

[00:47:11] This is the size that they made it and then remake the same size or something. But like, you cannot start with the template. So that’s another thing that a lot of people don’t understand or they’ll use. Camba has free graphics and those are okay, but you cannot use the pro graphics, um, in your principles.

[00:47:27] So, you know, those are just some kind of common no-nos and like, I don’t want anyone to think they’re, you’re not gonna get sued. I mean, I’m not a lawyer, it’s just more, you, most people wanna always do the right things, so take the time to learn what the right things are. Yeah.

[00:47:41] Megan: Uh, that’s so funny. I wouldn’t have thought that about the, uh, pro graphics.

[00:47:44] I would’ve thought it would be the other way around that like, if you pay for it, You can use it for whatever.

[00:47:49] Julie Berninger: It’s because Canva is, I think, licensing them from other third party websites like Pxa Bay and other websites we’ve heard from. So they don’t have the agreement with Pxa Bay for somebody to use them.

[00:48:02] Commercially in a product that will be sold. Now if you wanna put them on your Instagram, who cares? That’s fine. And I use pro Graphics all the time and you know, stock photos and things like that. But on an actual printable that I’m uploading to Etsy and saying is my own, I’m not gonna use any pro elements.

[00:48:17] Megan: Ooh, well, thank you for those tips, because I definitely would’ve been somebody who would’ve broken several of those starting out. So really appreciate that.

[00:48:26] Julie Berninger: So that’s why what I’m saying, like don’t DIY it. It’s just because then someone gave you that whole list and how long would you have had to spend, or like you might do it wrong for six months and then well now you get a best seller and you gotta change out the clip art and it’s frustrating.

[00:48:40] Megan: Well, Julie, this has been great having you. Where can people find you and connect with you online?

[00:48:45] Julie Berninger: You can go to gold city ventures.com. We have a free workshop if you are like, Hey, I actually wanna learn more about selling principles on Etsy. I am on Instagram at Millennial Boss. I am not a social media person, so I’m not gonna be doing the dancing tos.

[00:49:00] I have a couple on there, and that was enough. Um, maybe, maybe in 2023 I’ll finally get more excited about doing that. But I’m all about like keyword research and the more passive ways of making money. Doing the TOS and the Instagrams are not me.

[00:49:16] Megan: Yeah, me either, but I think TikTok is like trending more towards talking, like talking head video or whatever.

[00:49:22] So I’ve been thinking about it more. I’m like, I’m I in TikTok, but also I hate social media, so. Don’t get your hopes up anybody.

[00:49:31] Julie Berninger: Th and this is where I would love to, like I mentioned the mastermind, if I had like a mastermind of people of, Hey, I already have a business, but I’m dabbling in TikTok, so we could try it, but I was, what I don’t like about it, I don’t wanna have to prepare.

[00:49:41] And I was even, you know, I, I don’t have time to like do my makeup or anything here. I was putting the fake eyelashes, the filters on my face. I looked ridiculous. Looked like I had two spiders on my. And I just was like, well, I don’t have time, so I’m just gonna like, just have this filter, put makeup on my face and I’m gonna do this thing.

[00:49:57] So, I don’t know, it just seems like a lot of work. Um, yeah. It’s not, it’s not necessary. It’s not necessary to like perform, to have a multimillion dollar business. You don’t need it. Yeah. But it could help, to your point, I mean, people are really doing so well on these platforms.

[00:50:09] Megan: Yeah. I love that you say that though, because not everybody’s a social media person and you don’t have to be on social media to make good money in a.

[00:50:20] Julie Berninger: No, and and that’s what I learned with the podcast because I had so many listeners and fans like this podcast had a couple million downloads. And I, I thought it was fantastic. I met people in person and I kinda made friends through it, but that wasn’t a multimillion dollar business. Now I have no podcasts at very little social media, and I have a multimillion dollar business, so I don’t want people to like conflate.

[00:50:40] If you have a lot of followers and a lot of people click things, that’s not the same as you have a revenue driving business. Mm-hmm. And sometimes optimizing for downloads and content and traffic, but not setting up the rest of it. That’s where you can just kind of tread water. Yeah. And then you’re not making money on the side hustle.

[00:50:57] Megan: Another mistake I made for so long in my business thinking that like I just needed a blog and like get people to my website and do Pinterest and stuff, all distractions because I wasn’t making money for like a year.

[00:51:09] Julie Berninger: So yeah, you’re like, well what, what product are you selling? I don’t have a product. Oh, okay.

[00:51:15] Problem. So how you make money? Yeah. Yeah. You have to make money to have a business. What?

[00:51:20] Megan: Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Well, thanks so much for being here today,

[00:51:24] Julie.

[00:51:25] Julie Berninger: Thanks for having me.

Note: This transcript was automatically generated and may include typos.

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Dollar Sprout Podcast, where it’s all about building a business that offers consistent income and flexibility so you can live life on your terms. And now your host, Megan Robinson.

Introduction

[00:00:18] Megan: Welcome back to the Dollar Sprout podcast. Thanks so much for being here with me today. Our guest today is Whitney Hansen, who I’m super excited about.

[00:00:26] I’ve been following Whitney for a long time, or what feels like a long time. I guess it’s really been six or seven years. I don’t know. That feels like forever though. Um, but I started following Whitney back in her blogging days. She’s a financial coach and today focuses more on financial coaching. She used to do more blogging back in the day.

[00:00:45] That’s how I found her. Huge fan of Whitney. You don’t need to know all that, but there you go. I shared it. Anyway, , so I’m really excited for you to meet Whitney today and hear her story. She talks about how she decided to build a business that quote unquote doesn’t scale, um, and how she structures her work to only take coaching.

[00:01:08] A couple of days a week rather than, you know, sporadically every day of the week, which is a trap that some coaches fall into, especially in the beginning of their business. Whitney is just full of so much wisdom and in information about business. So, um, you’ll get to hear. , like I said, why she decided to switch from a more scalable business model.

[00:01:31] She started her business doing online courses, and then she moved to just doing one-on-one coaching, which is primarily what she does in her business now. Um, and a lot of the time you’ll see people go the opposite direction. They’ll start out with one-on-one services and then switch to something more scalable.

[00:01:50] An online course or a group coaching program, Whitney does the opposite, which I think is really cool. And it’s all about, you know, building a business that works for you and, and gives you the, the support and the lifestyle that you want. So be sure to listen in for that. Um, she also talks about how she realized it was time to stop blogging even though she was making passive income from it.

[00:02:13] How she gets clients now and how she got her first few clients in the earlier days of her business, and just so much more. There is so much value in listening to pretty much everything Whitney has to say. So also be sure to check out the show notes for links to all of Whitney’s, uh, information, her website and her podcast so that you can get in Whitney’s world.

[00:02:37] All right. Without further ado, please welcome Whitney Hansen.

Interview

[00:02:42] Whitney: Hey, Megan, I’m so excited to be here. Thank you so much for having me. I’m really

[00:02:46] Megan: glad that you’re here on season two. Really excited to hear you share the story of your business. Um, so speaking of your business, would you mind to start out just by telling the audience, um, what exactly your business is and what products and services

[00:03:01] Whitney: you offer?

[00:03:03] Yeah, my business is a financial content creation business via podcasts and a financial coaching business for women that are single or feel as if they’re single in their relationships, helping them get their finances in order so that they can have a little bit more time freedom and enjoy their money.

[00:03:21] So that’s what I do today.

[00:03:23] Megan: Yeah, that’s awesome. Can you, I’m curious, since you just said that, what does, what do you mean by feel as if you’re single?

[00:03:31] Whitney: Yeah, this is so fascinating. It’s, it’s really heartbreaking, but I, what I find is a lot of people that reach out to me, and I think naturally my brand tends to attract more of a female audience.

[00:03:42] And so what I found is when I was getting on these calls with people and just chatting, you know, Hey, why’d you reach out to me? Like, why now? What’s going on in your life that, that you feel like you need some help? A lot of the people that were responding were saying that they are in a relationship, they’re married or they’re dating.

[00:03:59] But their partner is not on board with finances and they feel like they have to figure this stuff out on their own. And so that was like, as a business owner, that was kind of an aha moment where I started to realize that actually was a pattern of the people that were reaching out. So that’s what I mean by that.

[00:04:15] Would love to

[00:04:16] Megan: know kind of how you got started in financial coaching, because I don’t know, some people in the audience might know, but I did financial coaching for a while. Um, and for me, you know, I started out studying finance in college and I was like on the path to become a certified financial planner and realized that.

[00:04:36] Actually did not wanna do that at all. Um, and so left school did some soul searching, couple of years of floundering and then found financial coaching. Um, so that was my path. But what was your path? Did you also start out in like. the financial field or Yeah. What, what did that look like for

[00:04:55] Whitney: you? Yeah. I would say my entry path to personal finance was, my background was in accounting.

[00:05:02] That’s what I studied in college, and I thought for sure accounting was gonna be awesome. And then when I graduated college, I worked in public accounting for three years. No, actually two years. I only lasted two and I hated it. . I was like, this is not for me. It’s terrible. So I always had a financial background, but financial coaching didn’t come for me until I had graduated college had $30,000 of student debt.

[00:05:27] And had that kind of come to Jesus moment where I had to make a decision of do I pay the minimum payments and just accept, you know, the standard repayment plan of 10 years, have this debt for a little while, or do I buckle down and pay off the debt? . And so for me it was buckling down, paying off that debt.

[00:05:45] I paid it off in 10 months, which was crazy. So I was like a staff accountant. By day I was anell technician nights and weekends doing manicures and pedicures, and so it was two jobs, a lot of hours, but that’s where I started having people come to me for advice. They were like, Hey, you paid off all this debt.

[00:06:03] Can you help me? I don’t even know how to create a budget. And I was like, girl, I got you. Let’s do this. So we’d sit down and we’d create a budget and start to put together a plan. And so that’s kind of where the business idea came from, was people were just coming to me asking me constantly for help with money.

[00:06:19] Yeah.

[00:06:20] Megan: So I’m curious, when you were on your journey and you were like paying off your debt, um, were you sharing your story very publicly or how was it that people knew to come to you for

[00:06:31] Whitney: this? I don’t recall if, I think at that time that was 2010. So the, the most social media esque platform I would’ve been sharing on would’ve been Facebook, but it was mostly.

[00:06:45] Shoot, I think it was just friends and family. It was, people were asking me like, Hey, why, why are you going to work at this job too? What the heck? What’s going on here? Why are you always working? And then I would just start to, you know, tell them. And when I paid off some debt, like big chunks, I would chunk my student loan debt and I would get so excited and just kind of share like, Hey, I just paid off another $5,000 of student debt.

[00:07:07] And so I think in, in the salon environ. is where it was really catching on too, because there’s so much downtime that you just sit there and chit chat all day sometimes, especially in the slow season. And so I think that’s how it initially started catching steam. Um, yeah,

[00:07:21] Megan: I find that that’s, you know, how a lot of people get started, how a lot of financial coaches that I’ve spoken with got started too.

[00:07:28] You know, like just. , you have your own financial journey and you also had the background in accounting and finance. Um, and yeah, people come to you because it’s something that’s so needed. And even though, like, like I, when I first started doing financial coaching, I didn’t know it existed until I found it, you know?

[00:07:48] And I was like, oh, I don’t have to be a financial planner. I can do this. And that sounds way better to me. Like that sounds way more fun. Um, and now I’ve met so many coaches and there are like so many of ’em out there, but at the same time, there aren’t enough. There’s not enough. Um, so yeah, really excited.

[00:08:07] Share your business with the audience and anybody who might be interested in, in trying out financial coaching. Um, so I also think it’s funny you brought up that you were in accounting and you hated it. Um, I don’t know if we’ve talked about this before, but like I had a similar experience where I didn’t even make it to corporate accounting.

[00:08:28] I like did a summer internship in accounting cuz my major was accounting. Before I switched to finance, I did a summer internship and immediately was like, I. I am not cut out for this life , none of it. like, no. Yeah. Um, anyway, so, so you were paying off your debt as you were working in accounting and also working your nail tech job.

[00:08:54] At what point did you realize that you couldn’t just like, help friends and family, but like this was a viable option for a business? At what point did you even. Realize you could charge money for, you know, your financial coaching

[00:09:11] Whitney: services. That is such a good question. I don’t even think. Entrepreneur.

[00:09:17] I’ve always been entrepreneurial, but I’d never thought running my own business would be something I would do. It just to me, running your own business means that you’re broke. That’s what I used to believe, . So I was like, I do not wanna be broke. I want to make a lot of money. That’s why I went to college and that was a very broke mindset, but that was.

[00:09:33] The mindset I had, and so I didn’t think it would be a viable business. I went back to school for my masters and when I was in my m MBA program, that’s when I started to get exposed more to design thinking concepts and lean startup methodology and all of these things where I was like, this is very cool and very different.

[00:09:52] And so that. That style of thinking and training your brain to ask the right questions and have a hypothesis and test that hypothesis and get feedback was very interesting to me. So at the same time, I was being exposed to those concepts and having people ask for financial help. So that’s when I was like, shoot, maybe there is something here, like maybe I don’t have to be a C P A or A C F P to make money helping people.

[00:10:18] And at that time, the only. The only large example of people that were doing financial coaching was Dave Ramsey at that time. Like that was pretty much the, and Susie Orman, I should say. So there were like the two primary. Voices there that were not CFPs or CPAs that were helping people with money, but I didn’t think I wanted to be a radio personality or you know, like I, so there just wasn’t anything that I could comprehend.

[00:10:44] So it wasn’t until I started realizing that business comes in different styles and it’s not necessarily you have to do the path that. Dave Ramsey or Susie or Orman did, you could kind of create your own thing doing almost a consulting model. That’s when it started to become a little bit more of a reality that this could be a viable business.

[00:11:04] Megan: So you realized it could be a viable business, but what was the motivation in pursuing it and actually making

[00:11:09] Whitney: it one? Yeah, there was of course the demand of people constantly asking for help, but truly what has driven me to help people with money, specifically women, is that when. when I was a kid, so when I was growing up, my mom and dad were married for like 20 some years, like 27 or something crazy.

[00:11:29] And so she was a stay-at-home mom. There’s six kids in my family, and so like they were very much paycheck to paycheck. My dad ran his own business, but I wouldn’t say we were like living. A high upper class lifestyle by any means. And so I remember watching my mom, raising kids, and my parents’ relationship started to slowly disintegrate and it started to get really toxic and dangerous.

[00:11:53] And so at one point, my mom decided it was enough was enough. It was abusive, there was drugs involved. It was just a rough situation. So she said, I’m out of here. I’m taking the kids, and I’m, I’m gone. And so she moved up to Bo. Where I live now, and we were so broke, Megan, we were like sleeping on this little mattress on the floor of an apartment.

[00:12:14] Like it was just a rough situation. And I remember one day my mom and I were walking and we found a mattress in the garbage can and we were like so stoked. I couldn’t tell you how we got it back home, but we were like, yes. And so we took that home. And so at that time I was 16 years old and that’s when I would say I had that.

[00:12:33] Lesson of like, oh shoot, money matters. Like when you don’t have control of your finances, you might be stuck in a really crappy situation like this. And that has motivated me so much to just have that freedom to be able to leave really bad situations when you have money. And so that’s really what has pushed me to really help people.

[00:12:55] And so that’s kind of always been in the back of my mind and my whole. .

[00:12:59] Megan: Yeah. I appreciate you sharing that story. Um, yeah, I just, my heart goes out to 16 year old Whitney, you know, having had not the same but like, you know, similar stories around money, um, of like just seeing relationships go bad and seeing how much struggle and strife that it can cause.

[00:13:21] Um, yeah, it’s, it’s a real. Difficult thing in a lot of relationships. Um, so I am curious, so when you first started out, people were coming to you and they were helping you with, or you were helping them with, uh, like budgeting you said, and setting up debt payoff plans, I guess. Um, what was the first thing that you charged for?

[00:13:48] How long did you do it for free

[00:13:50] Whitney: before you

[00:13:51] Megan: started, you know, charging for anything?

[00:13:54] Whitney: It’s very funny because I did what most MBA students would do first, and that is do not work on anything that appears to be scalable or unscalable. Like all you’re doing is only the things that can go to the moon, right?

[00:14:09] That’s all we’re doing is just building up that, that scalable system. And so what I initially did is I initially, for the first maybe two years of my business, did not do one-on-one financial. because in my head I was telling myself, you are not gonna make money as a financial coach. You need to do courses, you need to do other pieces that are more scalable.

[00:14:32] And so I kind of steered away from financial coaching completely for the first two years and only did the method of running webinars, doing some paid traffic behind that, and then selling courses on my webinar. That was all that my business model was, and it was fine. It was good. But I still had so many people that were even going through courses that were like, Hey, I really like this stuff, but can you just like help me?

[00:14:56] Like I just want you to look at my budget and see if there’s anything that I’m missing. And I, for the longest time was like, Nope, not scalable, not gonna do it. Because that was my, my M B A brain talking. And once I started to say, you know what, maybe the way to build a good business that’s profitable and is enjoyable for me is to do what’s unsell.

[00:15:18] And so I started to focus on the one-on-one coaching, and I would say that’s where I started having a lot more fun in my business and making pretty good money and not having to constantly worry about, is this gonna grow to millions of dollars a year? It was more like, how do I get this to $2,000 per month and then how do I get this to five and then 10?

[00:15:40] And so it, it helps you really start to refocus and help people and change their lives through the one-on-one unscalable. .

[00:15:48] Megan: Yeah. That’s so interesting that you started out cuz like a lot of people that you know, I’ve talked with in service businesses, it’s the opposite. They start out doing like the one-on-one or like the whatever the hands-on delivery thing is, and then they like create a course or a, you know, a system or something.

[00:16:06] So it’s very interesting that, you know, because of your MBA experience and everything you. On the opposite end, you started with courses and then moved to coaching because you just enjoyed it more, it sounds like.

[00:16:18] Whitney: Yeah, pretty much. I think it’s the, the message of the business world. There’s a great book that I read that really resonated with me too.

[00:16:24] It’s called Company of One, and. It was such a good book because so often the message around business is you need to get this to grow as fast as possible so you can hire as many people as possible so you can serve as many customers as possible. And so it’s all of this like grow for the sake of growing.

[00:16:46] And while I do think businesses do need to grow, I mean I’m certainly not naive to that. You have to have some money in order to make a larger impact. I do realize that sometimes it’s that focus on doing what is unscalable that actually helps your business grow. And so that was, it took a long time to like almost reprogram my brain.

[00:17:03] And that book, I think does a really good job of helping you almost unlearn that and recognize that the business is the right size for you at whatever level you want it to be. And so I’ve really enjoyed that book. Yeah. And

[00:17:15] Megan: I feel that very deeply because like, I’ve never really been somebody who wanted to build an empire, but you know, I do want.

[00:17:23] A business that I don’t hate, that like feels enjoyable and can pay me full-time for maybe working slightly less than full-time would be great too, but totally. Yeah. Um, so I get that . So zooming out from your business, um, would you mind to kind of talk about what your business looks like today? So you started out with courses and.

[00:17:49] Products or whatever and then move to financial coaching. How much one-on-one coaching slash courses or other things are you doing today in your

[00:17:58] Whitney: business? Yeah, this is, you’re catching me at a pivotable moment in my business, so this is really interesting, , but I actually recently have retired. Pretty much every single course offering that I have except for become a Financial Coach course, which is a a course slash group coaching model.

[00:18:19] And so it’s kind of a hybrid that is the only course that I’m keeping. And so my two services now that I offer for the public are one-on-one coaching and they become a financial coach course. So that’s it. I used to have a lot of different moving parts and I would have all those courses, and what I found is, As a solopreneur mostly I was spreading myself way too thin by trying to promote all of these different courses and I had very like niche courses.

[00:18:49] One on specifically paying off debt, one on specifically budgeting, one that was a comprehensive financial course and it just, it was hard to get the marketing messaging very linear and laser focused and build out funnels that way when I was constantly feeling like I was being pulled in lots of different directions for courses that.

[00:19:08] between $49 and $149. So the, it just didn’t quite make sense and so that’s why that that shift in my business is currently

[00:19:17] Megan: happening. Okay, cool. So you said you currently offer one-on-one financial coaching and then your become a financial coach course. Mm-hmm. .

[00:19:27] Whitney: Yep. Those are the two offerings within the coaching side.

[00:19:30] And of course the podcast has affiliates and sponsorship income and, and other little avenues here and there, but those are the two core offers that I have.

[00:19:39] Megan: That’s awesome. How are you feeling about, um, simplifying, tearing some stuff down in your business and, you know, figuring out your new core offerings?

[00:19:49] Whitney: So, stressed out, man, , so it’s years of like, so being intermingled with like all of these email opt-ins and downloadables and like trying to go back through and making sure you don’t miss any pieces where people are trying to. By a course that doesn’t exist and getting an email, you know, two years down the road, which I fully expect will happen, but it’s.

[00:20:12] It’s very hard, and I think it’s, you probably relate to this too. When you’re entrepreneurial, you get so excited about all the different products and services that you can offer, and you’ll hear, you’ll go to a conference and somebody’s like, Hey, this is working great for me. So then you go back to home and you’re like, I gotta, I gotta do this.

[00:20:28] Too. I need to do eBooks now. Great. And so pretty soon you’re, you’re spread so thin and you’re pulling in all these different directions where if you have a laser focus of all of my energy and attention goes towards these two things, it’s so much easier mentally to beat that overwhelm.

[00:20:46] Megan: Yeah, absolutely relate to that.

[00:20:47] I have so many . I was just talking to my partner Joseph the other day. I can’t remember what got us on this subject, but we were like talking about all the things that I’ve done in my business and he was like, yeah, you’re really good at starting stuff. And I was like, Finish that sentence, Joseph, finish that sentence.

[00:21:07] Whitney: He’s just looking real comfy. Yeah. .

[00:21:10] Megan: Uh, but I know what he means. Like, and it, cause it’s so easy as a business owner, like you were saying, there’s so many different things that you can do. There are so many options for like, things that you can do, even just like, you know, your business. For example, financial coaching, like there are so many.

[00:21:30] Options for making revenue in your business. Totally. You know, like it’s, it can be overwhelming and Yeah. And I’ve found like a ton of those and I’ve started a ton of them. Can’t say that I’ve finished a whole lot.

[00:21:46] Whitney: that, that’s so funny you say that. I relate to that so much. That’s exactly the struggle.

[00:21:51] That I have two. Tony and I were saying something similar when I came across a gal that was doing a lemonade stand. I’m like, oh dude, I can do a lemonade stand too. I’m like, okay, I need to just put, put my head down and focus on a couple things. It’s really hard. It is so hard.

[00:22:07] Megan: It’s so hard. Is there anything that.

[00:22:12] Are there any projects that like you look back on that you started to do in your business and you didn’t finish that maybe stand out as something that you’re like, uh, I wish I’d done that, or any on the opposite end that you were like, I’m really glad that I did not follow

[00:22:30] Whitney: through on that. Yes. I would say the biggest one that comes to mind was initially when I started.

[00:22:39] My business, I was doing a YouTube channel and they’re still out there. Yes, they’re embarrassing, but hey, whatever. So I did a YouTube channel and I was doing blogging, and that was one where I would say I went down that path of trying to be a blogger and trying to force that so much, and you know, had enough traffic that I was in a good advertising network.

[00:23:03] But what I realized is like that didn’t. My business, like all, it gave good information, it brought people into my world, which is fantastic. But it didn’t really align with my direct business goals, which was how does this convert directly to one-on-one coaching and how does this directly encourage people to become a financial coach?

[00:23:22] Like it, it really didn’t support that. So that was one activity that I think I pushed up a hill maybe a little bit too long and kind of regret doing, um, one project that I’ve recently. Was considering, and it put it in the parking lot for now, was doing a financial like, um, like a diary. So this would be like a spending tracker and budget template using my, my systems in a physical form.

[00:23:50] And that was one that I was really quite passionate about and ultimately had to put on the parking lot in order to focus on my core offers again. So that was a recent one that kind of.

[00:24:01] Megan: Yeah. Yeah, I’m, I’m right there with you. I have like a whole notebook full of ideas that like, I’m not even doing financial coaching anymore.

[00:24:08] I started a completely different business, but I’m like keeping this notebook and I’m like, I don’t know. You know, maybe I’ll revive this one day. , it’s hard to like let go of your creative ideas, um, especially if you’re somebody like, I don’t know. Do you, do you just enjoy the process of creating.

[00:24:26] Whitney: I freaking love it.

[00:24:27] Like that is my favorite thing in the world, and that this is actually an interesting tip for people that are kind of like us. If you are going into financial coaching and you like to dabble and experiment and try different things, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It just can’t take away from your core business offerings.

[00:24:46] So what I have done instead is I enjoy testing side hustles and trying to make. On the side, like I love it. I really do. And so what I have done is I actually have very strategically tested side hustles that I thought would be kind of fun and could easily, you know, turn into their own courses or eBooks.

[00:25:05] But what I’ve done is I’ve collected that information. So when I have a financial coaching client that says, Hey, I really just need to make this much money, we can kind. Explore, how much do you need to make? What are you interested in? Oh, here, I’ve tested this side hustle. Here’s how you can make it work.

[00:25:22] And so I found a way to kind of help support the educational side of my coaching by letting myself dabble and try other side hustles

[00:25:29] too,

[00:25:30] Megan: which is, yeah, I mean that sounds like a great solution because it’s being productive on both ends. On the one end, it’s like allowing you to do different things.

[00:25:39] Cause it can. . Yeah. If, if you’re like me in that way, it can be so hard to stick to one thing. Um, and then, yeah, it gives you information for your coaching business. Are there any side hustles that you’ve tried that really stand out as your favorites that you would recommend to anybody listening? ?

[00:25:56] Whitney: Yes. I think it depends on how desperately you need cash.

[00:26:01] Yeah. That’s the, the barometer that I use. So if you need cash immediately, I like the on demand delivery side hustles like Instacart, like Amazon Flex. I think Amazon Flex is one of. the best. There’s usually a very long wait list to get onto that program, but if you need cash very quickly and you have your own, you know, flexible schedule, I think that’s a really, really good one.

[00:26:26] Instacart is great. It’s all about efficiency. DoorDash, Uber Eats, I’ve tested, they’re okay. Um, those ones I think are fine. I love freelance writing. If you have some competency. Deeper skill or the ability to research and, and communicate very clearly. I love that as a side hustle for a lot of people, those are, if you need immediate income, if you’re thinking a little bit more long term, I.

[00:26:50] I love real estate investing. I have to be honest, like I think if you have the cash and you have the creativity, there’s so much you could do there to really change your life. Whether that is house hacking or doing cool Airbnbs, or even long-term rentals or midterm rentals. I’m very passionate about that, but that is more of a, a long-term game.

[00:27:10] Yeah.

[00:27:11] Megan: I have been following you on Instagram since like the beginning of your, I think, what was the beginning of like your, uh, Airbnb journey because you just, Like you’re officially launching, I think, what’s your first Airbnb, right? Cascade

[00:27:25] Whitney: Dome. Yep. The, the Geo Dome in the mountains. It’s been fun. And I, Megan, I totally spaced on mentioning furniture flipping.

[00:27:34] That is probably Oh, right, right. My go to side hustle for quick cash where you just buy pieces of furniture from a thrift store or. I don’t know, on Facebook marketplace or look around your, your parents’ house and you resell it. So sometimes you fix it up, sometimes you don’t. But that is a very profitable kind of fun one.

[00:27:54] But you do need to have a little bit of space to store some furniture.

[00:27:58] Megan: Yeah, we, uh, just had Robin Melissa from, uh, flea market flippers on the podcast too, so yeah, it was so, so fun and so excited to talk about them. They do wild flips. That’s crazy. Stuff that Ive never even heard about.

[00:28:12] Whitney: Prosthetic legs, like, yeah.

[00:28:15] Commercial, crazy kitchen, all.

[00:28:17] Megan: Yeah. Um, that is a, that’s a really good one. I’m glad you threw that one in there. Yeah. So Cascade Dome, I do wanna, I know this is like off topic, but I also haven’t had a chance to ask you about this yet. So you just like recently won. An Airbnb contest, right, to create an another unique rental.

[00:28:35] Whitney: Can you tell me about that? Oh my gosh, this was crazy. So Airbnb was having a global competition or fund, I shouldn’t really call it a competition, but the whole premise of that is you submit a crazy idea. It has to be pretty wild off the beaten path that would fit for their, their O M G category, which is all the architectural anomalies and just kind of these weird properties.

[00:28:59] And so I submitted an application for that, not really thinking it would go anywhere and it. Progressed into different levels and then pretty soon I got an email saying, Hey, you are a finalist, which is basically a hundred thousand dollars before taxes that will go towards building a giant flower pot in Idaho.

[00:29:20] is what I submitted. . So that is so cool. It’s crazy, but, so this is all of my next year. Which as a business owner and as a financial coach is very interesting because we, we like to do the build or at least a big portion of it. And so setting up my business now where I can increase my financial coaching prices to reduce the amount of clients that I have, but still make money and still pay my own bills, is really, it’s cool that you can do that.

[00:29:48] As a business owner, you

[00:29:49] Megan: mentioned increasing your prices and having fewer clients, um, and. Somebody who’s like has my own business. I’m curious how much time you spend in your financial coaching business right now. Um, cuz it sounds like. You have time to pursue other things. So what does that look like?

[00:30:11] Like what does a typical workday or work week look like for you in

[00:30:14] Whitney: your business? What I find is with my schedule, I will do calls Monday through Wednesday, and these are all of my meetings. This is all of the podcast interviews, this is all the coaching calls. And so typically what that looks like is. I will start my coaching calls around 11 or 12 Mountain time on Mondays and Tuesdays, and they will generally go kind of sporadically throughout the day till about eight to 8:30 PM and so that’s Mondays and Tuesdays, so it’s a little bit more.

[00:30:43] Back to back a little bit more stressful, like hopping in and outta calls pretty much all day long. Wednesdays I will do a mix of podcast interviews and calls, so that’s the time where I’ll have conversations like these. I’ll bring people onto the Money Nerds podcast and we’ll start to have. That all on Wednesdays.

[00:31:02] And so that’s how I have structured it. And the cool thing is, as a financial coach, you get to set how many people you work with. So my coaching package is three months and I work with people every single week in some capacity. And so most of the time it’s just quick check-in calls to make sure they’re sticking to their plan.

[00:31:20] We’re troubleshooting that kind of stuff. So it’s not a ton. Time all the time. It’s just occasionally you’ll have like your hour long masterminds. And so those are my, my more work days. Uh, Thursday I tend to do a little bit more content creation or just catching up on email, that kind of stuff. And Fridays I try to do half day Fridays or take the full day off depending on how the schedule looks.

[00:31:45] So I would say as a whole, I probably work about 30 to 35 hours a week. And of course, sometimes. Extra work weeks where you have to really grind out on something. But for the most part, that’s what I aim for. Thank you for

[00:31:59] Megan: sharing that. I think it, it’s been interesting to hear people talk about how they manage their time, like doing these calls with people.

[00:32:06] Um, and I think batching is like, The secret of success, . But was that hard for you as like, um, as a financial coach, as somebody with a service business? Was it hard for you to kind of say to people like, these are when, these are the hours I’m gonna work and these are the hours you can schedule your call rather than just letting people have free reign over your calendar nine to five, Monday through Friday.

[00:32:34] Whitney: Yeah, I’d say it, it was a little, it was a little hard in the beginning because I, I kind of had this feeling that if I wasn’t available for sales calls all the time, anytime I’m gonna miss those sales. And that was a little bit scary. And I would say there probably is some truth to that. The longer people think about a decision, the longer they, or the more they will talk themselves out of it.

[00:32:58] And so I do think there is an element of truth there, but you have to balance that with. The types of clients that you’re serving, and do they need you to really be on demand all the time? Like, that’s kind of exhausting. You’re, you’re just a human. And so it was really hard, but my moment of switching things up where I said, okay, no more is, I was on a road trip with my mom and we had to pull over at rest stops, like every few hours.

[00:33:24] So I could take coaching calls and that’s when I’m like, this is ridiculous. Like this does not have to be that. And so that’s when I shifted everything and I thought for sure I’d get so much negative feedback, but it was more in my head. My coaching clients saw the schedule they scheduled. That was it.

[00:33:41] But it was more like, I guess like exaggerated in my head of how bad it was gonna be. Yeah.

[00:33:46] Megan: Well, I’m glad you were able to do it and I think it’s, it is interesting like just sometimes in your own business it can feel. , I’m not allowed to do that. Or like you said, I’m gonna miss out on clients with those sales calls or whatever.

[00:34:02] But like so many professional businesses out there have normal operating hours like , you

[00:34:09] Whitney: can have set operating hours that you

[00:34:13] Megan: want that work for you. Um, so I’m curious though, how. , your time management, I guess, has changed over times from like when you first started your business until now, and I know when you first started your business you said you were doing courses.

[00:34:31] Um, yeah. How was it, I guess, what was it like managing your time and how much did you work in your business when you first got started? Um, I forget if you mentioned if you were, like, when you started your business, if you were also working other jobs or something. What was that like in

[00:34:47] Whitney: the. . Yeah, so I actually did not quit my job until about.

[00:34:53] I think it was like three and a half years into my business, so it took a little bit longer, and so I was still working my normal nine to five job, and then every single free minute, every lunch call, everything was dedicated to my business. And it wasn’t like, yeah, people would look at that and say, that is no.

[00:35:13] Balance for your life. But I was having so much fun that I really didn’t care. Like I really did enjoy it. And so what I have found is I probably worked about the same amount on my business then as I do now. But then, I don’t know what it was. I think it’s when you don’t have as much time, you’re so much more effective and you’re so much more productive.

[00:35:35] And so I look at those early days of my business, I’m like, damn. I was like getting stuff done. I was hustling. I was like producing. And there’s times today where I’m like, oh, I got my five themes for today. Done. Go me. You know, , it’s just so different. Yeah. And I don’t know, so I, I think that a lot of people feel like they have to go all in on their.

[00:35:56] And quit their job and just like focus all of their energy on there. And what I find is most people are actually very productive and very profitable growing a business in tangent with their nine to five job. And it, it works really, really well. Like I think it’s a really important thing to know as you don’t have to go quit your job and go all in on your financial coaching business.

[00:36:18] You can build it up slowly and you’ll still get great results. Yeah.

[00:36:22] Megan: It’s so funny you mentioned that. I’m the same way, like I am the most productive and most effective when I. Way too many things going on , you know? Um, but I’m like such a freaking sloth whenever I just have one thing, one project, or like one job or whatever it is that I’m focusing on.

[00:36:42] No, I need to have like way too many things. The anxiety and the pressure needs to be very high. And then I am like on it. But yeah, I, I’m not saying I love that about myself, .

[00:36:55] Whitney: I feel that, but it’s also how I operate. Yeah. . Yeah. Um, well, and I think so much of that is self-awareness and not trying to force yourself to.

[00:37:03] Perform in what we deem as a successful way. I think it’s like finding your path, your style, what works for you. And if you tend to be the person that crams before the test, like, cool, if that works for you, great. Like, we don’t always have to change everything about our natural instincts. I think we, we do that a lot.

[00:37:22] Megan: Yeah. Yeah, I agree. And yeah, so much of the last few years in figuring out my own business has been like figuring out the self-awareness portion and what, like what actually does work for me in terms of time management and the what I wanna do and how to structure my offerings and all of that. Um, I’m very curious if you have a take on.

[00:37:48] um, I was gonna say hustle culture. That’s a huge question though, but like hustle cul, you know, there is like the culture out there of like, um, just work, work, work, grind all the time. You know, if you should be working day and night, especially if you’re building a business or if you’re a business owner.

[00:38:04] And I know like a lot of the times I personally. Feel like if I’m not working on my business, I’m wasting my time. If I’m like reading a book fiction or nonfiction, whatever it is, in the back of my mind, I’m thinking like all of the things that I need to be doing in my business. So I’m just curious, um, what your take is on the idea of hustle culture, how much you should be putting into your business when you are just getting started.

[00:38:31] Yeah. And how you’ve maybe kind of let go of the idea if you ever had the, the idea or the feeling of. You had to hustle all the time. How you’ve shifted that to have more time outside of your business. It’s a lot of questions.

[00:38:45] Whitney: It’s such a good question though. I think it’s something we all struggle with and kind of go in and out of, of like, should I be like focused and only doing, you know, not coming outta my office except for dinner and then coming back and drinking more coffee and work until 2:00 AM Like we, I think we all kind of feel that way sometimes.

[00:39:01] And so it’s that, that message is very strong. What I, what I, my take is, In our lives, we are living by seasons, and so when you are getting a business off the ground, No doubt about it. I do not know a single person that didn’t have to put in more hours, sacrifice some time with family or friends or themselves.

[00:39:26] I have not met a single person that has been able to do that effectively. Maybe they’re out there, I just haven’t came across them. . And so what that tells me is when you’re first growing a business, there’s an element of you do need to put in more time and energy to get something off the ground. It’s, you don’t have that momentum yet.

[00:39:43] You’re pushing that rock up the hill, but it’s not quite self-sufficient. You’re not at the top of the hill yet, so it’s not rolling down. You have to like really heave and hoe to get that up. And so I find that when you’re starting something new, it does require a lot more hustle Once it’s going, I think you can start to slowly.

[00:40:02] Not put as much energy and effort into that because now you have that momentum. And so I think that that tends to be, the question I ask myself is what season of my life am I in right now? Am I in a season where it does require me to hustle and to put my head down and work extra hours? Cool. That’s what I have to do.

[00:40:20] Am I in a season where everything’s going pretty good and I don’t need to like force and work even more? Great. That’s fantastic. And so I think you have to really understand where you are in your business to see what is the requirement for workload. And that is one of those things too, where when you first get started in your business, you are so excited and it’s so fun and new that you will work more hours naturally because you enjoy it.

[00:40:46] I think the issue is when you’re working more hours into a business that you absolutely hate, Then it really is detrimental to your health. You don’t enjoy it. You’re having a crap time. You’re grouchy all the time. Your relationships are gonna suffer. Your health is gonna suffer and you’re gonna be miserable.

[00:41:01] But if you love what you do and you’re really excited about that process, you actually feel more energized by that. It doesn’t feel so draining. And so I don’t know if that’s just me, but that’s just what I’ve noticed in my own life. .

[00:41:13] Megan: Yeah, I think that’s, that’s very true. And I like what you said about being in seasons because it is so much work building a business in the beginning, like, yeah, I don’t know.

[00:41:25] I guess there are some cases out there or seemingly some cases where it like goes from zero to 1,000,006 months or whatever, but like. I don’t think that’s, yeah, that’s not the case for most people. And even if it is like the 12 months leading up to that was probably a lot of work. So, um, . Yeah. Anyway, I, I just like what you said about seasons and like you do have seasons where you’re busier, but like you can also have seasons where you rest more

[00:41:57] Whitney: and we should, right.

[00:41:58] Like, that’s the important thing. What I find helps with that too, is when I started to beat myself up and just be like, oh my gosh, you should be working on this. It’s, you know, 8:00 PM and you didn’t send out that email. What’s wrong with you? What I found is when. Really was very diligent about time blocking and scheduling my calendar almost very, um, maybe too much a little o c d sometimes, like from an outside perspective, it would look like, that’s crazy.

[00:42:30] Why are you doing that? But like down to like every 15 minute, 30 minute increment, what I found is that feeling of like, I didn’t do enough, kind of started to diss. Because I started to actually get a lot of stuff done throughout the day and start being a lot more productive. So that feeling of guilt wasn’t there as much.

[00:42:49] It was those days where I didn’t have a plan for my day. Maybe I had like a few things written down, but then I was scrolling through a TikTok or Instagram for God knows too long and that those were the days where I started to really feel like I should be working more is when I was noticing I was doing more of that.

[00:43:05] So I found a direct correlation with my screen time and that.

[00:43:09] Megan: Yeah, I have, I found the same thing. And also like I’m a notorious list keeper. Like I just love having pen and paper, a list of like every, everything I need to do. Um, like even if I’m working with a client, I’m using a project management tool, I’m in a sauna or whatever, I’m still gonna have my pen and paper list, you know?

[00:43:31] but I feel so, yeah, I agree. I feel so much better about that list and what I’m able to mark off of it at the end of the day when I’ve like put my items in specific time blocks on my calendar. . I don’t know how the magic of time blocking works. I don’t understand the science of it, but also way more productive when I do that versus when I’m like, I swear to God, I can have the same item on my pen and paper list and it takes me half the time to do it if I put it on my calendar.

[00:44:04] I

[00:44:04] Whitney: don’t know. I’m just saying works. I think you’re onto something, pal. Like this is a legit thing. .

[00:44:11] Megan: Yeah. Yeah. It’s crazy. I wanna go back and ask you a question that I think I meant to ask you earlier, and I totally forgot . Um, but I wanna back up and talk about how you’ve gotten clients for your business, um, because, well, in the beginning, let’s start there.

[00:44:29] In the beginning, you started out with courses and you said you were doing workshops, and then on the back end of the workshops you were like selling courses. How did you start that? Where were those people coming from? . And did you, like, did you have to learn a new skill to do that ?

[00:44:47] Whitney: All the time. I feel like I’m always learning new skills.

[00:44:49] Yeah. Um, okay. So what I initially was doing is, I think this is normal for most consulting or coaching businesses. Your first clients are going to be friends, family, people that know your friends and family. It’s gonna be that referral and to an extent that still is most consulting businesses. But I’d say that is your primary source of leads when you first get started.

[00:45:12] So what you have to do as soon as you possibly can with any type of business, but specifically coaching, is you have to understand your customer avatar. So then you can start to craft messages and marketing materials and. Talks or reels or whatever the heck, even a post on LinkedIn, when you have that avatar in mind, it starts to become more of that attraction.

[00:45:35] Instead of that, like, you know, you’re, you’re, you’re a little bit more pulled than push when it comes to your marketing efforts. And so that’s the key piece to any business, but specifically there. And then what you notice is the more that you. and usually when you first start, you don’t have a ton of testimonials.

[00:45:51] You are your testimonial. Like that usually is the case. So the soonest that you can get testimonials and feedback from other people and start to put those out into the world, then the more people are gonna start to say, oh, this is interesting. And so what I think is the primary lead generator for my business now is podcast first, followed by my email list that has.

[00:46:18] we’re sitting at about, I just cleaned it up, so we’re actually at about 7,000 people on the email list. Like a lot of people are like, oh, your email list has to be massive. It doesn’t actually, it truly doesn’t. When you’re talking to the right people, you can still build a very successful business with a smaller email list, size two.

[00:46:33] And so we, we are constantly promoting we meaning me, I’m constantly promot. Emails that will like pitch coaching and say, you know, hey, if you need to, I’ve got this many spots available for the next month. And so it’s all of those efforts combined with your marketing materials and being very strategic about the content you put out there that will start to attract people.

[00:46:54] But in the early days, it was a hundred percent friends and

[00:46:57] Megan: family. Awesome. Yeah, I think you’re totally right. Like. friends and family and cold outreach or just like referrals in general is how so many service businesses start. I’m like in the midst right now of doing cold pitches and, you know, looking at partnerships and stuff.

[00:47:15] It’s the worst

[00:47:17] Whitney: Anyways, so discouraging ,

[00:47:19] Megan: so, so discouraging, so necessary. Sometimes, but it is, I didn’t realize, uh, how late it has gotten, cuz I’ve just enjoyed talking to you so much. Um, but I would love to ask you some rapid fire questions before I let you go. Is that all right?

[00:47:35] Whitney: Let’s do it. I’m excited.

Rapid Fire Questions

[00:47:37] Whitney: First question

[00:47:39] Megan: I have for you is, what is one of the best or most worthwhile investments you’ve ever made in your business? And it could be an investment of money or time, or energy, any of those things or any other resource.

[00:47:51] Whitney: Ooh. It was an investment of time in joining a business incubator at Boise State called Venture College.

[00:48:00] It was a semester program, no credit, uh, just for fun, where you are very diligently working on your business, and that was the hardest I’ve ever worked, but the most fulfilling and most growth I think I’ve ever had. That’s by far the best investment I’ve had so far.

[00:48:18] Megan: Very cool. . Yeah, that sounds awesome. Um, okay, second rapid fire question is, in the last five years, what new belief, behavior, or habit has most improved your life and or business?

[00:48:33] I don’t know if you can hear. My dog is like dreaming behind me right now. It’s like, like yelping and is asleep. Okay. Okay. Calm down buddy. . Sorry.

[00:48:43] Whitney: That’s so cute. . Lemme think. I would say the, the biggest mindset shift that I’ve had is it’s not about how good your product or services is. It’s about how well you market the product or service.

[00:49:00] Mm-hmm. As much as I hate that, that is by far the biggest thing that I’ve had to wrap my head around, over and over again, but especially so in this past year, you can have a great product and service, but if you can’t market it, You were gonna be broke, you’re not gonna have a good business. And so that is by far the the biggest mindset shift I’ve been having lately.

[00:49:22] Megan: Hmm. Is there any product or service that, like you’re thinking of in your business that you created and you thought was amazing but like, didn’t get the traction or the attention you thought it should because it just marketing ?

[00:49:36] Whitney: Totally. I would say the, the course that I just retired manager money, like a.

[00:49:42] Mm, man. I thought that was the best course ever. , it’s a good course, but I did not market it to the degree that it should have been. And so it, it wasn’t a flop, but it wasn’t by any means, like, I mean, it would buy hundreds of dollars worth of stuff, but not a house like it. It just wasn’t the same level. So that was definitely one that I, in hindsight, could have done a much better job marketing.

[00:50:06] Megan: Yeah, it’s so true. It is. . Very hard to come to terms with that mindset, but it is so true. Marketing is like if you don’t have marketing, you don’t have sales, so you don’t , you don’t kinda important . Yeah. Um, okay. Last question I have for you is, what advice do you have for someone who’s just getting started or maybe toying with the idea of starting an online business or a lifestyle business

[00:50:35] Whitney: that sort of.

[00:50:37] Find a mentor. I think that’s the biggest piece that you can do, and that can be a virtual mentor or it can be an in-person mentor, ven virtual meaning podcasts, or maybe you’re reading their blogs or their YouTube channels. But what I suggest for anybody that’s interested in an online business of any type or any business, find a single mentor and follow their blueprint and their.

[00:50:59] To a t. Mm-hmm. Don’t intermingle other people’s advice. Just learn from one mentor at a time, and I think that’s where you find a lot more progress, a little bit more quickly.

[00:51:09] Megan: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I, I totally agree. And I also have a question for you around like, looking for a mentor. So Yeah. Have you found. do you, do you look for a mentor who’s doing something very specific that you know you want to do and has like that exact blueprint versus like, they’re also business coaches who are kind of more general, you know, who just like will meet with you every week and talk about whatever you’re working on and give you general advice?

[00:51:37] Ha, I what level or. , what kind of mentor do you prefer there?

[00:51:42] Whitney: I prefer very laser specific mentorship, so I’ll have different mentors for different elements. Like I have, one of my best friends is a rockstar at Airbnbs that are in the unique space, so she’s my mentor for that. I only follow her advice when it comes to Airbnbs.

[00:51:58] There’s lots of great advice out there, but that’s the only one I follow for financial coaching. I don’t really have a mentor. anymore in that space. But I would say when I was first getting started, I couldn’t find a financial coach mentor. So I would look at consulting models and really track that, kind of, that level.

[00:52:16] So I had a, a college professor that was a consultant, and I would meet with them and just ask them questions of like, Hey, well how do you get clients? How do you charge to make sure that you’re not underpaying yourself? And so those were the initial mentors as just like very topical, very specific. Um, I think once.

[00:52:34] you get to a certain level. Masterminds are really great for that diversity that you’re seeking. But in the beginning, yeah, laser topical specific I think is

[00:52:43] Megan: best. Yeah. Very cool. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show, Whitney, and for hanging out with me today. Um, before you leave, where can our listeners find you and connect with?

[00:52:57] Whitney: Yeah, the best places to go. Hop over to the Money Nerds podcast. You can find out on any podcast player and there you can get some more financial advice to and fun conversations can go hop over there and listen to some cool stories.

Note: This transcript was automatically generated and may include typos.

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Dollar Sprout Podcast, where it’s all about building a business that offers consistent income and flexibility so you can live life on your terms. And now your host, Megan Robinson.

Introduction

[00:00:18] Megan: Welcome back to the Dollar Sprout podcast. Today we have with us a very special guest, Gillian Perkins. Gillian is a digital marketing expert, a best selling author, and the founder of Gillian perkins.com, where she teaches entrepreneurs and small business owners how to improve their online presence and grow their business.

[00:00:41] Some of her programs include the Startup Society, which is a membership community that offers action plans to help grow your business. Live coaching and accountability in the community and validate is another one of her programs. I really love the idea of this. One. Validate is an eight week acceler.

[00:01:00] That’s designed to help you test drive your business idea to see if it has legs before you launch into something full force. Um, I don’t think that there are a whole lot of things out there, at least not that I’ve seen that are like validate. So I think that’s a really cool program. So if you’ve been thinking about starting a business, but you aren’t sure if it’s the right idea, definitely check that one out.

[00:01:24] Gillian has helped thousands of people achieve their business goals through her podcast, her paid programs, and her YouTube channel. And today she’s going to share her knowledge and experience with us. So sit back, relax, and get ready to learn from one of the best in the business. Please welcome Gillian Perkin.

Interview

[00:01:44] Megan: Hi Gillian. Thanks so much for being on the Dollar Sprout podcast today.

[00:01:48] Gillian: For sure. Thanks for having me. It’s great to be here.

[00:01:50] Megan: Would you mind to share with our audience kind of what your business looks like at a high level with some numbers today, um, starting with maybe what exactly it is that you sell and what is your business profitability look like

[00:02:07] Gillian: from that?

[00:02:08] So the main products that we sell are a couple different higher end business training programs that guide people to, we have two specific programs. One is called Validate, and we teach people how to test out their business idea and figure out like, is this a valid business idea? Is there really demand for this?

[00:02:27] Will it, does it have the potential of being a successful business? And so that’s an eight week accelerator program. And then we have our kind of next step program that is called hundred K Mastermind, and it guides people to take that proven business idea that they’ve gotten a validation for and turn it into a $10,000 or more per month revenue stream for their business.

[00:02:50] So how do they automate that? How do they build a sales funnel that consistently sell? Um, so those are two main higher level programs. But then something that’s always been really, um, just important to me is providing affordable business education for people who are just starting out. Because when you’re first starting out, a lot of the time you don’t even know exactly what business you wanna start.

[00:03:11] Um, maybe you have no idea if it really is going to be successful. Maybe you don’t even have enough confidence to jump into like an eight week accelerator and go all in with a business idea, even for a short period of time. Um, because I remember being at that place myself, where I was just had so many uncertainties and there were so many unknowns, and I just, I needed to learn things.

[00:03:30] I, I really didn’t know what I didn’t know. So I needed the training, I needed the education, but I wasn’t ready to go all in with a business idea or invest very much into a business. So the other main program that we sell is called Startup Society, and it’s a really affordable monthly membership program that’s kind of just a comprehensive business education.

[00:03:51] It’s kind of business 1 0 1 for all the different aspects of business just to get people started and help people to get that education that they need to learn how to develop their business. So those are the main programs that we offer and, um, those are our mainstreams of revenue. We also generate revenue from, um, YouTube ads because we have pretty big audience on YouTube around, um, around 600,000 subscribers.

[00:04:18] So that generates, uh, about $10,000 a month in revenue. And then we also do some affiliate marketing as well. However, we’re pretty selective with that. We just work with a few different companies and we’ll do promotions with them. Um, the programs that I mentioned, uh, startup Society is a membership program, and so we typically average around 300 members in it, and it brings and around 10 to $20,000 per month.

[00:04:46] And then we have these two group programs that we run Validate a hundred K Mastermind, and those we launch periodically throughout the year because we run those programs live because we like to work directly with the students, even though they’re group programs. We get really personal with the students and we are walking through the program with them.

[00:05:06] It’s not at all like a self-paced DIY course type of product. And so we launch them live and then we run them live. And so the revenue from those, it varies from year to year, depending on how many times we launch them and how, um, aggressively we market them when we do launch them. Very cool. Yeah,

[00:05:27] Megan: I, um, I, there is so much like business knowledge and there are so many business courses and stuff out there.

[00:05:35] Um, but I think that, like you mentioned earlier, there’s not a whole lot of like really

[00:05:41] Gillian: affordable

[00:05:43] Megan: specific trainings for like new business owners. And I personally haven’t seen a whole lot out there about what you were talking about with, um, how to validate your idea because I had so many ideas when I first like, wanted to start my business.

[00:05:59] I feel like I had a ton of ideas about the kind of business I wanted and the things that I wanted to sell, but. I didn’t, I didn’t know how to validate them. And that resulted in so many, like, so many months really of lost time, just like trying to figure out what the heck I was doing. So, um, I love that you have a whole program just about that, because I think that’s a key piece that a lot of people miss when they’re first starting a business.

[00:06:26] Gillian: For sure. Yeah, let’s talk about that for just a moment. There are two reasons that I created that program. One was basically the thing you’re talking about that a lot of the time is an obstacle that people face where they want to start a business, but they’re uncertain about whether or not their business will be successful.

[00:06:40] So either they spend a lot of time on, uh, idea that isn’t gonna be successful or just stops them, right? And they’re like, oh, I don’t know. And they waffle between different ideas because they don’t have any sort of proof that it will be successful. So they don’t really wanna invest their time and, and money and effort into it.

[00:06:54] So that was one reason I had felt that pain. I had tried so many business ideas, but not really like given them mm, I don’t know the, the test drive that I needed to. So instead I was just like, why isn’t this business working out? You know? Um, but it really held me back. The other reason was because we were running our program called startup.

[00:07:13] We had all these members in there who were trying to grow their business and they would be asking us, you know, why isn’t my business growing? And they would tell us about their business. And sometimes we’d be like, oh, you just need to do this thing. You know that that’ll solve all your problems, you know, or that’s your next step.

[00:07:27] But other times they would tell us about their business and we were like, um, actually, and. Our reaction, our opinion, and it was just our opinion was that their business didn’t really seem like a good idea , but who are we to tell them that? You know, maybe there were people out there who wanted what they had to sell.

[00:07:44] And even though I know a lot about business and have started quite a few different businesses over the last 10 or 20 years, I still do not feel that I am the the person who should tell someone whether or not their business is a good idea or not. There are all sorts of businesses out there that have been successful that I never would’ve guessed would’ve been successful and vice versa, I might think something sounds like a great idea just cuz I wanna, but maybe no one else wants it.

[00:08:07] Right? So I don’t really feel that I or anyone on my team or any business coach should be telling someone whether or not their business idea will be successful or. So I was like, how can we help people figure this out for themselves? Because I don’t want to give them advice about how to grow their business when I don’t even think their business is a good idea.

[00:08:25] Right. I think that they should test it out and they should figure out whether people want this. And so we developed the validation, a process to guide them in a really structured and really comprehensive way to like thoroughly vet their idea so that they could have the confidence to go all in with their business and they could just, yeah, they could be all in, give it what it would take to turn it into a success because they had the confidence that it was a valid business idea that there was demand, that it could be successful.

[00:08:55] Yeah, absolutely. Um, I’m would love to hear

[00:08:59] Megan: more about. I know you have such a long, vast entrepreneurial journey, um, and you know, I think you were one of those people who was a born entrepreneur, you know, like lemonade stand kind of story that you hear. Um,

[00:09:15] Gillian: but I’m curious, like where did your

[00:09:17] Megan: entrepreneurial journey begin and how, cuz obviously you didn’t start out just creating courses and programs teaching people how to start a business or validate a business idea that wasn’t your first business.

[00:09:30] Um, so where, where did your entrepreneurial journey begin and how did you get all of the knowledge and experience

[00:09:37] Gillian: that you have today? Yeah, well it was kind of a, a lemonade stand sort of story in that as a kid I started various different little businesses and ventures where I either got my friends to buy into different ideas or I walked door to door and, you know, sold things, um, to my neighbors and different sorts of things like that.

[00:09:58] Um, and then when I. Was a teenager around, I think 14 years old. I wasn’t even trying to start a business. I, I did want a job. I wanted to make some money, but I didn’t have any business idea really. Um, and I had a friend who asked me if I would teach her how to play the flute because I played the flute and the piano.

[00:10:20] And, um, I wasn’t, uh, an exceptional musician in myself. I’m just intermediate. But, um, she wanted to learn how to play the flute, and she was like, you know how to play the flute, so teach me. And she was very pushy, but actually, and I, I said no at first a couple times, but she was like, I need someone to teach me.

[00:10:36] You can teach me. So I’m glad that she did push because, um, turned out to be something that I enjoyed doing and I was like, Hmm, actually I’m, teaching is a natural gift of mine. It’s something that comes very easily to me. I, how to explain things to people is pretty just straightforward in my mind. Um, and so she felt like I.

[00:10:55] Did a good job of teaching her and very, uh, thank, I’m thankful to her that she then told other people, yes, Gillian teaches flute. Yes, Gillian teaches piano. And I was like, I don’t know about this. And so I immediately got a few referrals from her and I told those people, like, I don’t really know about this.

[00:11:13] I’ve never done it before, but they were interested in hiring me too. So, um, I quickly got a few different music students and pretty quickly got confident with that because I saw that it was something that came pretty naturally and easily to me. Um, and so kind of fast forward a few years, I, my student base had grown to my complete capacity, which for a, a one-on-one music teacher, it’s about like 40 to 50 students a week.

[00:11:39] Um, and so all my time was filled with that. And, um, I was going to have my first baby, we’d gotten married. Pregnant with First Baby, and I was like, Hmm, I need some help here. And so I decided to hire someone to work for me to teach my music students. And so I hired that first person. It was a terrible experience.

[00:12:03] She quit on me two weeks after I had the baby . There was a, a myriad of reasons, but basically she basically she lived too far away and she thought she’d be fine with the drive and it turned out she wasn’t. So, um, that was, I got burned that first time and tried to hire someone because then I felt like I had to rush back to work because I’d promised, you know, these people, I honestly, they would’ve been fine, but I was worried that they might go find a different music teacher and I was insecure about it.

[00:12:30] HUD back to work. But despite that bad first experience, I was, uh, interested Now in the idea of hiring people, delegating, I was like, I was basically trying to figure out how I could scale my business so that it wasn’t dependent on me to just be like trading my hours for dollars sort of thing. But instead I wanted to manage a business.

[00:12:49] Um, Because along the way, um, even though I’d been running that business that whole time, so basically for the last, like six years, um, I had also been, started several other businesses in this time. Um, I had started a hair salon, um, that I had been, it was a mobile hair salon, so I hired stylists and they would do like events and weddings and that sort of, Um, we’d started a small investment company where we were, um, financing manufactured homes, um, and flipping manufactured homes, um, and a few other businesses along the way.

[00:13:25] Kind of every like year or two, I would start a new business and sometimes I would really build it out and maybe we would hire someone, maybe we would make a significant amount of money. Um, and then other times it’s just like trying to start a business and, you know, just like writing a business plan. Um, so variety of experiences.

[00:13:43] It was a lot of fun. But the reason I was doing this was because I was trying to figure out like, what do I wanna be when I grew up, um, I had read through those lists of college majors that were my options so many times, and none of them really appealed to me. Any of those topics of study sounded relatively interesting to me, but the job that they would lead to was not a job that I felt like I wanted to have long-term.

[00:14:06] They all sounded like they would occupy all my time, not really be the thing I was most interested in, and not pay as well as I wanted them to. Uh, and then the few exceptions that did pay better, you know, being like a doctor or a lawyer, those took even more time. And being, uh, I didn’t see a profession as being like my life goal.

[00:14:27] It wasn’t my life goal to just be a doctor or be a lawyer or something like that. I wanted to be a mom. I wanted to enjoy my life. I wanted to travel. I had these other things that I found my identity and a lot more than a job. Um, and so I was, I wanted to work though. I enjoy working. I enjoy being productive.

[00:14:48] I wanted to make. Um, but yeah, I just didn’t wanna do something that was gonna take 40, 50, 60, 80 hours of my time every week. I wanted to do something that would be like maybe in the 20 to 40 hour a week range, but earn a good hourly rate. Um, so I had looked through those lists of college majors. None of them seemed like the right fit.

[00:15:08] So I was starting these different businesses to kind of try to test out different careers basically. Um, and it didn’t really occur to me that maybe what I actually wanted to do was run a business. What I, when I was like really honest with myself, what I would say is I wanna figure out how to get paid to think like I wanna, I don’t know what that would look like, but I enjoy like figuring things out and studying things.

[00:15:30] And I would, and I saw my dad. My dad’s an entrepreneur too. He runs a landscape architecture business and has my entire. Um, and he loves what he does. He loves landscape architecture, he loves plants. He loves being outside. He loves the whole thing. He loves design more than anything. Like he’s an artist.

[00:15:47] He loves design work. Um, and so I didn’t really, I don’t have that same passion for those things that my dad does, so that didn’t probably seem like the best fit. But then the other people who I was around who were like working professionals were the guys who worked for my dad. Um, and those were the guys who went out there and they dug holes in the mud to plant the plants on the job sites.

[00:16:06] And that sounded really hard, . And of course, like no one expected me to go be like a landscape laborer. But in my mind, like these were pretty much the options that I saw represented. Um, I saw my mom who didn’t work, and then I saw my dad who did this job that wasn’t really, you know, my cup of tea. And then I saw that these guys who were doing this work, they just sounded so hard.

[00:16:25] I was definitely kind of a lazy kid, so I really didn’t feel like doing that work. Um, so I was like, I don’t wanna do something where I have to like go and like use my body and like do something hard. I wanted to just like, what can I do that I can like, help people by thinking anyway? So, um, and so like that could look like a lot of different things and I realized that now, like you mentioned business management for example, like that’s a way that you can help people by thinking there’s lots and lots of different careers that are like this, but I wasn’t really familiar with them.

[00:16:55] And honestly, when you look at those lists of college majors, most of them aren’t really that sort of thing. Some of them are, but a lot of them require, um, a lot of productive work, like even like landscape architecture, which I do think kind of fits into this category, but you are like producing designs and selling them to customers, for example.

[00:17:12] So it’s a little bit different than like getting paid to just figure things out. Um, and that’s what I love doing. Started all these different businesses. Meanwhile was running the music company because it paid the bills. Um, so that was basically my day job. Even though I was working for myself, I was also working for 50 families who were paying me to teach their kids.

[00:17:31] So I kind of had 50 bosses and I definitely did not feel like I could take time off or like, I had very much flexibility. Um, it was definitely not a remote job. For example, I had to be in my same town every week going to those people’s houses. Um, and later I had a music studio where I had all the teachers working for me, but I had to show up.

[00:17:49] Um, and it was very like, schedule based, you know, everyone’s lessons were at different times, so I felt very tied down in terms of both time and location. And so that led me to realize another thing that I wanted. Not only did I want to get paid to think, I also wanted location and schedule. I depend.

[00:18:04] Which led me to the world of online business. You can make money online. How, you know, I’ve read the four hour work week and in it, you know, Tim Ferris paints this very ilic, um, I idea or image of someone who is like on the beach in Mexico and they’ve got this business where they sell, I think it was like audio files or something.

[00:18:26] Uh, and they only work like four hours a week and they make like a million dollars or something like that. And I was like, that sounds pretty good. Yeah, sign me up right now, . Um, so I started kind of chasing that idea, like, how do I get this? Is this real? Um, and so that led me to read a lot more books on that topic.

[00:18:44] Um, go to some different like conferences and conventions and buy some online courses, of course, to try to figure out how do you do this thing? Um, and I would say that most of the information that I consumed was overly specific. Or overly general. So it’s either like about a very specific thing that wasn’t really what I needed.

[00:19:08] I remember one of the first courses, maybe the very first course I bought, was a $2,000 course on webinars, how to successfully sell with webinars. And of course like this was presented as the the magic bullet of like, if you can just sell on webinars, then you can make, you know, a million dollars, right?

[00:19:27] Uh, you can sell anything. And I was like, okay, you know, sounds like what I need. Um, or it was too general where it was just like fluffy, big picture, vague, vague advice, you know, about like success mindset or that sort of thing. And I was like, I need like practical, tactical, like tell me what to do. Um, so I really felt like there was a hole in the market where no one would just tell me like, how do you actually start an online business?

[00:19:51] Like, I don’t think this is rocket science guys. Just like, tell me what do I need to do to start an online business? How do you actually make money online? Like, what would you sell? How do you get people to buy it? Except I wasn’t even there. I didn’t even realize like I needed to sell something and get someone to buy it.

[00:20:06] I did not know how this whole thing worked. So after a lot of trial and error, um, at first of all a lot of like wandering around trying to find the right information, I finally kind of settled on like maybe online courses. I think people are making money with online courses, so I try to making a course.

[00:20:23] Um, well before that, um, I started writing about things I was learning. Then I, um, Let’s see. I wrote and self-published a book, and that was one of my first semi successful ventures. Um, I had started also on my website where I was writing. I had started offering some services because that was a pretty obvious way to potentially make money.

[00:20:47] Um, because I had figured out how to design my website because I, I felt like I needed a website, you know, for an online business. I figured that out. So then I thought, okay, I, I enjoyed that process. Those, those design genes do run in my blood, right? I don’t, I don’t think anyway, um, for my dad. And so I enjoyed that process and, um, so I thought maybe I can do this for other people.

[00:21:08] So I put that service up on my website and then I was like, oh, and I could do this other thing and I could do this other thing. So I ended up just kind of being like, miscellaneous Lance. Um, and so I started making a little bit of money that way, but it was very inconsistent. Normally very small amounts.

[00:21:23] I was definitely, um, competing on price where I was just trying to like be the cheapest person so that they would hire me, that sort of thing. Um, so then I wrote and published a book on an unrelated topic. I just had something I wanted to write about. Um, and, but doing that immediately grew a small email list for me.

[00:21:42] Cause I put a free offer in the book. I was like, go to my website, sign up to get some more free stuff. Very unstrategic about it, but it worked really well. Um, and I got a few hundred people on my email list pretty quickly. And so then I thought, oh, I can make a little course about, you know, the strategy that I use to get some people on my email list.

[00:22:00] So I made this little course and nobody. Of course, right. I didn’t know how to get people to buy it. I had no idea how or why. And it was around the time that I went to a business conference of sorts. It was kind of a small business conference, um, that was being run by someone who hosted a Facebook group that I was in.

[00:22:23] Um, and this was, um, how long ago was this? About like six or seven years ago now. And at that time, Facebook groups had become such this like wonderful community really, of entrepreneurs. There were all these nice Facebook groups of people who were online entrepreneurs or aspiring online entrepreneurs.

[00:22:41] And some of them were really small, like 30 people. And then there are others that were like a few hundred people and a few that were a few thousand. But um, especially these smaller ones, the people like really got to know each other in them really. Um, and the people who were leading them, some of them were doing a really good job of actually providing training to the people in the Facebook groups.

[00:23:00] Um, and at this point, I don’t feel like this mostly exists anymore because there ended up just being so many of these Facebook groups and they got so big, um, and Facebook changed how like posts are shown and stuff like that. And so, um, it’s hard to connect with people in the Facebook groups as well as we used to be able to.

[00:23:16] So it doesn’t seem to exist really in the same way that it did. But at the time, this was a place where I just remember going, finding this Facebook group, these couple Facebook groups, and getting in them, and suddenly it was like, Um, just like I had the key to unlock my problems in that before, whenever I ran into like, wait, how do I do this?

[00:23:38] Or How does this work? I would start Googling and Google is amazing, but it’s also kind of this black hole where you kind of go down this rabbit trail and maybe you find the answer, maybe you don’t, but it probably takes you hours and you have to try a bunch of like, solutions that don’t work first. And so every time I had some little problem with my website or I couldn’t figure some business strategy thing out, um, it was just like hours and hours of my time lost.

[00:24:01] And so that was like what I was spending the majority of my time every week working on my business on was just like googling things and trying to, trying to learn. And of course I got, I learned a lot, but I also wasted a massive amount, amount of time. So once I finally found these spacesuit groups, it was like, wow, you know, suddenly I’ve got this golden key.

[00:24:18] Whenever I have a question I can just ask in the group and somebody knows the answer they could tell me, you know? And so that was a game changer. Um, Because now I had like a mentor basically. So I ended up going to this conference, and when I was had this conference, I had this epiphany and this epiphany now sounds like, well, duh.

[00:24:37] But at the MO at the time, it was my missing puzzle piece. And the missing puzzle piece was that I needed visibility, that that was the thing that I was missing in my business. It wasn’t that nobody wanted my products. Maybe they did, maybe they didn’t. I didn’t know. It wasn’t that my products were bad.

[00:24:52] Maybe they were, maybe they weren’t. I didn’t know. But the real problem, the thing that was preventing me from even figuring those things out was not my pricing. It was not my products. It was not anything about that. It was simply people didn’t even know that my products were there. Nobody had ever heard of me, nobody had heard of my business.

[00:25:10] Nobody was considering buying my product and then deciding not. . And like I said, now this sounds like well done. Of course people have to, you know, first hear about your products, you else, they can’t buy them. But at the time I was so focused on like, I want to make money. So I was so focused on trying to sell a thing that I didn’t even, yeah, I just missed that somehow.

[00:25:31] So I came back from that conference and I was like, I need to figure out how to get visibility for my business. And there’s actually a moment there, like maybe a week or so where I didn’t even feel like working on my business in a nice way. I was just like, I have the answer now. I don’t even need to like, uh, work it out in real life.

[00:25:50] I like this problem that I’ve been wondering about for years. Like, why am I not making money online? I have solved the problem. I know what I was doing wrong. But then after about a week I was like, okay, let’s, let’s try this. How can I get some visibility? So, um, what I did was I thought about what I had done in the past that had worked to get visibility because I’d started all these different businesses and every single time I’d had to get customers somehow.

[00:26:14] And so I’d tried a lot of different forums of advertising at that point. I had put ads in the newspaper, I’d put ads on Craigslist, I’d put ads on the radio. Um, I’d put billboards around town. I had stuck up signs all around my time. Like I had tried a bunch of different things. Um, and a lot of it had been expensive and had not gotten me results.

[00:26:33] And then there’d been a few things that had worked. Um, and then there’d been one thing that. I wasn’t even trying to advertise with anything, and it worked really well. And that was YouTube. A few years prior, I had started a YouTube channel, um, and it was just, it was purely like personal, you know, for pleasure, not for business.

[00:26:52] I was hoping maybe I could make some money from it, but honestly I just like, liked watching YouTubers and I was like, this seems cool and maybe I could make some money, so I’ll try it. Um, and so I’d posted videos off and on for about two years. And my videos honestly were horrible, like horrible quality.

[00:27:10] Like the video quality itself, I was awkward on camera. They were just terrible videos. Um, and most of them did not get very many views at all. In fact, like lots of them got like five views. . And at the time I wondered like, why aren’t people watching my videos? Because I was like, way too close. So I couldn’t tell that my videos were bad, you know what I mean?

[00:27:30] Because I’d never made videos before, so I didn’t know like what a good video looked like. Um, so I was just like, why aren’t people watching my videos? Why isn’t my channel growing? And then finally, uh, toward the end of those two years, I, um, I started getting some views. I specifically had one video kind of go viral and for my like tiny channel that had practically no subscribers, um, it got this video, got half a million views and I was like, whoa, that’s crazy.

[00:27:55] And what happened? Um, and around the same time, like probably because that one video took off, it was about how to braid your hair behind your. Do you have the skill, how to braid your hair behind your head? not an impressive video, but I was like, anyone, I have this like belief that anyone can learn to do anything if they are taught how to do it.

[00:28:17] You know what I mean? Like a way that makes sense to them. And as I mentioned before, I teaching is something that comes relatively naturally to me. I homeschool my kids. I love teaching my kids math because I’m like, math makes sense. Math is logical. If I just explain it to them clearly, then they will understand it.

[00:28:32] Um, and so all my kids believe math is easy because I told them math is easy, . And I told, and I just like told them how it works. And so I felt the same way about like braiding your hair. I had had a bunch of friends mention to me that they couldn’t braid their hair. And I was like, you can totally braid your hair if I just show you how.

[00:28:47] So I made this video, how to braid your hair behind your head. It got half a million views and that kind of pulled my channel up a little bit, like made my videos get a little bit more visible. So more of them started getting views. Still not large amounts of views, but you know, maybe a couple hundred or a thousand views.

[00:29:02] And suddenly my eyes were opened and I went from asking, why aren’t people watching my videos? To asking why are people watching my videos? These videos are terrible. Like, because now I was seeing them through other people’s eyes and I was embarrassed about them cuz they were bad quality. Um, so pretty quickly there, I shut that channel down.

[00:29:19] Um, and privated all those videos, . Um, so then fast forward to what is now like five years ago, uh, maybe six years ago when I’m have realized I need to get visibility for my business. And I remember YouTube was actually a pretty easy way to get visibility. Like, yes, I put a fair amount of time into it because I did it for two years, but I was hardly trying.

[00:29:42] My videos were bad quality and yet still, somehow I got thousands and thousands of eyeballs on this thing that I. I wonder if that would work for my business. So I started doing some research and I spent, um, about a year, really about nine months, let’s say nine months researching YouTube. I wanted to figure out what was the difference between channels that were successful and channels that weren’t.

[00:30:03] Because we all know there are people on YouTube who post videos, lots of videos, and their channels never grow. So I was like, is this going to create a predictable result? Like is there something I can do that will, like guarantee my success on YouTube, or is this just like a gamble? Um, so I spent about nine months researching these different channels and I pretty quickly noticed some patterns with certain topics.

[00:30:28] They would always be successful, like any channel. I found that video on that video had done well. I was like, oh, so topics matter and if you choose the right topic, then you can get views. Um, and I also noticed that quality really mattered. I was hard pressed to find a channel that was actually producing good quality videos consistently, and their channel was not either already large or growing quickly.

[00:30:51] Like I couldn’t find any channels that were like stock and stagnant and small that had really good quality videos. And so I felt pretty confident that if I just made good quality videos regularly and chose my topics well, that I would probably be successful. So I. I think something that a lot of people struggle with and definitely I struggled with was sticking with something like, it’s easy to say, I’m gonna journal every day.

[00:31:16] It’s really hard to follow through on that, right? It’s easy to say, I’m gonna go to the gym every day. Hard to follow through on that, at least for a long time. You know, you might do it for a couple weeks and then something interrupts your schedule and then you’re off the wagon. And I definitely knew this was something I struggled with.

[00:31:32] So I was like, I think in order, and I’d also seen it with the first YouTube channel I started where I wanted to post more videos, but it was hard to like get around to it or find the time. So I never posted as frequently as I wanted to. Um, so I came up with a plan, and my plan was, I’m going to be like all in, like completely focused on this for three months and then I can reevaluate.

[00:31:54] But I’m just gonna like, decide right now to commit for three months. And also, at least for these three months, it’s gonna be my first priority. So what that means is every Monday, first thing when I start working, the first thing I’m gonna work on is I’m gonna film a YouTube video, whether I feel like it or not, whether I’m sick or not, like I’m just gonna suck it up and do it whether I feel like it or not.

[00:32:15] Um, so three months later, I had a thousand subscribers on this new channel, and that was more subscribers than I’d ever gotten with the first channel. and it was growing really quickly and I could see that. Um, when was this? Um, this was around

[00:32:38] you asked hard questions. , I’d say this was 2017, I think is my best guess. It was right about five years ago. Um, and yeah, I think it was 2017. I remember I started in like May of that year. And so by basically the end of the summer I had a thousand subscribers. And then about a month later I got my first paycheck and it was for $113.

[00:33:02] YouTube pays you when, first you have to like meet the monetization requirements of 1000 subscribers and 4,000 hours watched. And so then you can start earning and then as soon as your channel earns its first a hundred dollars, then they send you your first check. Um, so about a month after I met the requirements, I’d earned my first a hundred to $13 and I got that first check and it really snowballed from there, both the subscribers and the um, the money.

[00:33:27] So the subscribers, once I got up to a thousand the next month, so month four, I got up to 2000 and it basically doubled for a few months. So then the next month I was at 4,000. Month after that I was at 8,000. Um, and around the time I got to 8,000 is when it leveled out a bit, and I started getting about eight to 10,000 new subscribers every month.

[00:33:50] And from that time it has grown so steadily, eight to 10,000 new subscribers every month, ever since. Um, so it’s been very predictable, really. Um, and then also the revenue from it. I got that $113 check and it followed a similar pattern where it doubled for a few months. Within just a few months, probably like the fourth month I got paid, I got a $2,000 check, um, and then continued to grow.

[00:34:16] And it grew up to the point of the five to $15,000 range. And YouTube is very like, cyclical. And when I say it’s steady, I don’t mean like every month exactly the same results, but over the course of a year, very similar results ever since then where YouTube has paid me, I would say, um, $75,000, a hundred thousand dollars per.

[00:34:40] Um, and this, I love, I love this because I don’t tell YouTube, but I would make YouTube videos for free. YouTube does not need to pay me. I would 100% do for free because I was doing it to advertise my business. I was doing it to get visibility. I was doing it to attract leads and attract customers. Um, and YouTube is such an incredible engine for doing that because they have spent millions of their dollars building this machine, this algorithm that is designed to match viewers with videos they want to watch.

[00:35:09] And so what that means is if you simply make videos that somebody wants to watch, YouTube will do the work for you of going out and finding that person and advertising your video to them, right? Suggesting it to them. So it cuts out a huge problem that entrepreneurs have faced for centuries and centuries.

[00:35:25] Uh, I mean, millennia, really, of like, how do I find customers? Right? Well, you, YouTube will do it for you. All you have to do is make an ad. So, um, I would happily do it for free, but I get this bonus like $75,000, um, which yeah, it’s just kind of the deal for YouTube. I’ll take it. I’m a big proponent. Yeah, I, I know, right?

[00:35:45] No big deal. I’ll take it. Buy a few extra pairs of shoes or something. Right? . So, um, anyway, so I’m a big proponent of YouTube. It’s been a huge, um, asset to my business. So where do we go from here? So that was the thing that enabled me to finally start growing my email list. And that did not equal instant business success by any means, right?

[00:36:10] Um, even if you have visibility, you still have to sell things that those people want. Um, meaning like something that they think they want, um, something that they are satisfied with when they get it at a price point that sounds good to them. Like I’m simplifying this a lot, obviously, but, um, you have to have business strategy aside from just visibility.

[00:36:31] Um, so once I had people’s eyes and specifically I had them on my email list, I could start trying to advertise things to them. And that enabled me to crash and burn to the ground many times, trying to sell different courses and stuff, um, and finally figure out some different things that worked. Um, along the way I realized that not everyone wants to be on YouTube and YouTube’s not gonna work for everyone.

[00:36:56] So how can people test drive their business idea when they don’t have an audience? And so I thought back to some things that I had done when I was first trying to test drive some courses, um, and what had worked there. And the long story short of this is like creating a beta product. So you haven’t invested too much time into the product itself.

[00:37:17] we need something that we can test quickly, right? So that we aren’t wasting time on the ideas that don’t work out because probably you’re going to have some ideas that don’t work out. And then also we need to figure out how we can present it to people, cuz people do have to see it or else they won’t buy it.

[00:37:33] Um, so my team and I, because at this point I had a team, once my email list really started growing and I finally started selling products, I quickly realized, I’ll talk more about this in a few minutes, I think, but um, I quickly realized I needed some help. So I hired some people, so they started helping me test out different ways of test driving products.

[00:37:52] And once we had a formula that worked, that was when we, well, that was not when we launched Validate, that was when a startup society really started taking off. We started teaching the Startup Society members those things. And then we realized this would do really well in a container that is like a dedicated, fast focused type of container.

[00:38:12] So that’s why we run Validate as an eight week accelerator. I don’t want this to be a process where you’re trying to test drive a business for like a year or two. Um, if it’s open-ended, if it’s self-paced, then people get caught up in the hard parts and they get sidelined, they get distracted, and a lot of the time they never get around to even completing that validation process and definitely not turning it into a real business.

[00:38:38] So I’m like, I people are gonna do the best if we really push them to just hurry up and get this done. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but we need to get it done. Um, it’s one of those things where you don’t get any result unless you finish it. , kind of like when you create a course, you’re never gonna make any money with it unless you finish the course, right.

[00:38:57] So yeah, there are lots of things in life like that. So that’s kind of brings us to where we are now. Um, I’ll just touch on the, the hiring the people. Um, I had of, I told the story of when I tried to hire that first person with the music studio and that did not work out. Um, and I continued to have kind of a unsuccessful relationship with hiring people, especially as I got started in my online business.

[00:39:22] Thank you again. Four hour work week and a bunch of related books that told me that the answer was to hire like a $4 virtual assistant from the Philippines. Um, and that, that would solve all my problems. definitely doesn’t, um, if those people even exist. Um, I think they kinda do, but uh, they don’t speak English very well and that makes it hard to get anything done and causes a lot of wasted time.

[00:39:45] So. Um, yeah, I, I tried that, that didn’t work. Wasted some money, wasted a lot of time. Um, then eventually when my YouTube channel really started growing, so not after very long, really like started the YouTube channel. Probably six months later I was like, okay, this is really working. I need to kind of go back to the drawing board with my business and figure out what I can sell that will actually serve these people and they’ll want.

[00:40:12] Um, but the YouTube channel thing is working and it’s working really well. So I think if I could get some more help with this, I would both have more time, cuz video editing is very time consuming. Um, and it could be even more successful because there are people who could edit videos better than I could, right.

[00:40:28] Cuz I’m just, you know, self-taught. So I hired a video editor and that was a first very successful hire that saved me time. And made me money, right? Because I was now, I had those probably like 10 plus hours of editing work off my plate every week time I could now spend on the business. And now I could spend that time creating and selling products.

[00:40:56] So now I was making a lot more money, um, far more than the video editor was costing me. And that helped me to have this epiphany that I had felt like I needed to do everything myself, because I was like, on this bootstrap mindset where like shoestring budget type thing needed to save all the money, didn’t want, like, wanted to keep all the money for myself because I felt like it was scarce.

[00:41:18] And then once I saw that working, I was like, who else could I hire? Who would make me money? And I, so I switched from the mindset of like trying to hire the cheapest person to now trying to hire the person that would make me the most money. And so that led me to my next successful hire, which was hiring an online business manager.

[00:41:35] Now, I’m sure if I had asked round most people, probably everyone would’ve told me that I was doing this too early, that my business wasn’t making enough money yet, and that, you know, that I was just like, I don’t know, jumping ahead too fast, getting in over my head like, you don’t need that yet. But I realized that I did because I saw that my biggest weakness was that I am not good at management type tasks.

[00:42:03] I hate keeping records. I hate homework. And so there was this whole side of my business that was really suffering and getting really messy because I like, I like organizing things, but I don’t have the, the diligence when it comes to that type of work to maintain systems that I create. And so I realized that if I had someone who was managing that side of things for me, that it would enable.

[00:42:30] Me to run a much tighter ship, um, and my business to function much more functionally, to be more effective, more efficient. Um, and so I hired an online business manager, fantastic hire. Um, helped so much. Uh, I was just hoping she would come in and maybe like help me organize things and then maintain those systems.

[00:42:50] She came in and like took charge of whole, the whole management, half of my business and organized things I didn’t even ask her to organize. And my business manager, her name is Courtney Loveridge, and she’s just incredible. So she taught me a and she also like caused me to rise to her standard of like, she had the standard of like, we are going to keep good records, we are going to keep things organized.

[00:43:12] And I was like, okay, I guess we are.

[00:43:14] Megan: Yeah. Oh, I appreciate all that you just shared. Gillian, I like, I don’t know if you saw me over here, but I was like furiously typing notes at points cuz you just have like so much wisdom through your entire business journey. And also there were so many things that you said that I wrote down just cause I related to them so much

[00:43:33] Gillian: for one,

[00:43:33] Megan: the four hour work week that was also like my first venture into the whole online business world.

[00:43:39] And

[00:43:40] Gillian: it, I feel like it. . In a

[00:43:43] Megan: way it did inspire me cuz I didn’t know that that world existed. But in a way it also did me a disservice cuz I was like, this is gonna be cake. You know, like whatever, start an online business, create a course. Yeah. Whatever. And I’m just gonna be a millionaire this time next year.

[00:43:58] No big deal.

[00:43:59] Gillian: Um, yeah. But I would highly recommend the book, if anyone hasn’t read the book, if anyone is like a little bit interested but skeptical, read the book, it’ll inspire you, it’ll get you to start like searching, it’ll get you curious. Um, and then you’ll learn a lot. Yeah, right. . Yeah.

[00:44:18] Megan: That was the biggest thing for me.

[00:44:20] Yeah, absolutely. It inspired me and it also like showed me a world that I didn’t even know was possible. Yeah. So, but it is funny. There are things that I look back on it and I’m like, Tim, I thought this was gonna be so much easier. Um, but . But, uh, and then you also yeah. Mentioned like getting paid to think super relate to that.

[00:44:42] Something I’ve thought about a lot where I’m just like, I just wanna sit and Right. And like, make courses and organize and put curriculum and things together and, yeah. Anyway. So, um, I am curious, if you don’t mind if we like, hop back a second. You mentioned, um, that there were like jobs that you looked at on maj, like list of college ma, college majors that you knew you didn’t wanna do.

[00:45:08] I’m curious like if there’s anything you knew you liked teaching, but was there anything like starting out that you were immediately like, no, I do not wanna do this. in your business or from those like

[00:45:22] Gillian: job majors lists? . Oh, in my business, I mean, looking at the list of jobs, it was like, there was aspects of a lot of them that I thought would be interesting, but honestly I felt like they all would end up being boring.

[00:45:37] Um, because they all seemed like they’d be very, I think the main thing was repetitive. So like, I like math for example, but accounting sounded like it would be very boring doing math for other people. . So math I don’t really care about and not like interesting algebra or trigonometry problems or anything like that, but just like the same, like adding and subtracting and dividing over and over and over again.

[00:46:00] Right. That sounded boring. Um, I don’t know, just pretty much everything that I considered, it didn’t sound like it’d be fulfilling. It sounded like it’d be very repetitive. Um, and also like just doing it for someone else, I didn’t really realize at the time that that’s what was the turnoff for me. Because I wasn’t really considering working for myself.

[00:46:21] I thought I wanted a job. Um, but it made the work a lot more meaningless to just be working for someone else and just giving them all my time. So I wasn’t really like building something for myself. Yeah. And you

[00:46:33] Megan: also mentioned earlier that like you didn’t really identify with the, um, like just being career driven and wanting to be in one specific career, which I also feel like I can relate to.

[00:46:46] Like my identity is like definitely another

[00:46:48] Gillian: things. . Yeah. And I think a lot of people might be surprised if they heard me say that because I am a fairly ambitious person and I’m interested in business. And so you might think, oh, if she’s career driven or she’s focused on her career, but even though I find business and marketing fascinating and I love spending my time on it, um, and I love learning about it and I also am ambitious and love building my business and hitting my goals and things like that, I just don’t see my identity as a career, like even now.

[00:47:21] Um, I identify with the career, if you will, of being an entrepreneur far more than I would’ve with any other career. But I think I just see myself. And I think, like, I think everyone should see themselves this way as a multifaceted person who, you know, I am a mom and I am an entrepreneur and I am, you know, all these different things.

[00:47:43] Um, and they’re all different components of my personality and who I am. And so to sign up for a job that was going to occupy such a large part of my time didn’t really fit within that perspective of myself. And you also mentioned, so

[00:47:58] Megan: you talked about YouTube and it being such a great lead gen tool, um, that you do YouTube videos for free.

[00:48:07] Um, I know you started, well you talked about, you know, when you first got your. First thousand followers, I think you said in 2017. Is YouTube still, like if somebody were just starting their business today, do you think that’s still a really good lead gen channel? Or should somebody today focus on like TikTok or other social media?

[00:48:29] What

[00:48:30] Gillian: do you think about that? I definitely think that YouTube is still a great opportunity. It’s a very, it’s an opportunity that doesn’t exist with most of the newer things that have come up. Like you mentioned TikTok. Yes, there could be more like easy opportunity when something is new, like maybe not with TikTok now, there’s so many people on TikTok, right?

[00:48:53] But whenever there’s a new platform for a little bit, there’s an, a greater, like an easier opportunity. But YouTube is different than pretty much any other platform that exists. Um, it’s much more similar to podcasts or blog posts because it’s long form content. And so this gives you an opportunity to develop a much deeper relationship with your viewers, um, or with your followers.

[00:49:18] And it also means that your followers are people who want that long form content. So they are much more dedicated, even aside from their relationship with you. Like for example, with me and my channel, I talk about business, business strategy, marketing, those sorts of things. And I don’t have followers who just like wanna give 15 seconds of their time to that.

[00:49:42] you know, like a TikTok follower might. I have people who wanna sit at down and watch 15 minute videos on a regular basis about those topics. Those are the people who are much more likely to buy products relating to those topics, right? Because they are more interested in investing in those topics. Um, so, and there’s a lot more reasons too, but you know, starting with those two things, like you can develop a deeper relationship so people are more likely to buy from you.

[00:50:09] The people who you attract on YouTube are going to be much more likely to buy. And then also, as I mentioned, like YouTube has this incredible machine of an algorithm that matches videos with viewers who want to watch them. So those things haven’t changed. YouTube is still the same in those regards. And YouTube, while it’s been around for quite a while, and at this point I would say that this is just an asset in YouTube’s book.

[00:50:35] Um, just a positive attribute. YouTube has proven itself cuz YouTube has now been around for about 15 years and it is, it hasn’t declined. It has continued to grow. Okay. So that gives us a lot of proof that YouTube is gonna continue to stick around. Um, especially because there isn’t something that is competing with YouTube really.

[00:50:56] Uh, the people who like watching YouTube, like myself, TikTok isn’t taking any of my YouTube time. I’m still watching just as much YouTube as I ever did because I like YouTube and I like that format out of content. Um, and then also, Uh, YouTube has continued to grow in terms of like people who are watching the videos.

[00:51:11] But you know, what has changed? The creators, the creators continue to change. People do not like creating videos forever. That is the truth of it. Someday I will stop creating videos. I enjoy creating videos, but someday I’ll be like, I’ve had enough of this. I’ve made enough money. I, I don’t know. I wanna do something else, right?

[00:51:29] I don’t need to do this anymore. Um, and so because of that, and a, a lot of people last a lot less time than I do. A lot of people, um, they get discouraged as soon as their numbers aren’t climbing as quickly as they were, or they don’t start out with the right strategy so their channel doesn’t grow very quickly.

[00:51:46] There are lots of reasons why people would get discouraged and they give up, and a lot of times people aren’t doing. As their business. And so they do it for a while, but it’s just a hobby. And then, you know, they get another hobby, right? So there are lots of reasons why people quit making YouTube videos.

[00:52:01] And what that means is that there is always room for new creators. Um, and also because people, new people are always watching YouTube videos. There’s room for new creators. And also people’s interests change. So even if right now all the people who wanna watch videos about gardening have channels that they watch, well, first of all, are they really gonna say no to another channel on gardening if it has better videos?

[00:52:23] Um, or different content? No, people are always looking for more content. And then also, um, there will be people who right now are watching videos about, I don’t know, uh, baking. And then they get interested in gardening. So then they go out and they’re looking for gardening channels. And if yours is the latest, greatest gardening channel, they are gonna become your subscriber and you’ll be their favorite gardening channel.

[00:52:42] So there’s just always opportunity, just like in the world. It’d be like saying like, do you think so many people have started businesses at this point? That. The opportunity is over. No, because people still wanna buy stuff. Right. And because there are always businesses that are closing, so there’s always opportunity for new businesses and YouTube is an ecosystem, just like the world is for business.

[00:53:04] Yeah. And you mentioned, yeah,

[00:53:06] Megan: that your YouTube channel continues to grow like eight to $10,000 a month pretty consistently, or I’m sorry, eight to 10,000 subscribers a month. Pretty consistently. Um, and I think you said about 10,005 to 15,000 a month, which is pretty passive. It seems like, you know, with YouTube revenue and course sales, like a lot of the revenue in your business is pretty passive.

[00:53:29] So I’m curious at this point in your business, how much time do you put into it? How much time do you end up working per week? What is a

[00:53:38] Gillian: typical workday like for you? . Yeah, currently I’m working 10 hours a week. I’m currently working two five hour days. This is not quite the norm. The norm is 20 hours a week for me.

[00:53:49] Um, but I had a baby a couple months ago, so I’m on kind of like a partial maternity leave right now. Um, and I was thinking about this just earlier today about whether or not I need to work and the conclusion I came to was pretty quickly was I don’t need to work to pay for our current living expenses at all.

[00:54:11] Like, I can stop working. I could take three months off. I could take a year off right now, and our income would not dip much at all. But the reason that I want to and feel like I need to, to some extent continue to work, whether it’s 10 hours a week or 20 hours a week, is because I need to work to continue to grow my business and to keep my business healthy so that.

[00:54:35] Next year I continue to make money. Right? And the year after that, YouTube is very passive. Um, on the one hand, making videos takes time and effort, right? So that’s not passive. But once you make the video, it stays on YouTube and it is evergreen and people continue to watch it typically for years afterwards.

[00:54:54] So you continue to earn ad revenue from it. Um, and then also the other reason I consider the income to be passive is because, like I said, I would make the videos even if I wasn’t getting paid. So it’s not really the reason that I’m getting paid. So it’s kind of like this passive profit that I get as a bonus.

[00:55:09] Um, so obviously making YouTube videos, it’s an active marketing strategy, right? Um, but it creates some passive income. And you

[00:55:18] Megan: said, I think 10,000, five to 10, excuse me, five to 15 a month in, um, YouTube, pretty passive revenue. Um, what does that look like, I guess, for your business overall? Do you mind to share like.

[00:55:35] your profitability of your business. How much of it, excuse me, how much of it is profit and like how much do you reinvest back into your business every month to continue to grow?

[00:55:46] Gillian: Yeah, so I typically am operating at around 50% profit margin. It fluctuates between around 40 to 60, I would say. Um, my base, like overhead type expenses, it’s technically not overhead.

[00:56:02] My consistent like necessary type expenses, um, those expenses are, I would say around 30% of our revenue. Um, and so I could take home as much as 70, but then I choose to reinvest back into the business to grow the business further. And so then that gets me up to that like roughly 50% expense rate. So very

[00:56:23] Megan: healthy.

[00:56:24] I think the , yeah, the wisdom there is create passive revenue sources, people ,

[00:56:31] Gillian: passive and scalable. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. . Um, well, I

[00:56:35] Megan: know we are coming up on time, but I do have a few rapid fire questions that I would love to ask you before I let you go today.

[00:56:42] Gillian: Are you up for that? Yeah, absolutely. Okay.

Rapid Fire Questions

[00:56:46] Megan: So first question I have is, what is one of the best or most worthwhile investments that you’ve ever made in your business?

[00:56:55] And it could be an investment of money or time or energy

[00:56:58] Gillian: or anything. I would definitely say hiring my business manager. It was one of the biggest, probably the bus biggest expense that I had ever made at that time. Um, but I made it because I saw a weakness in myself and I knew I needed to compensate for that.

[00:57:15] And I knew that I could go way further if I got help in that area where I was weak.

[00:57:19] Megan: And I don’t know if you mentioned earlier, but what were some of the like specific tasks or things that you were doing that the. That your O B M, your business manager took over when, when you first brought them on?

[00:57:32] Gillian: When I first hired her, I wasn’t really hiring her four specific tasks.

[00:57:38] I thought there’s two main things I wanted her to help, well, kind of three. One was that literally just like the files, the digital files of my business we’re very messy, and I felt like that needed to be organized and stream. Um, and I just felt overwhelmed by it. Um, another thing was I felt like the customer journey slash the product suite that I was selling was all over the place.

[00:58:04] Like I was selling too many products that didn’t quite relate to each other in the right way, and I wanted someone to help me organize that and, um, kind of cut down the number of products that I was selling, but maybe make different products, like I wasn’t really sure, but I needed someone to like work with me on that.

[00:58:20] And then the third thing was I thought, you know, I always have these great ideas. Like I always have these, these plans or these projects that I wanna work on that seem like they could be really successful, but a lot of the time, I get sidelined, I get distracted, I lose motivation and I don’t see them through.

[00:58:37] And maybe some of them wouldn’t be as successful as they think they would be, but I’m pretty sure I would be more successful if I saw more of these projects through to completion. And so I wanted someone to hold me accountable, um, and to be kind of be like the overseer of my business so that I could focus on the project without having to worry, like if something else was breaking.

[00:58:56] I wanted someone to have eyes on everything so that I knew everything was being taken care of and also hold me accountable.

[00:59:02] Megan: Yeah, it’s easy to have a ton of ideas and as a business owner you have a million other things to do, so it’s difficult to like be accountable to following through on those ideas.

[00:59:14] Um, so that’s awesome, .

[00:59:16] Gillian: Um, second question that I

[00:59:18] Megan: have for you is, what is a common myth or misconception about running an online business that you want to clear up once and

[00:59:26] Gillian: for all? Hmm. There’s so many , I think, uh, two that I’ll mentioned. One is the thing we were talking about, about the four hour work week.

[00:59:35] A lot of people just go into it thinking that it’s gonna be so easy or that they’re going to set everything up and then it will be perfect and it’ll run on its own. Um, yes, there is such a thing as passive income, um, but when you’re running a business, like running a business is always going to require some effort, sometimes some management, right?

[00:59:56] Um, there, like some of the most passive investments might be like if you just bought stocks or gold and then just let it sit for 50 years and then you cashed out, right? But that’s not going to be as profitable. You’re not gonna get as high a rate of return on that investment as an actively managed investment like a business.

[01:00:13] And so it is always going to require. Um, however, what’s cool about the passive income is that you are able to scale your time. So instead of just like getting paid for every hour you work, right? You’re like, I am only working 10 hours a week, but I’m earning, like if we are to, uh, calculate an hourly rate on that, like I’m earning thousands and thousands of dollars per hour, right?

[01:00:37] That wouldn’t be possible if it wasn’t largely passive. The other thing is it gives you so much flexibility. Like I said, I could take time off right now, I could just stop working and I would continue to get paid. Now if I kept doing that, I wouldn’t keep making money indefinitely. I probably would make, keep making some money indefinitely, but my income would significantly drop off, you know?

[01:00:57] Um, but I can take a day off, I can take a week off, I can take a month off whenever I want to with really no downside. And so I’m. I’m just saying people have kinda the wrong expectation of like, finally when I do all this work, I will arrive and then I will not have to work anymore. I’ll just retire eventually, you know, you’ll put enough money in the bank that you can just retire, or you’ll have enough in those investments that are paying you that 10% rate to return that you can just live off of that.

[01:01:27] But as long as until you get to that point, you’re gonna continue to work. So choose something that you’re going to enjoy. Awesome.

[01:01:34] Megan: Okay, so last rapid fire question I have for you is when you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, or you’ve lost your focus temporarily, what do you do to help get yourself back on track?

[01:01:46] Gillian: I love to switch things up, so that sometimes looks like changing my environment. So I’ll go and work in, like, in a coffee shop instead of in my office or work in bed instead of in my office, but just like change of environment. Um, or I’ll change up my working routine. So like instead of, normally I sit down and I’ll like start my toggle timer, which is like, um, keeping track of my hours, um, just to, yeah, just to keep track of my hours.

[01:02:11] But sometimes it’s like, well, maybe I should use like Pomodoro technique or maybe I should just do like one task and then, um, like, I don’t know, do some jumping jacks and then do another task and then do some jumping jacks or something ridiculous like that. But just like, how can I break this up into different chunks because that stimulates your mind and it makes the work feel fresh.

[01:02:30] Um, and that enables you to stay a lot more focused, uh, because you no longer are getting distracted because you are bored or overwhelmed. It also can really help if you’re overwhelmed, to break things up in different ways. Like I was just saying, so one task that’s not overwhelming, so think like what’s the next thing I need to do for this?

[01:02:49] Or I’ll just work on this for 15 minutes. Love that technique. A lot of the time something will seem overwhelming, not necessarily because of how long it’s going to take, but just like I’m not quite sure how to do it. So it seems overwhelming, but if I just say, I’ll just work on this for 15 minutes, or I’ll just work on this for 30 minutes, that suddenly makes it very doable and a lot of the time I’ve finished the entire task in those 15 or 30 minutes.

[01:03:12] Yeah, it’s funny, I

[01:03:14] Megan: do the same thing, but like I just have to change it up. I don’t think I found one thing, like one method of working. Works for me all the time, but it does help me to always change things up. Like, you know, I’ll calendar block and I’ll, um, batch tasks and other days I’m like, I really have to switch and do different things all day, or I’m just gonna drive, I’m gonna go insane.

[01:03:37] Um, so that’s funny that, you know, you kind of have a similar experience of like, trying out different things and just figuring out what you need on that day, um, and breaking, figuring out how to break up work in different ways. Yeah,

[01:03:51] Gillian: yeah. And of course, like you’re going to find things that work well for you and you’re, and once you find something that works well for you, you should keep doing that most of the time.

[01:04:00] But then sometimes it won’t work, and so don’t be afraid to switch it up. Um, I know sometimes like I start working on something, you know, a lot of the times it’s like writing something and I’ll get in that flow mode and I’ll just keep writing and writing for hours. Fantastic. Okay. But when that stops working, well now what are we gonna do right now?

[01:04:17] Let’s do some 15 minute blocks or something like that. Well, thank you so

[01:04:21] Megan: much for being here today, Gillian. I’ve just loved hearing about your business story, um, and you’ve had so many great tidbits that you know, I’m definitely gonna call out in our show notes, um, so that people don’t miss them. Before we get outta here, where can people find you and connect with you?

[01:04:38] Gillian: Well, uh, if you just Google Gillian Perkins, you’ll find me, um, or you can look it up on YouTube. Um, just search for Gillian Perkins. My website is gillian perkins.com.

Outro

[01:04:48] Megan: Thanks so much for being here and for listening to the Dollar Spa podcast today. Be sure to check out the show notes for any links and resources that were mentioned in today’s conversation.

[01:04:58] And if you enjoyed this episode, then don’t forget to like, subscribe, and leave us a review wherever you’re listening to this podcast. Thanks again for being here and for being part of the Dollar Spout community, and I will see you in the next episode.

Note: This transcript was automatically generated and may include typos.

Welcome to the Dollar Sprout Podcast, where it’s all about building a business that offers consistent income and flexibility so you can live life on your terms. And now your host, Megan Robinson.

Introduction

[00:00:18] Megan: Hello and welcome back to the Dollar Sprout podcast. Thanks so much for being here today. I’m coming to you today from my, uh, office that is mid redecorating, so apologies if there is an echo here.

[00:00:35] Hopefully Zach, our editor can, uh, help me out a little bit with that one. Um, yeah, so. Things may look clear behind me, but trust when I say if you’re watching this on YouTube, that every other direction of the room is a little chaotic. So apologies if the sound is a little weird, but appreciate you being here.

[00:00:57] Anyway, um, today’s episode of the podcast is a recording that I did with Kel Jamieson of the O B M Leadership Academy. Um, this was, uh, I think the first episode that I did an interview for. It was the first interview that I did for this season of the podcast. Um, so it was a little rusty really on just.

[00:01:21] Having a conversation with another person, . Um, I, I work alone a lot. I, uh, don’t talk to very many people during the day, so appreciate Kelly’s patience and your patience with me as I kind of got back in the flow of interacting with another human being. I don’t know, maybe some of you can relate with working home more the last couple of years.

[00:01:42] Anyway, it was a great conversation. Um, Kelly has been an O B M for over 10 years and she now has the OPM Leadership Academy, where she trains other people to be OMS or online business managers. And you’ll learn a bit more about that, what that entails. Um, but it’s the certification that I did this year in 2022.

[00:02:06] Um, and, uh, yeah, OBMs do a lot of project management and team management, um, and metrics tracking and the back end of businesses. Uh, yeah, we’re, we’re usually the back end of businesses. We’re not, uh, typically the face of a business unless it’s our own sometimes. But in Kelly’s case, which you’ll also hear more about in this episode, she very much was not kind of the public face of her own business because she grew this business over the course of 10 years.

[00:02:36] With zero online presence. She did not use social media to promote her business, and she didn’t even have a website for 10 years running an online business, which is really cool and also kind of crazy to think of. Um, so yeah, you’ll hear more about how she grew a successful business with absolutely zero online presence.

[00:03:00] Um, also, I completely forgot. In the end of this episode to have Kelly say where you can find her online. Um, so what I’ll say is, again, she runs the om leadership Academy, om leadership academy.com. Um, and any resources, she has several free downloads. If you’re interested in becoming an O B M, um, you’ll, after you hear more in this episode, kind of about what that is, um, and Kelly’s business, then you can go check out her website and also check out her free downloads.

[00:03:33] Um, one of her downloads is the syllabus for her O B M training. Um, and another download is the O B M Essentials kit, which is, you know, how you can take the skills that maybe you’re already using in corporate if you have, um, project management experie. Team management experience, that sort of thing. Um, and use that to, or how you can yeah, translate that experience and those services into an O B M business.

[00:03:59] So definitely go check out Kelly’s website and those free downloads. I’m so sorry, Kel, that I completely forgot that. Um, but yeah, without further ado, please welcome Keldi Jameson.

Interview

[00:04:14] Keldie Jamieson: Thank you so much for having me. I, I’m happy to be here. It’s nice to, uh, meet you in person, virtually in person, Megan. So, uh, yeah, I’m happy to, to be here and talk with your audience.

[00:04:26] Megan: Awesome. Well, our audience I’m sure is gonna love your story. So, um, before we kind of jump into the nuts and bolts of it, um, can you just give us an overview in your own words of what it is that you do in your business? What is it that you sell, any products or services that you offer? What does that look like?

[00:04:45] Keldie Jamieson: So I am a certified online business manager and a licensed trainer for the International Association of Online Business Managers. And what I sell is training, uh, other people to do and become online business managers, which is something that I discovered about 10 years ago. Um, I love helping businesses understand their data and with their day-to-day, um, as a trainer, what I really love is giving back to the next generation, as I call it, because so many, um, entrepreneurs that are online actually need hi help behind the scenes because.

[00:05:27] Very good at whatever it is that they decided to do in business. And sometimes they need help from someone in the, in the behind the scenes area of the business so that they can literally just focus on what they’re delivering. So I love working with new people coming into this industry. There’s so much talent out there, there’s so many businesses that are unique.

[00:05:49] And, uh, just seeing that next generation of O B M, that’s the acronym for an online business manager. Um, just seeing that next generation come in and the talent, um, and the caring and the geeks like me, uh, come in who love things, organization and systems. It’s, it just really does light me up. Uh, and I love my students.

[00:06:10] I love helping them, you know, with their mindset and learning the new skills. Uh, it just, I guess I found a calling in becoming a teacher of this as well. It’s really, really fulfilling to me as a career.

[00:06:25] Megan: Yeah. And it is, it is fun to kind of geek out with other OBMs. I I just took the ob m training and got certified this year as you know, as we were talking about before this call.

[00:06:36] Um, and yeah, it is, it’s such a great community and it’s, it’s fun to, you know, be around other people who love processes and systems and metrics and like tracking all the nerdy backend business stuff, . So, um, selfishly I’m very excited to have this conversation with you cuz I am very curious about your own O B M business.

[00:06:56] Um, awesome. So you mentioned a couple of metrics that you were comfortable sharing on the show, one being the number of email subscribers that you’ve been able to build because you have been in business for over a decade. Um, and I know your business has changed, which I would love to talk a little bit more about here in a bit.

[00:07:17] Um, but what does your current email list look like? Is the first number I would love to get from you.

[00:07:23] Keldie Jamieson: Sure. So I love this, this number because it’s going to not impress a whole bunch of people, but it’s a great number for me. So I have 1700 people on my email list who are interested in becoming, uh, online business managers, and that just lets you know right there, uh, and that’s on my list.

[00:07:43] And I laugh because when I started my business just a little bit, it was all based on word of mouth referral and I didn’t have an email list at all until I became a trainer. So it, this number for me is, uh, a great number because I am actually not necessarily the biggest fan of email and I try not to email when I don’t need to.

[00:08:02] So I like to have, uh, people that are really relevant on my list. So it’s about quality over quantity. Um, so I’m not into the vanity numbers. of an email list. So I like my small little 1700. I think it’s a big list for me. , it’s more than enough for me.

[00:08:19] Megan: Yeah, I think that when people first like get started or think about starting an online business, there’s a lot out there about building your list and people, some people start out thinking you need to have like a huge email list before you can make any money.

[00:08:34] Um, and that’s just not true. That’s way putting the cart before the horse. Um, so I love that you know, that you don’t have tens of thousands of email subscribers. You can have a great business with 1700 or with no email subscribers. Um, so that’s great. Thank you for sharing that. Um, and then the next thing that I wanna know about the current state of your business is, , I know your schedule, the way that you work probably looks a lot different today than it did 10 years ago, you know, or when you first started your business.

[00:09:08] But what does that look like? What’s a typical workday for you, and how many hours a week do you spend working?

[00:09:15] Keldie Jamieson: So what I do in my business right now is I open my door at 9:00 AM Please don’t ask me to do anything before 9:00 AM. My brain doesn’t work that way. I’m not a morning person. So I’ve set my business up to accommodate that.

[00:09:29] And then I have a, uh, a thing on my phone that reminds me to close my office at 3:00 PM Sometimes I’ll go past that a little bit. But, um, for my family, my husband is one of those early risers, like at four in the morning. Um, and so he’ll come home from work at about two. So I’m trying to make sure that that happens.

[00:09:49] Sometimes I’ll work till about four. , then I’m done. And Fridays, uh, I don’t take any calls on Fridays. I don’t talk to any students, any prospects. Uh, Friday is my day to work on my business. If I choose, or it’s an a long weekend, which is usually what happens on Fridays, is it kind of turns into more of a long, uh, long weekend for me.

[00:10:11] So I typically work four to maybe five days a week, but I’m really in there only from about nine or 10. So if there’s nothing at nine, 10 to three is sort of the hours that I like to work on my business. And then I am, uh, shutting the door. So that is it. It just works for me. Part of be becoming a trainer in the first place.

[00:10:34] What, where I am now was so that my husband and I could travel the world. And, you know, we had the, uh, someone I know calls it a, the banana ramma that came, that happened for people. Um, and it kind of stopped us from traveling. , but that was the whole point of transitioning my business to the model that I’m in right now, was that we could travel.

[00:10:56] Um, as an online business manager, we are managing the business, which a lot of times means we’re in the day-to-day, which was what I loved, and I couldn’t travel the way my husband likes to travel, which is to get up at six in the morning, hit the ground running, drop on your bed at eight o’clock at night and start the next day at six in the morning and continue.

[00:11:14] So if I travel that way with my husband, it would make it difficult to run somebody’s business. And so I’ve chosen this model instead. So now I train and I set myself up to have a shorter workday and a shorter work week for myself because that’s really where, um, I mean, I get in, I got into this business for my own lifestyle, like I’m building my business around what I want to see in my life.

[00:11:41] That’s why it’s set up the way that it is. So I guess I’m working, what is that? Maybe five. So 25 hours a week, let’s say. Somewhere in there.

[00:11:53] Megan: Wow, that sounds amazing. I, uh, I’ve done something like, I’m similar in that I’m not a morning person. Um, and I don’t start working in my business until 10:00 AM no meetings before 10:00 AM That gives me time to like wake up and go to the gym and become human.

[00:12:12] Um, but I make up for it at the stage that I’m in, in my business. I make up for it by working late at night. A lot of time . So it’s nice like hearing that. Oh yeah. There are actually people out there. Like I can get to the point where I’m only working 25 hours a week in my business. I think that. , that’s aspirational for me.

[00:12:33] Keldie Jamieson: Well, and here’s the thing, that we set our businesses up to work for us. And so when my children were at home, I did work in the evenings because I chose to, to have that afternoon period with them in different times. So I do like that you’re asking how many hours we’re working in it because that, you know, when we do it doesn’t really matter.

[00:12:54] It’s about, you know, how much effort or how much, um, how many hours we’re putting in does help with your energy. But it is about energy levels as well. So you and I both agree. Don’t ask me for things first thing in the morning. My brain doesn’t work. I’m really great, actually late at night, but I have made a shift in the last year to be very conscious and intentional about my hours, um, co co whatever, coinciding with my husband.

[00:13:21] So that’s an intentional thing. But if I could work, you know, from, um, six to eight, my brain’s really good at those hours. , you know, so it’s all about whatever works for you. It really is about what, what, what works for each individual person.

[00:13:37] Megan: Yeah. It sounds like you’ve been able to really, like you said, just create a business that works for your lifestyle.

[00:13:43] Um, so I love where your business is today. I also wanna talk about before you started your business, what was going on in your life? Um, what were you doing in your career? And also what was the motivation for starting a business to begin?

[00:14:00] Keldie Jamieson: So, um, I’ve been doing, I’ve had my business for over 10 years, so prior to that I’ve been working in corporate.

[00:14:07] So I was doing, uh, as a general manager. I had started off in administration and, uh, bookkeeping many, many years before that. Uh, event management, live events, weddings, corporate events, and, um, when I was working for a electronic, um, I shouldn’t say electronic, but a mechanical engineer and we would build all these great products.

[00:14:32] Uh, I worked there for quite a while, went off to do something else as a general manager, and then was asked to come back and run that business. And I did. And then when that business, um, was looking to sell and then closed, I was at a point in my life where I had some choices to make in that time, even though I was working, let’s say a typical.

[00:14:55] You know, nine to five job, which a lot of people think is ideal. And I would go home and things would be great. I was also commuting to work and so from an early age, my children were in before school care and then after school care and didn’t know the parents cuz I couldn’t hang out cuz I was working all the time.

[00:15:16] So basically from about, you know, seven in the morning until sometimes six o’clock at night, my kids were not with me. They were in before school care, after school care. And what I had noticed over a period of time was that my youngest daughter stopped instigating hugs. So she would give me a hug if I went up and hugged her, but she would not come and hug me.

[00:15:40] I don’t know if she was aware of it, but it was something that I noticed. And so when the opportunity came with the business closing that I was working at in the corporate world, world, I was like, I need to be home now. Like I cannot go get another job. I didn’t even look for another job. I just intentionally started working on my business plan.

[00:16:00] I’m going to, uh, transition my career online. I had been thinking I might be a virtual assistant who, you know, does all the work. I took training on how to build websites and do shopping cart things. Um, my heart was still in management and team, uh, because that’s where I’ve been working as a, as a GM for that many years.

[00:16:20] Um, but I, I decided I needed to leave corporate so that I could be home with my children. And what was interesting was, A lot of people wanna be home when they’re younger, and I totally get it. It’s very informative. Years for your children. For me, this was an opportunity to be home when I felt they really needed me the most, but when they felt they didn’t need me, so I needed to be that presence of I was the house that they could come to with their friends, I could pick them up.

[00:16:48] I could let my children now do activities after school, let them find themselves through sport or other activities that they were interested in, and then be that, be there to hear things, to see things. I didn’t want latchkey kids. And so with my daughter not hugging me in this opportunity, I literally decided that’s it.

[00:17:08] I’m leaving corporate and I’m going to be uh, there for my children. And that was sort of what had me move over. Um, and then if you don’t mind me sharing, I’ll actually tell you what happened. So I, I left corporate and so the in between is like, like when I left corporate, I started my business and I became a project manager for the person that actually taught me how to become a virtual assistant.

[00:17:36] She had an agency as well and she taught courses and. , I said, Hey, you know, I’ve learned all these things from you. Um, if you’re looking for a project manager in the future, would you hire me? And she said yes. So within a few months I had bookkeeping clients from the corporate world, which was not my ideal.

[00:17:53] But then I had this pm uh, project management role with a virtual assistant agency, and I really got to taste what it was like to work online. That’s where I discovered the term online business manager. And that’s what I transitioned my business to. So in this transition, um, of becoming my own business and then starting to work online as an online business manager, I ended up taking the training from the association, which transformed my business within a year of taking that.

[00:18:23] Um, so then I knew what I didn’t know about working online. And what it allowed me to do was then to start to travel with my daughter. So she, her, she tried gymnastics, she tried dance, and then she finally did, uh, cheerleading. And that’s where she found a little bit of both. She loved it. And so then she was like all in for her activities.

[00:18:45] So over the years, I would travel with her because I could still work with clients with my laptop. We could, you know, go away for the weekend long, weekends, in the middle of the middle of the week. I could work with my clients while she was in doing her activities. A lot of. In that period changed and within two to three years, very intentional of me working this way.

[00:19:07] We were the place where all her friends would come, I would pick them up after school. I would work in the evenings cuz I chose to be very available during the time that she was, you know, not in school, after school. And what was really in interesting and nice was, uh, there was one event that I couldn’t go to.

[00:19:24] So it’s about three years, almost three years in to me being a business owner. And I dropped her off at someone’s house because I couldn’t travel that weekend. So I went to get her bag out of the trunk and she was up at the door and I brought her the bag, uh, her suitcase, and she hugged. and said, mom, I’m so sorry you can’t come with me.

[00:19:47] We’re going to miss you. I love you. This is so exciting. I, you know, it’s too bad my daughter had no idea. I’m not even sure if she actually knows this at, even at this point in her life, that I had been on an intentional journey to build back that trust and that that relationship with her. So when I left, um, I drove down the street and I pulled over and I immediately called my husband and I said, you know, she hugged me and I was in tears.

[00:20:18] And he was like, oh my goodness, you’ve been working so hard at this. Cuz he knew this was very intentional, this rebuilding of the relationship with my kids. And to have that happen finally, where it was very recognizable, she came up and hugged me, uh, was a, was a big deal. Um, and yeah, so I never regret my business cuz that’s literally the intention.

[00:20:43] For me was there was something broken and I needed to fix it. And becoming a business owner and doing what I do to be able to work remotely and take my laptop wherever I needed to go, uh, was, was the vehicle that got me there with my daughter. So, um, I just want everyone to, I, I love that story, even for myself.

[00:21:05] I get teary whenever I talk about it. Um, and it’s because when we’re intentional, when we know our why, what, what is motivating us to do this, when there’s things in our business we don’t like the why and our passion possibly for what we do is what’s gonna carry us through. And I don’t regret anything that happened in my business, um, at all because of the result that I got from that.

[00:21:31] Megan: Yeah. That’s such a heartbreaking but also beautiful story, a heartbreaking story with a beautiful ending. Um, and I appreciate you. Sharing that. Thank you so much. Um, I, I am curious, how old was your daughter when you made this transition into your business, and how long did it take to repair that relationship?

[00:21:54] Keldie Jamieson: So I started to see things around my daughter would’ve been in grade four or five. So 11 or 12 was when I started to actually notice this happening. Um, and then I, that was, so that was, yeah, grade four. So she was going into middle school was when I got to leave corporate. Um, and so that would’ve put her into like grade six or seven.

[00:22:18] So she would’ve been about just like, I guess she was like 12, 13 going on what, I think she was 12 because I think I kept calling her a preteen. So she was right there at that, that age. And it took about three years. So it was, uh, about closer to 14 and 15 years old when that changed happened. And then that’s.

[00:22:36] Not an easiest time for any, uh, parent child relationship going on, but I was able to turn it around in that time by being that parent who was there in the background. I didn’t have to lecture, I have to tell you, any parents out there, um, teenagers in a car, captive audience, like I, it was a really great way to connect when you’re commuting, cuz we, we did have some commuting to do, but I could do it.

[00:23:03] I could listen, I could enjoy, um, my daughter interacting with her friends. I mean, it was just a really, um, it was a longer process than I had hoped, but it was still intentional. So it was, it wasn’t about me forcing anything. It was just showing. It, it just, being a business owner, like doing this work allowed me to just show up.

[00:23:30] It allowed me to create my own, uh, timeline so I could work in the evening. I didn’t have to work during those periods of time. I could work while she was in school. I set my schedule around being available for my children. It was a big difference.

[00:23:47] Megan: Yeah, and that’s, yeah, one of the amazing parts, I’m not a parent, but you know, I know a lot of parents who their children are their why, for why they started a business, because they wanna be more present.

[00:23:59] They wanna be able to spend more time. And it’s just one of the many amazing benefits of being a business owner that, you know, you can build your business intentionally so that you get that time back and. , I’m glad to hear that you were able to rebuild that relationship with your daughter, even if it took three years, you know, that you were able to build a business that allowed you to, to be present for your family and your kids in the way that you wanted and the way that they needed.

[00:24:27] But teens would never recognize that they need, you know, their mom or their dad or their parent, uh, as much as we do when we’re in those middle school years. Those are, those are tough years for a kid.

[00:24:41] Keldie Jamieson: I agree. And you can, and it’s not just family, that you can build it around like your children. You could build it around anything.

[00:24:46] If you have a lifestyle or an activity that you love, your own things that you’re doing, this is what I, this is what I really love this people. Uh, a lot of times people think that people wanna build a business just for money. And I think most of us are motivated from a lifestyle perspective. , what are we not getting when we work a job versus what do we get if we get to, um, set our own time?

[00:25:10] And don’t think in the beginning I was working 25 hours a week cuz that wasn’t happening. Right? I was working a lot when I was building that business, right? Entrepreneurs, it’s hard for us sometimes to even shut off our brain even when we’re on vacation because we are the owner of the business. We’re responsible for people on our team, we’re responsible for, uh, you know, to get things done for our customers or whatever it is that we’re supplying.

[00:25:32] So even though we can change our hours eventually and get there, um, intention is the, is the key word here. Building your business with intention. What is it that you want it to do for you? Um, and whether that’s money or time, freedom, whatever that might.

[00:25:48] Megan: Yeah. And that’s, yeah, absolutely. And that’s true for me.

[00:25:52] The time, time freedom is what I’m building my business around. So getting to the point where I can work just 25 hours a week and being able to spend the rest of the time, you know, with my partner and with my dog going hiking or just hanging out with him, training him, um, and doing nothing. I’m a person who really enjoys a lot of space, you know, so that’s why I like time freedom, or I’m pursuing time freedom in my business because I just, I feel like I need a lot of, a lot of brain space.

[00:26:23] I need a lot of, a lot of free time . So yeah, that’s, that’s my goal. Um, I am a, a crazy dog parent, uh, no kids of my own, but I am building my business pretty much around my dog and around, uh, the idea of having more time freedom . So

[00:26:43] Keldie Jamieson: I love it. Yeah, I love it.

[00:26:45] Megan: Um, well, I’d love to walk through, we’ve talked about where your business is now, and we’ve talked about where you were before you started your business. I’d love to talk more about that middle point of how you got to where you are today. Um, I know you, your business started out differently than it is today, and you said you took your virtual assistant training, um, or you started out as more of project management, virtual assistant. Um, I guess from 0.0, would you mind to talk about what led you exactly into project management and virtual assistant work? Um, and then what was the very first step you took in making money in your business? What was that first dollar that you made?

[00:27:31] Keldie Jamieson: Here’s the thing, I just wanna point out something else. I’d actually started a business like years before, uh, when my daughter was born and I got a valuable lesson out of it, just.

[00:27:42] Just, just to let you know that I had started a business, but I had no idea what I was doing. And I was, uh, creating a product. Somebody said, oh, I’m gonna take it across the country for you salespeople. They took my product across, we’re gonna get me all these orders. What they did was they took it and they got it knocked off.

[00:27:58] It was in the clothing industry. Um, and I was out of business as soon as they came back from taking it to my competitor and having it knocked off by a national brand. So with that, what I learned was contracts, contracts, contracts, and that, because I wasn’t passionate about that business, I didn’t know anything about the industry, which is why I said that when I started this business, it was like, I’m gonna do what I know how to do.

[00:28:22] Um, I love planning. I love strategy. I love numbers. I did a lot of bookkeeping. Um, I thought the bookkeeping was easy. And so when I first started my business, I had a lot of networking that I had done when I was in corporate. If, you know, if you have a chance to network and talk to people, um, it’s a great way to get started in your business.

[00:28:43] And so I actually said, does anyone know anyone looking? This is what I wanna do. I want to, uh, be someone’s virtual partner. I didn’t know how to describe it, but I mentioned things like, um, you know, managing the back end of their business and project management and understanding those things. Um, and then what happened was someone said, Hey, I know a business that’s looking for a bookkeeper.

[00:29:06] Well, when you’re starting your business, sometimes you do things just because it’s money coming in. And I was like, raise my hand. Went and talk. Got a, got a bookkeeping client. That one actually stayed with me for many years to the point where I finally had to convince them to hire someone else because I just didn’t wanna do that anymore.

[00:29:23] And, um, it was holding me back. In my time availability to work with ideal clients. So I, uh, needed to offload them, but my first dollar was probably from that bookkeeping opportunity. And then some of the corporate people that I knew online hired me to run their office when, um, somebody went on maternity leave.

[00:29:45] And so when they were off for maternity leave for months and months, um, I’m in Canada and so we get like almost a year of maternity leave. So that’s a big position to fill. So I would run their office remotely. But what I was noticing was that was not lighting me up, it wasn’t finding me the clients. Um, so starting with, uh, project management and then finding out about O B M, then I took the training.

[00:30:08] And what was nice was all of a sudden, as soon as I took the training and uh, learned about actual online business strategy and the stages of business and what people were doing, and then because I joined the association, we had access to requests for proposals. I didn’t have a website up. I have to tell you that too.

[00:30:26] For 10 years, my website was coming soon, 10 years coming soon, um, maybe not quite 10 years, but really close. I got all of my clients through word of mouth referral and through the R F P process. And so that allowed me to then just work with clients on a longer basis. I loved the day-to-day. I was all in as a partner with people in that business.

[00:30:50] Uh, so I had long-term clients as well. And I then started, you know, I still did the bookkeeping on the side as a side hustle thing. Um, but I worked with one really big client. And my ideal client at the time in the, in, when I was working as an OBM was women empowering women. I didn’t care so much about what they did.

[00:31:10] My, my mission was to empower other women in whatever made them feel empowered. And so then working in the back. The back end of a business and being behind the scenes, what was great for me was I know for a fact that I impacted thousands and thousands of women’s lives through empowerment by helping one woman and her team.

[00:31:33] And it just gives me no amount of joy to know that by me helping another woman who empowered other women, no matter what that was, health business, coaching life, whatever it was, when I let her stand in the light is what I call it, stand in the light. She would take the praise and the criticism and she would change those women’s lives by helping her and the small team behind.

[00:31:56] I literally impacted thousands of women’s lives. And that for me was like, that’s a big passion of, of mine and a big why as well, um, to be able to do that. So yeah, it made a huge. Uh, a huge difference in like taking the training. And so for years I worked with some pretty influential, uh, women entrepreneurs and, um, sometimes their business could be a little chaotic because they’re so focused on their own clients and making a difference that they just didn’t have the capability to help behind the scenes, to run the team, to be there when the team needed support themselves. Um, and so I took a lot of joy in that. And then my business went along like that for years. And then the opportunity came to become a trainer. And, um, I knew that when my husband needed to sell his business for us to travel in a certain way, I’m like, I’m not gonna be the reason we’re, we’re not traveling.

[00:32:56] And so I literally, uh, became a trainer for the association, which I love. They’ve supported me for years. Never been alone. Um, and then I was still working with my client and then I decided, okay, I’m gonna work one less day a week for my client to work on my business. You know, you gotta know your personality when you’re an on an entrepreneur as well.

[00:33:16] So what happened for me was I still put my clients first over myself. And so then my own coach had to remind me, you need to rip the bandaid off. And so I went all in on training and I ripped the bandaid off and I no longer take o b M level clients because I needed to be able to focus on me. And once I did that, it was amazing what happened for my business when I ripped the bandaid off and was all in on myself and on my students, it made a huge difference.

[00:33:46] So I’m all in with my clients, um, normally as an O B M. And then when I became a trainer, I was all in on for my students as well. So I got to take that same energy and just redirect it. So yeah, it’s just, it’s been a wonderful in between, but it did take building and. , you know, we all learn about boundaries.

[00:34:06] We all learn like, so business will show you things about yourself that are good and not so good. Um, it’s, it’s like, I’ve heard that before, but it is so true. You will learn that, you know, maybe you’re not good with setting a certain boundary or maybe you’re not so good at that, or, you know, I’m not great at copywriting, but I love to read copy.

[00:34:26] I know what good copy looks like. I can’t write it for myself. So I learned to hire. My weaknesses over, like, over my strength. So this whole journey has been, um, wonderful for me. I would make an awful employee now. . Totally awful employee.

[00:34:44] Pete: Same.

[00:34:44] Keldie Jamieson: I could never go back to corporate. Same?

[00:34:46] Megan: Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. Same. And I, I think it’s, I love that you brought up that, uh, business is essentially, I mean, being in business for yourself is, it’s such a personal growth journey.

[00:34:58] I am somebody who loves reading about personal development and, you know, always trying to get better about my habits and improve my mindset and all of that. But the two things in life that have helped me grow the most as a person, Being in a relationship, number one, because that’s hard communication and all.

[00:35:21] Um, and then number two, having a business. Um, those are the two things that I think have so much potential to help you just grow as a person. Um, and yeah, I’ve also found that in business it is just, yeah, you learn a lot about yourself.

[00:35:39] Keldie Jamieson: You do, I I I, I find it interesting. But we do learn so much and I love that you’re into personal development.

[00:35:45] Um, I can never get enough of a lot of that stuff as well. Uh, even this past year even. So we all, I’ll have to get, uh, have clients that have coaches. And so this year I invested in myself as well and got, um, a coach, went through a coaching program for a year and. It was interesting to learn about, um, subconscious stories or messages that we have or that we tell ourselves that when we speak them out loud, we know they’re not true.

[00:36:16] Um, and, you know, figuring out where the story came from so that I could, you know, bust that belief system. Uh, so it’s really interesting this whole journey. So you don’t think that your personal life actually affects your business. You’re thinking, oh, that’s business and this is personal. I actually don’t believe that anymore either.

[00:36:34] There is a lot of things from being a child or younger and learning things, and even things that we learn just by working and, you know, living life. And we have these stories that can actually get in the way of your business. So if you’re feeling like you’re stuck, having someone help you is also beneficial.

[00:36:54] because I’ve been doing this for, for 10 years and this last year I was like getting really curious about beliefs that I held. Like why do I believe that? I know it’s not true. I have evidence from my clients that my belief is not true and yet it’s still there. And so, um, just know that even as an entrepreneur, please seek help when you need it, cuz you need that support system.

[00:37:16] We can’t do it alone. You know, everything is about community and relationships buying and selling to people, but if you feel like you are needing that, you know, I encourage people to go seek that out. Now, I didn’t realize how important it was until this last year when I experienced it to bust through some myths that I had about business.

[00:37:38] Megan: Yeah. And I think a lot of people deal with that in business around money, you know, limiting money, beliefs. Um, I know that I have, especially because, I mean, I’m a B2B business. My business is. , you know, being an O B M now as well, . Um, and so if you’re selling high ticket, you know, B2B packages or services, then that’s very different.

[00:38:03] That’s a very different level of transaction than, you know, working for an employer or, um, selling smaller service packages. And so to ask somebody to give you 10,000 plus dollars, there’s just, if you have those beliefs, there’s, there’s a really big leap that you have to make there. And, uh, it’s, it’s work, uh, recognizing that in yourself and then also figuring out where it comes from and how to get past it so that you don’t sabotage yourself in your business and you can actually make money and sell the things that you wanna sell.

[00:38:37] So, I 100% agree there. Um, I also wanna ask you, so you said that your first dollars. Your first few dollars, your first few sales in your business came from reaching out to your network. You didn’t have a business or you didn’t have a website for years. Um, I am curious, did you have any fear or hesitation around doing that outreach to your network?

[00:39:02] Keldie Jamieson: I personally didn’t have any fear just because I had made a point of, uh, networking heavily when I was in corporate. I actually was, uh, a director for the Chamber of Commerce, and I don’t like networking the way a lot of people do it. So I love to go and hear about people and how can I help? And I would always serve first and didn’t ask for anything in return, even though a lot of people were there just to sell, sell, sell, sell, sell.

[00:39:30] You know, and it, it would be disheartening a lot of times to go to those events. I did give back because that was, I felt like that was sort of like my volunteer work. And I also knew that being a member of the Chamber of Commerce and then volunteering to be on committees and then I was a director, what I learned was from so many other business owners that were way ahead of me, cuz I knew eventually I was gonna be starting my own business and not, you know, working as, as an employee.

[00:39:57] And so I got that benefit. And then because I just gave and gave for, you know, probably three or four years of just giving while I was an active, uh, member of the chamber. What happened for me was when I went out into business, I didn’t have a problem. Uh, I literally went out and said I need help with a business plan.

[00:40:18] I found out that I could get a government grant to help me write my business plan where I was, and I went and got that help. I have Sinced help other helped other people with that. Um, but I’m, I literally just went out and said, Hey, I have starting my own businesses. Anyone know anyone that needs this type of service that I can do for them?

[00:40:38] And that’s when I had people say, Hey, I know a business that’s looking for a bookkeeper. It wasn’t my ideal, but it was money coming in like that. Like it was easy for me to go and I had the confidence to do that. And then as my business progressed and I didn’t have the website for 10 years, I literally would have, uh, coffee chats and I with people.

[00:40:59] And I know a lot of people say, oh, don’t, don’t do coffee chats. It’s a waste of everyone’s time. It worked for me. How can I help you? I would have a conversation, what is your ideal client? Who are you looking for? Um, and when I was filled with clients, I would still have those conversations of people who wanted to hire me that were referred and I would refer them to someone else.

[00:41:19] And when I worked with team members, team members are great referrals. Um, I even had someone that I actually had to fire. Hire me on her team, in her agency after that situation. And then even when I wasn’t working with her anymore, when I had another opportunity that I was open for a client, cuz I always had long-term clients, a year or two years.

[00:41:40] Um, I reached out, she didn’t have anything for me. Five minutes later she reached out again and said, actually I have a client for you. So networking has always been big for me. It’s just how can I help other people? And then when I needed to ask, I didn’t feel bad asking cuz I know that I gave first for so long that when I said, Hey, does anyone know?

[00:42:03] And I would just like, no pressure. Hey, I just so you know, I’m gonna be open for a client in the next 30 days. I, I’ll be available to start. Do you know anyone? Do you have any leads? Please? You know, let them know. And I always. Something that came up for me, and that was because I gave first. So having the coffee chats referring even when I wasn’t accepting clients, I would have the free conversation with someone.

[00:42:26] What’s going on in your business that I think this is what you need? I, I don’t have room for a client right now, but I know these three people that I’d like to connect you with, and it just seemed to pay. For me.

[00:42:39] Megan: Yeah. Did you feel like you had a lot of people in your network who were your ideal clients at the time? Or who knew your ideal clients? Um, that’s, yeah. Okay.

[00:42:51] Keldie Jamieson: No, no, I’m just, I’m shaking my head, but No, no, I didn’t actually. Um, it was literally from, well, let’s, let’s talk about that for just a minute. So the request for proposal thing that came through my association that I’m a part of, that started the journey for me.

[00:43:06] That’s where things turned around. So as soon as I got my first client, um, one of the first clients I got was an ideal client. Um, on paper, I’m gonna say that on paper . And what I loved was I had the ability to hire my dream. So people that I had been following for a long time that were experts in different areas, uh, it was affordable for that team to be created from this client’s budget that they had.

[00:43:33] And so then I got to work with all of these people that I had always wanted to work with because I would interview with them and bring them on board for this big launch thing that was happening with that client. And she already had some great people on her team. It was a wonderful experience. And then I started networking from there, like just, oh, I know this person and I know this person.

[00:43:53] And it just kind of expanded. And then I learned that I networked heavily with my own team. I got to know my team. So as an O B M, I’m leading the team, but I got to know the virtual assistant, the executive assistant, the associate coaches, the contractors coming in to develop a program and help with the marketing.

[00:44:09] So marketing experts, copywriting experts. I got to know them on a personal level. And I just kept naturally networking beyond that over and over and over again. Who do you think I should follow to learn more about this? I would ask them, oh, I follow this person and this person. And then I, I just kind of kept expanding my network.

[00:44:28] And so I think that’s really important to not forget about your teammates. Like who’s on your team? Who do you know? And ask them who do they follow, who do they recommend? And then I would become part of those communities and I just learned to keep expanding in the niche that I was in. Um, yeah. And give and just giving back.

[00:44:50] And so again, I had many coffee chats. Like I am known for that when I talk to my students and they’re like, how do I find clients? I’m like, networking. And I encourage you to go have 10 coffee chats with other uh, colleagues, not with, don’t think of them as competitors cuz we’re not, we’re all colleagues.

[00:45:07] Go have those conversations and find out who likes to do what. So I think earlier I asked you about what you like. in your business about being an obm and I told you, oh, I hate that. Like, I love using it, but I don’t wanna do that. And that is the kind of stuff that I learned about other people. So that when, uh, a client would come, you know, in front of me and I still have clients that reach out and ask me, um, for referrals to OBMs, this happens all the time.

[00:45:35] I ask them about their business and then I’m like, oh wait, okay, okay, you’re looking for that and that, oh, I know someone who’d be a great fit. I can look at what you’re doing. And I know that that appeals to them, what you’re doing as a mission and vision for your business. And it just kind of comes back.

[00:45:49] So I also encourage you when you do those coffee chats to have like a little spreadsheet. Sort of sounds like cheating, but put down what it is. Like what is it that they’re looking for? Um, are they open for clients? Maybe you might know someone and they’re like, I don’t ever wanna work for a client for like 40 hours a week.

[00:46:05] Okay, well I know this person’s looking for that, so I’m not gonna refer that one. I’m gonna go down to the other person that’s got room for, you know, a bigger client or something like that. It’s always just about knowing, um, that first initial conversation and then revisiting it. You can even reach out, Hey, I have someone that’s looking for an O B M.

[00:46:24] Do you have, you know, do you have room for a client? Oh, I don’t have room right now. Okay, great. You know, and just a little bit of a catch up. What are you doing? Has anything changed since I last talked to you? Okay. I put that in my notes and we just kind of go from there. So please don’t be afraid to reach out.

[00:46:39] It’s, you don’t have to come from a place of desperation. It’s like there’s an opp, it’s a, it’s an opportunity. Hey, if you know anyone looking, cuz so many people are looking for uh, workers right now too. Like, it’s like a hot market. Um, , everybody seems to be looking for employees and or help with their business, whether it’s online or offline.

[00:47:00] So if you have an opening, tell your friends, tell your family, um, you know, tell your other colleagues, Hey, if there’s a client that’s not a great fit for you, um, you know, this is what I’m looking for. And, you know, please feel free to pass it along to me.

[00:47:16] Megan: I love that you networked with so many different people, because what I’m facing right now, I’m also, you know, well, and I’ll also say I think probably the non-tech savvy people out there are like jumping up and down like, woo, I don’t need to build a website or whatever. But the introverts are probably like, oh my God, no. I have to network. And I’m on that side of things. I am like huge introvert. Never been great at networking, but I am starting to do that now and I feel like I don’t have a lot of people in my network, friends, family, colleagues who, um, are my ideal client or really know my ideal client.

[00:47:58] But I think that. what you’re saying, or part of what you’re saying is that you first of all never know who’s gonna be a good connection. You never know who knows who. Um, and secondly, you don’t just have to go out and try to find your ideal client. You can talk to people in your industry or, um, my business coach talks about like your shoulder industries, right?

[00:48:23] So people who kind of do what you do, but maybe have a, a different focus. Um, so like as an obm, I’m more systems focused. I like creating processes and documentation. Um, but there are other OBMs who love launch planning. Um, and there are other OBMs who love metrics tracking, you know, and all of that. And so, um, yeah, just networking with people who also do what you do and not seeing it as competition, but seeing it as like, how can we maybe help each other?

[00:48:54] How do we, who do we know that we can send each other to? And um, yeah, just, just. Telling people what you’re looking for and also, um, being able to serve by understanding what they’re looking for and looking for connections that you can send to them. So, um, it doesn’t have to be overly complicated and as an introvert, it’s just something you might have to do in the beginning of your business.

[00:49:20] Keldie Jamieson: So think about, I mean, you and I met in person on Zoom here for the first time, and I feel like we are learning things about each other and I don’t feel like you’re shrinking away from me. We’re just literally having a conversation. And this is what those coffee chats can look like. And, you know, if you’re other, if there’s other team members or clients you can say to your, you know, if you’re really upfront with your client, Hey, I love what we’re doing here and we’re only working this many hours, I have room for another client.

[00:49:50] Do you have a biz bestie or someone else that’s maybe even not in your industry that you think could benefit from working with me to help them? It, it can sound, uh, stressful to ask that question, but it can just come up in conversation. It, you don’t have to always be selling yourself. It can be a casual conversation, and this is why I love coffee chats, especially for introverts because a lot of times introverts, um, come alive once they feel comfortable.

[00:50:18] Talking to someone and there are so many introverts in our industry as online business managers, and so you’re probably gonna talk to another introvert like and introvert. Doesn’t mean that you’re afraid sometimes it’s just an energy level thing as well that you are very conscious of how you spend your energy.

[00:50:36] So I think there’s lots of ways that you can do it. I am not a fan of the in, I love networking in person, but I am not a fan of, always feel like feeling like I’m being sold to. And so if you do go to those events, my recommendation is ask other people about themselves first and um, offer to help them or give them ideas.

[00:50:58] And then if there’s time, they will naturally ask about you and you can just come across as. Whatever’s naturally coming out of your mouth about your business at the time, don’t feel like you need to sell someone. I know we’re supposed to have an elevator pitch. Um, I actually did an, uh, a networking thing for our association if you ever go listen to it, where, you know, I help people do X so that they can do y unlike others that do Zed, which is actually something from Mel Abraham that he has a podcast episode on how to stand out.

[00:51:30] Um, and he actually did something for my community where he did a training on how to be seen as your customer, your ideal customer’s only solution. Um, and he knew that he was coming in to speak with OBMs about that topic. We don’t have to always be selling ourselves and putting ourselves out there.

[00:51:48] Behind the scenes. I love being behind the scenes. I love being that person behind the scenes that’s letting that person stand in the light. Because I’ll tell you, as much as we look at influencers and think their life is great, I’m sure that it is great. But at the same time, there’s a lot going on. They take a lot of negativity.

[00:52:06] It takes a certain personality to be able to, to do that work, to take all the praise, but to take the criticism that comes with that every little mistake that’s seen. So actually love what I do because we’re behind the scenes, , it just, it, you know, we’re making a difference, but we’re making a difference in our, in our quiet way of making a difference.

[00:52:32] And I love that just as any business owner. So you don’t think that whatever you’re doing means that you have to show up as this influencer to have a business? Cuz that’s not true either.

[00:52:45] Megan: Yeah. And I, I love that you are the perfect example of, um, being able to grow a thriving business without having a huge online presence.

[00:52:55] You know, and networking sounds like was the key to that. Um, yeah. I’m assuming you didn’t do a whole lot on social media over that, you know, 10 year period or whatever it was that you didn’t have a website. Yeah. . So

[00:53:09] Keldie Jamieson: I did not do that either. I am, yeah. I’m like a social media stalker. I love to read everybody else’s stuff.

[00:53:15] Megan: Same.

[00:53:16] Keldie Jamieson: Every once in a while I will publish something or put it in, or because I’m supposed to, which I just did hand quotes for that supposed to, um, I am, I, I think I’m like an introverted extrovert. So I do, when I feel comfortable with people, I am really, really, uh, like to have a lot of fun. I don’t take my business too seriously.

[00:53:37] So for all of you that are thinking about that as well, the business is there to support me and it’s supposed to be fun. I love talking to people. So there’s that part of me that thinks I’m extroverted, but at the same time, I don’t necessarily wanna be the person that is the face of, of the industry or of the, of whatever.

[00:53:58] I like to, um, I just like to help and be of service and at the same time know that I’m making a difference and empowering other women. So again, it’s both your mission and what you’re trying to, with intention of what you’re trying to get out of it. And so, even though my business transitioned from being the O B M and then working my way up and learning, and then helping these women to now being a trainer, , it still meets my mission.

[00:54:24] My mission has never changed. Women empowering women. And this time it’s me empowering others to show up for themselves. And that you can have, you can do whatever you want in business. That’s the other thing, like I, I like to point out as well. Um, whatever lights you up, like what is it that lights you up?

[00:54:40] I happen to be training people to do what I did, but I am not, um, like if you love to push all the buttons for tech, oh, please go be a virtual assistant because we need more of you. Um, we can’t be an O B M without you. If you love coaching women, if you love making products, um, you know, selling on Etsy or what, like, I never care what someone wants to do in business.

[00:55:06] And I love business as a vehicle to empower, uh, empower women. I mean, and it does empower men too. I don’t wanna exclude that. I think we all come from a place of. things in our life that might have made us feel a certain way. So at one point in my life, I felt a little bit disempowered. And so because of that, um, I’m all about empowering women.

[00:55:28] Does does that make sense? So that’s where that, that passion comes from.

[00:55:32] Megan: Yeah. And I love that you have that kind of twofold mission on your, you know, in your personal life with your family. That was the reason for starting your business. And then also on the business side, you know, empowering women. I think that it’s great that you have both sides of.

[00:55:48] Um, that kind of drive what you do in your, in your business. Um, I know we’re coming up on time here. I have so much more that I feel like I could ask you, but, uh, I do want to ask you a few rapid fire questions, if you don’t mind. Does that sound good?

[00:56:04] Keldie Jamieson: Yep. Sounds good.

Rapid Fire Questions

[00:56:05] Megan: So my first question is, what is one of the best or most worthwhile investments that you’ve ever made in your business? And it could be an investment of money or time, or energy, anything.

[00:56:17] Keldie Jamieson: Uh, hands down, it was, uh, joining the International Association of Online Business Managers. It took my business that first year. I wasn’t really doing much. I wasn’t having ideal clients to getting ideal clients and then finding a community of mostly women in that community, but finding that community that supported me, I never felt alone in all of these years in business.

[00:56:39] Um, I have my geeky friends who all seem to like similar things to me, and it’s just been a pleasure and a joy to build my business with, with them as my support system. Yeah, yeah. Hands down, yeah.

[00:56:51] Yeah. I

[00:56:52] Megan: am also in that community now. Having gotten certified this year, and I can say without a doubt, it’s been an amazing investment and, uh, yeah, it’s just a great community.

[00:57:02] I’ve only been in it for like four months, but I swear probably every other week I post a, a question to the group and people are so helpful. So it, it really is an amazing community. . Um, next question is, what is a common myth or misconception about running an online business or a lifestyle business that you wanna clear up once and for all?

[00:57:25] Keldie Jamieson: Um, that you don’t have to work or do anything, and that clients are literally just gonna fall in your lap. Um, that is not true. We do have to work at it. There is work that needs to happen so you can have a side hustle, uh, but if you build it, they will come, is not necessarily true. . So just because you have a website doesn’t mean that people are going to find you.

[00:57:46] You do still have to either market or network or do something. Um, it doesn’t mean that you, it can’t come easy for some people, but don’t think that, I mean, I didn’t have a website for 10 years, but I networked. So it’s not like I didn’t do things to promote my business. So just because you build it doesn’t mean that they will come.

[00:58:02] It is not the field of dreams. , yes. I’ve learned that lesson so many times in my own business. I like, I just keep relearning it, , hoping eventually it’s gonna stick.

[00:58:14] Megan: Um, so last question that I have for you is, how has a failure or an apparent failure set you up for later success in your business? And do you have a favorite failure in your business.

[00:58:27] Keldie Jamieson: So my favorite failure was actually in the first business I learned, oh, um, to read contracts, um, to not let the money. That’s what happened. Um, someone promised me a sales rep that was in my indu in that industry, in the clothing industry, but in that niche, um, literally say we can make, oh, you, you can make tens of thousands of dollars.

[00:58:48] Give us your samples. We’re gonna take it. We’re we’re just leaving. I didn’t get a contract signed. I did none of that. Um, it took me months to get my samples back. And then when I was talking to cl to the clients that I’d already been selling to successfully, They said, oh yeah, those guys, they took your product and the big box company is now making that product for us and they can sell it to us for half the price that we were getting at wholesale from you and then reselling it.

[00:59:15] So, unfortunately, we love you, we love your product, but it’s cheaper over here. Like they’re very honest. It just shut my business down. I didn’t have a contract. I didn’t read a contract. So now what I’ve learned a and as an O B M I ask for contracts. I read contracts, I point things out to people. I let money, the dollars thing influence me into thinking that I could have this really simple business that money was just gonna fall in.

[00:59:43] Again. You have to like thinking I didn’t have to work. Um, it was a huge lesson for me of not knowing my industry. because I wasn’t really all that passionate about it anyway. And I let dollars get in the way and I didn’t read a contract. So, huge lesson for me about setting up of expectations, um, and covering your butt.

[01:00:05] Yeah. Like really like looking out for yourself. So yeah, that was a huge lesson, was my favorite lesson because, you know, years I went back into corporate, but when I was ready to go into business again, I knew that I needed to set expectations and read and understand what I was doing. Yeah. It was a good lesson for me.

[01:00:26] Megan: Yeah. Well thank you so much, keldi. I learned so much personally from our conversation and I’m sure that our audience is gonna get a lot of value out of it. So thank you so much for being here.

[01:00:38] Keldie Jamieson: Thank you for having me. Um, and you know, if you’re thinking about starting a business, I’m like a hun, I’m behind you a hundred percent. Read your contract, set your expectations, find your passion, find your why, and I think you’ll be successful.

[01:00:52] Megan: Yeah. Yes. And work on that mindset.

[01:00:55] Keldie Jamieson: And work on that mindset. Yes. Thank you so much for having me, Megan.

Outro

[01:00:59] Keldie Jamieson: Thanks so much for being here and for listening to the Dollar Spa podcast today. Be sure to check out the show notes for any links and resources that were mentioned in today’s conversation.

[01:01:09] And if you enjoyed this episode, then don’t forget to like, subscribe, and leave us a review wherever you’re listening to this podcast. Thanks again for being here and for being part of the Dollar Spout community, and I will see you in the next episode.

Note: This transcript was automatically generated and may include typos.

Welcome to the Dollar Sprout Podcast, where it’s all about building a business that offers consistent income and flexibility so you can live life on your terms. And now your host, Megan Robinson.

Introduction

[00:00:18] Megan: Welcome back to the Dollar Sprout podcast. Thanks so much for being here with me today. Today’s guests are two.

[00:00:26] We actually have two guests today. Um, Rob and Melissa Stevenson of Flea Market Flippers. They have a business. , uh, reselling. So you’ve probably heard of flipping. Maybe you’ve seen videos of people buying tables and furniture at estate sales and then turning around and sanding them and painting them and then selling them for more.

[00:00:47] So it’s kind of the same. I mean, it’s the same concept for a business, but Robin Melissa actually focus on, um, particularly items that nobody else really wants to deal with, um, because they’re too big to. ship for a lot of people. So they often do flips on things like commercial appliances and things where they have to figure out freight shipping, and it’s allowed them to do some really impressive flips, um, that you’ll hear more about.

[00:01:20] But one for example that I thought was really crazy was, um, a bus wash. If you don’t know what this is, then. . I didn’t either. So you’ll hear Rob, I think describe it on the show, but this is an item that they paid $500 for and they turned around and sold it for $14,500, which is just crazy. So definitely a different kind of flipping business than maybe what you have seen or heard of in the past.

[00:01:53] And Rob has been doing this for 25 years. Since he was about 16 years old. So there was just so much wisdom in here to share. There was so much that they were sharing in tips that I was just writing them all down. And then you’ll hear me towards the end of the episode. I kind of read out all of the different tips that they gave throughout the show because there was just so much and some of it blew my mind.

[00:02:17] Um, but they share things like specific formulas that you can. For how to know if an item is gonna be profitable or not, and how much you should pay for that item. How they won two out of the three refund requests that they received in the last year. And tips for how you can avoid refund requests from your own customers if you decide to pick this up as a side hustle or business.

[00:02:43] Yeah, and then again, just all of those crazy stories that are so fun. Um, and it’s so fun to hear Rob and Melissa talk about these, um, cuz you can tell how passionate they are and how excited that they get about finding good deals. So it’s a really fun episode. I hope you enjoy it. Please welcome Rob and Melissa Stevenson.

Interview

[00:03:04] Rob and Melissa Stephenson: Awesome. Thank you so much for having us. We’re so excited to be here.

[00:03:08] Megan: Yeah, thanks so much. Um, so will you tell the audience in your own words what it is that you guys do in your business? Um, I know you guys have different sides of your business, so, um, can you just tell people what you do and what products and services you offer?

[00:03:23] Rob and Melissa Stephenson: Yeah, absolutely. So we buy and sell used items. We take it from a local market, uh, which, um, in our local market, we’ll buy stuff. And then we actually, um, and to give you an example, it’s like, uh, commercial restaurant equipment, exercise.

[00:03:36] That’s what we’ve gravitated more towards now because it makes more money. But yeah.

[00:03:40] Any thing that we can make money on, we’ll buy, but from the local market, we buy stuff and then we actually throw it onto eBay, uh, from 90% of our sales we throw onto eBay and we sell it. And then, uh, we also have a coaching program that we teach other people how to do exactly what we do.

[00:03:54] Megan: Very cool. So you guys really found your niche in the, uh, in the flipping space.

[00:03:59] Rob and Melissa Stephenson: Yep. We do a lot of larger items, so the stuff that people won’t ship. So that’s kind of where we’ve honed in because most people won’t ship appliances or exercise equipment, and we will. So we’ll ship pretty much anything. So.

[00:04:13] Megan: Yeah. And how long have you guys been doing this? You guys have been in business for quite a while now, right?

[00:04:18] Rob and Melissa Stephenson: He’s been doing this since you were 16?

[00:04:20] Yeah, almost 25 years now. Yeah. So I’ve been flipping in Yeah, in some facet for like over 25 years. Um, but as honing into really a larger higher profit items, um, and, um, coaching Yeah. For the last seven years.

[00:04:36] Yeah. And that was more when we jumped in full-time. Yeah. You honed into that a little bit more.

[00:04:41] Megan: Huh, very cool. 25 years. So you have a lot of, a lot of good wisdom to share with us for, for new people who maybe wanna get started with this as a side hustle today. Um, that’s awesome. Well, I definitely wanna hear about, you know, your all’s background and like how you got started when you were 16 years old.

[00:04:57] Um, but before we get into that, . Um, do you guys mind sharing a little bit about the behind the scenes of your business? Um, what does it look like these days after being in business for that many years? Um, what’s your business? Revenue and profitability?

[00:05:13] Rob and Melissa Stephenson: Yeah. So we, like, we ha our time is split really between obviously flipping and then the coaching parts.

[00:05:18] We have two parts of the business, um, and we do it full-time. Both, both of them, but they, they feed into each other, so we’re still, he’ll never stop flipping no matter how much teaching we do. Like, he just loves finding stuff. so loves finding the deals and, and making, and it’s fun to still be relevant obviously in what we’re teaching, why we teach.

[00:05:36] Yeah. Um, but like we start every day basically with a run, listening to a podcast and then. Start our day that way almost every day. Um, and, uh, and either do one part, you’re working on the flipping part and I’m working on the back end of the other part. Yeah. Um, making videos and stuff. And last year for our flipping business we were, we sold 58 items for, uh, $80,000.

[00:06:01] And then, um, profit was like 65,000. So our, our biggest thing for. , uh, flipping is finding the items at the right price. So, and then being able to sell them. We, our goal is 10 x on our items, so, and higher profit items and higher. So we only had 58 transactions, which most resellers are doing thousands of transactions to get that, to get that.

[00:06:24] So, um, our goal is to have less transactions so that we can, you know, clean list, take pictures. List less, spend more time with our family, spend more time with our family, and we also have the other part of the business too. So, and this is the flipping portion of our business, probably takes up, I would say, five to 10 hours.

[00:06:40] if that five to 10 hours a week is all we’re spending on the flipping portion of what we do, um, we have a lot more time into the coaching, into, uh, social media, into, um, the, yeah, like the coaching portion of the business takes a lot more of our time.

[00:06:53] Megan: Very cool. So how much, okay, so you, how many streams of revenue do you guys have in your business? I know you mentioned you have the flipping side of your business and you have coaching. Do you also like, have affiliate revenue or anything like that?

[00:07:08] Rob and Melissa Stephenson: We do a little bit, like we’ve worked a little bit with affiliates. There’s a couple of people that we promoted, like we don’t sell on Amazon, so we’ve, you have a couple, uh, friends that sell on Amazon or, uh, little things we haven’t done as well in affiliate marketing as we probably could have

[00:07:22] So, um, that hasn’t been a big revenue stream. Um, and even, uh, have we started doing more ads on our website. and then we cut those off. So that’s not even a stream anymore. It’s mostly our own products that we, um, that we sell. And then we have affiliates like that promote us too. Um, but it’s mostly our main business is our own products.

[00:07:42] So yeah. And eBay sales, what we’re selling is eBay sales. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:07:45] Megan: Very cool. Okay, so, so Rob, you mentioned that you’ve been doing this since you were 16 years old. I have to. what gets a 16 year old into flipping stuff on eBay or online? How did that happen?

[00:07:59] Rob and Melissa Stephenson: Yeah, definitely. So I come from a bigger family.

[00:08:02] I have six older sisters. I’m the youngest and only boy. Um, as a kid, my parents would take us to yard sales, um, to find cool stuff, but also to be able to provide for a big family. That’s how, uh, I grew up. So, uh, going to yard sales, my parents also had a side hustle. They would buy. From yard sales as it when I was a kid, uh, they would bring it back.

[00:08:21] This is before smartphones, before eBay, even any of that stuff. They would buy stuff in the yard, sales in the local arena. Um, and they would, where it reached a smaller amount of people. So many people at a yard sale, one yard sale on a weekend. You might have reached like 300 people. Um, they would buy it from a yard sale.

[00:08:37] They’d bring it back and they’d list it in the local classified section, which had the potential of. 20 to 30,000 people. Um, so I got it modeled at a young age. My parents did this and this wasn’t like their full-time gig. This is just something that extra money. Cause they had a lot of kids Exactly.

[00:08:50] Exactly. That. They had a, they enjoyed it. So they did it as a side hustle. And uh, I got modeled that from a young age and then, uh, when I was 16, talked to my mom and she kind of helped. , you know, uh, helped me into the business and helped me start doing some stuff, uh, when I was 16 years old. I know one thing that like, uh, one thing that you got started, you wanted to buy that car.

[00:09:10] Yep. That was a, what was it? A Ford Mustang. And he totaled up, like he, you were a working part-time at, um, red Lobster and he was like, okay, I have to work so many hours if I wanna buy this car. Like, what were you making? How much an hour? Nothing ? No, I think it was like $250 every two weeks is what I was making as a post at Red Lobster.

[00:09:28] And then he found the first thing that he really flipped was a Nordic track ski machine and bought it for $5 and sold it for 350. Three 50. Did you just say that? Sorry. No. Okay. Yeah. Three 50. And um, then he is like, okay, well that’s a lot I can do. Sell this one item versus working how many hours at Red Lobster.

[00:09:45] And so that was kind of like his journey into it, I think. Absolutely. How he got started.

[00:09:50] Megan: Yeah, well there’s no more motivation than, you know, wanting to buy a nice car or like having, you know, something you really wanna buy, especially if you’re a car guy. Um, very cool. So, so, You got into it when you were 16, and then how did this kind of become both of your all’s thing?

[00:10:09] Melissa, at what point did you start getting into the flipping business? Is that something you were doing before you guys met?

[00:10:17] Rob and Melissa Stephenson: Uh, no. I had no idea what. So, like I knew about eBay, but I had no idea like you could actually make money on eBay. Like I had no idea. Um, so he kind of, you know, showed me what he was doing and I still didn’t really know what he did, uh, to make some extra money.

[00:10:32] But at um, we were about to have our third kid and I was a personal trainer and I was like, this is crazy. Like three kids under three, I have to stop and just be home with the kids. So we kind of made that decision and then right after we made that decision, I. eight months pregnant and his job said, sorry, like we’re cutting health benefits.

[00:10:52] And it was supposed to cut like April 1st and or March 31st, and I was due April 1st. And I was like, well that’s not good . So, so we had to kind of make a decision, are we gonna jump into this full-time? And then I can help him do stuff, like more of the listings. I can do work on the back end of it. And if we both jump in and both add some more hours, what can we do?

[00:11:11] So that was kind of how I really. Pushed into it and uh, and yeah, so then we dove in with both feet and cuz we knew, what were we making then? We made 42,000 part-time, part-time. Um, the first year we actually kept track of it first. Yeah. Well that was, and that was part-time. And so that when we finally went in, with both feet full-time, we were able to get to 130,000.

[00:11:31] So, um, and it was a hundred thousand dollars profit. So it was like, that was a, was with three kids Under three . Yeah, with three kids. So it was like, like, okay, we can do this. So the coaching part of the business wasn’t really, um, that big then. So that was kind of around the same time that we had started that too.

[00:11:47] So, um, it was really cool to be able to see that and be like, okay, well we’re doing this part-time. What can we do if we do it full-time? And we’re both doing it and along with taking care of our, our family, but,

[00:11:57] Wow. So you said 130,000 the first year. You guys went like both full-time into it. Was that more that you guys, more than you guys were making at your jobs before?

[00:12:06] Megan: What were you, what were you doing before you like really went into the business? .

[00:12:10] Rob and Melissa Stephenson: Yes, it was definitely more. Yeah. Um, cuz I had already gone back part-time, um, from personal training. And you really were only at your job for the health benefits. You still weren’t, you weren’t making very much. No. You were making more flipping.

[00:12:21] Yeah. Um, anyway, we just had it for the health benefits for the most part. And I worked for a report company. Uh, we did home homeowners, uh, insurance. Insurance, yeah. Inspections, right? Yeah. So that’s what I did as my full-time. And she was a personal trainer. But yeah, this was definitely making more. Um, doing this and we are on our own hours, being able to work together and working at our own pace and our own hours to make the money that we did the first year.

[00:12:45] Megan: So it sounds like the motivation where you, for you guys was largely like wanting to have more. time freedom, wanting to like have more time with three kids under three and be able to like be present as parents. And is that accurate?

[00:12:59] Rob and Melissa Stephenson: Yeah. We, whenever, um, before we had decided to jump in full-time, we could both really, we had our own schedules, so like we would just, uh, uh, make him opposite.

[00:13:08] Like, I would work these days. He would work these days so we could be home with the kids. Cuz we really, it was important to us. Not to do daycare, and that’s not for everybody, but we really wanted to just be home with the kids and, and take care of them. So, um, so we alternated, but then when we could both be home and work on it together, I mean, they were just in the mix of everything.

[00:13:25] Yeah. So they, they’ve been going to the flea market and, and yard sales with us since they were babies, so .

[00:13:31] Megan: Very cool. Awesome. And now you said you work on the flipping side of the business five to 10 hours a week and. in total. How much time you guys put into the business Right now?

[00:13:40] Rob and Melissa Stephenson: We really should calculate how many hours that we do

[00:13:42] We do a lot of hours on the coach, the coaching side of it. Oh. Cause we do a podcast three times a week. We do like the videos. We do, we have a small team that’s helping us. But um, we’ve hosted three summits this year, so like, it’s. It. There’s a lot, I guess, behind the scenes, so I really should calculate the hours.

[00:14:00] So the flipping side, we try to stay at five to 10 hours a week and bring in roughly, our goal is round around a hundred thousand dollars a year for the flipping aspect of it. And this isn’t, Hundreds or thousands of items. We’re trying to stay under, you know, a hundred items a year, selling it roughly, um, 75 to a hundred items a year to be at that price, at that, uh, that income.

[00:14:21] Megan: Yeah, that’s amazing. That’s definitely the most impressive part, I think, about your all’s flipping business because like I see people all the time talking about flipping items online and they’re making a profit of like a hundred bucks or like 150 bucks and that’s like a big profit. But you guys. , you make a lot of profit on the items that you, on the individual items that you guys flip, which I’m really interested to hear more about. Um, how did you get into this niche of, you said used restaurant equipment?

[00:14:52] Rob and Melissa Stephenson: Well, that’s one of the, that’s one of the things that we did. Like I just shipped out something yesterday that we bought for $400 and we sold it for $10,000. Um, I just shipped it out yesterday. That was one of our flips. And it was, it was a commercial oven is what it was.

[00:15:05] Uh, countertop commercial oven called a turbo Cheff. Um, but like one that goes in like subway or something that Yeah. Starbucks exactly. Up your food fast. But way before that, when we actually jumped into this full-time, we both quit our jobs. We were in it full-time. We had the kids, um, we, we were flipping.

[00:15:21] And I had flipped, like I said, many, many years prior to that. But I’ve never done a larger item flips. Um, I bought something from a local auction, uh, table and chairs. , um, and a buffet, it was huge. So it was like eight or 10 chairs, a beautiful, uh, real wood table buffet with it. Um, I bought it at a local auction for $350 and I tried to sell it locally because that’s how we had always anything that we had bought big.

[00:15:45] We sold it locally and I was trying to get $700 for the table or seven 50. Um, and I had it listed for like two months and I could not get the thing sold. So I jumped onto eBay and I started looking on eBay and saw all the comparable tables. The only ones that were selling were the ones that people were offering shipping, um, or companies that were offering shipping.

[00:16:03] And that was kind of my aha moment of K. Okay, wait a minute. And they were getting way, way more money than $700 for sets like this. So I was like, okay, I’m gonna list this. If I can get it sold, I will figure out the shipping portion of it. And that was our first. Freight shipment that we did. Um, we sold it for $2,200, not even 700.

[00:16:20] We sold it for $2,200 and then plus 500 shipping, then another $500 for the shipping portion of it. So, um, and we did that in less than 30 days, and that was when we were like, okay, there’s something to these larger items and being able to ship the larger items because the profit is here.

[00:16:34] Megan: What is like, what is the barrier to entry there for people who are going from flipping like tables that they find on Facebook marketplace and they like, you know, paint and fix up a little bit. What, what’s the barrier to entry to like, Going into that niche or like, you know, shipping those larger items was a lot of logistics or what all did you guys have to figure out to make that happen?

[00:16:57] Rob and Melissa Stephenson: The, well the major thing was shipping. We had to figure out how to ship large items. I mean, we’re selling it on eBay.

[00:17:02] So eBay, the transaction itself is not hard. Like eBay is pretty, you know, you list it and, um, and more people. people can see it than they can in the local market. So, um, we’re not selling it on our own site, we’re selling it on eBay’s. Um, that’s, but that’s, then it’s the shipping is where like the freight shipping.

[00:17:17] Um, and that’s one of the big things is eBay. Like we, I talked about how my mom would buy stuff from yard sales that had a potential of reaching a yard sale on a weekend in my area, maybe 300 people. She’d buy something from that yard sale and then she’d put it on the classified section, which had a potential of whatever the town is for, that classified 20, 30, 40,000 people.

[00:17:36] So she could ask more money for the item and she could get it sold quicker that way. So we do the same thing now. We buy on Facebook, marketplace, offer up, Craigslist will find stuff locally, we’ll bring it back, we’ll take pictures, and then we throw it on to eBay, which has like, I think last time I looked, 152 million registered users, which are just taking it from a smaller market.

[00:17:54] putting it onto a lot, lot larger market that has a bigger, um, pool of people looking for that specific item. So that’s how we’re able to make the profits that we make on our items. And the item has to be worth a certain, like there is a, um, like it has to be really worth at least, I would say $500 on the low, low end.

[00:18:09] Would you say to ship if for somebody, cuz you have to think of the customer. Um, who, cuz it’s gonna cost us around a hundred to $300 to ship something on for the most part, unless it’s like a super huge pallet. Um, so we have to know like, is the customer. Willing to pay, um, let’s say $600, and we know we’re gonna pay 150 in shipping.

[00:18:27] Is that profit still there? So we have to always take that into an account because sometimes it’s not there. And so it’s not worth shipping. Yeah. Um, so the profit has to be there to do it. So

[00:18:36] Megan: Do you have any like, unique tools that you guys have created or how, how do you figure out, um, like if that profit is there on those larger items?

[00:18:46] Rob and Melissa Stephenson: I think it’s just knowing the, uh, your time and invite, like what would you say the, well, the, you don’t really have to know a lot. The biggest thing is finding out what that item retails for. Yeah, sure. So our formula for anything that we’re buying, uh, I’ll take that example of the thing I just shipped out yesterday that Turbochef, I paid $400 for that.

[00:19:02] We actually bought two of ’em, so I paid $800 for two of them. I checked the retail on that before I bought it, so I jumped on my phone. I, I Googled it and I saw retail on that item was $23,000. So if somebody was gonna buy the same exact item that I got for $400, if they were gonna go and buy it from a store, they were gonna spend $23,000.

[00:19:21] Now our formula is anything that we’re getting. We can sell roughly for 50%, maybe even a little bit more depending on condition. Um, we can sell it for, uh, 50% of what retail is. So that’s kind of the formula that we work by, and we’ve been really, really accurate for years and years of, okay, if this thing is.

[00:19:39] $10,000, I should be able to get roughly $5,000 for it on the resale market. Um, that’s kind of the formula that we, uh, we adhere to when we’re looking for those items. Like Melissa kind of talked about, the item has to be worth a lot more, um, than what you’re selling it for, for it to, um, make sense for somebody to be able to put the extra money into shipping, uh, shipping costs of free.

[00:20:01] And then our goal for finding the item is, uh, 10 x less . So if they’re, yeah, selling something for a thousand dollars, like we’re looking to spend about a hundred. So it’s kind of where our goal, our goal, and that leaves us enough room for shipping and our profit. So cuz we usually do free shipping, we just build it into our price.

[00:20:18] So yeah. So we are picky about what we actually source. We, we don’t want to, and our goal is selling less items with higher profits. Um, that’s really our goal is to be able to work less in the. Um, and more, have more time with our families. We don’t, don’t wanna spend a hundred dollars on something to make $200.

[00:20:33] It just, it’s not worth after all the work and, and fees and stuff that, that’s just not worth it. So, yeah.

[00:20:39] Megan: Gotcha. So two things that I have heard you say is, um, Find something, if you’re gonna do this, find something on a smaller market, list it on a much bigger market, first of all. And second, you look to get, uh, 50%, roughly 50% of the retail value out of these larger items that you’re selling. Do you have any other, like rules of thumb that you guys play by in the flipping part of your business?

[00:21:07] Rob and Melissa Stephenson: Um, I think it is just being a little bit, we’re more picking out of what we buy. I. , we were on a buying freeze cause we have so much to list , but yeah. But you can’t pass up a good deal ? No. I’m really good at finding deals and sometimes a deal might need something.

[00:21:21] Like I might find something that is like, I’ll give you another example. just last week or the week before I found another turbochef. So when my one Turbochef sold, uh, my buddy sent me a, uh, a picture that he, I mean a, uh, listing that he found on marketplace of another turbo chef. And the guy was asking $300 for it, but he said when he put power to it, it didn’t come on.

[00:21:41] That’s the kind of deals that I want. And this one is bigger than mine and it’s worth probably 25 to $30,000 as retail on this other turbo shelf. So I messaged the guy and I asked him if he would take $150 and he said 200. And I said, well, let me think about it. And he goes, okay, come pick it up. I’ll take $150.

[00:21:55] So I’m getting this. 25 to $30,000 oven for $150, but it doesn’t power on and that’s a no-brainer to me. But you’re right, it doesn’t power on, but you know, you can even sell it for parts E. Exactly. The parts on these ovens are super, super expensive. Some of the parts are two, three, $4,000 a piece. So I knew I had something there that I would not lose $150 and I typ typically would make more money.

[00:22:16] Well, I got it and I have a little bit of knowledge from doing this for years and years and. And YouTube and looking something, you can look up anything on YouTube, how to fix anything. Exactly. So I knew that if it didn’t have any power at all, there’s fuses in there. So the first thing I did, Pop open the top, look at the fuses.

[00:22:31] The fuses were blown. I went and got two new fuses, put it in it, and uh, that fixed the oven perfectly fine. So I had $30 in fuses because they’re special fuses, $150 into the item. And then I have it listed for another $10,000. So roughly under $200 into an item that’s gonna sell for nine or $10,000.

[00:22:49] That’s just being picky at what we’re trying to buy. Um, and we just wanna be really, really picky looking for those.

[00:22:55] Megan: Yeah, you’re obviously very good at finding deals. You guys know a lot about this, having done it for years and years now. How long did it take you to get to this point though? How long did it, did it take you to get good at finding deals?

[00:23:10] Rob and Melissa Stephenson: I mean, you’ve done it for so long. Yeah, but I, I think like one thing that we tell people that when they’re starting and they wanna find like looking and training their eyes is look for stuff that, um, you enjoy. So like you now, we gravitate a lot towards these items because they know they make us so much money.

[00:23:25] But, um, like starting out with stuff that you really enjoy doing, cuz you already know what things are worth or you know a lot about the item. Yeah. So one or the other, if you enjoy it, it’s a hobby or you. Like you collect something. Yes. Um, and, and you know it, like you can spot it and it’s just quick. So, um, that’s the easiest way to get into this is, and it, it’s a lot less learning if you already know a really good item, um, that you’re working with on a day-to-day basis in your full-time job.

[00:23:52] Or something that you have a hobby and you’re working with because you absolutely love it, you’re passionate about it. Um, those are the best, um, best things. And then you can learn new niches at a time and then you can spot ’em. So it just makes it a little easier than trying to look for everything, cuz then it’s overwhelming.

[00:24:04] You’re like, oh, well this could be worth something. Now I gotta look all this stuff up. But if you kind of pick and like you’re more picky in the beginning and then you expand your knowledge, then um, that helps. Yeah.

[00:24:13] Megan: So when you’re starting out, look for stuff that you enjoy and or that you know a lot about.

[00:24:19] Rob and Melissa Stephenson: Like Pokemon cards, , that’s one that I wanna get my kids into. Pokemon cards. Our kids love Pokemon cards, and so we’re trying to teach ’em like how to find the, like look for the ones that are worth. So our daughter finally is starting to be like, oh, this one is an older card, so it could be worth more. So, yeah.

[00:24:34] Um, so yeah, it’s fun.

[00:24:36] Megan: Nice. Keeping it, keeping it going throughout the family, throughout the generations. I love it. . Yeah, that’s, uh, that’s something that Ben Ben Huber from Dollar Sprout. Yeah. Uh, a couple years ago started. Flipping Pokemon cards and I think he’s pretty good at it. So there’s, yeah, Ru there.

[00:24:54] Rob and Melissa Stephenson: He was just a little while ago and was showing what he was doing. I’m like, that’s crazy. Like so much, so much on Pokemon cards. That’s awesome. .

[00:25:02] Megan: I know. It is crazy. So, I mean, you guys have been in a in business for a long time, so everybody in business, you know, makes mistakes or. Does deals or comes up with things they think are gonna be great and aren’t so great. Have you ever had something that you found that you thought was gonna be a really good deal and ended up being a really bad deal?

[00:25:25] Rob and Melissa Stephenson: Um, the one bowling game that one comes to mind. Yeah. one within the last probably two or three years. Yeah. We bought, was a bowling arcade game. Um, because you like those games.

[00:25:35] I love. I’m a, a kid at heart, so I’m always into arcades. I’m always into fun, fun stuff. Um, so yeah, we actually bought one of these. The cool thing is we redeemed ourself, but this was a bad buy. , um, we had to drive up to, it was like two or three states north of us. Yeah. Um, we found something on one of our road trips.

[00:25:54] I didn’t have the room for it, so we had to come back home, get my trailer, um, and go back up and pick up the item that I wanted, uh, which was a bus wash. Um, but I wanted to make the most outta the trip. And I found two other items up there in the same area. And the arcade that I bought was a bowling arcade from, I think a seventies, something like that.

[00:26:11] Um, Thought I could get roughly $2,500 for it. Um, the guy said it wasn’t working or it needed a couple little things. So when I got there, it was in a lot rougher condition than I had assumed it was. And that’s when we should have walked away. I should have walked away from it. Cause you’re not obligated to buy it.

[00:26:26] No, but he didn’t walk away. I didn’t We bought it and we trucked it back to Florida. Um, I got some pictures of it. I didn’t spend too, too much time with it. Think we barely broke even. Yeah. On the money that I spent. And then you have time into it. Exactly. The money that I spent on it, I don’t remember what I paid for.

[00:26:41] Maybe 150 bucks. Yeah. I think $150. But then after I sold it, shipped it eBay fees that I paid for it and shipping. You sold it for 400? Yeah, four or $500. I like it was, Break barely breaking even so broke even. And I, yeah, I messed that one up. Big . But the cool thing is the bus wash and the oven that we bought on that dude, we killed it on those.

[00:26:59] So it made up for my really screw up that I did on my fu. The only fun thing that I bought , I, I screwed up on. But the other two, we really, really killed it. We made ridiculous profits on those other two things, so it wasn’t a total wash. .

[00:27:12] Megan: Was there a lesson learned from that one?

[00:27:14] Rob and Melissa Stephenson: Walk away when you know you should walk away.

[00:27:15] Walk , walk away. Exactly. Don’t, don’t get too attached. We, I, trust me, we tell people to do this. I preach this all the time. If the deal’s not there, walk away from it. And in the heat of the moment, I couldn’t do it. We are, yeah. And if it wasn’t an arcade game, I think you could have done it. Absolutely. But it was just the fun.

[00:27:32] Ness. Yeah. Of I agree. Wanting to, I don’t know, have that, I guess. Yeah. So don’t be afraid to walk away. There you go. That’s the best lesson. If the deal’s, yeah. Not there. If it’s not in good shape, walk away .

[00:27:44] Megan: I think that’s also true. Yeah. Just in like any kind of business. , I think we can get emotionally attached to the things that we like or the things that we create. Yeah, so I think that’s just general good business advice. , don’t be too emotionally attached. Make sure the numbers are there. Make sure it’s something people are gonna buy. Checks out. Um, Do you have any stories of when you did walk away from a deal?

[00:28:09] Rob and Melissa Stephenson: Sometimes I walk away, um, because I know it’s gonna be more work and the seller will bring down the price to where it’s almost a no brainer for me to buy.

[00:28:20] I’m trying to think of something that I did that on recently. Market. Sometimes, yeah. A lot of times they’ll want the sale so bad that they’re bringing it down to a ridiculous price. Just want it gone. Um, kind of like the oven. I told you I got, he wanted 300, I offered him 200 and then he’s like $150. I offered him 150 and he said 200.

[00:28:37] I was gonna walk away at 200 cause I didn’t wanna put the extra $50 into it. Um, and he came back and said, okay, 150, I’ll do it. And um, but that was, that was a really, really good deal. I’m trying to think of something that we’ve walked away from that you regretted. Not that that I regret it or that I should have walked away from because the money was there.

[00:28:53] No, they regretted. Thought you regretted that. Oh, I do that all the time. . I’ve done that at the flea market. Like I’ll walk through the flea market and I’ll see something that I want and I’ll walk away from it. And then on the way back, driving back to my house after the flea market, God, I forgot to get it.

[00:29:07] Sometimes I’ll turn the car around and go back to the flea market because I’m like, shoot, I really should have bought that. and I go back and I buy it. I’m trying to think of a specific item. I’ve done it for the bats. I did it with the bats for Brody. Oh yeah, that’s right. A a whole bunch of brand new, uh, T-Ball bats.

[00:29:21] Our son got into T-ball and, uh, we, the bat, I told him to go look for a bat at the flea market for our son, and he comes back with. 35 bats. Well, no, I came back with two bats and then you and I was like, the guy had 30 or 40 of these bats. I probably should go back and buy ’em. . And I talked myself into going back to the free market and then buying the rest of these bats, which we ended up, uh, buying.

[00:29:45] Yeah. After I walked away from him. Yeah. We sold him as a lot. We did, but yeah. And we made decent money on it. So . But it was fun.

[00:29:50] Megan: That’s so funny. So, I’m curious what I know you’ve talked a lot, talked about several really big flips that you’ve made. Do you have like anything that sticks in your mind as being like just chef’s kiss the best decision you’ve ever made in your flipping business in terms of like items you’ve bought and sold?

[00:30:11] Rob and Melissa Stephenson: Yeah, I would probably say two that really out the bus wash is really a big one. Yes. So we bought that bus wash that I told you with the arcade. We paid $500 for that bus wash. Um, we sold that for $14,500. Um, so that was a amazing flip, uh, with a lot of high profit on that.

[00:30:28] Um, and it was a, and it was a probably one of the biggest pallets you’ve ever done too. It do. Which was, it’s kind of like rewarding to know like, oh look, it, yeah. We actually did ship that. So that was, went on a pallet that was like 12 foot long, seven foot wide, six foot tall. So it was huge pallet that I had to build and put into it so I could ship that, uh, that, and you always think, so I’ll get this done this afternoon and like it takes him an extra day or two.

[00:30:51] Yeah. It takes, takes me a little bit of time. So our highest profit that we’ve ever sold is actually a parking lot security tower. , we invested a lot more money into it. Yeah. I don’t like putting that much into it, but, but I did my rule of thumb on this and I did the research before we bought it, and this unit was $125,000 unit, so a parking lot security tower, um, 125,000, 127 south thousand, something like that was retail on it.

[00:31:16] Uh, we got it for $5,000. I paid $5,000 for it at a local auction. Uh, we ended up selling it in 30 days for $25,000. So that was our highest flip. Um, and it was huge profits. We absolutely loved that one, but it scared me. I don’t like those big investments. I like investing $50, a hundred dollars. 5,000 was a lot.

[00:31:33] Yeah. But I have confidence that he would do it, so I had to have confidence in him. And he sold it within a month, so. Yep.

[00:31:40] Megan: I’m so curious. Where are you finding all of the buyers for these on eBay? Or like who buys a bus wash or a SEC Parking lot. Security tower.

[00:31:52] Rob and Melissa Stephenson: Yeah. Yeah. We, yeah. We’re not looking for the buyers.

[00:31:54] No. It goes back to the amount of people that go to eBay, uh, because of their pool of people that are, um, the, the, their registered users are on there. It’s just a bigger pool of people. You have a lot better odds selling unique items on eBay because people go there and they look for it. But the other thing is they show, they show up on Google too.

[00:32:12] Google anytime. So somebody’s looking for like, Security tower for whatever purpose, like it would show up on Google. Like we’re probably the only one on eBay and it’s gonna show up on the top of Google. So, yeah.

[00:32:22] Megan: That’s so funny. Just these like items, I don’t even know what a bus wash is. Items that I don’t even know what they are. And you’re like flipping them for so much.

[00:32:33] Rob and Melissa Stephenson: One singular, uh, like wash a car wash. It’s just, yeah, but it, it walks around the bus so it, like, it’s powered.

[00:32:40] Megan: Oh.

[00:32:40] Rob and Melissa Stephenson: If you think about the old type of, yeah, the old types of car washes that have those foam bri uh, bristles that spin around. So that’s what it does.

[00:32:47] But this is actually a mobile one. Stands like 10 or 12 foot high. It’s electric, so it has a little, like a, a little handle on it, and you just walk it around the bus and wash the bus. Um, all the way around. It washes the sides and yeah, it’s, they’re pretty cool. But the retail on that was, I think 25, 20 $5,000 and the guy got a really good deal at, at 14.5.

[00:33:06] Megan: Do you guys intentionally go for deals like that you think Nobody else wants to?

[00:33:11] Rob and Melissa Stephenson: I think that’s kind of one of our, our tactics because a lot of people in the local markets, they’re gonna can’t move these items because it’s in the local market. Um, and it’s a larger item that a lot of people won’t ship.

[00:33:23] So that kind of is our niche, is the larger items that people will not ship or they can’t move them in the local markets. Those are what we can hone in and get on a really good deal. One thing that I’ll tell you this is like if you take anything away from. Whole interview is your money’s made in your buy.

[00:33:38] You have to get that item absolutely as cheap as you possibly can. So on the back end, when you are selling it, your money is made because you, you have a low, low, um, entry into it. So that’s one thing. Your money is always made in your buy.

[00:33:52] Megan: Yeah, that’s a great tip. That’s, yeah. I’ve heard people say the same thing about real estate investing or like, you know, flipping as well. Get the best deal you can up front, cuz that’s how you know you’re gonna actually make money in the end, which makes sense. Um, so last question before we move into our rapid fire because I’m so curious. You guys have talked about like the, um, some of the best deals that you guys have had. What would you say, is there anything that just like when you think back on it makes you cringe because you lost money or. Whatever didn’t go right. Do you have any deals like that in mind?

[00:34:32] Rob and Melissa Stephenson: I, the one was a wash that, that one, uh, that we talked about. The, um, the pulling arcade machine. Yeah. Um, I think. . I don’t know if I can think of anyone that really, but the, I’d probably say one of the things that would be the most frustrating that you have to deal with sometimes is if somebody like tries to do it, we don’t really get that many returns.

[00:34:54] But if they try to change an item and try to do an item not as described, it doesn’t happen that often with our items, because I think we have a higher, I don’t know, caliber of buyer because they’re spending so much money. But it does happen every once in a while, and you do have to. , get on the phone with eBay and get on like Yeah.

[00:35:11] And do that whole process, which isn’t fun. Um, but it’s like one out of, I don’t know a lot that that happened. Well, just outta last year, I think. What do we have two refund requests? Or three? Three. And you won two of ’em, cuz the other one was completely your fault. . So last year we’ve only had three refund requests, but those.

[00:35:28] Yeah. The two we did not have to give refunds on because of how we set up our business, how we do everything. Uh, we don’t take returns and that kind of stuff. We advertise, um, we always and the guy had altered something or he signed for it cuz you have to sign for your items if they’re over $750. Yeah.

[00:35:43] And he tried to go to his credit card and claim that he didn’t get the item and we’re like, uh, you signed for it. So . There you go. . Yeah. So, but it’s just like the logistics of go back and. So, yeah, I think that’s the one that sticks out in our head. It was a, um, escalator cleaner is what we sold. We sold it for $1,200.

[00:35:59] Um, made great money on it. I think I only had to pay like $25 for that. An option, right? Yeah. Three of ’em. Three of ’em in one lot. So I didn’t pay that much for that. It was an amazing flip, but dealing with the guy that bought it, I think he was a, um, a dealer. He got it. Took the whole thing apart and then tried to send back, um, uh, one of his, otherwise a broken one that he wanted to get the money back for.

[00:36:19] Um, we ended up winning it because eBay saw that he took it apart. He sent me all kinds of pictures, taking it apart, doing stuff to it. Um, ended up we won the case. So it didn’t really, but just logistics wise, it was, it was a headache to have to go back and forth with this and, and deal with eBay and deal with the return and all that kind of stuff.

[00:36:34] So, um, yeah, it’s not. Um, rainbows and cupcakes in this business. You do have little things like that, but thank goodness we only had out of our whole year. Last year, three of these we dealt with, um, and two, and two of ’em, the two large ones we won. The one that we didn’t win was my own fault, and it was like $125 for a small scale that we sold, um, that we just, we ended up giving the, outta the refund.

[00:36:55] He sent it back to us. I resold it, listed it the proper way, resold it, and didn’t lose any money at. So, um, but yeah, I think that’s, that’s probably the biggest thing that we think of cringe wise is having to deal with something like that when a, a seller, um, is dishonest or has issues, but it doesn’t happen all the time.

[00:37:10] We don’t deal with it very much at all. And everything is different too. And that’s one thing that we do try to tell people that when they’re in this business, you’re gonna have people that do a return request or gets damage in shipping. And like, that’s probably a little more common than a return request Yeah.

[00:37:23] In our business model. But, um, like everyth. You can figure out like every, like each one, you just have to be a problem solver and try to figure out what happened, how you can best come up with a solution for you and the buyer. And um, and yeah, you can usually figure everything out. So

[00:37:38] Megan: You said the way you set your business up makes things easier when you have, you know, situations like this. Do you have any tips for like how people who are flipping, just getting started, maybe selling items on eBay, um, how they can make sure they have their bases covered in situations where they might have like, You know, a bad buyer who tries to scam them out of, you know what, whatever. Just, I think some people are nervous that that’s gonna be the case, you know, when you start selling online is that they’re gonna get taken advantage of. So do you guys have any tips on like how you can avoid that and just have your bases covered?

[00:38:15] Rob and Melissa Stephenson: Yeah, I’ll, uh, I’ll sum it up in one line. This is one thing that I tell everybody when you’re starting off under promise overdeliver. So we physically are, we physically try to turn people off from the items that we’re selling.

[00:38:29] So I’m taking every single that item that I’m selling, if there’s a scratch on it, if there’s a dent on it, um, I’m taking close up picture of that and showing people. In my eBay listing, and I’m also telling people if I don’t have any pictures in there of that, and there might not even be any scratches, DS or scuffs on it, you see?

[00:38:46] Yeah. I still will put that in my listing that this is a used item. Please have proper expectations. It is used, it’s not brand new. Um, don’t, yeah, I’m setting the expectations and then a lot of times when people receive my items, they’re like, oh, they give me great feedback and say, this is in way better condition than I assumed.

[00:39:01] So you always want to under promise. Overdeliver. That’s how you’re gonna set yourself up for a good business. Now, back in the beginning, I used words like mint condition when I first started selling on eBay. Mint condition, amazing condition, awesome. I mean, it’s stuff like that that set up. Try to sell your item.

[00:39:17] It’s set up bad expectations when the people got it, and it was not what they had expected. So under promise, overdeliver. You’ll be okay. That’s, that’s the biggest o underlining thing that I think. Yeah. And a lot of people, like you’ll, if, like looking at a lot of resellers, they do recommend taking refunds and it’ll, sometimes you have to, if you have a very competitive item, because eBay shows your items more.

[00:39:37] If you accept refunds, you have a 30 day refund policy. Um, for our business, it doesn’t really make. Sense to have that. Um, so we don’t have a re we have no refund policy, but sometimes things get damaged in shipping, and so then it’s just a shipping claim. The buyer gets their money, we get our money, we just have to go through the shipping claim process.

[00:39:53] So that’s probably the most common thing that happens in our business. And just knowing that is something like if a, um, somebody. Writes in on eBay and says, you know, this item is damaged, I wanna refund. Well, it’s not really refund, it’s a shipping claim. So that’s where you just kind of step back, evaluate the situation.

[00:40:09] Then you’re just nice to the buyer and say, okay, I’m so sorry I got damage to shipping. Can you send me pictures? And then, um, of the item, and then you just start the shipping claim. And then, I mean, it sucks that the buyer doesn’t get their item, but they still get their money back and you get your covered, you get your money back.

[00:40:23] So, um, it’s just making sure. Evaluate the whole situation before you just all of a sudden send ’em a refund and get, you know, frazzled. So, yeah.

[00:40:30] Megan: Yeah, I feel like that’s great advice. And I also see, I think I’ve also done before, cuz I’ve flipped a few items. Nothing like huge or anything, but, but you wanna sell your item, you know, upfront. And so I think a lot of people make that mistake that you were mentioning earlier, Rob, about just really trying to sell it in mint condition and, um, I feel like that’s just such good advice. Not do that under promise and overdeliver. Are there other like really prominent mistakes that, uh, you see people make all the time as coaches and this now, um, that anybody who wants to get into this listening could avoid?

[00:41:10] Rob and Melissa Stephenson: I think the biggest one is overpaying for items. Yeah, that’s a big one. People get into this. You have to know what your time’s worth. If you’re buying an item for $10 and you’re selling it for 15 or 20, you just spent a lot of time cleaning an item, picturing an item, listing an item, uh, shipping fulfillment.

[00:41:26] You spend a lot of time to make very little profits, so you really have to know what your time is. Uh, don’t, don’t get into the whole thing of, even if you’re doing a hundred of those items, you think of all those things that I just said, and you gotta multiply it by a hundred because you’re doing it that many times on an item.

[00:41:42] Um, just know what you’re, what you’re doing. Be willing to walk away from an item if you can’t make the profit that you need to, to make what you’re worth an hour. So I think that is a really. Something that people don’t really think about. Uh, they’ll buy something for $5, sell for $10, and it’s like, great, you made a little bit of money, but after it’s all said and done in your time and fees and shipping, did you really make any money?

[00:42:02] Or are you just, you know, busy work. Um, that’s the biggest thing is just really realize, hey, this is what I need to be making. And then don’t. Don’t feel bad walking away from deals that you’re not making 25, 30 $5 on the flip. Uh, just because you are worth a lot more than you’re Yeah. But there is a time in the beginning that there Oh, absolutely.

[00:42:19] That, that is important to sell those items while you’re buil building your feedback because like, Obviously we’d like the higher dollar items, but somebody’s not gonna go buy, uh, a thousand dollars cooktop from somebody with zero feedback. So like those smaller items do have a play, like when you’re first starting out.

[00:42:34] So start out, and this is referring to eBay? Yeah. So when you’re deal dealing with eBay, that’s what she’s talking about. You really have to have that good feedback. So building up to it, like 50 to a hundred feedback, and then you can add those higher value items in, and then people trust you. They know you’re not there to scam anybody.

[00:42:47] You, you have a business. So, um, those items do have a play. But in the more, in the beginning, I would.

[00:42:52] Megan: Yeah. You guys have given so many great tips for people who maybe wanna get started in this as a side hustle or business today. I’m gonna read back some of them. Um, and then would love to know if there’s anything else that you guys would recommend for beginners.

[00:43:06] So you guys have said. Find something on a smaller market listed on a bigger one. Just go like local places and then list on like eBay or something. Um, look to get, I guess you look to get 50% retail value on your items, right? Would you say? I guess that’s a general rule of thumb.

[00:43:26] Rob and Melissa Stephenson: Yeah. Yeah. If you can adhere to that, absolutely. That’s a, that’s a great, uh, great benchmark.

[00:43:32] Megan: Okay. And then you said, uh, look for stuff in the beginning that you enjoy and or know a lot about, which makes sense. Um, if the deal isn’t there, walk away. Don’t get emotionally attached. Your money is made in your buy, so make sure you’re getting a good deal upfront.

[00:43:48] And then when you go to list under promise and over-deliver, take closeup pictures of every flaw. Make sure people know that it’s a used item. Um, yeah. And then start with smaller items and build up your feedback. Kind of get the hang of it before you move on to much larger deals. I think all that makes sense. Do you have any other tips? Anything that comes to mind for anybody who’s just getting started? Take your course!

[00:44:19] Rob and Melissa Stephenson: I think that sums it up. I can’t really think of any other ones. You, I mean, you really hit them all on. Those are the, the biggest mistakes that people make. You just went down the line of that stuff.

[00:44:31] If you adhere to that and really try to follow those, um, you’re gonna be successful in this business. You, it just takes a little bit of time, uh, to build. Uh, build that business blueprint up and then, yeah, the sky’s the limit on what you wanna do. If you wanna scale and go bigger, you’re, you have the right foundation.

[00:44:46] Megan: Can you tell us before we get off here, I had said one more question before rapid fire so long ago, and I know I completely lied, . Um, can you tell us before we get off here, before we move to rapid fire questions, um, would you mind to just talk a little bit about your course and your coaching, how it works, what people could expect if they, you know, wanna go check it?

[00:45:05] Rob and Melissa Stephenson: Yeah. I think that’s one thing when you say of over, um, or underpromise and over deliver, that’s what we wanna do with all of our stuff too, even with our course and everything. And I think, um, like we started this six, seven years ago. Yeah. Started teaching, um, people how to do it. One of our friends actually said, you should teach people you love this and you’re really good at it.

[00:45:24] So we started that seven years ago and, um, I, I don’t know, I think. Most awesome parts of the whole thing is our community, our group. We have a really cool, um, community of people that are so helpful and like if somebody has a question and that like, yeah, I don’t know. How would you add to that? The, the community is very, there’s a lot of different communities out there reselling communities and, um, and.

[00:45:49] there can be some drama and people don’t wanna share what they’re doing and winning and like what they’re selling, but everybody, like our people, I don’t know. You’re all over the country. Like, I just sold this. And then people, they look for it in their area and like, it’s not competition. Everybody is helping each other.

[00:46:02] Yeah. And it’s just such a fun place to be. The cool thing is peop people that are at all different levels of flipping. Yeah. So we have over a thousand people in our private community, uh, who have gone through Flipper University, um, that are at different levels. So when you have a question. To get a, a legit, a quick, a good answer you posted in the group and then you’re gonna have 10, 15 people give you some solutions that they might have dealt with the same problem or they might be going through the same thing and they’re, they’re helping you walk through it.

[00:46:27] It’s really, really cool. So the community is really amazing. Um, and. That is attached with Flipper University. And like we said before, we’ve kind of have gravitated a little more towards appliances because we know that those make the most money. And like we have a lot of people in our group that are doing appliances too.

[00:46:42] And one of the guys like if you need a part, he’s got all the parts. So he’ll, he helps our people with the parts that they need to. Stuff. So like it just has made this whole, I don’t know, it’s really cool. It is. And say, okay, I just sold this for a thousand dollars cause Adam gave me the, or uh, sold me the part that I needed.

[00:46:57] And it’s just like, I don’t know, it’s just a really cool thing to see all that happen. Yeah. So, so to go back to your question, , we do have something called for university, uh, that we actually walk people through this whole process of, uh, kind of from start to finish. You guys can start out with not knowing anything about flipping.

[00:47:13] Uh, we get you in, we teach you how to build your eba. Um, you set up your accounts and do all that kind of stuff, and then go to the next level. I mean, and you can all go all the way up to start flip flipping high profit items. Um, and that’s really where we’re at. Um, like Melissa said, we’ll do this the rest of our lives.

[00:47:28] I absolutely love, love flipping items. Um, we don’t flip tons and tons of items, but I wanna stay relevant for our community, so I’m. Really the top, the highest dollar items that I possibly can so I can keep people up to date with what’s going on with the sale. If there’s problems throughout the sale. I wanna be able to tell our people exactly the issues that I had to help navigate them through the same issues or get them to fix the issues before they get into the same problem that I had.

[00:47:53] Um, so yeah, it’s a real cool community and you just love it. You’ll never die. No, absolutely love what, I love what I do. I’m very passionate. If you can’t hear it in my voice. I love, love. .

[00:48:01] Megan: Yeah. Melissa said before you guys came on, she was like, yeah, let’s talk about some deals that really gets Rob worked up.

[00:48:07] He loves talking about deals. Um, and yeah, you can tell that you love it. You can tell that you’re very, very excited, very passionate about it, so I love that. Um, awesome. Well, thank you for sharing a little bit about your, your course and coaching. Um, would love to get some rapid fire questions in here finally, as promised, um, before we head out.

[00:48:29] So. Are you guys good? Good to answer some rapid fire questions. Awesome.

[00:48:34] Rob and Melissa Stephenson: Let’s do it.

Rapid Fire Questions

[00:48:36] Megan: Okay. So first question is, what is one of the best or most worthwhile investments that you’ve ever made in your business?

[00:48:46] Rob and Melissa Stephenson: I wanna say to this one that I don’t know if I can think of just one, but we are constantly always investing in coaches.

[00:48:53] So we have pretty much, since we started seven years ago, I mean, We did that with Caitlin, like we started every year. We’ve always invested in coaches at trying to get us to the next step that we wanna be at. And I even currently, right now, yeah, we’re in a coaching program and we have a coach. Yeah. Um, besides the coaching program.

[00:49:15] So we’re always investing in ourselves. We, we don’t just sell coaching ourselves. We are very huge advocates of. Always learning and growing, because if you want to get good at what you’re doing, you’re constantly doing that. Like Melissa said, last seven years, uh, we’ve had tons and tons of coaches who have helped us go to the next level in all aspects of our business.

[00:49:32] Every year we go and see, okay, we, this is what we want to accomplish, who in is in this space that we need to go and that we can learn from? So, um, so yeah, and I think that that, I don’t know, I think it’s always great to be learning because that. , you’re always improving and you can, we can only serve our community better if we know how to do that better. So.

[00:49:53] Megan: Yeah. Yeah. 100% agree. You don’t have to sell me on courses in coaching. I’m like, you know, huge advocate. Spent so much Yeah. over the years. Um, and I love it. I also, like, I don’t know about you guys, but I very much like need the accountability sometimes as an entrepreneur. . Maybe you guys, I don’t know, maybe you guys use each other for accountability, but like, I need, I need somebody there to tell me, like make, make sure that I’m staying honest to doing what I want to do and what I say I want to do. So, yeah.

[00:50:27] Rob and Melissa Stephenson: True for sure. Absolutely.

[00:50:29] Megan: Yeah. Um, okay, so second question is when you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, what do you do to get back on track?

[00:50:39] Rob and Melissa Stephenson: I would say the first thing that helps us every day, like I mentioned earlier, that we start the day with a podcast and a run, um, pretty much every day. And I think that helps us get focused for the day even no matter what happened the day before.

[00:50:53] Like if it was crazy, um, I’m the one that tends to get overwhelmed. He kind of is more laid back. , and like you said about the accountability, we, we are accountable to each other and I think we balance each other out a lot. So I think that that helps. Yeah, because I’ll go into a state of overwhelm pretty quick and he’s like, what’s going on?

[00:51:10] like, come on, . So, um, so yeah, I think that that helps a lot. So I agree if focusing our, in that. Really helps us kick off the day. We spend roughly an hour, hour and a half with each other, uh, listening to an amazing podcast, getting great ideas. That goes back to investing into ourselves with other coaches.

[00:51:27] But podcasts, I mean, are amazing to be able to listen to other people and then implement it into your business. Um, we do that while we’re getting exercise, while we’re trying to, um, invest in our marriage, uh, invest in, um, our business and healthy, we’re, we’re trying to stay healthy. So yeah, we can keep up with our young kids that are crazy.

[00:51:45] Megan: Yeah. How old are your kids now?

[00:51:50] Rob and Melissa Stephenson: Now they’re 10, 10, 8, and six. Yeah. It’s crazy.

[00:51:54] Megan: Ten, eight and six. Wow. Yeah. awesome. Um, yeah, I love that you have that morning routine, that ritual that you do together. I do the same thing. If I have a day where like I skip my regular gym routine, it is all downhill. It’s not a normal day. I might as well just like sleep through the day and go to the next day. .

[00:52:15] Rob and Melissa Stephenson: Yeah. It sets the tone for the day and yeah, you can really, like, even just on the way, our way back from our run, we’re like, okay, so what is the, what is the main thing we need to accomplish today? Okay, focus, because you do need focus for the flipping part too.

[00:52:26] Like I gotta get stuff listed, so like we got, yeah. So it helps us both.

[00:52:31] Megan: Um, well, last question I have, and I will let you guys go is about failure. So how has a failure or an apparent failure set you up for success later in your business?

[00:52:44] Rob and Melissa Stephenson: I was thinking about this one and I think that, um, our biggest, the biggest failure I can think of in our business was we quit six months into starting our flea market flipper, our brand.

[00:52:57] Like we created the course, we did all the things. and nobody showed up and we’re like, we quit. This doesn’t work. Like we can’t help anybody. So we quit for another about six months and then all of a sudden both of us were like, we probably should revisit that and see, you know, like if that’s can, we can work on our blog and work on all the things.

[00:53:18] And, and we both had that idea at the same time. And so I think having that, and I think the reason why we quit too is because we had a really good friend who, um, created a. made a million dollars in 13 months, and then we’re. . Okay, well it doesn’t work . So we were like, okay, we’re a failure. You know, we’re a failure because we didn’t go that model.

[00:53:38] Yeah. But that wasn’t our course. Like that wasn’t what we were supposed to do. And I think that has set us up to know, like to, for all the work we’ve done over the last seven years, like it’s a lot, but it it, you just in. , you enjoy the rewards? I think better than if it was so fast. Like it’s been a slow growth and I think that that’s okay.

[00:53:55] I think we’re better off for it. Yeah. Than, uh, than fast growth. I mean, I would like fast growth, but . Yeah. And I, I also think about failure. You have to be willing to learn. Failure sets you up to learn. Everything that I teach in Flipper University that Melissa and I do was a failure. It’s everything has been failures that I have done, and I’m trying to help people cut that failure out.

[00:54:15] Your journey. Um, so, but you have to be willing to learn. If you screw something up, if you make a, you know, you, you lost money on shipping, you did this. Well, how can I learn from this? So my next one, I don’t do the same exact thing. So those failures are the learning process. And you think about even other.

[00:54:31] Portions of your life when you’re in low or bad spots, what can you learn from those low ba lower bad spots? What can you take from that to keep you out of those for the next, you know, the next go around when something like that kind happens? So the most people learn the most through failures. Um, and that’s the same thing with us.

[00:54:47] We’ve done it, uh, we try to help other people, you know, cut that failure, um, ratio on half, but at the same time, . That’s when you really, really learn a lot is when you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re making failures, but you keep going. You don’t stop. Yeah, don’t stop like we did originally. We stopped. Yeah, we quit

[00:55:01] But you have to stay the course, stay the track. Keep going and really try and take some, some good nuggets away from what you did wrong and how you can fix it on the next go around. .

[00:55:10] Megan: Yeah, absolutely. I totally agree. And I’ve done the same thing. You know, I’ve quit so many projects or so many like would be businesses that don’t exist today, probably too early.

[00:55:21] And I look back and I think the same thing, like, oh, you know, those people who make a million dollars in 13 months are the exception, not me. It is. It is slow growth and that’s okay. It’s okay to have slow growth also. . Very cool. Well, thank you guys so much for coming on the podcast and for sharing your story and for all of the amazing tips that you gave to our audience today.

[00:55:46] Um, one more time just to close us out. We tell people if they wanna get into your community, if they wanna learn more about your business, um, where can they find you?

[00:55:55] Rob and Melissa Stephenson: Uh, flea market flipper.com is the best place to find us. It’s where all the things are. So , it’s kind of our hub.

[00:56:03] Megan: Perfect. Well, thank you guys so much for being here.

[00:56:05] Rob and Melissa Stephenson: Thank you so much for having us. Absolutely. Thank you.

Outro

[00:56:08] Megan: Thanks so much for being here and for listening to the Dollar Spa podcast today. Be sure to check out the show notes for any links and resources that were mentioned in today’s conversation. And if you enjoyed this episode, then don’t forget to like, subscribe, and leave us a review wherever you’re listening to this podcast.

[00:56:25] Thanks again for being here and for being part of the Dollar Sprout community, and I will see you in the next episode.

Note: This transcript was automatically generated and may include typos.

Introduction

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Dollar Sprout Podcast, where it’s all about building a business that offers consistent income and flexibility so you can live life on your terms. And now your host, Megan Robinson.

[00:00:18] Megan: Welcome back to the Dollar Sprout podcast. Thanks so much for being here. Today’s episode is with Emma Sloan.

[00:00:26] Emma is a content creator and the founder of the We Writer, and I just. Loved Emma so much and I loved having her on the show. Just her message that growth in business is not always linear is one that really resonated and really hit home with me. If you’re a business owner, if you’ve ever started a business before, you know two things are true.

[00:00:52] It’s stressful. It can be very, very stressful and a lot of work to start and get a business off of the ground. And two. Growth isn’t always linear. You have ups and downs. You have some years that are gonna be higher revenue years than others. You have some years where you’ll grow your team and other years where your team will shrink back to where it was two or three years ago.

[00:01:18] Um, so I loved having this conversation with Emma and talking about where her business is now. So Emma has grown the We Writer, which is her content agency to $70,000 a year, and she is on her way to the six figure mark, and she shared so much wisdom about what she’s been through on her journey from starting her business while she was in university to growing it over the last.

[00:01:44] Seven years and through a lot of stress and a lot of ups and downs. Um, she talks about mistakes that she made in the beginning, particularly when she was cold pitching clients early on. Which is hilarious to hear her talk about because I’ve done the exact same thing before that, that you’ll hear her mention in this episode.

[00:02:06] Let’s be clear that it is a mistake and she mentions it so that you can avoid it if you’re starting a service business and doing cold outreach to clients. So definitely pay attention and stay tuned for that. Um, she also talks about mindset and the shift that’s helped her. Get more business that you might not realize If you, if you didn’t hear her story, you might not realize that that was the case or that that was the possibility for this, you know, type of mindset shift and this type of outlook on business.

[00:02:37] She talks about tips for getting clients when you don’t have any work to show the story of how she knew it was time to hire someone in her business and who she chose to hire, which I was surprised. But, um, made a whole lot of sense for what it is that Emma likes to do in her business. Um, and it definitely opened up my mind to what I should be paying attention to in my business.

[00:03:04] Um, the things that I like and the things that I enjoy doing, even if, you know, the traditional business advice is to outsource. Certain things and grow your business in a certain way. I think Emma’s story proves that you don’t have to always follow the quote unquote conventional wisdom of how to grow and scale your business.

[00:03:24] So great episode that you have to look forward to with Emma. And without further ado, please welcome Emma Sloan.

Interview

[00:03:33] Emma Sloan: Really excited to be here. Thank you, Megan.

[00:03:36] Megan: Awesome. Um, well, I would love if you could tell our audience just to kind of get started in your own words, what is your business? Where is it now?

[00:03:47] What do you, what do you do and sell and offer in your company today?

[00:03:52] Emma Sloan: Absolutely. So I’m the founder of the We Writer. We are a very small team that offers customized copywriting and editing services. Um, I started out as a solo entrepreneur and have since extended, since 2015 to be managing my own small team of subcontractors that helped me with various roles.

[00:04:12] Um, and we currently work with small to medium sized businesses across Canada, the states, and the.

[00:04:20] Megan: Oh, okay, cool. I didn’t realize that, that it was, you know, Canada, the States and the uk. Um, Very cool. Um, so you said in our survey we send out a guest survey to everybody before the, uh, recording. Um, and you said that you’d be comfortable sharing the revenue that you make in your current business.

[00:04:40] So would you mind to talk about. What your business is currently doing? Does all that revenue come from one source or how is it split up?

[00:04:49] Emma Sloan: Absolutely. So our current revenue is 70 K a year, and I wanted to come on here and talk about that because so often you see interviews of, you know, entrepreneurs making the ideal 500 K a year.

[00:05:03] 50 K year and I’ve been in business for seven years and it’s just a great opportunity to talk about how growth isn’t linear. Uh, for me, this is a fantastic milestone and even though we have a long way to go still, um, that’s still something to be proud of and celebrate. Um, right now that revenue comes from seven different marketing agencies that we work with, and that’s in a variety of subcontracting and contract.

[00:05:29] Megan: Fabulous. That’s awesome. Yeah, I totally agree. Uh, business is not linear in any way. Um, I started my L L C back in 2017 and there were definitely a couple of like negative years there in the beginning where I invested in courses and programs and things and then never really, um, built the business up. So we stayed in the red for, you know, a couple years, uh, and.

[00:05:56] Yeah, I, it’s, it’s not a linear journey at all. Um, so I think 70 K is amazing in revenue and you’re able to do this, um, full-time, is that correct?

[00:06:09] Emma Sloan: It is, yeah. We are full-time and we are fully remote.

[00:06:12] Megan: Yeah, I think that’s awesome. So, running your company full-time, how many hours a week do you dedicate to your business?

[00:06:22] Emma Sloan: It fluctuates between 30 to 40 per week, um, which is down from what it used to be. So that’s another milestone that we’re celebrating of not putting in that mandatory overtime. And also checking yourself about the kind of semi mandatory hustle culture we find ourself in. Um, I’m not sure about your specific sphere, but in mine it can often be almost a competition of who can work more.

[00:06:46] Who can work the longer hours, especially when you are remote. Um, so to be able to take a step back this year and scale down those hours, I think is a really fantastic step for me personally and for the people on my team. I think it’s disgusting the whole hustle culture, you know, racing to work the most.

[00:07:04] That’s like never something I’ve ever wanted to do.

[00:07:07] Megan: Um, yeah, I think one of the big reasons for me personally starting a business is to be able to work less eventually . So yeah, I 100% on the same page there. Um, so now that you have kind of built up your agency and you have other. Team members, contractors that you’re working with, what does a typical workday look like for you?

[00:07:29] Are you still doing any writing? Um, are you spending all of your time managing your team?

[00:07:35] Emma Sloan: That’s a great question. So right now my standard hours try to be nine to five, as I’m sure you know. If. Things pop up. Some days you work less, some days you work more, uh, depends on your client’s needs and what deadlines come up.

[00:07:48] Right now I actually am still very hands on in the writing department. That is what I started out being passionate about, and what I’ve actually done is delegated the managerial roles to my team members, so tasks like project management and whatnot. That might be interesting because I know a lot of, um, a lot of founders like to do the opposite and take that backseat.

[00:08:11] And do a lot of the overseeing. I’m the opposite. I was spending too much time doing the nitty gritty of project management and client communication. And the only thing I’m good at is writing. I’m not a talker as we’ll find out today, . So the less talking I can do and the more writing I can deliver a half year, most people are.

[00:08:30] Megan: Yeah. Well I think you’re doing fine. I think you’re a fine talker, Emma, but uh, yeah, I absolutely understand and I think that. Most people think about growing their business. Uh, I guess the default is kind of to step more into that managerial role, you know, get out of the day-to-day. Um, but I love that you’ve been able to kind of delegate that managerial work and continue to do what you love.

[00:08:56] Because I think that’s something that happens to business owners when they do get out of the day to day, they realize, oh, I started this business because like, I like to write. But now, , I’m spending my whole day in meetings and you know, managing other people’s writing and editing and I don’t get to do what I originally wanted to do.

[00:09:16] So I think that’s great. That’s awesome.

[00:09:19] Emma Sloan: Thank you.

[00:09:20] Megan: Yeah. So would you mind to take us back in time, and I wanna talk about where you were before you started your business. What were you doing in your career and what was the motivation for starting this business in the first?

[00:09:35] Emma Sloan: Yes. Okay. So this officially kicked off about seven years ago, and it actually started when I was in university.

[00:09:42] Um, obviously it took a few years for it to grow to the full-time venture it is now. Um, but what kicked all that off was I was doing a variety of PR and nonprofit work. Which in their own specs were extremely fulfilling. But I noticed that because I was working on these really small teams, um, so much of the essential marketing, such as good copywriting on your website, up to date, social media copy.

[00:10:12] Um, add copy, et cetera. They were all falling to the wayside. And what was happening in these really small teams was the foundation for your marketing wasn’t there, and therefore all the money that was currently being invested was going down the drain. Because I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a great ad.

[00:10:28] You’ve gone to their website and you notice that things just aren’t lining up, whether it be, it just looks very out of date. They’re advertising things on their site that you assumed were out of date by now, et cetera. Um, so once I got out of that, I decided to really offer to businesses like that, that really core foundation and.

[00:10:51] Also when it came to PR specifically, again, because I’m not a great client facing person, um, it all those things were a bit too chatty for me. So I took the introverted route of how can I offer similar things, um, but really harken back to what I enjoy doing and what I’m actually good at doing, which is writing.

[00:11:12] Megan: Yeah. I love that. So, um, you started this business when you were in university. That is such a hectic and crazy time. Um, I look back on, you know, being in college and I can’t even imagine starting a business back then. So what was, uh, what was it that drove you to start this company while you were still in school?

[00:11:37] Emma Sloan: I was finding it very difficult to find part-time work anywhere. At the time I was based in a very small college town, um, and I was also going back and forth to the mainland quite a lot because one of my relatives at the time was sick. So I was looking for something that offered flexibility and when I was looking online, I was noticing a lot of entry level freelance roles that were at least writing adjacent.

[00:12:02] So that was how that started, and I never expected it to pick up in the way that it has, but even some of those clients from back then, we still work for it. Um, just in a minimized role. So I am extremely fortunate to have kept some of those very starter relations, um, which obviously, um, snowballed into making more connections locally.

[00:12:25] And I actually, I contribute a lot of my initial success to those people and putting my name out there.

[00:12:31] Megan: Yeah. That’s awesome. Um, so you started this business when you were in college. Because you found that this was a need that companies had, um, what was the process of. Starting this business, how did you make those first few dollars and get those first couple of clients?

[00:12:52] Emma Sloan: Mm-hmm. . Initially I felt flat on my face. , as is a very story that started out on their own. And what was the real make or break for me on top of being incredibly persistent was I made. a faux portfolio. And of course it was, it was, um, distinguished as such. But it was just a variety of examples because when you’re starting out, so often you’re pressured into offering your services for free.

[00:13:23] And I feel that that can consist be a pitfall, especially if the word gets out that you’re doing that. Um, so what I did to circumvent that and actually get my foot in the door was take time. craft a really nice writing portfolio in the industries I wanted to mostly work in and then send those out for a very discounted rate.

[00:13:43] Um, and I was very fortunate that people put the leap of faith with me.

[00:13:48] Megan: Yeah, I love that. I, um, I think that so few people do that because it is hard when you’re first starting a business or something and you want to get those first clients. It’s hard to. You know, put in, it’s hard to want to put in that work upfront to create like a faux portfolio, um, so that they have, so that you have samples that you can share with potential clients, but it really makes you stand out.

[00:14:15] I’ve seen some people do that. I work with, um, software teams a lot currently in my business and, you know, I see some newer software developers do that. They’ll build like a small app or something, um, just cuz they’re right out of college and they don’t really. Work experience to show. Um, and I think that’s such a great idea and yeah, just can really, really help you stand out.

[00:14:39] Um, so what were the kinds of companies that you were focusing on when you first started doing outreach and what was that outreach like? I’m personally, I’m asking this question because I’m not a fan of networking and outreaching as very much an introvert, so I’m always curious what other people’s experiences with that, especially because it’s a lot of the time what you have to do when you’re first starting a service business.

[00:15:11] Emma Sloan: Yes, it is a necessary evil, and I, to be honest, everyone I chat with about this, we all have our list of faux paws that make us cringe into our body when we remember how we used to try to drum up work. Um, the industries that I used to try to outreach to, um, were very much centered in publishing nonprofit and general pr simply because that was the only things I had background in at the time.

[00:15:36] Um, from there I did reach out to, let’s say they knew people in the real estate industry who were in need of someone to hijack their website and get that, get that uh, flowing. Well that would happen that way. Uh, but when I was solely on my own and before I made those connections, it was a lot of cold calling, which I never recommend.

[00:15:57] It was a lot of cold emailing, which I also never recommend. And a big mistake I learned, uh, firsthand was when I was cold emailing in particular, because you want to prove that you’re going to be helpful. So what I would do in a very well-meaning way was point out things on your website or social media presence that I felt could be improved upon, which of course, no one wants to hear, especially from a stranger and a kid.

[00:16:25] So I think being told to get lost from that approach and people, people took time outta their day very kindly to outline why that wouldn’t be the best approach. I learned that within the first month of attempting to do that, which I very highly value and wish I could remember who told me that I would like to think I would write, I would like to write them a thank you letter.

[00:16:47] Cause if I’d kept doing that, I probably would’ve. Simply out of frustration from not getting any responses. What I do now is I’m very lucky to co moderate a freelancing Facebook group. Um, it’s hyper local to my area of Canada, and it’s a great networking platform because I don’t work off of a scarcity mindset.

[00:17:08] If I see a job pop up that I’m not good for, I would love to throw it into the abyss. My online network and see who else could pick it up. And it’s very reciprocal in that way. So I scratch someone else’s back. They will eventually scratch mine. Everybody’s happy. And that’s the avenue I stick to now.

[00:17:28] Megan: Yeah, I, I totally agree. I’m part of, uh, now as an online business manager, I’m part of a really great O B M community and there is for sure something to be said about having. People in your circle, having a community of people, even if they’re people who do the same thing or similar things to what you do. Um, , yeah. You can just always be helpful for one another.

[00:17:53] It doesn’t, doesn’t have to be seen as direct competition. So, um, that’s great. I’m, I’m glad you also have found that community. So I guess, what were those first few services that you offered, um, with when you were writing? Were they like very specific, um, writing articles for websites or? Yeah. What, what did that look like and how has that changed over time for what you offer now?

[00:18:18] Emma Sloan: Good question. It originated mainly as social media related copy for various platforms and very short form articles, um, that is actually almost directly pivoted in the opposite direction. I now very rarely offer social media related services. And I opt for a longer form content writing that is very SEO oriented as well as related editing services.

[00:18:43] Um, and that was simply because as I was going through social media, which is very in demand and continues to be, I realized it simply wasn’t something I was passionate about and the clients I was working with really deserve someone who was passionate about that. And delivering on that service. So when I do offer that now, that is subcontracted out to one of my team members, um, just for quality assurance purposes.

[00:19:08] Megan: What’s been one of the things that surprised you the most about running your own business?

[00:19:12] Emma Sloan: Another great question. I think, I thought it would, I thought progress would be more linear. I think to harken back to our original topic, I assume that every year would be a very linear growth structure, both in terms of team members I was bringing on and revenue from doing so.

[00:19:31] And what I’ve learned instead is that progress for the sake of progress. Doesn’t necessarily equate to that. For example, since bringing on my original three members, I haven’t continued doing so simply because they’re so great at what they’ve been assigned to do. And to continue to build on that simply for vanity or to say that I am doing that, um, it just isn’t worthwhile.

[00:19:54] And I would rather grow with those team members longer term and give them more coaching attention in that way.

[00:20:00] Megan: I work with a couple agencies and I’m considering doing the agency thing in my business. I’m not sure if I’m gonna take that route or not, but I’m curious your take on this, how did you know when it was time to hire another person in your business and how did you know what the right role was to look for?

[00:20:22] Emma Sloan: So in the May of last year, I was actually diagnosed with alopecia. Um, so for today’s call, I’ve kind of tried to do my hair up as best I can to hide it, and they, the doctor said that that was likely triggered by stress.

[00:20:38] Um, and it’s something I still, uh, go in for treatment for. And um, that was obviously also on the heels of the pandemic, which was stressful on everybody for various reasons. And when I really sat back and analyzed what could have caused a stress flare up that badly, it was the amount of time that I was spending managing those timelines, that client communication, especially the amount of time zones we currently work.

[00:21:04] Um, so that was when I called up my first subcontractor, went through that hiring process on Indeed, and I noticed a difference in my stress levels right away. Um, so I’m so glad in a way that this happened because it prompted me into hiring out during a stage where I would’ve stubbornly refused to otherwise.

[00:21:24] Megan: Yeah. Would, uh uh, Gift and also, um, difficulty. Um, I’m sorry to hear that you went through that and that that had to be the, you know, breaking point or the, the sign to tell you to do something different. But, but I’m glad that your stress levels have lowered and that you’ve hired the right people in the right roles so far.

[00:21:47] So thank you for sharing.

[00:21:51] Emma Sloan: Thank you.

[00:21:52] Megan: I know you kind of talked about this a little bit before, um, with some of your social media services that you offered in the beginning. Are there any other services or products that you tried out, um, throughout your business that you abandoned that didn’t work for whatever reason? And would you mind to talk about any of those?

[00:22:12] Emma Sloan: The only other one would be long form ghost writing, as in ghost writing novels.

[00:22:17] Megan: Oh, wow.

[00:22:18] Emma Sloan: Um, or very long form, let’s say medical content, um, which I did get a request for. And simply for the fact that unless your client is very direct, In what they need. The revision process is personally too long for my taste.

[00:22:35] Um, so that is something I do field out to my broader network now because I do have some really fantastic writer friends who knock that outta the park and are happy spending two years on the project. Um, for me, I’m a little bit more fast paced, so my monthly cadence of let’s bang out a really SEO optimized 5,000 word article for you, much more at my.

[00:22:59] Megan: Yeah. Awesome. Um, lessons learned, . I feel like there’s so many things that I’ve tried out in my business that I have abandoned over the years. Uh, For the better. You said you’ve been in business now for seven years. Is that, is that right?

[00:23:15] Emma Sloan: Yes.

[00:23:15] Megan: Yeah. Yeah. So what do the next few years look like? What are, what do you see happening with the We Writer and, um, what are your goals?

[00:23:25] What is it that you want your business to do for you?

[00:23:27] Emma Sloan: Um, I would love it to stop stealing my hair. That would be fantastic. Um, other than that, I would really love to get to a hundred K. Um, we’re on the brink of, of, um, securing some clients that could get us there and I also very much want to keep the team members I currently have with me.

[00:23:47] Um, so finding ways to enrich their own day-to-day processes is something I’m actually currently taking courses. because I, I have no prior management experience. So we’re all working together as a team to figure out what works for each individual, um, and what processes make both our work better and their time with me better.

[00:24:07] So all those together are, um, plans for 2023. We would love to get that iron out.

[00:24:14] Megan: That’s awesome. Um, I’m curious what these courses are, if you have anything that you have taken or that you’re taking and you like and would recommend, because I feel like that’s kind of a weakness of mine too. I I don’t think that I’m a naturally great manager or leader,

[00:24:33] So, um, if there’s anything that you have that you could recommend, I would love to hear.

[00:24:38] Emma Sloan: Mm-hmm. . The two that come to mind for me would be HubSpot has a couple that are management adjacent, and they’re more focused on processes, but depending on the segment they’re in, they do talk about how, and it sounds so basic, but when you’re in your day-to-day, uh, cadence, it can be easy to forget that, you know, not everyone likes to be managed the way that you like to be managed.

[00:25:01] Not everyone gleans the same assumption from directions that you might g. They may not be familiar enough with the client, et cetera. So those very basic reaffirmation for me are very valuable. Um, and I actually, we use Trello and Asana for our processes. Um, and we actually have a dedicated board in those, um, In those management tools, um, just as a way to easily communicate what’s working, what’s not, what could be improved, et cetera.

[00:25:31] And the other one for me is actually from a client of mine. I’ve been with her since the beginning, and she, herself is a coach. Um, so simply by writing her articles, her website, et cetera, on a monthly basis, I’ll also do, uh, podcast management for her. Um, I learned so much from her triumphs and failures, um, as she was in a very similar position I learned when she was first.

[00:25:58] Megan: I think that sounds great. I think it sounds like you’re building a great business and you know, you are really setting the foundation for something huge. So I’m looking forward to watching the We Writer over the next year and, uh, watching you crack a hundred.

[00:26:15] Emma Sloan: Thank you.

[00:26:16] Megan: Yeah. Um, so last question I have for you, before we move into the rapid fire, if you don’t mind, uh, sharing.

[00:26:25] I know you shared a little bit earlier about how you get most of your clients these days and with your network, um, networking, reaching out to people, having a community, um, I’m curious, where has your biggest client come from so far?

[00:26:42] Emma Sloan: Referrals. Um, how the way I look at it is no client is going to be a client of yours forever.

[00:26:49] So to get a good recommendation from them early and to consistently deliver on them until the end of your time together. Yields such fantastic return on investment long term. So all of my bigger clients have always stemmed from, I did a really good job for so and so. Our time has ended and I was the first name to come to their mind when a peer or friend also needs help.

[00:27:14] Um, an example of this is we are actually currently working with Etsy through an agency called Stretch Creative, and that was a direct referral. Um, and that’s also a project until December. So that is our large project to date. Um, and I’m extremely thrilled.

[00:27:31] Megan: So yeah, that’s incredible. Congratulations.

[00:27:35] Thank you.

[00:27:36] Yeah, . Um, alright, well I would love to ask you a few rapid fire questions if you’re up for it.

[00:27:44] Emma Sloan: Okay. I will try my best.

Rapid Fire Questions

[00:27:47] Megan: First question I have is, In the last five years, what new belief, behavior, or habit has most improved your life and or business?

[00:27:57] Emma Sloan: That would have to be getting myself out of that scarcity mindset and to stop looking at other freelancers as competition.

[00:28:07] Um, in the beginning, especially when I had no work experience, it was easy to feel insecure about how accomplished everyone else was. And to feel the need to very much discount my rate as a way to entice people to work with me, that is completely the wrong way to go about things. What you offer is distinctly unique, um, and you can easily prove that to both potential and existing clients.

[00:28:30] And how I’ve actually flipped that around is on a monthly basis I do something called my nifty networking. And I actually bring on an article form a competitor on my website that I feature. And that has actually been a fantastic referral generation as well. Um, simply cause even if we offer similar services, we each have our own niche and we each have our own way of communicating and delivering.

[00:28:55] And that’s really what makes our breaks. What makes you compatible with the. So that’s been a really great growth journey for me personally.

[00:29:03] Megan: Yeah. Based on that experience of, you know, you said you discounted your services a lot in the beginning to try to get those first few clients. Um, I’m curious if you have any.

[00:29:14] Advice for someone who’s maybe starting out in, you know, a similar or a service-based business, um, as a, rather than discounting, heavily discounting your rates, what are some other things that you think would work for. Generating that initial revenue and getting those first few clients.

[00:29:34] Emma Sloan: I think two things, persistence and also an authenticity and passion.

[00:29:39] Um, so many clients I work with now bring on whether it be interns or um, temporary workers who don’t have a lot of work experience, but they were so passionate about getting their foot in the door, um, that it made these clients want to open that for them, and I’ve seen that time and time again. And I feel that it’s understated in today’s work climate, um, that people really do want to work with other people who believe in their mission and what they want to do and what they want to achieve.

[00:30:09] So I, I wouldn’t cross that out. That was something I crossed out early on that I shouldn’t have. And my second piece of it, advice, um, if they are thinking of doing that, is never price yourself in a way where you would be embarrassed following up for an invoice. Initially that was how I knew I was undercharging to the point of embarrassment, was looking at an invoice and thinking it’s not worth to follow up on this.

[00:30:36] And especially when you’re very young, if you, in your, uh, late teens, early twenties, it can be easy to fall into that trap, but you can’t. So my advice would be if you’re looking out what your charging. And you know, that it wouldn’t be worthwhile, um, timewise or, uh, pride wise to do that. Um, get someone in the industry or someone older to reevaluate your pricing sheet.

[00:30:59] Megan: Thank you for sharing. That is great advice. Um, what next question that I have in the rapid fire, which I told you is not very rapid . Um, , what is a common myth or misconception about running an online business or a lifestyle business that you wanna clear up once and for all?

[00:31:18] Emma Sloan: Mm-hmm. , in my personal experience, and maybe you have found this as well, especially as a woman in the, in the workforce in this way, um, there is this split between you either have to be dedicated to hustle culture.

[00:31:32] And you need to be putting in that overtime. This is your absolute passion of working yourself to the bone or you go into freelancing because you need the family flexibility. You know, maybe you’re a mother or other duties that you need to take care of, and this is a way to work very part-time during very flexible hours.

[00:31:52] And there seems to be no in between. Um, at least currently. And we also see that reflected on social media in terms of what we should aspire to. And it’s always these two very different options. I have found myself to be in the middle. I, I don’t lounge around in my pajamas all day, but I’m also not working 70 hours a week anymore.

[00:32:12] Um, and I just want people to be working on balance does exist and this type of work. Just what you make it, it’s not what anyone else tries to sell it to be. Um, so just to not fall into that trap of, oh, I’m not the workaholic, or I’m not the working mom that only works nights because of this. And it doesn’t make your business any less valid.

[00:32:34] Um, everyone’s just on their own unique journey.

[00:32:37] Megan: That’s so true, uh, that there is a lot of both of those extremes online when you see influencer or like, you know, influencer business owners or online business owners or whatever that Yeah, there’s a lot of the hustle culture and then there’s a lot of the like, oh, I work.

[00:32:54] Two hours a month cuz all my income is passive and you can do this too. And yeah, and realistically, like there’s a lot of in between and there are a lot of people who are working in their business regular 30, 40 hours a week, um, or 20, 25 hours a week. Um, and yeah, you, you, it can be balanced. . So I agree. Um, so next question I have is, when has a failure or a parent failure set you up for a later success in your business?

[00:33:28] And do you have a favorite failure in your business?

[00:33:30] Emma Sloan: Yes, I have so many. Um, when it comes to mind, they are all deadline related because obviously when you’re freelancing, the mantra is, Under promise, over-delivered. Um, but especially when you’re expanding, it’s so easy to take whatever is coming your way.

[00:33:48] And when I was first diagnosed with alopecia, I had a lot going on in my personal life as well, and I simply wasn’t able to manage those promised deadlines. So I wasn’t, I was over promising and not delivering at all. Um, So I would recommend to, if that ever happens, and I feel that it does happen in some capacity to everyone who strikes out on their own, um, to, to look at it less as a failure and just as a learning lesson that you’re not going to repeat again, because hopefully you’ve already learned your core lesson from that, um, from the get-go, uh, which was certainly my case.

[00:34:25] Megan: Last question that I have for you here before we wrap up. , what advice do you have for someone who’s just getting started or maybe toying with the idea of starting a business that’s, um, similar to yours or in your industry?

[00:34:41] Emma Sloan: Find a mentor. If I found a mentor very early on, I would’ve priced myself better.

[00:34:47] I would’ve advertised myself better. I would’ve found my niche earlier. And a lot of pain points could have been avoided very early on. Um, and my, my specific recommendation for that, especially for women in the industry, is there are a lot. Great online resources to find that if you find yourself in an area where that’s not readily available.

[00:35:10] And I would recommend for those women to look at Facebook groups like Women in Marketing or I think it’s just called Freelancers Group a Facebook. And there’s so many people who have been in the industry for a long time who are looking to reach out that helping hand, um, and simply offer advice on whether it be on an ongoing or a periodic basis as you.

[00:35:33] Megan: Yeah, Facebook is a great place to find support, surprisingly. I like that’s, the Facebook groups are the only reason I still have Facebook because there are so many good…

[00:35:43] Emma Sloan: me, too.

[00:35:43] Megan: Yeah. There are so many good like business communities. Um, I every day, you know, will wake up and go to the Facebook groups and see what questions people have asked and, um, Questions about things that I’m dealing with.

[00:35:58] So yeah, I think having that comu community is important and Facebook is surprisingly a good place to find it . So, um, well thank you so much for being here with us today, Emma. I really appreciate it. Um, this has been a great conversation. I’ve loved hearing more about the We Writer and yeah. Looking forward to seeing where it goes for you.

[00:36:20] Um, would you mind to share where can people find you? Where can our audience get into your world?

[00:36:26] Emma Sloan: We are mainly on LinkedIn at the We Writer and my website also at the We Writer. Um, I recommend people tune in for the Nifty Networking Showcase once a month, um, if only to find inspiration in their specific niche.

[00:36:41] Megan: Well, thank you so much. This has been great.

[00:36:43] Emma Sloan: Thank you for having me, Megan.

Outro

[00:36:44] Megan: Thanks so much for being here and for listening to the Dollar Spa podcast today. Be sure to check out the show notes for any links and resources that were mentioned in today’s conversation. And if you enjoyed this episode, then don’t forget to like, subscribe, and leave us a review.

[00:37:00] Wherever you’re listening to this podcast, thanks again for being here and for being part of the Dollar Spout community, and I will see you in the next episode.

Note: This transcript was automatically generated and may include typos.

Introduction

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Dollar Sprout Podcast, where it’s all about building a business that offers consistent income and flexibility so you can live life on your terms. And now your host, Megan Robinson.

[00:00:18] Megan: Welcome to the Dollar Sprout podcast. Thanks so much for being here today. Today’s guest is Ke Klein of the Savvy Couple.

[00:00:26] I’m so excited to have Kellen on the podcast today because I actually met him and his wife, Brittany, a few years ago at FinCon, A financial. Media conference. Um, and they were so great. They were just such lovely people and I was really excited to have them on the podcast. Unfortunately, Britney couldn’t be with us today, but Ke did a great job by himself.

[00:00:47] Yeah. I’m just excited for you to hear this episode. In this conversation with Kellen, you’ll hear about everything the behind the scenes of their. Kellen was so generous in sharing so many of their numbers from their revenue to their profit, to how much they pay themselves in the business. You’ll hear the whole story of how their business started, how Kellen was able to go full-time in the business after making just their first $50.

[00:01:14] Um, how they realized it was time to start creating their own products instead of selling other people’s products through affiliate marketing and ads, and why their first. Two courses or two of the four courses they created flopped, and then also how they manage running their business together as parents of two small children.

[00:01:35] This episode is just so packed full of good information and tips that you can learn just from hearing Kellen and Britney’s story. So without further ado, Welcome Ke Klein.

Interview

[00:01:48] Kelan: Yeah, absolutely Megan. Appreciate it.

[00:01:49] Megan: Awesome. Um, well I’m really looking forward to hearing more about what’s been happening in the Savvy Couple business over the last couple years, cuz as we were just talking about before we hit record, um, I’ve met you and Brittany in person.

[00:02:02] Uh, but over the last couple of years since we’ve seen one another, your business has had some really cool, really explosive growth. So, um, before we get into all of that, can you just kind of tell the audience what it is that you do as a business? What kind of products and services do you sell?

[00:02:20] Kelan: Sure. Uh, so my wife and I run the Savvy couple.com, um, and we help families take control of their time and money, um, so they can create their life of freedom.

[00:02:28] Um, so we have a bunch of different printables and, and products and planners that we help, um, specifically moms kind of control the chaos in their life. Um, and just kind of write things down, get ’em pen and paper and just get themselves organized so they can free up their time and then focus on creating more money, um, from home and then, you know, create their life of freedom with their family.

[00:02:46] Awesome.

[00:02:47] Megan: So is all of what you guys sell at this point, um, digital products, no services of any kind?

[00:02:54] Kelan: Correct. Uh, when we first started, we, we did do some blog coaching and just some side coaching and some services, but now it’s all digital products and courses. Yep.

[00:03:02] Megan: Awesome. Yeah, I remember those days. I think at one point we were both doing v i p kid teaching on the side, like building our blogs Yes.

[00:03:11] Kelan: And businesses and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. I, I remember that.

[00:03:14] Megan: Um, that’s awesome. So can you talk a little bit about some of the metrics in your business? I really appreciate when you filled out our guest survey, you said you were really open to being transparent and sharing a lot of the numbers in your business.

[00:03:27] So would you mind to first talk. , what does your current revenue look like in your business and how much of that is profit?

[00:03:34] Kelan: Yeah, sure. Um, we’re all, one of our core values is being open and honest. Um, so love to share these numbers to kind of inspire and motivate others to take action. Um, so this year we’re on pace to hit over $500,000 in revenue, which is insane to even say Wow.

[00:03:48] So really excited about that. Um, and the profit margin on that is usually right around 60%, um, from month to month. Um, so it’s, it’s going really well. We keep a very lean and mean team, um, and really focus on driving revenue and, and driving profit each month. So it’s, it’s exciting to get to that level.

[00:04:06] Megan: Yeah. 60% is like awesome profit . Um, how big is your team at this point? I mean, I know it’s you and Brittany, and then how many other people do you.

[00:04:15] Kelan: So we have Brittany and I, uh, my brother actually runs some, some of our niche sites. So we have a couple niche sites that are not the savvy couple that we can dive into if we wanted.

[00:04:23] Um, and then our main team is a freelance writer, a virtual assistant, an editor, and an ops manager.

[00:04:29] Megan: Very cool. Awesome. Um, so you also said that you were up for sharing your personal income that you guys received from the business. Uh, would you mind talking about that?

[00:04:40] Kelan: So, when we first started the business, we didn’t take ascent from it for two years, um, to really kind of just grow it and put all the money back into it.

[00:04:47] Um, and then eventually when Britney quit her job, we started taking $5,000 a month. Um, so we’re just living off of $60,000 a year. And then recently we’ve kind of continued to give ourselves raises. Um, currently we’re taking take home pay $7,500 a month, um, from the business. Yeah, owning a business is exciting, um, because you can kind of give yourself those raises over time, where, um, at a job, right, you really have to kind of put in the time and effort and, and trade your time for money to, to make those raises happen.

[00:05:14] Um, whereas owning a business or freelancing, you kind of can do that on your own terms. .

[00:05:19] Megan: Yeah. So for those two years before you guys were taking any, uh, income from the business, how were you getting by? Was it working full-time jobs or, and also freelancing? What did that look like?

[00:05:32] Kelan: Yeah, great question. Um, so we first started the blog as a side hustle.

[00:05:36] We were in $40,000 worth of student loan debt and just wanted to make a couple extra hundred dollars to, to kind of help pay off the student loan debt. And from there, Uh, we kind of hustled for like nine months to figure out the business, figure out what blogging was even about, content marketing. Um, and we finally made our first $50.

[00:05:53] And that whole time we were both working full-time, saving money, paying off debt, and really saved up a huge nest egg. So the moment, and I did like five jobs before this, um, jail debt, s insurance sales, hated them all. Always came to the same conclusion. I gotta work for myself. Once we started the side hustle and it started to make money, the first $50 we had our finances in order.

[00:06:15] I went to Brit two weeks later. I’m like, I gotta quit and do this full-time. And she was like, go for it. Um, so we were able to live off of her teacher salary and anything I made from the business or starting to freelance right after I quit my job, um, was just, you know, icing on the cake. Um, and then with the nest egg there was not that much risk cuz we had almost a year’s worth of salary that I could make nothing for a year and, and we’d be all.

[00:06:35] Megan: That’s awesome. Yeah. So you guys really prepared financially before you just jumped into entrepreneurship full-time?

[00:06:42] Kelan: For sure, and honestly, the the point where I made the decision to go all in on it, it was more scary to think about staying at, um, a job I hated or another job getting another job that I’m gonna eventually hate than taking the leap of faith and, and just going for it and see what.

[00:06:58] Megan: Yeah, absolutely. I understand that feeling 100%. Um, so let’s kind of go back there and talk about that a little bit more. What exactly were you doing right before you started your business and what was the motivation for starting this business?

[00:07:14] Kelan: So I was on my fifth job. The one I had right before I quit was a jail deputy.

[00:07:19] I did that for three years, excuse me. Absolutely hated it. Fell into a deep depression, kinda had an identity crisis cause I wanted to be in law enforcement whole life. And I was like, I just saw the writing on the wall. It’s just not going the direction I wanted. I wanted a family that I could spend time with and have, uh, you know, freedom of my time.

[00:07:34] That’s what I prioritize most in life, is freedom of my time. Um, After that I had to find like a bridge job. I actually worked as an office manager at our local college for a few months while starting the, the blog. Um, and that’s kind of what motivated me to, to really kind of create this full-time income with the online business.

[00:07:53] Um, and it was a big jump. I was making close to $30 an hour, um, as a jail deputy with overtime down to like $13 an hour as the office manager. Um, and just like was like, well, I know that our finances are okay cuz Brittany finally landed the full-time teaching job and I just need something to bring in some income that’s part-time that I can also work full-time, you know, put full-time hours into the blog to really kind of help scale it.

[00:08:16] So, um, it was a really good bridge, you know, part-time job into the, into the business.

[00:08:21] Megan: Yeah. That working as a jail deputy, uh, that’s a hard, it’s a hard career being in law enforcement. My dad worked in a prison, so he started out, I think as a jail deputy. And then, you know, he worked in the prison for over 30 years, I think.

[00:08:37] But you know, there were a lot of holidays where he couldn’t be there because he had to work. Certain shifts, um, or he would like, you know, come visit at night on Christmas. Um, but he would have to work all of Christmas day. Um, so we wouldn’t see him until we got home from, you know, doing family Christmas stuff with everybody else.

[00:08:56] So, um, yeah, that’s, that’s. It’s super hard and yeah, it’s, it’s just a very tough career in place to be.

[00:09:04] Kelan: Yeah. It’s, some people make, they love it and they, they just absolutely love the challenge and, and what they’re doing, and it just wasn’t for me. Um, yeah. And yeah, the, the biggest thing for me was not being in control of my time having, you know, yeah.

[00:09:15] It would happen all the time where we would be short staffed and I would work eight hours overnight and it’d be seven in the morning ready to go home, exhausted. Mm-hmm. , and they would call on the radio and say, Hey Klein, we need you to stay for another six hours. And I would just be like this. Insane.

[00:09:29] Mm-hmm. like, I just want to go home and sleep and like, just forced to spend more time in, in a horrible place like that was just like the writing on the wall, like, I have to get outta here. Yeah.

[00:09:39] Megan: Yeah, that’s definitely motivating. Motivating being in a, a job in a career that you don’t love, especially when, as difficult as law enforcement or, um, being in the medical field.

[00:09:49] My dad worked. Prison. And my mom was a nurse and so, you know, I saw both of them having these insane careers. Yeah. Um, so why was it specifically that you chose this type of business? Or is, is this the first business that you started with? What did it look like when you were first? Getting into it.

[00:10:08] Kelan: Yeah. Um, so I’ve always kind of loved business.

[00:10:12] Uh, I think I started my first lemonade scene when I was like three. Um, and then I quickly turned that into, uh, neighborhood carwash. And then I was selling cell phone boosters in high school. I was flipping items on eBay my whole life. Um, so I always had the entrepreneur mindset and like making money. Um, and when I was starting to sell items on eBay at 13, I had my, I helped my dad like flip a pair of boots that he didn’t use anymore.

[00:10:34] I dunno, 50 bucks or something at the time. And it was like mind blowing, like, holy cow, you can make money online. This is wild. So that was my first introduction to making money online and not having to trade your time for money. Um, and that completely changed my life. And then I’ve tried drop shipping through college.

[00:10:49] I was flipping, uh, or I was selling wine coolers and, and sports memorabilia. Um, and got the permanent ban from Amazon, uh, cuz the supplier had issues. But that was a good thing because it, it. Led me into, okay, what other online businesses are there? And I started reading blogs and reading income reports.

[00:11:06] Um, shout out to Michelle Schroer, um, right. She was making crazy amount of money. Um, and then Bobby Hoyt too was another income report. I was, I would read and it was just mind blowing. So actually when I was doing my job as an office manager, I was going back to school also to become a home inspector, um, to basically do inspections after every sale of a, you know, a property in, in New York and got certified.

[00:11:30] Did all that and then at the same time we were starting this business and I’m not even sure why we picked to do the blog, but looking back the. The amount of scale that you can have with an online business versus like a home inspection business. Like we would’ve been capped at probably 75, 80,000 a year, where like our blog can, you know, we can reach seven figures with it, um, and, and beyond.

[00:11:51] So, uh, just such a good decision to do that and I thank Britney being part of that decision and being part of the, the journey the entire way and being supportive and, and working on it with me and, and scaling it. So it’s been special and that’s kind of why we picked the online business is cuz it’s so scalable and you can reach and impact so many.

[00:12:08] Megan: Yeah, you really can. There’s no limit to having an online business, especially something, um, like a blog or something where, you know, a lot of the revenue coming into your business is pretty passive. So, um, passive in a sense, I guess we could talk about the idea that there’s no such thing as truly passive income, but, uh, but yeah.

[00:12:28] That’s awesome. And it’s funny. Yeah, just the income reports. I remember, that’s actually how I found Dollar Sprout originally was because I was on Pinterest and I would go through and I was reading like Michelle Schroeder’s, uh, income reports and then yeah, Bobby Hoyt from Millennial Money Man and all these others, and one of them that I came across was Dollar Sprouts.

[00:12:50] And then I like creeped on their Pinterest and found out that, They lived in Blacksburg and I lived in Blacksburg, so Yeah, it’s funny. Small world. I just, yeah, . I just remember the whole, the days of like scrolling through Pinterest, reading everybody’s in income reports and like trying to figure out how are people doing this online business thing, right?

[00:13:10] So, yeah, it’s funny. Um, so let’s talk about then, The very beginning of your business. Um, talk about how you made that first, I think you said your first $50 is when Yeah. You told Britney that you want to quit and do this full-time. Yeah. So how did you make that first $50?

[00:13:31] Kelan: So when we first started the blog, it was really kind of about budgeting, meal planning, saving money, um, just living a frugal, savvy lifestyle.

[00:13:39] And we used Pinterest quite a bit to drive traffic. Um, that was back in the day when Pinterest was amazing for bloggers. Uh, it’s definitely changed over the years. Have a love hate relationship there for sure. Um, but yeah, it was just a, a brand, I can’t even remember the brand that came out and said, Hey, we’d like to sponsor an article.

[00:13:54] Um, and they actually offered us a hundred dollars and we were so small at the time. I felt bad taking that, so I talked them down to $50 . That’s just the weirdest, , weirdest story ever. But, uh, but yeah, that’s, that’s kind of how we, you know, we got paid $50 to write, uh, an article for them and kind of promote them in the, in the blog.

[00:14:12] And then, um, from there I just kind of knew. That we had an audience, we were starting to build traffic. You know, we had, you know, proof of concept, you can make money. There’s obviously someone coming to pay us money to, to be on our blog. So if I can pair, you know, continuing to work on the blog, knowing it’s gonna take at least another year or two to really make a decent amount of income with, with freelancing, with skills I already have, um, learned from starting the blog, then, you know, I can quickly replace my income and, and provide for the family and, um, you know, give us a potential to really scale and build something.

[00:14:44] Megan: Tell me a little bit more. I know cuz I used to read your all’s income reports too when you first started . Um, and so I know some of the things that you went through, like I said, we were both doing v i p kid teaching at the same time. Um, but what were some other, when you were like first building up the.

[00:15:01] Digital product revenue and the affiliate revenue and everything. What were some of the things that you did to kind of make money in the beginning of your business? You mentioned blog coaching as one of them. That was kind of later on when we, we were making at least, you know, a couple thousand dollars a month.

[00:15:16] Kelan: Um, so I, I had some type of. Tech or some type of skill set to teach other people with, to kind of fast track their success in blogging since it took us, you know, nine months to make our first penny. Um, but yeah, to kind of rep to kind of help with the income. Um, I did v i p kid, that was like one of my favorite side hustles ever, is super flexible.

[00:15:35] I don’t th think they’re, they’re around anymore. Um, they’ve changed laws in China. But, um, that was really fun and. On top of that, I would get digital marketing got gigs. So I was helping, um, a company in Canada write blog posts, you know, market on social media, just, you know, customer service with their clients and just learning more skills that stack on top of each other that I could put into the blog.

[00:15:57] Um, and then there, there came a time actually where Jeff, I reached out to him or in his group and I was just like, at what point do you. Freelancing and go all in on the business. Um, cuz you know, the income was very different. Like I was making a few thousand dollars a month with freelancing in just a couple hundred with the blog.

[00:16:15] And he, he posted a question that really like, changed my mindset. He was like, well, do you actually need the freelance money? And the answer was no, because Britney was still teaching. So I was like, oh. So let’s just go all in on the blog, even though it’s making couple hundred and scale that to make the same amount that I’m making freelancing, that’s gonna be more passive long term and you’re building your own own asset versus just trading your time for money.

[00:16:35] So that’s, uh, yeah, Jeff made me help me realize, like to make that switch and, and go all in on the business. Yeah.

[00:16:41] Megan: Wow. Look at Jeff really being Vienna help. Yeah. . Oh yeah. That. Always. Yeah. That’s awesome. So you were basically doing freelance work you said in digital marketing and doing v I p kid. How are you finding these gigs When you first got started were you on freelance sites like Fiver?

[00:16:59] Kelan: So V I P Kid is one of our subscribers, kind of messaged us and like taught, shared what V I P kid was and I was like, holy cow, this is amazing. Um, . So like within a week I applied and went through all the interview process and got hired. And then being a male, I had the upper hand for sure, cuz they were, they were desperate for males to teach.

[00:17:17] Um, so my like schedule got booked up immediately. So it was an incredible experience. Um, but other than v i p kit, I would use Upwork to find, you know, freelance projects and freelance, you know, long-term gigs, um, with other people. And then eventually a couple. Those projects would go off of Upwork, so I didn’t have to pay the fees.

[00:17:33] And we would work just one-on-one and kind of have a monthly retainer, monthly, um, project type of.

[00:17:40] Megan: That’s awesome. I also loved v I P kid, by the way. It was my favorite side hustle. I remember when I first quit my last full-time job that I had before going into Dollar Sprout or doing anything in online business, I found v I P kid pretty soon after leaving my job.

[00:17:56] And um, yeah, I would teach like four classes a day or five, six classes in the morning and make a couple thousand dollars a month and that was super helpful. So, Yeah, I definitely think that that saved me a lot. I was prepared a little bit financially, but prob not as much as you guys were prepared financially when I left my job to go full-time in business.

[00:18:20] So, um, so you got to a point. where Jeff asked you this question, change your perspective, and you said, no, I don’t need this freelance money anymore. Um, we can live off Britney’s salary. So then what happened? What did you focus on next in your business and how long did it take for you to kind of ramp up revenue? What does that timeline look like?

[00:18:42] Kelan: The first nine months, we made $50 and then the. Um, after that we made 53,000, I believe. Um, so quickly ramped it up. Um, and what we did was we hired a virtual assistant and just had her help create content. So, um, and it was, it was all about, you know, roundups and Pinteresty type of articles that we could promote on Pinterest and drive traffic with.

[00:19:06] And then we quickly got into Media Vine, so we were getting display ad revenue, um, and it just quickly, Snowballed from there as far as a revenue standpoint.

[00:19:15] Megan: And at this point, you’re, how many years into your business?

[00:19:17] Kelan: This was the second year end. Yep.

[00:19:19] Megan: Okay. Second year end. You’re making like 53,000 a year, is that what you said? Yeah. Did I get that right? Okay. Yep.

[00:19:26] Kelan: And then I’ll, I’ll continue from there cuz it gets exciting. Yeah. Uh, from there, um, we just kept kind of working on the business like crazy. We had our first daughter, um, Britney went back to school that year. Um, so I was still trying to scale the business, um, from where we were at.

[00:19:42] And we were in a good spot financially. Like Britney was making 45 ish thousand a year. I was making like 50,000 from the blog. More money than we’ve ever made before. Cuz we were always like, I, I’m working, she’s trying to find a job, go back to school and vice versa. Um, so we were scaling it and I was, you know, full-time stay-at-home dad with our newborn.

[00:20:01] Um, and for those six months I would wake up at like four in the morning, work my butt off, more content, more back backlinks, more seo, more affiliate marketing, just more of everything to try to scale it. And, um, by the end of the. We were starting to make, um, some pretty significant amount of money through sponsorships.

[00:20:19] Um, and we actually ended up making, I think over $150,000 that year. Um, and, I’m sorry, no, $250,000 that year. And, um, a hundred thousand of that came from sponsorships and the wake up call we had for like the last three months of Britney’s school year, she was having a really rough school year. And I was like having a rough time being a stay home dad and trying to scale the business.

[00:20:41] And I was like, And we never even talked about this when we started the blog, but we had the conversation of like, what would, if we made enough money for you to quit your job, would you join me? And what does that look like? Like how much money would we need in order for us to feel comfortable doing that?

[00:20:56] And it was $10,000 a month for six months. Um, and May, so this school year ends in June, may. We made more money than she made her entire year teaching. And it was just like a sign from God, like, go for it guys. You guys are supposed to do this together. Um, and then Britney put in her her notice and never went.

[00:21:13] Megan: Wow. And that was May of 20 21, 20 22.

[00:21:18] Kelan: Uh, this would be May of 20, shoot, 19.

[00:21:22] Oh, 2019. Wow. Yeah.

[00:21:24] Megan: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Wow. That’s amazing. So you made more money in one month than Britney was currently making for her entire year of teaching.

[00:21:36] Kelan: Yep.

[00:21:37] Megan: That’s incredible. Yeah, that definitely sounds like it meets your, your $10,000 a month for six months goal.

[00:21:43] Kelan: for sure.

[00:21:44] Megan: You kinda knocked that one outta the park. . Yeah. That’s awesome. So going back to when you were first kind of building up revenue on your blog, I wanna talk about the different income streams that you guys were focusing on. Cuz you mentioned sponsorships. Can you talk a little bit? , first of all, is that like the first thing that you really pursued in the blog?

[00:22:05] And secondly, can you just talk to people a little bit about what, what you mean by sponsorships and how that kind of relationship works?

[00:22:13] Kelan: Yeah, sure. Um, so we always focused on, first and foremost, we focused on display ad revenue. Um, we are, we’re big fans of chasing foxes back in the day. Um, and they were heavy into kind of Pinterest and driving traffic via Pinterest to earn, you know, ad revenue.

[00:22:28] Then from there, you know, we got into affiliate marketing, but we were really like broad. We sign up for every affiliate program possible and try to market every single one instead of like focusing on a couple core affiliates that you just market in so many different ways and, and really focus on.

[00:22:41] Driving traffic to ’em. Um, so that was never really successful. It was mostly display ads. And then, um, you know, we did coaching on the sides for Simone, you know, our own services and products. Um, but then we ran across sponsorships and I just became obsessed with how do I not only get. You know, other brands interested in working with us, in getting in front of our audience, which is their ideal customer, but how do I maximize how much I can charge them to, to do so?

[00:23:08] Um, so I really came up with this in incredible system. We actually have an entire course on it called Sponsorship Secrets, um, and it’s really getting companies interested in working for you, showing the value that you can provide. And then putting together an entire marketing campaign package that can include, you know, multiple blog posts, uh, a YouTube video, Facebook ads, email marketing, social media marketing, putting it all into one bundle and charging them, you know, anywhere from 5,000, upwards of 10,000 beyond.

[00:23:33] Megan: Wow. Yeah, that’s a, that’s a very different mindset. You had to get into there from like refusing to take a hundred dollars, only asking for like $50 for your first sponsored post to being like pissed $10,000. Yeah. What was, uh, I guess how did that. Transition work or like what, what did you do or experience that gave you the confidence to be able to reach out to brands and and say, yeah, you can pay us five to $10,000.

[00:24:01] Kelan: And I think when we first started, we were just, we weren’t getting much traffic like maybe a few thousand hits a month. And by the time we started to, to really make good amount of money through display ads and sponsorships, we are getting close to 300,000 pages. So my confidence was just skyrocketed.

[00:24:17] And then I realized after getting the first sponsorship to pay us, I think it was 2,500. , and they, they jumped on it like that. I was like, wait a second. I’m really good with negotiations. Like, I’ve always been good with negotiations if someone jumps that quickly, like there’s money left on the table for sure.

[00:24:31] Um, so another, another hint for the audience, um, or another tip. If you’re into sponsorships, whether you’re doing TikTok or or whatever, Instagram, your own blog, YouTube channel. Never, ever, ever have a price sheet and tell companies. The prices to work with you always ask them what their marketing budget is and let them tell you, um, so that you’re in the driver’s seat with the negotiation.

[00:24:51] Um, and there’s been so many times where I’m like, I think I can get like five grand for from them. And they’ll come back and say, our budget’s 10 grand, and I just doubled. You know, I just made $5,000 more by not telling them what we charge.

[00:25:03] Megan: Nice. Yeah. Yeah. That’s a great tip. Yeah. I’ve never been great at negotiations, but , I think that’s, that sounds like a great tip.

[00:25:11] Kelan: Um, yeah, it’s definitely a skill. Um, I just, yeah, I love the game of negotiating, so I, I really enjoy it.

[00:25:18] Megan: Yeah. So you guys don’t do a lot of sponsorships today though, right? You said you mostly focus on digital products?

[00:25:24] Kelan: And sponsorship is still a decent part of our income, um, but we’re really picky on who we work with.

[00:25:29] Um, and, but yeah, a mo a majority of our income comes from affiliate marketing and, and selling our own products.

[00:25:35] Megan: You went from doing blog coaching and mostly sponsorships and ad revenue to eventually building up your own digital products. At what point did you realize that you wanted to start creating the these products and that it was a good time for you to start creating those to sell?

[00:25:54] Kelan: Uh, so we actually took Mike Pearson’s course, stupid Simple SEO, I think the same time, uh, Ben and Jeff did. Um, cuz we kind of all started the blog at the same time. Um, and like them became obsessed with the idea of getting evergreen traffic through Google search.

[00:26:09] Um, so we took his course, did tons of keyword research, and we actually came across the keyword budget. and we had one that Britney created. Um, cuz you know, we were helping people, you know, the simplest way to budget and control your money is just pen and paper. Get it on paper, test it out, see what it looks like.

[00:26:24] Um, then you can get into apps and, and doing it passively through Mint or whatever. Um, but we started ranking for budget template and we had a budget template that was created. So then we were like, okay, people are signing up for this. What’s the next step in that funnel? What’s the next problem that they need?

[00:26:38] They need a whole budgeting binder. Um, so we created the budgeting binder, which was our very first product. And then we, you know, from there we just saw that there’s so much opportunity. So we started creating, you know, debt planner. So to people, you know, organize their debt and pay that off a meal planner, a time management, um, a money and marriage bootcamp, which has been, you know, incredible for, for couples.

[00:27:00] And I think that’s it. But yeah, we put together kind of just kind of kept building on top of each other and, and hitting people’s pain points. And it’s called the cast control bundle. And now, you know, we sell it, um, kind of on our blog and on our, on our niche site as well.

[00:27:15] Megan: That’s awesome. So you essentially came upon the idea of creating and selling digital products because you already had something that was working and you were just trying to figure out, like w We have, I think, I don’t know if you said, but it was a free budgeting template, right?

[00:27:30] So you had the free budgeting template that was ranking. So the next step was like, okay, cool. People obviously want this. How can we sell something that is related to this? Um, awesome. And did people start buying it right away? What was it like? You know, being able to. Monetize that.

[00:27:50] Kelan: Yeah, it was, uh, it was definitely exciting to finally have our own product to sell.

[00:27:54] Um, we, we actually took, um, Serita’s course a million dollar shop and she kind of helped us and coached us through, you know, setting up Shopify and having, you know, Shopify as our, our checkout cart and kind of our, our. Marketplaces sell our products. Um, so we still sell through Shopify. We also use Thrive Cart.

[00:28:13] Um, but yeah, that she kind of helped us set that up and, and it was just, you know, like I said, it kind of took time to build the whole, um, the whole idea of the whole bundle. But it just kept kind of building on top of each other and we kept just refining the product and the offer to our audience, um, and making it like a one-stop shop to fix your organiz.

[00:28:31] Megan: That’s awesome. I wanna, so I wanna ask you this question because I’m also a course person. I’ve mentioned this on the show before, but like, I love buying courses and going through and like learning about how other people. Built their business and all of that. Um, Ben and Jeff think I’m crazy sometimes when I talk to them about this because I’m, I think that they, I think you’re right.

[00:28:53] They did do Mike’s, uh, stupid simple seo. Um, but I think maybe that’s the only course they’ve ever done. Um, yeah. And I think the, the rest of it, they’re just, they’re not really COE people. So I’m curious to hear your thoughts on like, , you’ve mentioned two or three courses already that you guys have been through before.

[00:29:14] How do you find the right course? How do you know what course to sign up for? Um, yeah. And know that you’re. I guess not just like throwing money at the wall and spending money on courses that don’t matter, that you won’t complete .

[00:29:29] Kelan: Yeah, I think that I definitely am with you. I think the fastest way to find success is find someone that’s already doing it and learn from them.

[00:29:36] So I think I look at a course or even like a book as a mentor. They’re literally giving you the steps and the process and the system to find success, whatever niche they’re kind of teaching. Um, so we’ve spent tens of thousand dollars on courses in coaching, um, through our career. And I think that’s been, you know, massive, uh, way to help us grow and build those skillset to, to know what we’re doing, um, in the strategic about building our, our business.

[00:30:02] Um, but yeah, as far as like searching for courses, I think, um, we actually like put away a. For every quarter to at least buy one course to go through and, and just refine our skills or a coaching program. And I think it’s important just to, you know, Find someone that is doing what you want, follow them for a little bit, make sure you know that their values line up with yours and it’s not, um, you know, a bro marketer like Ty Lopez or, or someone like that.

[00:30:27] And, um, just vet the course by searching for reviews and, and looking at, uh, what other people are saying about it. And then once you buy a course, I’m the type of person to like sit down and just go through it in one weekend. Like, don’t let it sit on the shelf and not do anything. Like if you’re gonna buy it and invest your time into it, invest or, or invest your money into it.

[00:30:45] You gotta invest your time and, you know, go through it slowly and execute as you go. Don’t just try to rip through it and try to learn everything. Like literally take a lesson, go do that. Take another lesson, go do it. Um, and I found that to be extremely.

[00:30:58] Megan: So I’m curious, have there been any, you’ve talked about things that you’ve done in your business, uh, display ads, um, sponsorships, your own digital products.

[00:31:09] Are there any things that you created or any services or products that you tried in your business that were just. A flop that you no longer do?

[00:31:20] Kelan: Of course. Um, yeah, we, I think we are up to like four courses that we’ve tried. Um, two of them complete flops, two of them we still sell and they, and they do a decent job, um, uh, more in the blogging niche, but we kind of got away from the blogging niche.

[00:31:36] Um, but, but yeah, we’ve, you know, it took us many different attempts on creating courses and digital products to, to find the. Um, you know, the right audience for the right product, um, to kinda have a good fit and, and it’ll help us scale.

[00:31:50] Megan: Yeah. Why do you think it is that those, uh, two courses flopped.

[00:31:54] Kelan: Um, I think that we, I think now we know like when you’re creating a course, you first wanna test it with your audience.

[00:32:01] You don’t wanna just dive in and like make a a hundred video course. Um, unless you already know people are interested and willing to buy it. So we always pre-sell now as like a beta and then have those people that are, you know, willing to put their time and effort into it, help you create the course.

[00:32:15] Cuz then you’re creating exactly what people want. Um, where we kind of did the reverse on those two courses, we would like create the course and then try to sell it and the marketing would be, Um, and then we would just give up on it because it was really frustrating.

[00:32:29] Megan: Yeah, I learned that same lesson. I tried several digital products and I think two courses back when I was doing financial coaching and, you know, my personal finance blog. And yeah, I just didn’t validate the idea and I didn’t, uh, didn’t do my research. And so I went through all of this effort of creating what I thought was gonna be such a cool and successful course, and then, I think sold three , so, yeah. Yeah. It’s so deflating too. You put so much time and effort into it, and then it doesn’t sell.

[00:33:02] It’s just, yeah. It’s a big, it’s a big deflating thing.

[00:33:05] Yeah. I think it’s a lesson that so many people, so many business owners learn though of like, let’s not, let’s not put the cart before the horse here of, let’s make sure for sure people wanna buy this and they’re gonna pay for it. then spend the energy and time creating it.

[00:33:20] Yeah. Um, absolutely. So what is it like working together in this business? I mean, it’s been three years now, I think you said that you and Brittany have both been full-time in this business together. So how’s that been and how’s that changed your life?

[00:33:38] Kelan: Yeah. Um, so it’s definitely a dream come true. Mm-hmm. To, you know, spend all the, we’re best friends. We started dating when we were 14, so we love spending time together. Um, and I don’t think it can ever get old, but, which is weird to say we’re kinda that corny couple, but I would say like the first. The first year was like really difficult to figure out our roles within the business and having that like, boundary between business and family and marriage.

[00:34:04] Mm-hmm. and um, kind of that. So we’ve done a really good job, um, recently of kind of splitting up our hours. I’ll work in the morning from, you know, eight to noon and then we’ll have lunch together as a family, and then Brittany will kind of work from three to five, and then we’ll, you know, be off the rest of the night with the family or, Just doing stuff with them.

[00:34:23] So it’s, it taken a lot of time to figure out the schedule and how to work with each other and set those boundaries. But yeah, it’s been a dream come true, for sure.

[00:34:31] Megan: Yeah. So how much time per week at this point do you both put into the business?

[00:34:36] Kelan: So it’s changed, um, When we first started, it was like a full 40 to 60 hours on top of our normal job.

[00:34:44] Um, but we’ve really systematized things and we have a, an incredible, incredible team. Um, I can’t emphasize that enough, like hiring the right people to help you scale the business with the same vision and the same drive, um, is huge. Um, so I average like 25 hours a week is like a pretty big week for me.

[00:35:01] Um, so it’s 20 to 25 hours. And Brittany, um, Probably right around the 10 to 15. Um, so no, definitely nothing crazy. Um, we’ve definitely set it up to, you know, to create our dream life, you know, work part-time on high ticket stuff that’s gonna grow and scale the business and that we actually enjoy working on outsource everything else and have lots of family time.

[00:35:22] Megan: That’s awesome. So you mentioned hiring the right people who have your same. Vision and values. Um, what is your vision for the Savvy Couple? What are you all planning on doing with it in the future?

[00:35:36] Kelan: Yeah, so we’re, you know, we definitely wanna get into the Seven figure Club. Um, I think that we have a good strategy and plan to do that in 2023.

[00:35:45] Um, and our vision is just to help as many families take control of their time and money and create a life freedom. Um, we know what it feels like to be stuck working nine to five jobs have no time together. Just be stressed outta your mind, you know, living paycheck to paycheck and it’s not fun. And life is so much more important than living and working that nine to five that you don’t enjoy.

[00:36:04] So, um, it’s really, you know, helping people find their freedom and, and give them a vision and a strategy to create that life that they love. .

[00:36:11] Megan: That’s awesome. And it sounds like, it sounds like that’s exactly what you guys are doing and have been able to do with the Savvy Couple so far. Um, and on that note, I do wanna ask, cuz you, to us a little bit about it, some of the products that you guys sell nowadays.

[00:36:26] Um, would you mind kind of giving a breakdown of like, revenue wise, what does that look like?

[00:36:31] Kelan: So, kind of digital products and courses. I lump them together. Um, it’s probably right around 25% of our revenue. Um, so a little bit over a hundred thousand dollars a year. Um, and then the, the other two, I mean, we’re pretty diversified I’d say are, you know, ad revenue is probably like 20%.

[00:36:49] Affiliate marketing is up there in the, the 30 to 40%. I’m probably losing track of percentages here. I didn’t look ahead of time. Um, and then, What’s the other kinda, sponsorships is probably like another 10 or 15%. Um, so it’s pretty diversified. I love that. You know, we, our digital products have kind of increased in the revenue and the profit.

[00:37:10] Um, cuz the more stuff that you own, um, the more strategy you can have and the. Pricing differences, and it’s just better than affiliate marketing in that case. Um, but affiliate marketing has its pluses too. Like you don’t have to do any fulfillment. You, you get people to click on an offer, you get them to convert, you get the commission, and then you’re done with ’em where, you know, and you send that traffic to that person that has the course or product.

[00:37:32] Um, where when you own your own product, you know, it takes on customer service and fulfillment and all that stuff. Um, but yeah, we, we currently, our biggest seller is the chaos control bundle, and that does really well. And we actually recently, the start of this month started doing a membership upsell on the back end of that.

[00:37:49] Um, and we’re, we should hit like 60 members by the end of the month. Um, it’s just a quick $7 a month. And it’s just kind of Brittany doing her awesome teacher slash mom thing, helping moms kind of control the chaos, um, with a bunch of different accountability and more printables and teachings, and it’s really, really exciting.

[00:38:06] Megan: So Cool. That’s awesome. Yeah. You guys have really diversified. Membership is very exciting. I would love to jump into some rapid fire questions if you’re up for that.

[00:38:18] Kelan: Yeah, let’s do it.

[00:38:19] Megan: I say rapid fire, but honestly I’m the queen of tangents, so we’ll see how quickly these go. , they’re not always very rapid um, yeah, yeah. Okay. So first question I have for you is what is one of the books that you’ve given the most as a gift and why?

[00:38:37] Kelan: Um. So this would be The Millionaire Fast Line. Um, and it’s one of my top, like three books of all time, and I give it because it’s very, It changes your mindset on life and on what a normal nine to five is and what freedom looks like.

[00:38:53] Mm-hmm. and how society kind of sets us up to live in the slow lane, go to school, get in debt, get the brand new car, live in debt, and then, you know, work on nine to five that you don’t really enjoy for 40 to 50 years and then retire when you’re 60. And your body’s not even capable of enjoying life as much as it used to be.

[00:39:11] Where? Mm. You know, if you start your own business, you take control of your time and money, um, you can really fast track your financial freedom. And this, uh, this kind of gave us the vision of like, we wanna reach financial freedom by 35. We’re 32 right now. Um, and we’re on pace to do that. Um, so it’s just a book that really opened up my mind to financial freedom and what it looks like and in the strategy to get there.

[00:39:31] So it’s a book that I definitely like to give out to.

[00:39:34] Megan: Awesome. Um, yeah, I, I feel like I’ve maybe heard of The Millionaire Fast Lane, but I know I haven’t read it, so I’ll have to order that one. It can sit on my shelf for a year, like all my other books before I actually pick it up. .

[00:39:48] Kelan: Yeah. Um, yeah, I mean, it took me a while to read, but he does a great job of breaking down each, um, chapter and then giving you like a summary at the end.

[00:39:57] So it’s, it’s a quick read. Yeah. I have dyslexia, so it took me forever, but it’s so eye opening.

[00:40:03] Megan: Awesome. Well, thank you for sharing. Um, yeah, I’ll go add it to my Amazon cart. That’s what really happens is I’ll add it to my Amazon cart in like six months from now. I’ll go back and be like, oh yeah, I should order that book, and then I’ll order it. Then it’ll sit on my shelf for a year. So I up with you in like a year and a half.

[00:40:21] Kelan: I challenge you to buy it and go read it before they go.

[00:40:23] Megan: Okay. Challenge accepted. Cool. Um, okay, cool. So second question I have for you is, what is one of the best or most worthwhile investments that you ever made in your business? And it can be an investment of money or time, or energy, or any other resource.

[00:40:42] Kelan: Yeah. Um, so it’s hard to, well, I guess it’s not hard to pick a best one. Any, any type of course that, you know, improved our skills and, and honed in what we’re doing with our business has been, you know, monumental to our growth.

[00:40:54] But specifically we signed up for a coaching program called two x, um, and that. Literally helped us two x our business and get the right systems in place, get the right team, get the right offers, um, get the right focus. Just everything. And we actually, I just got back from a mastermind in Austin, Texas. Um, the two X Mastermind and I, we signed up again for another three month sprint with them.

[00:41:14] So I’m excited about that.

[00:41:17] Megan: Awesome. Yeah, I don’t think I’ve heard of two x either. Um, who, who is it that runs that, if you don’t mind sharing or what is, um, Austin?

[00:41:27] Kelan: Yeah. Austin net. Netell, I think his last name is Netell. Um, , but yeah, they have, they basically, their mission is to help, you know, six figure entrepreneurs reach the seven figure mark.

[00:41:37] Um, cuz only 4% of entrepreneurs that start businesses reach that seven figure mark mm-hmm. . So they wanna basically improve that, um, that percentage. So we’re definitely their ideal avatar and, uh, I’m hoping that, you know, sign up for their coaching program can help us get there.

[00:41:52] Megan: Awesome. So is that pretty new? You said? How, how long have you guys been in that program?

[00:41:58] Kelan: We joined it two years ago and we just did a three month sprint with ’em. Um, and then we got invited to the Mastermind. So we did that, and then that got us excited to, to jump back in and, and kind of scale the business again.

[00:42:09] Megan: Very cool. Awesome. Yeah. Um, last rapid fire question I have is when you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, what do you do to help get refocused. .

[00:42:23] Kelan: That’s a great question. Um, for me, I like to, there’s definitely days that I, I love what we do, but there’s definitely days where I feel burnt out and just like, mm-hmm. not focused, not working, which definitely helps cause I can be like, Hey Brett, I’m watching the girls all day.

[00:42:38] You can work, or we can hang out for the day and take the day off. Um, so that definitely helps. But for me, I think it, everything comes back to the vision. You know, sitting down with your spouse or your partner or you know, by yourself and really figure. Your destination, like what is the end point? What are you working towards?

[00:42:55] Because if you don’t have that end point, you can’t set up the g p s to get there. So, um, revisiting what our vision and our mission is for not only our business, but our family, um, and beyond. And, and the impact that we wanna make, um, gets me refocused and recharge to, to get back to work.

[00:43:09] Megan: Yeah. Yeah. I love that. Awesome. Well thanks. Appreciate your time ke, thank you so much for being here today. Um, where can our audience find out more about you? Where can they get into the Savvy Couple world?

[00:43:22] Kelan: Yeah, so we’re on, you know, online on a blog, the Savvy couple.com obviously we’re also on YouTube. Um, you can just type in the Savvy Couple and, um, I, I can give you guys our financial Freedom Starter Guide.

[00:43:33] It’s kind of our, our opt-in, um, to help families kind of create that vision together and create that roadmap to, to fast track their financial freedom. So that’s a great way to get on our email list and stay in contact with us.

[00:43:44] Megan: Thanks so much for being here and for listening to the Dollar Spot podcast today.

[00:43:48] Be sure to check out the show notes for any links and resources that were mentioned in today’s conversation. And if you enjoyed this episode, then don’t forget to like, subscribe, and leave us a review. Wherever you’re listening to this podcast, thanks again for being here and for being part of the Dollar Spout community, and I will see you in the next episode.