Brilliant Business Moms with Beth Anne Schwamberger

Lauren Keplinger is a fellow military spouse (hoo-ah!), and mom of three kids ages 5, 4, and 1. She started her shop, Funky Monkey Children, during her husband’s deployment to Afghanistan in 2012. Since that time, she’s grown her custom business to over six figures in sales, including over 5,000 sales on Etsy. And, remember, she did this through deployments, moves, and the birth of 3 kids! If Lauren can grow a biz, I know you can, too!

When Lauren was pregnant with her 2nd child, her first was only about 6 months old. She got started sewing as a hobby with a really terrible sewing machine she bought at a yard sale. Lauren would make John Johns for her son and burp cloths for the new baby.

But she wanted more. (How many of us have felt that way!?)

As a military spouse, so much of life revolves around her husband’s job. She wanted a challenge for herself while she was home with an infant. Lauren started selling her creations on Etsy and the business just grew from there. She says it’s been a wild ride!

Having her own site is a recent development in the last 18 months. The majority of her sales are still on Etsy.

And a question we frequently get is, “Should I use Etsy or a self-hosted site?” What’s Lauren’s answer?

She has mixed feelings! Etsy has a great built in traffic and its own platform. She can test new products and quickly see how they’ll perform with the built-in traffic of Etsy.

She’s found it harder to drive traffic to her own site. Lauren does keep an active Instagram account and has found that’s where most of her site traffic comes from. But beyond social media or word-of-mouth referrals, it’s been tough! For now, Lauren is Team Etsy because of the opportunities.

It’s tough to have a sustainable business site without a strong following. (I agree! The main way we drive traffic to our own shop is paid advertising.)

Bottom line: If you build it they don’t necessarily come.

I wanted to offer my experience that one mega benefit I’ve found of running a self-hosted shop is that I can easily collect email subscribers and get back in front of people with new products. (Especially when it comes to Facebook ads!)

Lauren does leverage her Etsy sells by including a card with a coupon code that works on her self-hosted site in every package, but she says the use of the codes are hit and miss.

But the strategy is smart! 90% of her purchases are gifts for other people, being sent directly to the recipients. Lauren already has the potential of the gift-giver to be a repeat customer, and by including the coupon code she can try to bring the recipient on as a new customer. Though Lauren says she has a few customers who have purchased from her multiple times always via Etsy, despite the coupon codes to her own site!

Another smart way Lauren tries to optimize email subscribers is by including her newsletter link on the message Etsy sends following checkout.

Originally Lauren started selling baby items, because that was her season of life. At first she thought her products would be higher-end baby items, but turns out that’s not what Lauren’s customers wanted.

She always took custom orders on Etsy. And over time, she let those custom orders change her business direction as more people were interested in nursery items and baby shower gifts.

(As we’ve heard time and again on this show, listening to customers is a perfect way to grow your business!)

Is there anything a shop owner can do to make their products easy to give as gifts? Lauren has some great practices!

Offering product customizations is an instant hit with gift-givers.

I absolutely love how Lauren thinks of the list-minute shoppers (like me!) by offering her ‘Rush Order Upgrade’ service. She ships products even faster through priority shipping. In other words, you could order from Funky Monkey Children on Monday and receive your order in time for a baby shower that weekend.

Let’s be honest, people don’t always think that far ahead in advance when it comes to giving gifts, especially for baby showers! I absolutely love that Lauren truly thinks about her customers’ needs and finds ways to meet them.

By the way, wouldn’t it be great if Etsy could filter your search based on turnaround time!? I would definitely choose shops with rush shipping for their fabulous products!

Lauren started Funky Monkey Children with no prior business background! She learned a lot by trial and error.

She started her shop buying bibs from Babies ‘R’ Us and monogramming names on them. Since that time, she’s worked hard to increase quality by (you guessed it!) listening to customer feedback.

In the early days she would get comments that one fabric seemed too thin or a certain bib wasn’t very high-quality. Hearing critical comments about your work can be hard to take, especially for someone, like Lauren, who doesn’t have any background knowledge in business (or sewing, for that matter!). Where the heck do you even find thicker fabric?

To answer those questions Lauren did the her homework and looked at how she could improve things.

It seems like a lot of work to undertake, and it is, but Lauren’s goal was always to have a sustainable business, not be a hobby seller.

Because of that commitment, she has committed to great customer service. Lauren knows that part of the job is to do the work of resolving and correcting issues, making it super easy to be a Funky Monkey Customer.

I’ve totally seen Etsy or other handmade sellers really struggle when they get negative feedback. It feels personal, but Lauren has a fresh, wonderful perspective: It’s just a business transaction. “If it’s not what you want, I’ll make it right,” wins every time.

One of Lauren’s most frustrating instances of an unhappy customer is when the customer ordered the wrong size and then was mad that the product came in the size she had ordered!

Lauren keys in on the emotions many of us have felt: “It’s hard when you’re working so hard on your business and you don’t want to spend the time to do it again or work for free! It’s hard to balance.”

One of her practices that’s been so helpful is to wait a day before responding to any criticism. Sleeping on it helps her to not have an emotional response, so she can approach it as the business transaction it is. Again, her philosophy really takes the pressure off: “They bought it, they’re not happy, and I can take care of it. It’s not the end of the world.”

I’ll admit - customer care really it’s hard for me! I don’t do my customer service anymore, and it’s a good thing! That’s a second strategy to handling customer care, outsourcing it. One on hand I can be super giving and when I think the cause is worthy I’ll give away whatever! But when customers want refunds for a reason that feels to me like they’re cheating the system, I get super emotional! As always in business, compensate for weaknesses and play to your strengths.

All of Lauren’s trial and error, testing and learning, have really paid off. Now she consistently gets great feedback that, in turn, perpetuates sales. She’s got 5-stars on Etsy and over 1,100 reviews; her shop stats clearly speak for themselves!

When you care deeply about quality, how can you get the right products for your custom work?

As usual, Lauren spent time trying and testing a bunch of options. She said she has hundreds of dollars worth of stuff she’s ordered sitting in her basement simply because they don’t meet her standards.

Another way she’s found products is by watching the conversations in Facebook groups specifically for embroidering and applique businesses. She would follow threads in those groups in which makers would mention their materials companies, then place a sample order herself.

I think it’s totally brilliant that, after Lauren made a sample order, she would try out the pieces on her own kids to see how the fabrics held up. Because we all know that how an item looks out of the bag is totally different after a few washes and drying cycles. What a great idea to use her kids as tiny product testers!

Placing an order is so tricky! How does a newer business owner decide how big of an order to place?  

Lauren didn’t start with wholesale purchases. She started buying pieces from Amazon and Babies ‘R’ Us, and it was a slow process from there.

Eventually, she upgraded her burp cloths, and then bibs. About two years ago she took a huge leap in her business and started buying bigger quantities, which allowed her to expand since not only did those larger quantities increase her profit margins, they also increased the variety of products she had available.

Where is Lauren now in business? What does her order fulfillment process looks like? Is she still embordering, packaging, and shipping every order herself? Or does she have help?

Lauren is still running her business all on her own. While putting in those kind of womanhours week after week is certainly impressive, she freely admits it’s not sustainable for the long term and expects changes in the coming months. Much of her growth has come on quickly and her business has doubled in the last year.

Steady childcare has made a big difference in her ability to grow her business. For a while she worked at naps and bedtime. In fact, for one entire year she worked weekends - all day Saturday and Sunday. Her family made this decision to save up money while her husband transitioned out of active military duty, but everyone understood the arrangement wouldn’t be perfect.

Last year she put all of her children in school, 5 days a week. Her two youngest go to preschool from 8:00am - 11:45am and her oldest child is in kindergarten. Lauren only works during those times and has found it to be so helpful mentally! When you’re trying to fit in work at every turn, it really is a recipe for stress and often feels as if there’s never enough time.

It’s helpful for Lauren to know there are set working hours, plus she can always pick up work later if needed.

About 6 months after starting Funky Monkey Children, Lauren’s husband deployed to Afghanistan. The Keplingers knew that this major adjustment was coming, and building the business during that time ended up being a great blessing to them. It’s been a source of income that’s followed her family through countless moves and many life transitions.

Being a military spouse, there have been many times Lauren’s business has taken a backseat to family life, and she’s had to be okay with that.

I appreciate how honest Lauren is in this interview! She says straight up that the pause moments often felt more like setbacks. And it IS frustrating because Lauren says it felt like every time she got momentum in the business, something would happen and she’d have to slow it down again.

But in the midst of so much instability, it was great to have something stable. She didn’t have to start a new job each time her husband received a new assignment; she could just keep building what she had already started.

This past year, Lauren’s business has really taken off. What made it happen for her??

Adding child care has been a great help to Lauren as she grows her business. (And we talked a lot about this earlier, so no need to rehash here!)

This tip is a clever one! Lauren doesn’t have any data to back this up, only her anecdotal experience, but the findings are interesting! She’s been noticing on Etsy that her sales will be really consistent as long as she’s consistently shipping things out. If she’s shipping every single day, sales are consistent. But if she gets really busy and misses three to four days of working and shipping, her sales will decline for a few days until she ships out again.

In short, the more active she is in her shop, the more active her shop is. If she’s updating pictures, adding new listings, or doing any sort of general tinkering, it seems to drive sales higher.

Adding a variety of products has been also been a huge factor in the growth of Funky Monkey Children.

And finally, continuing to take custom orders has been a bit of a Golden Ticket for her growth! When people request custom orders and those sell well, it gives Lauren a whole new shop category!

For example, she’s been selling baby quilts. Those started out when she created a few for friends, and took photos to put in her shop. Then, guess what? The custom orders came in! “Can you make one with just initials and a birth date?” “Can you make a quilt for a baptism with a cross?”

Oftentimes we shop owners might think one particular product will be so successful, but it isn’t always! You aren’t always marketing to people just like you. It’s a good nuance to remember.

To finish our chat, we address that constant question, “Is Etsy oversaturated?”

Lauren’s bottom line is this: If you make your products stand out, you’ll build and expand. And hint: you don’t have to be the cheapest to stand out! (You’ll have to listen to hear Lauren talk about why standing out isn’t a race to the bottom for pricing!)

There’s room for growth on Etsy if you have a unique product, with a unique angle.

It may be cheesy, but I feel that it’s true that ‘the cream will always rise to the top’.

If you always work hard to serve your customers well, to be different, to find a space to shine, you know you’ll rise to the top.

People are buying things all the time. There’s plenty of room for more sellers.

Lauren’s 4-year-old daughter just decided she likes yoga. And yoga is the least competitive activity ever, right? But with 3 kids everything is a competition. The other day her daughter was finishing up her yoga video and said, “You know mom. I’m going to keep practicing yoga every single day. I’m going to go up to my room and practice with no one watching. And then I’ll become a yoga champion!!!” So cute!

Site: FunkyMonkeyChildren.com

Etsy: Funky Monkey Children

Facebook: @FunkyMonkeyChildren

So first off, the very first thing I am just bursting to tell you is that the 2018 Brilliant Life Planner will drop in the shop this week of recording: Friday, November 3rd @ 10 AM Pacific / 1 PM Eastern. Make sure you’re following @brilliantlifeplanner on Instagram because that’s where the planner fun will happen. There’ll be so much going on for those of you who can join the launch live, and also for our early-bird purchasers. Pencil this date into your planner and come hang out! It’s been amazing to hear from so many ladies who are so excited for this year’s planners. It gives me all kinds of warm fuzzies to hear how you love it, how much you’ve used and loved it this year, and how much you’re looking forward to 2018! I just want to say thank you for loving and cherishing The Brilliant Life Planner as much as I do! I wanted to pop behind the mic and share a few quick insights into what I’ve been learning about regarding Time Management, Intentional Living, and Goal Setting - all those weighted, heavy words - this year since I had a baby in April. I hope to give you some perspective, some encouragement, and maybe even some wisdom.

I just loved chatting with a brilliant Mompreneur I met this year through Instagram, Leesha Chamberlain. Leesha is a wife, a mom to one adorable little girl, and a wellness coach. She blogs at Living Contently where she helps women take better care of themselves and their families.

Press the play button below or read on to hear our conversation about self-image, how to create a beautiful Instagram feed, and how she uses her planner to maintain a healthy balance between work and home.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been seeing a lot about wellness coaches these days! It seems like there are a ton of different ways wellness coaches run their businesses and I haven’t really taken the time to figure out what a wellness coach actually does! Thankfully, Leesha shared her own journey and gave me some clarification.

She’s been coaching people, especially moms, to health and wellness for about 18 months now. Leesha was drawn to wellness coaching due to her own childhood history of weight struggles, and a battle with disordered eating in high school. Leesha was able to conquer those battles...but only temporarily. When she was pregnant, those same issues came flooding back.

Knowing she had a little girl on the way helped Leesha realize enough was enough.She knew she had to do something better for herself and her daughter. She knew she had to learn healthy eating habits along with a healthy lifestyle.

This life-changing decision prompted Leesha to start looking at different options.  But with her history of disordered eating, plus her new role as a nursing mom, Leesha knew she needed to be careful.

She read a blog post that described a program the author used to lose weight after having her baby, plus preserve her breastfeeding relationship and adopt long-term healthy habits. (Win! Win! Win!) The author was a wellness coach and her program was successful for Leesha too! She found the accountability and support to be invaluable and lost 40+ pounds - that was all her baby weight and then some!

You can imagine with these kinds of dynamic results, Leesha was eager to share with others, which started her own journey to becoming a wellness coach.

To be trained as a wellness coach means understanding nutrition and fitness in a healthy, balanced way. Leesha learned that health isn’t restricting intake, but giving your body exactly what it needs.

Women often feel pigeonholed into maintaining one focus with health and fitness, like losing weight, and nothing else. As a coach, Leesha works with women at all different stages of their journey. She looks at the goals, backgrounds, and lifestyles of her clients, then together they create a plan with tools and resources that work.

Leesha is especially passionate about unlocking these wellness journeys for moms! It’s hard for moms to take care of themselves. But with Leesha’s programs, her moms create healthy lifestyles for themselves and the whole family!

I can totally relate to pregnancy bringing up all sorts of body image issues. I gained 62 pounds when I was pregnant with Levi. He’s 6 months old now, and I’ve since lost almost all of it. But I still worry if I’ll ever feel like myself again!

This is the same type of fear Leesha stuffed deep down inside. But once she started talking, the power of those fears left. Who would have known that actually airing these worries would make them go away?

Women, we need to talk to other women and encourage one another!

I actually met Leesha through her beautiful Instagram feed. I’m always on the lookout for brilliant business moms doing fabulous things, and not only are Leesha’s photos gorgeous, but her posts are so well done!

All her content is centered around getting healthy and living intentionally, and I just love how seamless she’s made her feed.

Of course, you don’t curate a beautiful feed by accident. Leesha says her two goals with Instagram are to tell her story and connect with others.

After all, her business model requires quite a bit from her customers. She needs women to feel comfortable about approaching her with their concerns about weight and self-image. So she has to make a strong first impression on her potential clients!

Leesha is really intentional with the content she curates for her feed. Each post touches on one of 5 main themes. (Isn’t this a great tip!?)

Leesha suggests choosing those 5-6 things that are really a part of who you are as a person, and curating only posts that fit one of those themes.

Leesha goes beyond just talking about her  business and helps people to connect with her on a personal level too.

Leesha’s 5-6 things are:

1. Fitness
2. Faith
3. Family
4. Motherhood
5. Self-love
6. Health

Take a minute and think through the qualities and passions that will define your own Instagram feed!

We’ve talked about big-picture content, let’s get down to the pretty images. Leesha has some fabulous tips for creating beautiful Instagram images.

I hope it’s encouraging for you to know that Leesha has no professional photography experience. Really!

You don’t have to be a super pro to have a professional-looking feed. What you do need, and what Leesha practices, is a desire to make constant improvements. Leesha is constantly gleaning as much information as she can to be better at her craft - both as a coach and a social media influencer.

Leesha was kind enough to share several of those tips with me.

1. Pick 3-4 backgrounds to use consistently. You can use either a natural background in your house or something you’ve purchased like a piece of fabric or poster board. A consistent background will do a lot to make your feed more cohesive.
2. Lighting! Lighting! Lighting! Again, to encourage those of us who are beginners, Leesha doesn’t have any fancy photography equipment! All her photos are iPhone photos. Lighting will be your game changer. And my favorite rule for lighting is the more natural light the better. This means Leesha often takes her images right beside a window in her house or using a big presentation poster board as a backdrop. So the light coming in from the window will reflect off of the white surface of the poster board.
3. Edit, just a little. Since Leesha’s photo-taking is all smart-phone based, she relies on apps for editing. To crop or adjust lighting, her two favorite apps are Snapseed and Aviary. And of course there are tons of other photo editing apps that won’t cost you an arm and a leg. Pick one and play around with it until you get something that you find attractive. (And go ahead and test more than one option!)
4. Choose one filter for all of your images. Whether it’s a filter within Instagram or a third-party editing app, picking just one to use will help you achieve a cohesive, professional look. Leesha uses a particular filter on Aviary for each of her photos.

Instagram is a scrolling environment--where thumbs are whizzing past pictures every day! You want your images to stand out so that people say, “OH! That’s my favorite business owner’s post. I’ll take time to read what she said.”

And Leesha’s feed is truly beautiful! It’s so light and bright. She sprinkles other photos in with her standard backgrounds, but that white background is the glue that holds everything together!

The final effect is really professional.

Figuring out the perfect filter or the perfect app can be tough.  In so many aspects of her business, Leesha spends a lot of time at the front end to do research, play around with options, then figure out exactly what she wants before putting her plan into action. It’s worth the time you spend initially to get the results you’re after.

You might be wondering, how much time does it take to get that picture-perfect result?

Well, it varies and Leesha admits she’s a bit of a perfectionist. How much time she’ll spend on a photo really depends on the quality of the original image and how much editing she needs to do. If she can stage the photo on her specific background and have good natural lighting, it might take 10-15 mins to do her simple photos and edits.

Another way Leesha streamlines her process is to try to use the same edits each time.

But here’s the great news... the more you practice, the faster you get!

When you’re first learning something new, it can feel overwhelming.

It’s easy to think that a certain task or skill will always be super challenging and time consuming.

“Posting on Instagram will always be hard.”

“Filing my business taxes will always be hard.”

And sure, at first your images might take an hour to create from start to finish, but it won’t always be that way.

Cheer up, mama! Things WILL get easier! Keep learning and practicing. You can do this!

It’s been clear talking to Leesha that she’s a total go-getter Mamaprenuer. It shouldn’t come as no surprise that she’s always been a planner nerd. (I totally get it!! You’re my person, Leesha!) I was blushing at the lovely compliments Leesha had for the Brilliant Life Planner.

Like so many of you, she wanted a planner that worked for her business and personal life. Leesha knew ahead of time that two separate planners would be less efficient for her.

One of her favorite components (and a favorite of many!) is the weekly reflection pages. Not only can you record memories and gratitude, you can also keep those goals you set at the beginning of the year at the forefront of your mind. It’s nice to have that weekly progress report, so you don’t lose steam by March!

Leesha says she always thought she’d be a scrapbooking type mom, but she’s not! The weekly reflection pages allow her to record the cute things her daughter did and said, so she can keep that record of what’s happening as her daughter grows, without spending the time that scrapbooking takes.

Another page Leesha loves is the Project Planner! (And honestly, I don’t think this amazing resource gets enough press! I’m glad Leesha mentioned it.) On the Project Planning pages you can break down those big, whopping assignments of yours and list each specific step. It guides you through thinking about the budget, time frame, and what needs to happen to get that big project done!

Another benefit of the Brilliant Life Planner Leesha loved is a series I did in January: Planner School.

It’s a video-driven walkthrough of my goal setting process (with your Brilliant Life Planner, of course!) that initially took place in a lively, interactive Facebook group.

Leesha says she always wanted to be a woman with a pretty-to-look-at planner, but it’s not her style! It was so great for her to see all the colorful, stickered planner pages in the Planner School Facebook group. But the great thing about the Brilliant Life Planner? It’s pretty on its own - you don’t HAVE to do anything else!

It’s been so fun for me to see how different ladies use the Weekly Time Blocking pages. Leesha let me in on her process, and it’s just as unique and lovely as she is!

Like many of you (myself included) Leesha does not describe herself as a super strict schedule follower. Much like Julie Fuller, Leesha will use her time blocks to first plot out specific, time- sensitive activities like meetings and training.

Each morning, she’ll take time to write out her daily priorities to accomplish. And Leesha does mean priorities! She’ll list out her tasks in a numbered list, 1 through 10, by order of importance. So when Leesha gets a pocket of work time during the day, she knows exactly what needs to happen next.

Of course, some days go much more according to plan than others! This numbered priority list guides her. And what doesn’t get accomplished in one day just moves to the next.

With a new baby at home, that’s usually how my planner looks, too! In so many ways I’m actually an anti-planner! First and foremost, my planner is a tool to help me reach my goals and stay focused on what matters most. Life often means that my planner gets jumbled and things move around. And I wouldn’t have it any other way!

I thought Leesha’s simple practice of moving unfinished tasks to the next day was so refreshing! We aren’t getting graded by how much we can check off a list in a day! That’s not a fair assessment of what truly matters.

Of course, I want you to work hard at your business goals and craft that brilliant life of yours. But, at the end of the day, I want you to lay your head on your pillow and know that cuddling your kiddos or having a meaningful conversation with your husband were the most important things you could do.

And those tasks that didn’t get finished? Just move them on over. You always get an A+ at life in my book :)

If we’re being honest, being a mom is often our biggest time management struggle!

Leesha says that she’s pretty task-oriented and enjoys that feeling of checking off her to-do list. But of course, you can’t always start and finish tidy tasks with kids at home!

What keeps Leesha grounded is maintaining her priorities that she is a mom first, and a business owner second.

When you design your life with snacks, diaper changes, and cuddles in mind...it all works out.

Little ones help us see so much of ourselves! Leesha loves seeing how her daughter Grace has adopted some of her habits.

For example, when Leesha grocery shops she always takes a detailed meal plan and shopping list. As items get added to the cart, she checks them off her list. Grace already (within her first year!) has had to have a notebook and pen with her when they go to the grocery store to keep track of her little items!

Isn’t that the cutest!?

I loved this conversation with Leesha, and hope you came away feeling as refreshed and validated in your planning as I did!

Instagram: @leeshachamberlain

Site: Living-Contently.com

Julie Fuller is the super creative owner of Tokyo Blossom Boutique where she sells Christian gifts for women. She’s married to a fellow creative, and together they have one handsome son.

As a busy Etsy seller and mom to a darling boy with special needs, it’s critical that Julie makes the most of her time. Press play on the podcast player below or keep on reading to hear all about Julie’s brilliant planner hacks.

Fun side note here!: Julie was one of the very first listeners of the Brilliant Business Moms podcast! Julie and I got to hang out at a conference in Nashville last year, and I wasn’t at all surprised to discover she’s as sweet in real life as she is online!

Julie’s shop, Tokyo Blossom Boutique, has gone through a bit of a transformation in the time I’ve known her. Lately, her business has been growing in fabulous ways, and I just had to hear what changes Julie’s made that have led to her new growth!

Through 2016, Julie was selling lots of hand crochet and knit items. One of her products, knit cup cozies, was selling WAY more than the other items, but she couldn’t figure out why. At that time in business, Julie had been working hard to make her brand visually unified, rather than focusing on a target audience.

The more cup cozies she sold in person, the more feedback she got that her product was encouraging. One lady said she was buying a cozy for a friend who’s not very joyful, as a reminder to be joyful. (This one made us both chuckle a bit!)

After they purchased a cozy, customers would message Julie to say they purchased it because they needed the inspirational message to encourage them during a difficult time. One woman in particular wrote to tell Julie that her husband was facing tough medical issues and life was especially hard; She wanted a cozy to have that reminder to be joyful right on her daily cup of coffee. (Wow, that’s a powerful reason to buy a product! And Julie listened to each of her customer’s stories carefully!)

Early in 2017, Julie decided to focus on developing more encouraging products that her customers would love.

She revamped her shop and made mental notes of which products to purge and which to keep. The cup cozies, of course, stayed! Another favorite product, her planner clips, got a makeover; Julie redesigned them to incorporate inspirational messages. And the switch worked! Many customers are using the planner clips not just for planners, but to accessorize their Bible journals.

Tokyo Blossom Boutique is now happily a Christian gift company!

I just love the simple but impactful steps Julie took to refine her business:

1. Meet customers
2. Listen to them
3. Serve their needs

The day following our recording, Julie moved into her first retail space! She’s officially a vendor at Woodstock Market, which is a huge retail store of local makers selling home decor and gifts.

Julie had been eyeballing this place for a year and a half...she knew it would be a great opportunity! Plus, once a vendor gets in, they receive lots of traffic and attention from local businesses and boutiques.

Though Julie’s desire to have space in a retail setting was strong, she knew there was a lot that had to happen in her business and personal life before justifying the risk. Julie’s husband Scott had recently started his own creative business, and she wanted to give him time to get his business going strong. Julie wanted to have the confidence that even a small risk wouldn’t hurt their family.

A wise move on Julie’s part was that she also wanted to make sure her shop was ready for a bigger platform. Though her products were visually appealing and high quality, she wasn’t confident that she could give a tidy description of her shop in one sentence. She wanted to work toward that unity within her business before contacting Woodstock Market.

The right time turned out to be 18 months after she first started thinking in that direction.

Julie had a peace about finally reaching out to the merchandising coordinator and putting in her application, and she heard back the very next day! Those magic words, “You’re a perfect fit, and your products are just what we’ve been looking for!” were exactly what she needed. Since Woodstock Market is Christian-owned, they’d been looking for a vendor who offered Christian gifts. Talk about perfect timing!

After Julie got her initial call back from the space, she then had to go through an interview process. Julie says that she appreciated how honest and validating her discussion with the merchandiser was. Julie asked hard questions, like “What if I bomb as a seller!? And can you explain the details of this contract?” And she got straightforward answers right back.

In fact, everything worked out so perfectly, that Woodstock Market actually made room for Julie when they had just booked their last spot! She’s been getting great feedback from her in-store shoppers. And it’s encouraging to Julie that many local stores got their start as a vendor at Woodstock Market.

I already love Julie’s planner clips, but planner clips aren’t the only creative planner hack she’s made!

Julie has experimented a lot with the Brilliant Life Planner. The planning pages at the beginning of the year and each month have been a big part of her goal setting. But, like most of us, Julie says most of her hang-ups come during those daily, mundane tasks.

She would look at the blank week ahead feeling like a deer in headlights! What were all those nitty, gritty business tasks she had to do? Planning for social media, sending her newsletter, marketing, and contacting the right people...the list was overwhelming!

Inspired by Crystal Paine’s Homemaking Binder, Julie made a master binder for her business that she incorporates in her planner. She listed all her weekly, recurring business tasks by day and tucked that list in the front pocket of her Brilliant Life Planner. Now Julie tackles that blank week with confidence! She fills her schedule with the regular tasks first and then adds in all the unique ones.

Julie’s system for tackling recurring biz tasks is brilliant! She has an awesome system in place to make sure none of the important tasks in her business fall through the cracks. She makes progress on all of them each week.

So what are some of Julie’s recurring business tasks?

On Mondays, for example, she makes it a point to give her Etsy shop an update. How does everything look? Are her listings up-to-date? Is there anything new she wants to add to her Shop Announcements? Julie keeps regular tabs on her shop so it always shines.

Does Julie kick herself if she misses one week of shop updates? Not at all! But having this important to-do on the schedule ensures it gets accomplished more often than not.

Some other biz tasks Julie keeps on her recurring list are interactions with fans on Instagram. Like many of us, it’s easy for her to update Instagram, but not necessarily to remember to come back and interact with fans, so she puts it in her planner.

Julie also includes a list of who to contact for marketing, such as wholesale businesses and box companies. So brilliant! If marketing isn’t a regularly scheduled part of your business, growth is pretty hard to achieve!

Julie’s planning strategies have allowed her to meet her great big goals, and I couldn’t be more excited for her!

In 2016 she doubled her sales from 2015, and for 2017, her goal is to double her sales AGAIN!

Julie is well on her way to reaching that milestone. At the time of this recording, she’s up 60% in sales from where she was last year! And with space in a retail setting and Christmas coming, hitting that goal is definitely within reach.

Let’s be honest, meeting these goals didn’t happen by accident. Julie has been super organized and strategic in making steady progress on her business every week.

So, does Julie have any other tips for making the most of her planner? Yes!

As moms, a lot of our schedule outside of business can be counted as recurring, like picking up the kids from school, or a weekly lunch date with our husbands, as is Julie’s case.

Julie noticed that she was writing the same words and events over and over again. As a result, her pretty planner was getting cluttered!

For those daily recurring items, she writes them all out in the slots on her Monday section. And instead of writing the same task or event sideways across the week, over and over, she takes a piece of washi tape and tapes out the same hourly slot through the week. It’s one way she keeps her planner neat and pretty, plus saves herself time.

The same washi tape hack can be used if Julie has a vacation coming up. If she needs to block out a full day or an entire week, Julie just stretches washi tape either vertically down the day, or horizontally across the week. Brilliant!

Julie uses 2-3 clips in her planner at all times. She uses one to mark her weekly planning page, and another for the monthly page. Marking the monthly page helps Julie make sure she doesn’t add events to her week that overlap with anything previously scheduled.

And when she’s working especially hard for a goal (like doubling sales from last year!) she adds a clip to her goals page too.

I just love this hack! Julie saves herself loads of time by speeding up all the small tasks she’s doing each day… like flipping through her planner!

Another great spot for using a planner clip is to mark your Habit Tracker page. But speaking of the habit tracker page, Julie (and many of you!) have asked if there are plans to include the habit tracker on the monthly page.

While we haven’t changed the format of the planner, we ARE creating habit tracker stickers! I’ve teamed up with Ashley Monda of Sunshine Sticker Co.  to make custom sticker pages just for the Brilliant Life Planner! They are gorgeous, and I can’t wait for them to hit the shop!

Another thing Julie does with her planner that I just love is to use the smallest size sticky notes for repeated routines or lists. Turns out, those sticky notes are just about 1.5 inches by 2 inches and can fit across a several-hour block on our planner. Julie can then take her sticky of to-do’s and move them to different days as needed. How great is that!?

Don’t worry bullet journal fans...the planner works for you too! Julie also is a bullet journal user and has incorporated a half-and-half system in her planner.

She does time block recurring things. But during her big chunks of time, like the mornings when her son is at school or the afternoons if he takes a nap, she bullet journals. Rather than schedule 30-minute increments, she gets a lined stamp for planners and stamps lines into that block of time to create a bullet-journal style to-do list

I do the same thing! I frequently use my big blocks of time as a to-do list.

Julie’s son refers to her customers as ‘friends’. One afternoon as the two of them worked in their home office, he was very quiet and preoccupied with a project in the corner. He then came to Julie and showed her scraps of papers and glued them together. He said he made something for her ‘friends’ and they need to buy it so they’ll be happy. So cute! He gets it!

And you’ll have to tune in to the podcast for a second adorable moment that Julie shared!

Etsy: Tokyo Blossom Boutique

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What do you think? Will you try any of Julie’s planner hacks?

I know I need to make better use of my clips, and I’m excited to give washi tape a try for some of my daily routines!

Today we’re talking with Jill Martin of Strong Hearts, Strong Women. Jill and her husband Sean live in Texas and are parents to 13 kids: 11 at home and 2 who live in heaven. Their family has been built by birth and adoption, and includes several kids with special needs. Strong Hearts, Strong Women is an online community that Jill has built over the last year.

I’m so excited to chat with this amazing woman about how she’s grown her business over the last year and how she’s used her planner to juggle everything and live intentionally.

You will absolutely LOVE how Jill has gotten her kids involved in planning too! It’s a unique focus that will probably surprise you!

Strong Hearts, Strong Women started almost a year ago, when Jill originally wanted to coordinate fitness and nutrition groups. It’s a passion of hers and something she already does in her free time. A fitness coach friend of Jill’s encouraged her to give it a go, so she did!

Thirty women signed up for a one-month Facebook group, and when she looked at the makeup of the group, Jill felt like the women would be best served by the addition of a Bible study. In Jill’s mind, “No matter how many push-ups you do, if your insides aren’t right you’re still not going to be happy with your life.”

Jill’s first group was so successful that ladies were begging her to do it again!

These groups, that initially began as month-long groups, kept going for months after. Well into the New Year, Jill hosted a group every single month, with between 30-40 new women in each group.

From these groups, Strong Hearts, Strong Women was born. Jill put together a 3-week test group with women she knew where they talked about common struggles they experience. Together, the group tackled fitness and nutrition issues, but also self-image, forgiveness, or feeling that part of your life was a mistake. (They dug really deep!) Shortly after this beta test group, Jill’s daughter had a big surgery. During that time, when Jill was using Facebook live to talk about her daughter’s recovery, a lot of people really connected with Jill and asked her to keep Strong Hearts, Strong Women going.  Jill was grateful for that interest, but had a lot on her plate! What should she do next?

In July, she was finally ready to reopen the group. Currently the Strong Hearts, Strong Women community is at 260 members! She sees herself as a community leader -- helping women to focus on character qualities, growing strong in heart, mind, and life. In short, it’s a safe place to be honest about hard things.

Encouragement is Jill’s word of the year for 2017. (Let us know if you chose a word of the year, too!) And though encouraging others was a big goal of Jill’s, she found that she was the one getting encouragement in return.

Jill has always been a big goal setter and she’s introduced the practice to her kids. Each year between Christmas and New Years, the entire family picks areas of life to focus on and decides what they want to learn and spend time on.

All together, they brainstorm the next year and lay out their goals.

One year, Jill’s daughter wanted to make homemade bread, so they chose a new recipe to try each month and wrote it at the top of the month on her calendar. Isn’t that so fun!?

Calendars have always been important to Jill since she loves scheduling and plotting things out. The Brilliant Life Planner came her way at the perfect time last year and she especially loves the visual planning tools, like the Big Goal Mind-Mapping page.

The way Jill uses these pages is that her kids will choose one character quality to write in the center as their big goal. For example, they may choose kindness or diligence.

One of Jill’s daughters, Joanna, has given us permission to use her worksheets as an example. (Thanks, Joanna!!!)

Joanna chose kindness for the year. She wrote kindness at the center of the mind map. Then she has all sorts of ideas for how to make kindness part of her life on the lines pointing back to the center: have more people over, more pizza nights, read to her brother, and so on.

I love how the Martin family centers their year around these one-word character qualities! And they don’t limit themselves with their goal-setting. Jill says their goals can be about anything: educational, business, personal, spiritual, crafty...whatever they want! As long as the goal connects back to the character quality, it gets put on the calendar for completion.

For Jill’s goal of encouragement, she would plan out how to make that happen for the year, like writing letters to friends or doing an act of kindness.

To give a real-life example of how this plays out, Jill shared more about Joanna’s goal of kindness.

Joanna has some academic struggles, including reading and writing. Jill took this as an opportunity to get reading onto Joanna’s goal list by asking: What are some kind things you can do for others?

Sure enough, reading aloud to another sibling (a brother with a lot of disabilities) made her list. He recently received a diagnosis of brittle bone disease, which means his lifestyle is especially limited, and Joanna found a way to help.

One of the MANY things we love about Jill is how she views challenges as opportunities. In Joanna’s case, she saw the challenge of her brother being in bed as an opportunity to put a smile on his face by reading to him.

Is that not a triple win!? Building character, bonding with siblings, and - surprise - becoming a great reader all wrapped up in the goal of kindness.

Jill and her older teenager have physical copies of our Brilliant Life Planner, while her littles use our printable pages, which you can get for free here: http://bit.ly/blpprintables

Each month, Jill and her littles do a monthly check-in with their goals. I can’t love this enough!!! As a busy mom, I use the weekly reflection pages to check in on my own goals, but how fabulous to check in with the kids on theirs, too!

Jill started off 2017 with a character goal of encouragement, and she’s been using that to guide her choices ever since. She says she would never have guessed that her goal of being more encouraging to others would lead to an entire community of women who are growing in their faith and their character.

The Strong Hearts, Strong Women Facebook community is a closed community that’s free to join. Jill governs her Facebook group tightly so the women in it know it’s a safe and secure place to bring their struggles.

Members of her group get a monthly printable and devotional guide, as well as workbook pages; they can complete as much or as little as they want. The topics of these resources are geared around a character quality of the month, which the ladies in her group select.

Can there possibly be a typical day with 11 kids in the house!? (And did we mention Jill homeschools her kiddos!?)

Surprisingly, Jill actually does have a typical day. She says she runs a tight ship, and she likes it that way:  “I’m that person who likes surprises when I plan them,” she laughs. “I like to know what to expect.”

Having multiple kids with special-needs, Jill has spent a lot of time in doctor’s offices. And you know what? Her favorite doctor, an orthopedic surgeon, taught her about efficiency! She only waits ten minutes in the waiting room, her family gets to spend a half hour with him, it’s not rushed, and everyone leaves happy!

That wonderful doctor taught her how to schedule her home. While homeschooling and managing her kids will change with the seasons of life, what doesn’t change is block scheduling and leaving buffers. That’s what the smart surgeons do!

The offices that squish everyone in for the sake of more patients end up spending only 5 minutes with each patient, which means nobody's happy.

Jill didn’t want that for her life.

She follows the natural rhythms of life to block out her day:

• From Get Up to Breakfast
• From Mid Morning Snack to Lunch
• From Lunch to End of the School Day
• Afternoon
• Evening

Then, depending on the ages of her children, Jill will put 3 - 5 tasks in each time block, accounting for buffer time within each block.

Her high schoolers get to come up with their own schedules, but they’re not allowed to get behind on work!

Life will happen in the middle, so Jill PLANS to have time to change diapers and deal with meltdowns...or answer the phone...or fix a clogged toilet...or whatever comes her way!

Here’s her trick: At the end of the block, nothing from that block moves on to the next.

It’s really simple when you think about it! Even high school works like this: If English class is over, but you haven’t finished all the work for that class, do you stay in English or move on to the next class?

You move on to the next class, and you pick up where you left off with English tomorrow!

Jill uses the same system with her time blocking.

The things that occur in her morning block (between Breakfast - Morning Snack) stay in that block. And she has a buffer zone built in.

So, if it’s a good day, Jill might use that buffer to do business and social media stuff. She does mini tasks in those buffer zones or gives extra help to her kids, whatever is needed.

If a Morning Block task doesn’t get finished, it moves on to the next day in the same block. So the next block is FRESH.

Jill is fresh, tasks are fresh, and no one is stressed out. Tomorrow is always there!

(I LOVE that!)

The tasks that Jill needs to do every day are defined by the fact that most of her 11 kids are at home. The 2 oldest are away at school, but she has every age from littles to teenagers still at home. Her family lives on a farm in the country and they homeschool.

So first up in the day? Farm chores! These come before breakfast. Then, after breakfast, they do morning school work. She’ll put the hardest tasks first on the list, the ones that hit her children’s weakest points. It’s a mental thing and it teaches her kids to push themselves. So that might be spelling, language, or vocabulary development.

Jill’s buffer zone almost always includes diaper changes, bathroom issues, and medication delivery.

Then they have additional reading time, then go into math and writer’s workshop.

Next up is lunch and a prep time. Each kid has an assigned job. These jobs stay the same for the school year. One person sets the table every time, every meal, every day...for the whole calendar year!

Each person does their job before lunch. Then they do afternoon school work: history, science, singing, and art.

Then the afternoon includes free play, outside time, and farm activities.

For the evening there’s family time: Dinner, playing outside, games, riding bikes, whatever sounds fun!

Jill has an incredible mindset when it comes to her kids with special needs. She doesn’t want the disabilities of some of her children to define their family life, or their own lives!

She describes their approach as “not fussy; we just roll with it!” she says, “some kids get vitamins, some get seizure meds. It’s not an obstacle for them, it is what it is.”

Isn’t Jill proof that every mom is capable of doing and accomplishing so much more than we think we can!?

Jill says, “If you make too much out of it, it will be. The mountain in front of you is only as big as you perceive it to be. You can decide: I’m not going to let this be an obstacle, I’m going to let it be an opportunity.”

Jill admits that her schedule was much more complex when she had just two kids. Now, it is much simpler. She sets those boundaries now because she has to.

One thing we love about Jill is how she leverages Facebook Live to grow her online community and her ability to encourage others.

Jill says that she doesn’t practice, and she doesn’t do trial runs. If she’s going to a friend’s house, she’s not going to practice how she’ll answer a friend’s questions or have a conversation with them! She’ll just talk to her friend!

Jill treats Facebook Live the same way She usually has reasons for going live and she won’t just fish up topics for fun. Her content is natural and relevant for her audience.

So Jill’s Facebook Live Advice? “Don’t practice! Don’t make it too big. If you flub up, just go on or delete it. It’s not a big deal!”

And rewatch yourself to catch those mistakes or quirks you might want to fix for later lives!

One of Jill’s favorite memories is when her eldest, Jacob was really struggling with how to be patient with his youngest brother - who was a bit of a copycat and drove Jacob just a little crazy!

The two were playing basketball in the driveway when Jacob yelled, protesting, yet again, about his brother’s copying. Jill started out with a stern warning in her Mom voice, and Jacob quickly responded, “But I’m sick of opportunities for leadership!!!!!!!!!!!”

(Too funny! Jill’s kids love to joke about how she frames every struggle or nuisance as a “leadership opportunity!”)

Personal Page: Jill Martin

Facebook Page: Strong Hearts Strong Women

Facebook Group: Community Group-Strong Hearts, Strong Women

Jill's Full Course: Recalibrate

Oh Friends, I’ve been dying to share this episode with you! Today on the show I’m pleased to welcome Jamie Clinard, who owns the shop Saturday Morning Pancakes. She creates adorable t-shirts for moms and kids inspired by 90s hip hop. You’ll have to head to the show notes to check out Jamie’s hilarious and so adorable shirts.

What makes this interview so exciting and so incredible is that by digging into Facebook and Instagram ads last summer, Jamie has taken her business from being a nice hobby ($500-$1,000 a month in income) to hitting $1 Million in sales in March of 2017! She told me she’s on track to do $2.6 Million for her business this year(!!!)

And, no, Jamie didn’t start teaching others how to grow a business to get these amazing results. She doesn’t have all these hidden revenue streams or $1,000 products she’s selling. She just dug deep and focused on her t-shirt shop.

Jamie got busy serving her customers well, finding new customers, creating ads, testing audiences, and scaling what’s working. That’s all she’s done, and she’s hit $1M in sales! When Jamie reached out to me to tell me what a difference Facebook ads have made in her business, I was seriously stunned!!  

Now I KNOW Facebook ads work, but to go from a hobby biz to a 7-figure biz in less than a year?! They’re even more powerful than I realized!

I hope you will listen to this interview with an open mind. Don’t set up barriers for yourself and think, “well, Jamie must have something special that I don’t.”

Or “Jamie just got lucky.”

Or “Great for Jamie, but this won’t work for me.”

I want you to know Jamie is a SAHM, just like me and just like you. She grew her business in the margins. She was tinkering with ads during naptime and bedtime, and her business started taking off!

In fact, after the first month when business really exploded, she had to turn her ads off because she was getting SO much business. She took the time to hire the right employees, set up the right systems, and then she turned the ads back on for massive growth!

I hope hearing from Jamie will get you excited at what’s possible when you use Facebook ads to grow your business!

Jamie is also a mom of two kids, a 4-year-old girl and 18-month-old little boy. She worked in gang prevention before she got pregnant. She loved her work, but when she was expecting her daughter, her family decided it was time to pursue something different. There’s so much negativity in the world that Jamie wanted to find an outlet to bring more light and laughter to people.

Jamie has always been a fan of 90’s rap and hip hop. In college she created a playlist called ‘Saturday Morning Pancakes’ to crank up every Saturday morning while she made pancakes for her roommates. They were the kinds of songs you just HAD to dance to!

So when she thought about a company name, that was the first thing that popped into her mind. She thought about how funny it would be to incorporate hip hop phrases into kids clothing… turning something “tough” into something funny and cute.

And it worked! People loved it. Saturday Morning Pancakes has taken off. (Just wait until you hear the behind the scenes!)

Jamie’s first tee design is actually still her best seller -‘Regulators Mount Up’. The song is so popular and well-known, but the twist of the kid tricycle is just so funny. That’s why Jamie thinks the tee has sold well.

We’ve been hinting a lot about Jamie’s crazy growth, let’s get to it!

Until the summer of 2016, Jamie was doing everything for her business -- from the screen printing and shipping, to the marketing and designing, in her garage - with two kids in the house! Something snapped in Jamie and she wanted more from her business. With that motivation, she started researching Facebook ads, Instagram marketing, and email newsletters. It was pretty overwhelming to tackle all at once! So Jamie decided to pick one method and roll with it.

It was around this time that Jamie found FB Brilliance. She was in a PR-focused group called Cupcake Magazine. She asked if anyone knew anything about Facebook Ads, and a member directed her to Brilliant Business Moms!

She found us thanks to that group, and joined our course. It took Jamie two months to get through the content with two little ones at home, but it was exciting! She kept pushing past the tech hurdles and tougher parts of mastering ads, and she finally got her ads up and running!

Jamie’s first ads were okay, but once she sat down and thought about her customer, it all started to come together. Jamie started thinking about all of the websites she would visit online, and all the interests she had, and she used that to narrow in on her targeting and show her ads to the right people.

She started testing a few audiences at once, and things really started snowballing! As Jamie’s sales started to grow in a big way, her husband finally told her, “You need to turn off the ads!” She got so many orders that it was almost scary! She knew she couldn’t continue to run the business on her own. Jamie and her husband sat down together to refocus, and make a plan.

Jamie hired a fantastic college girl to help her with shipping, and the business kept growing the more she scaled her ads. It was really fun...and addicting!

After a few growth spurts, Jamie was able to get some warehouse space and hire even more staff to handle fulfillment and shipping.

With all this growth, Jamie is still really involved in her business. She does all her Facebook ads and product design herself, but she has a team that helps her ship, and a company that helps her screenprint her tees.

Jamie tried hiring an ad agency to help with Facebook ads, because she thought there might be a lot of information she didn’t know. But… the ad agency totally bombed! They were targeting all sorts of strange interests and creating ads that just didn’t resonate with Jamie’s ideal customers. This experience helped Jamie realize she REALLY was the person who knew her business best!

At the end of the day, a big fancy ad agency can’t capture what makes your business unique as much as you can. No one else has that special sauce!

In our case Ellen, our team member, is perfect at making ads exactly how I envision them. Jamie also has an awesome team member  Carli, who is their Social Media Manager and always hits the nail on the head with her funny posts.

Jamie’s first hire was her General Manager, Jenn, who is in charge of all operations. (To meet her entire, awesome team, just visit their about page!) It is scary to let go, but oftentimes letting go in some areas will allow you to grow! Isn’t it hard to be a mom and CEO?

We always recommend hiring for personality. That really matters!

Jamie has found that her customers really connect with her team! They love getting to see them in action. Her team shares hilarious videos on Instagram stories, and Jamie loves it when fans write to her saying, ‘Your Team Is So Cute!’.

To give you a sense of how much Jamie’s business has grown: she has 9 employees, a shared warehouse with an aftermarket company, and a shared space with a non-profit.

Her business is bringing in six figures each month. “I never thought this was possible in my LIFE! I didn’t even think six figures in a YEAR was achievable!”

Okay, so I have to go on a little rant here. A lot of us mompreneurs receive patronizing comments on a regular basis: ‘“Oh honey, your cute little business” - that kind of thing. And it’s so frustrating! All of us are capable of six figure years and more!! We need to ignore the patronizers who think we just have a cute hobby. Our businesses can be so much more than that if we want them to be!

In fact, Saturday Morning Pancakes is already a seven-figure company! (That’s still a goal of ours here at Brilliant Business Moms!) When Jamie hit a million in sales for the year, she was so in the grind trying to make sure everything was working, that she almost missed the milestone! (It happened in March of this year!)

Once she realized that her company had surpassed seven figures, she and her husband did have a celebratory beer on the couch, and kept on working hard. “I would say to myself, ‘It’s working! It’s working! I hope it keeps working!’ I kept thinking I would wake up one morning and the ads would suddenly not work.”

So far, Jamie’s business just keeps on growing, and now, she’s got a huge base of happy customers who will continue to come back and buy from her again and again!

So you ladies might freak when you hear how much Jamie is spending on ads, but stick with us to hear her ROI!

Jamie determines how much to put into a given ad set (a particular audience that she’s showing a particular ad to) based on whether she’s getting sales for $6 or less from that ad set. If a couple of days go by and Jamie’s cost per sale is much higher than $6, she’ll turn off that ad set.

And if she’s getting sales conversions for as little as $1 to $2 each, she will scale those ads aggressively!

At first, Jamie started with ads for 2 t-shirt designs, and tested 5 different audiences per shirt. These days, she’ll often have 7 different ads going to 7-10 ad sets (audiences) inside each campaign.

Jamie never caps her budget. If your ads are doing well, and earning you profitable sales, don’t limit your success by capping!

Early on Jamie and her husband DID experience some moments of panic: “Oh my gosh! We’re spending $500 a day on ads!”

In March, when they hit 7 figures, they probably spent $1,000 a day - and made $5,000 or more back in sales on that same day.

Again, she always bases her spend off of her conversion metric:  $6 sales conversions or less = scale up baby!

You might have some growing pains at first, but if you’re making profitable sales and can fill your orders, keep scaling! Hint: This is EXACTLY how we do things here at Brilliant Business Moms too, and I never would have hit six figures so quickly without this strategy!

(And, yes, Jamie checks on her ads at least 3 times a day to make sure they’re still profitable :)

Since Jamie is earning such a great profit from her ads already, one day of having a loss with her ads would be a bummer, but it wouldn’t end her business or anything!

And of course, Jamie has setbacks or days when the ads perform less well than others.

Jamie told me about the time when she meant to increase an ad set budget to $50 a day, but accidentally changed it to $5,000 per day! She didn’t catch the mistake for almost 3 hours!!! Eeek!!!

Sales went through the roof, but she DOES NOT recommend this method! Her cost per sales  conversion was $30 each, so Jamie was losing a bit of money on each sale. Thankfully she caught her mistake quickly enough and didn’t spend the entire $5,000! It was more like $300, with some sales thrown in to recoup most of those costs.

Jamie’s story totally cracks me up, because it sounds like something I would do! We all have goof-ups, but usually they’re just opportunities for growth and knowing what not to do next time :)

It’s easy to spend $1,000 a day when you’re getting profitable sales. In Jamie’s case, if she’s spent $30,000 on ads in a month, she’s made about $100,000 in sales that month - or more! Jamie says she’s getting back 3x her Facebook ad investment.

If for every dollar I give Facebook they give me back three or four dollars in return? Well, I’ll keep giving them dollars all day long!

Cause here’s the thing:  You can decide not to spend money on ads and work your buns off to earn $10,000 month all on your own. And I know you can do it!  

But think about all the extra cash Jamie gets in the door from ads. She’s working the same amount as that solopreneur bringing in $10,000/month, but in Jamie’s case, she’s bringing in $70,000/month after she accounts for her ad spend. Even if you then factor in her growing team and say, half of those profits go to expenses, Jamie’s still coming out way ahead at $35,000/month in her pocket.  (This is just a general example for you to see why ads can be amazing for your business!)

“It felt like magic,” Jamie said.

Scaling Facebook ads for massive sales can be easy when you have a great product and you know your target market really well. And the more ads you run, the better you get at knowing what your customers will respond to!

Most of Jamie’s campaigns are optimized for conversions and then she chooses the purchase event. Facebook is so good at optimizing whatever action you tell them to!

I’ve started optimizing for purchases with my $15 mini classes. I can show my ads to a cold audience, get super affordable purchases, and get a 2-3x ROI on my ad spend.

And here’s a quick tip! Facebook has a neat resource called Facebook Blueprint. Sometimes they’ll do mini classes to help your ads experience. The teaching style is a bit robotic, but sometimes the instructors will totally nerd out and give you insider info!

This is a recent tip I learned inside a Facebook Blueprint class:  People who are strong clickers are different than strong converters.

Some people assume a traffic campaign will be enough -- just to get clicks and eyes on their site. But there’s way more competition for those clickers. And the clickers aren’t necessarily the same people who will convert into a customer. Just something to keep in mind as you run ads.

So what did Jamie’s first ad look like and how did it do?

Her first ad was...also her worst ad! The very first ad Jamie ran was a promo saying they hit 10,000 followers on Instagram. She had 30 Facebook followers at the time. Needless to say, the results weren’t great!

After taking our course, Jamie’s first ‘real’ ad was for one of her adult tee shirts that read ‘But First Gangsta Rap’ with a selfie of her wearing it. She was targeting cold audiences as she hadn’t quite figured out lookalike audiences just yet. But her sales were profitable!

Jamie says she tried targeting from every angle to narrow in on her ideal customers, and probably 90% of the audiences she tested were not successful, but the 10% that were she threw everything at them and made massive sales!

Jamie’s purchase pixel was already in place to track those sales and measure exactly how much it was costing her per sale for a given audience she was targeting.

Some of Jamie’s audiences convert immediately, low and quickly. Those are the ones she pushes money towards. Some audiences have no sales for 3 days, but all of a sudden they take off like wildfire.

Jamie gives each ad set about 3 days at $5 a day before calling it quits. And if she has a gut feeling to push one audience a bit further, she’ll go with it! The more you run ads, the more you’ll get a feel for what’s worth hanging onto and what you can stop on day 1 because you just KNOW it’s not going to work out!

Jamie can describe her results best by growth.

She started advertising after finishing FB Brilliance in August. She experienced an immediate growth in sales of 500%. It was fast! And she instantly became a crazy person with Facebook ads. She really wanted to push things off the ground. She was researching audiences and checking her ads every 6 hours.

“You can’t give up right away if it doesn’t go well,” Jamie cautions. She went through about 20 audiences before one worked. But once it worked, it REALLY WORKED.

I still remember Jamie emailing me at the end of last August telling me about her month of 17k in sales! Things took off for her really quickly because she was constantly testing and tweaking her ads strategy!

The selfie with her tee shirt was her only ad she was running at the time, but then she created ads for her ‘Regulators’ kid tee. Facebook tends to like women’s shirts better than their kids’ shirts, which is interesting!

I see Jamie’s ads in my Instagram feed all the time! I’m someone who sees a product I love, and I will buy it right away! Way to go Facebook, very smart with the targeting ;)

The Facebook pixel is seriously awesome, you guys. They will go out and find people who will give you sales at the most affordable rate!

Delving into Lookalike audiences really blew Jamie away. She did a lookalike audience based on her website visitors at first. Then she created an audience based on people who watched a marketing video SMP produced. Jamie has created lookalikes of people who have visited certain pages on her website, and a lookalike of her customers. You can get really deep with it! It’s amazing what Facebook can do!

I, Beth Anne, am currently running ads to build my email list. Let me give you an idea of how many lookalike audiences I’m leveraging:

• I have a lookalike of everyone on my email list
• I have lookalikes of people who have visited certain blog posts
• I have a value-based lookalike (which is a new feature Facebook rolled out where they take all your customer data and try to find people who will spend the most with you!)
• I have general customer lookalikes
• I have lookalikes of webinar signups

You can do so many things with lookalikes, and the coolest part is, no one else’s lookalike will be just like yours - so you’ve got all these killer audiences of millions of people that only you can really target to! (Ok not exactly but… you won’t be competing person-for-person the way you would with an interest-based  audience!)

Cold traffic sometimes will perform better than lookalikes for Jamie! If the shirt she’s advertising has been around a while, then cold traffic audiences are better. If it’s a new shirt she’s introducing to her audience, lookalikes or retargeting ads are best.

One caveat:  sometimes Jamie finds that her ads will suddenly stop performing. What she’ll have to do then is change up a new picture and post text for the same shirt, reset the ad, and the sales turn back on. This is all part of being a savvy business owner!

Let’s have a look at some of the best ads Jamie has run.

The first ‘But First Gangster Rap’ Tee, featuring her daughter’s preschool teacher!

Image: Selfie type of photo that moms relate to. It’s totally cool, casual mom style!

Copy: Coffee is great, but for reals, though. Nothing gets our day started quite like a little Biggie Smalls, am I right?

Get free shipping with promo code → GRFreeShip

Grab yours here -> Bitly Link

I love how conversational, casual, and fun Jamie’s ad is! This is how you would share about t-shirt you really like with a friend. That’s why it resonates so much with people.

Jamie says she doesn’t want her company to feel like a big name brand.

Saturday Morning Pancakes include gifs and memes in all of her emails. Jamie responds best when she can laugh with someone and, let’s be honest, who doesn’t!?

Copy: First Gansta Rap. Then Coffee. Then I do the things. Grab this super soft gangster rap tee and turn your cold, cozy mornings into hip hop awesomeness.

Get your free shipping code here → GRFreeShip

And if you remember back to Melissa Kaiserman’s episode, she also said her customers don’t often use her free shipping codes! They just love the product!  It’s nice to include coupon codes, but don’t be surprised if most of your new customers don’t use them!

Jamie charges $31 for an adult tee and $21 for her kids sizes. So again, people aren’t coming to her for cheap tees, but they are coming to her for these hilarious and fabulous products that tell the world what they’re all about!

Another factor in pricing the tees is that they’re sourced with high quality fabric, which makes her costs higher.

Don’t be afraid to charge what you’re worth, and of course, leave enough wiggle room so you can afford to pay to acquire a new customer.  THAT’S how you scale up a business!

Does Jamie screenprint her own shirts? SMP does work with a screenprinter now, due to the quantity. There’s just too many to do on her own! But Jamie does still screenprint a few of her shirts.

During Christmas of 2016, Jamie was still screenprinting 60% of her tees, and her heating element went out! She was desperate for a solution, and even tried baking her tees in her oven! Jamie says she was desperate to make things work and not keep her customers waiting!

This ad is a flat lay of a t-shirt that says ‘You're The Wu To my Tang’ with a cute pair of sunglasses and cut-off jean shorts.

Copy: GREAT NEWS! We are now offering our Wu Tang tees in another color! Woot woot for Wu Tang!

Grab yours here: (bitly link to the shop page)

Get 10% OFF with the code WuTang.

(And shocker again! Not a lot of people are using the 10% off coupon!)

Jamie has a great product that appeals to a specific niche. She’s always testing marketing.

What else is working for her right now?

“Build a community! People know when they're being sold to,” Jamie says. “I love my customers, and I’m sure we’d all be best friends if we had the chance!”

I know just like Jamie, you and your customers are passionate about all the same things. You all have a story. Jamie has extended her branding and connection to her customers all the way down to the packaging of her products! Everything she does is light and fun!

If you’re just trying to make a quick buck, people will know. Your business should be community-oriented.

Jamie says she’s always had a strong, loyal customer base. About 70% of her customers are new this year because she’s just growing like crazy. But once she earns a customer, they ARE repurchasing!

This is why even if you can just break even on ads but get a bunch of loyal customers for years to come, it's worth it!

You’ll have to listen for this adorable burn from Jamie’s 4-year-old daughter! I was cracking up!

Was that not incredible hearing from Jamie!?

Here’s the exciting news: If you’re ready to dig into Facebook and Instagram just like Jamie did and explode your business growth, I’m opening the doors to my course on Facebook advertising, FB Brilliance, this month!

The doors will open Thursday, September 21st and they will ONLY be open for a week. I will close the doors Wednesday, September 27th - and that’s it, friends!

I won’t re-open the course til next April.

But I don’t want you to wait 7 months to learn a strategy that will get you the biggest bang for your buck and help you scale your business like Jamie did.

In the meantime, I’m running a scholarship program from Tuesday, September 12th - Saturday, September 16th. This scholarship will be hosted inside my new Facebook group FB Ads For Brilliant Mamas.

Five motivated ladies who submit their answers to all 5 assignments I give during my lessons will receive lifetime access to FB Brilliance, for free!

You want to be in this group, and you WANT to be eligible for this scholarship by completing our totally doable assignments.

And if you’re not sure about FB Brilliance, you still want to be in the group because you’ll learn a lot from my live sessions! (Jamie is also going to make a surprise appearance in the group towards the end of September!) Don’t hold yourself back! I know you can do it!

Even if you have doubts that you can succeed, we will all be there to rally around you and help!

And you can still grab our cheat sheet, 10 Things You Need to Know Before You Run Your First Ad right here: brilliantbusinessmoms.com/facebookadscheatsheet

SaturdayMorningPancakes.com

As I’m sure you’ve noticed, we’ve been talking all about Facebook ads and their potential to help you grow your business this month on the podcast. If there’s anything I’m ridiculously passionate about, it’s using Facebook ads to explode your business growth. I’m on a mission to help as many brilliant mamas realize their potential as possible!

I’ve got another amazing case study for you today from LJ Johnson. What I love about her story is that a year ago she didn’t even have a website!  She just had an idea in her head. She was passionate about planning trips to Disney on a budget and wanted to help other moms do the same.

In January of 2017 LJ started her website, Smart Moms Plan Disney, and in March she launched her first product with a presale. LJ has done more than $30,000 in eBook sales since then. I think that’s pretty crazy for someone who didn’t even have a website a year ago!

It’s not often you’ll find someone who starts a blog, and less than six months later brings in five-figure sales stats, but that’s the power of Facebook ads! You can really amplify your business growth.

If you’re out there just thinking about a business idea, I think you’ll be completely inspired by LJ’s story. You’ll feel empowered that you can do this, too!

Exciting News!

The other thing I wanted to mention is that LJ talks about going through my Scholarship Program for FB Brilliance. And I wanted to let you know I’m hosting the Scholarship Program again this year! 5 brilliant, amazing ladies will get to enroll in FB Brilliance for free.

And I’m not talking limited access or limited stuff. Nope, they get the whole sh’bang! They get lifetime access to the course + all updates. Access to my weekly coaching calls that happen for the first 8 weeks of the program. Access to the private Facebook group to connect with other amazing Mamapreneurs. Access to my mastermind pairing bonus (yep… everyone will get matched up into an 8-person mastermind this year!). My scholarship students get everything!

To be considered for a scholarship, make sure you request to join my private Facebook Group right here. Every day, for 5 days in a row (from September 12-16th) I’ll share a lesson. At the end of the lesson, there will be a simple assignment.  Each woman who completes all 5 assignments will be considered for the scholarship. We will pick those 5 winners based on who has done the best job on each assignment. Plus, each lesson and assignment will set you up to be more successful with your own Facebook ads, so it’s a win-win!

Last year we had 3 winners. These ladies have been totally motivated, and totally rocking and rolling in their businesses. I loved having the chance to gift this course!

(Something else fun...and I don’t even know if I should mention this! But I actually gave everyone who submitted a scholarship application a special discount code for FB Brilliance last year! So if you’re on the fence, you should give the Scholarship Program a shot! It’ll give you a sense of my teaching style and steps you can take to set you up for success.)

Ladies, I just can't wait to see you in those lessons!

And one more note before we get into the interview. I wanted to say that LJ gives FB Brilliance a pretty rave review. That is totally unsolicited! She just started sharing how much she loves FB Brilliance and how it’s changed her business. I just want you to know I did not try to pull that out of her! She just started sharing, which was so, so sweet. I love that she’s enjoyed the course so much. And I honestly think you will, too. Make sure you’re on our list so you get all the updates about FB Brilliance!

LJ Johnson is the founder of SmartMomsPlanDisney.com. She lives in Kentucky with her husband and 4 kids. Her business is not even 1 year old yet, and she’s already done amazing things!

I am just so excited at how she’s grown a blog and created a product from scratch this year and you won't believe her sales numbers for that brand new eBook!

LJ achieved her insane growth primarily using Facebook ads and I can't wait for you to hear her story.

LJ’s business idea was brewing for a while. She knew she wanted to do something Disney-related because her knowledge around doing Disney on a budget was seriously ridiculous! (As in, she and her family had been going to Disney every month, and sometimes twice a month for several years!) LJ was eager to bring friends along for the ride.

She discovered Brilliant Business Moms in the Fall of 2016 -- the last time the doors to FB Brilliance were open. In fact, she stumbled upon our 5-Day scholarship program ON Day 5! She watched the entire series after the fact, but almost wrote the scholarship off as she didn’t think she would have time to complete the assignment.

LJ’s super amazing husband agreed to wrangle their kids for two days while she worked through the assignments so she could be considered for a scholarship.

And that was literally the beginning of her business! When we asked you all to start a business Facebook page so you could run ads, that was the moment LJ had to think of a name for her business!

“My business was born in FB Brilliance,” LJ says.

Those initial business tasks took LJ until the first of the year, which is when she officially launched her business.

At first, she was considering becoming a Disney travel agent, but it wasn’t a great fit for her passions. LJ felt the real pressure to make a profit, especially since she was spending a lot of her own money on Facebook ads to build her email list.

The idea of writing an eBook came to her in March of 2017. She realized that two of her areas of expertise were managing money and going to Disney World, and her ebook was born: Disney World Within Reach: Meeting The Mouse Without Breaking the Bank.

This book was the answer to a question LJ has received hundreds of times: “How do you afford to go to Disney?” LJ always thought she was giving common sense answers, but as we business owners have to remember, what comes naturally to us doesn’t come naturally to everyone else!

Disney has improved LJ’s life in so many ways, from getting her finances in line (her family was almost a quarter of a million in debt!) to learning how to make the most of time with her family.

Through our emails, I recommended my sister-in-law Abby’s Book Boss* resource to LJ. In that course, Abby shares her own eBook launch strategies - such as offering presales and working with affiliates - which LJ took to heart.

By creating a product that really helps people and following solid marketing advice, LJ has more than earned back every cent she has invested into her Facebook ads. During just her week of presales, she sold over $11K worth of ebooks! And that was just presales! Those customers hadn’t actually received the final product yet!

Within two and a half months of the book going live, LJ made $35K in sales. LJ says she is reinvesting a lot back into her new company, but the income has already outpaced the real estate company she already has!

In February, LJ started a Facebook group, which really works well for her niche. Fans were posting to LJ’s business page asking their Disney planning questions, and LJ was eager to answer them...but she felt uncomfortable answering personal questions in a public place. She had the idea to start a private Facebook group where moms could ask their questions, and it worked well.

Facebook did a great job of matching up the perfect members to join Smart Moms Planning Disney. By the time the book pre-sale started, LJ had about 5,000 members in her group, with tons of engagement!

LJ told her group an ebook was coming the moment she started writing it! And it worked out great since she got tons of amazing feedback during the writing process. (People were even begging her to finish the book as quickly as possible!)

Once LJ was ready to warm up buyers, she introduced the book price at $50. She knew most moms might find $50 for an ebook too much to pay, but she wanted to establish that value in their minds. Plus, when she announced the presale price of $35, everyone was super excited for the deal and eager to buy!

LJ’s goal was to sell $3,500 total, but she made that amount in the first day! LJ credits all of her success to the working of God.

Of course, Facebook is LJ’s #1 tool. She says she never would have connected to her audience without it.

Another tool LJ loves is SamCart. This app makes it easy to offer customers other products you have for sale. And in fact, it motived LJ to diversify her product offerings and create several packages for customers to choose from.

SamCart includes training that suggests using ScreenFlow or PowerPoint Mac to create a slideshow pitching your products and how they work together. She also purchased a quality microphone to record her voice overs.

LJ invested $1,000 to use SamCart for a year, but it paid for itself on her first day of sales.

LJ ran her first Facebook ad on Christmas Day, but there was a MAJOR glitch. A friend sent her a screenshot which showed that LJ’s landing page was completely messed up and looked awful! Still, those leads were coming in at $2.20 each, which is pretty great considering her error-filled page. LJ quickly turned off the ad and did some troubleshooting. Once she was back online, she started getting leads for as low as $0.15 a day!

LJ watched our FB Brilliance course in bits and pieces. But whenever she would hit a dry spot or snag with her ads, she picked back up and watched the next module - which usually solved her problem.

Due to her background in real estate, LJ is comfortable with the idea of investing money in order to grow. She was okay to spend money up front (about $2,000 a month for a few months) to build up her email list so they would be ready to buy when the time came.

Once LJ started writing her book, she backed off Facebook ads and let the momentum organically continue. These days, she is spending about $200 a month on targeted ads.

LJ’s most successful Facebook ad is her simplest.

She tells the story of how her first Disney trip was a total disaster! But she came back home, learned more, and tried again. The second trip was a huge success!

Then she directs visitors to her free cheat sheet on a carefully designed landing page.

This simple ad is her highest clicked link of all! Despite the fact that she’s really pushing other ads to evergreen blog posts.

From the investment she’s put into Facebook ads, LJ already has 10,000 subscribers on her list. That kind of growth is incredible for such a new business!

And the proof is in the pudding that LJ’s sales funnel is on point. In fact, she has a recent example of one customer completing her entire sales funnel in the course of a one day! The customer:

• Signed up for her free cheat sheet
• Clicked immediately on the delivery email and joined her Facebook group
• Began engaging with the group, and clicked over to LJ’s popular blog posts
• While reading her blog, the customer requested LJ’s first ebook chapter for free
• And by the end of the day, had purchased LJ’s $50 eBook!

Since things are going so well, I have a new experiment for LJ to try:  Retargeting ads for the people who ended up on her product landing page but didn't end up buying. She could offer a special bonus or $5 off coupon, or even a customer testimonial ad to recapture those visitors and get the sale.

At this point, LJ says she can’t handle more sales. (And I know that’s a great problem to have!) Currently, about 6 out of 10 orders are digital, but taking care of the printing for those few physical orders is a lot. LJ is interested in assembling a team at some point to help her grow.

So let’s dig into LJ’s ad. It’s so well done!

Copy: I know you barely have a second here between taking care of your kids and career. In fact, you’re so busy you don’t think you have time to plan a vacation this year. But you know your kids are only the perfect age for that Disney World magic for so long before the time passes you by.

I’m LJ and I understand exactly how you feel.

But to be honest, my first trip to Disney wasn’t all that magical. I was so busy, I just showed up in line and stood all day. I had no plans, no reservations, and no idea where anything was. We stood in the heat all day and did very little.

I didn’t go back for 3 years.

But when Baby #2 started walking, I wanted to go back again.

And this time I wanted to be prepared.

An obsession was born.

I now look back on that next trip with such fondness and feelings of joy. I wouldn’t trade those magical memories of my kids and husband for a million dollars.

Since then, I’ve gone to Disney over 20 times. I spent over 100 days at Disney World in the last 2 years. I’ve taken not only my four kids but also people of every age from newborn to school age to grandparents! I’ve stayed at almost every Disney resort, rode every ride, seen most every show, ate at so many of the restaurants.

And I’ve started this blog to help other working moms find the magic I found at Disney World. I’ll make it easy for you to plan your trip because I don’t want you to end up like me during my first trip! I even have a free cheat sheet that will give you all the important steps to plan your trip.

Click here to sign up and grab my free Disney World Planning Cheat Sheet. → bit.;y/WDWFreeCheatSheet

Photo: It’s a fun flat lay, desktop shot. And she has snapshots of Disney World overlaid on the desk, as well as a checklist.

Headline: Disney World? You CAN go this year.

Tagline: Disney World:  Make the Magic Happen in 2017

This ad has so many shares and views, it’s really perfect!

You guys, this is why moms business are going to take over the world!  Moms love supporting other moms, and telling other moms about the awesome things they find! And, moms listen to each other. I just love this energy!

LJ is also passionate about moms having an outlet, and being able to earn an income from home.

(Audio abruptly cuts here due to some technical difficulties we had, bear with us!)

We see that LJ has an ‘Ear Hat Ad Set’ that is marketed directly to travel agents for them to be affiliates of her book. Pretty smart!

Copy: You’re the expert. Your client is looking to you to provide assistance to make their trip to Disney World as magical as possible. They want you to tell them where to eat, where to stay, what they should fast pass, and how to save money.

If you’re like most people, you probably value a great recommendation. When someone tells you about a product that makes your life better, you’re grateful to that person and you’ll go out of your way to help them in the future.

The word for this is loyalty.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could make a great recommendation and earn your client’s loyalty for years to come?

And it would be even better if you got paid to make that recommendation!

If this sounds intriguing, click here to check it out the program.

And the link goes to a smart landing page explaining the affiliate program for LJ’s book.

What I also love about this is that LJ let her ad do the work of narrowing down her target market. A lot of newbie advertisers try to perfectly pinpoint their audience on Facebook, only to get frustrated that Facebook doesn’t have that exact audience at their disposal.

But the thing is, it doesn’t cost a lot for Facebook to show your ad around. Let the very clear message in your ad copy, image, and headline do the narrowing for you. It’s totally okay if thousands of people pass you up on your offer, as long as a few of the right people see it and respond. That’s the power of Facebook!

A lot of people think that Facebook ads are only for huge businesses, but I’m here to tell every Brilliant Business Mom that ads are doable for any business of any size!

You don’t even have to run your ads every day to see great results. You can have a successful campaign for $50 a month, get new people in your funnel for about 10 Days, turn off your ad, nurture them, measure your results, then tweak from there!

When LJ started her real estate company a few years ago, at the time she was really nervous about investing! “Am I really going to spend all this money? I might never get it back!” And thinking about FB Brilliance, LJ says if anyone is on the fence she can attest that the course is a great investment.

She says, “This course had everything I needed in it. You gave me the direction for me to head in.”

(That is SO sweet and kind. Thank you, LJ! And our interview ends really abruptly here due to technical issues. But stay tuned! We’ve got great things ahead.)

Did this interview leave you just itching to test Facebook ads?? We have a cheat sheet you can grab before you do: 10 Things You Need to Know Before You Run Your First Ad.

It'll save you time, tears, and money!

Whew! That was so fun talking to LJ! One thing I wanted to mention, there were a few awkward starts and stops to the interview,  and you might have heard baby squeaks in the background. That’s because I was holding Levi while recording, and his schedule was a bit different than mine :)  We did have to cut this interview short, and didn’t get a chance to hop back on due to scheduling, but I did want to share LJ’s story!

Her success is absolutely crazy.

And one thing I wanted to point out is that LJ is not afraid to invest funds up front in her business to get results. You can absolutely do Facebook ads on a budget. But LJ did scale more quickly to see bigger results more quickly.

As LJ shared, she comes from a real estate investing background. And in real estate, you’re often putting up large sums of money before seeing a return. And honestly, that’s how a lot of business growth works.

We’re almost spoiled to think we don’t have to spend anything and can just start a profitable business from thin air. Yes, we live in an amazing time where we can set up shop on the internet instead of having the huge overhead involved in a storefront or physical place of business. But that doesn't mean starting an online business will be free.

There is always a cost to growing your business. The question you have to decide is what expense do you want to trade in: dollars or hours?

There isn’t a right or wrong answer. But if you’re ready to trade dollars for quicker growth, I think you’ll love FB Brilliance!

Erin Odom blogs at TheHumbledHomemaker.com. She’s wife to Will and Mommy to a lovely trio of redheaded girls and one sweet baby boy (yay! another boy mom!). Erin says she’s a recovering overwhelmed homemaker, and she writes about motherhood, homemaking, healthy living, and family finances. Her debut book, More than Just Making It: Hope for the Heart of the Financially Frustrated, is coming out on September 5th. I just have so much praise for her book! I’m so excited for Erin and delighted to have her as my guest today. Welcome to the show, Erin!

When Erin’s family was living the difficult story she recounts in her book, she would think to herself, “God is teaching me so much. What good will come from this? If I ever make it through this time, I want to do all I can to shatter the shame and stigma of the poor.”  But she never envisioned she would write a full book, and with a major publisher!

Erin was raised in upper-class middle America, went to private school, and received a college education. Yet her book opens with Erin walking into the Department of Social Services to apply for food stamps. Like many of us would be, Erin was embarrassed and shocked to have found herself in that position. In fact, she says her pride was so strong that initially, she thought she would write an expose on government aid and how broken the system was! Erin’s story is one of being humbled over and over again.

Her book formally began when an agent, actually through Facebook, reached out to her. Her agent told her three things were needed to publish a book:

1. Be Able to Write
2. Have A Platform
3. Have a Story That Meets A Heartfelt Need

Erin had several long phone conversations with her agent about her life, what she’d learned, and ideas she had, but things kept coming back to this low point in her life. While going through this time she would think, “We are just barely making it,” but at some point the tables began to turn and she started saying, “Okay, we can be more than just making it.”

Book writing can be more rigorous and drawn out than you might think! Erin signed with her agent in January 2014. She took two years to write book proposals due to other professional projects. Her book was finally written in 2016, and is now getting published in late 2017.

Thanks to the time between the actual living through these events and the writing of her book, Erin had already processed much of the emotions bound up in her story. She had shared bits and pieces of the story to real life friends and blog readers, and already faced much of that shame and privilege in the eye.

Erin is also wisely looking ahead and anticipating critics. Especially due to the controversial nature of a few, main topics in her book - like government assistance - she knows there will be people who disagree. Erin says she’s at peace with that now, but also won’t be surprised if she sheds strong emotions when that first negative review comes! But even still, she says she couldn’t NOT have written her story.

Especially for other Christians, Erin’s chief advice is to pray about the decision. Her book couldn’t have been written without lots of prayer!

Also, she suggests doing a ton of research on your topic. Erin had her own story, but also she needed to research the facts to help her gain objectivity.

Whatever book or business you want to produce, you’ll be influenced by what you read and listen to during the process. A couple of books in particular were foundational to Erin’s writing process during the proposal phase. She was very drawn to books which read like fiction, even if they weren’t!

Bonnie Gray’s Finding Spiritual Whitespace was one such book on Erin’s list. Gray did offer practical tips on how to find whitespace, which was helpful to Erin in a time of entrepreneurial burnout, but her book was framed in memoir. Erin really loved that feeling!

Emily T. Wierenga’s Atlas Girl, was another title that gripped Erin’s attention. Wierenga’s book didn’t have a practical element, but she does chronicle her time moving around the world, alongside the story of her mother having a terminal illness.

Erin took this inspiration and thought, “if I want to write a book geared toward financial practicality, I don’t want it to be dry and boring.” She wanted her book to take her readers into the story. Erin wants people to feel that space with her, and evoke their empathy. “The way we evoke empathy for other people's stories is by sharing our stories.”

Writing this book wasn’t easy, even having always loved writing and majoring in Journalism! Erin says she thought it would be much easier to write her book than it was. Around 2015 she was in entrepreneurial burnout mode, and simply longed to write. As her blog became a business, she got farther away from those writing roots and wanted to get back. Since this was her heart, she thought book writing would be easier....but it was MUCH harder!

The memoir was emotionally difficult to write. There were many layers of her financial situation, and painful realities to walk through - some of those stories made it into the book and some didn’t.

But writing the practical part? Well, Erin confesses that it was kind of boring to write! (We’re all business moms, aren’t we? We can admit there are boring parts to business, right!?)

Primarily, Erin wondered if readers would even be helped by her tips! She didn’t want to write a book that only gave people the warm fuzzies, she wanted to write a book that gave steps to life change. (Phew! Erin placed a tall order on herself with this book… but I think she totally delivered!)

It’s tempting to think that everyone already knows the things we do. When Erin was writing the book, she incorporated many tips her parents instilled in her. Both Erin’s parents grew up in large families with not a lot of extras; and though her own father had a great job, frugal living was the norm.

She realized in the moment that God prepared her for her lean years since she was a girl. And Erin realized while writing the book that not everyone grew up in a family that was super frugal like hers was. (What’s common sense to us is often knowledge that others need to learn about!)

If Erin could tell a mom feeling financially frustrated just one thing it would be, “There is always hope.” Of course, she can’t predict levels of financial success, but she can say, “Wherever you are doesn’t mean you’ll be there the rest of your life.”

In any trial, it’s easy to think the trial will go on in the same way forever. Erin says, “Especially if you are listening to Brilliant Business Moms and you’re an entrepreneur, trying to make a business for your family, you’ve already taken a big step!”

One major issue the Odoms discovered is that they had an income problem. A key component of her book is to identify that if you’re financially frustrated, you may have either an income problem or a spending problem. Once you know the root cause, you can find a solution.

“If you have a small biz or are planning on starting one, you are steps beyond what many are,” Erin says.

The Humbled Homemaker (Erin’s successful blog) launched in 2011 and it was on a bit of a whim. She was freelancing for newspapers, and one of her editors told her, “Erin, there are moms making an income from home with their blogs.”

The idea was certainly intriguing to her!

At first, Erin had absolutely no money to invest into a business. There are lots of ways to start a blog or business by investing money up front, and you usually do get quicker returns. But Erin didn’t even have $10.00 for a website domain. Her first domain literally was thehumbledhomemaker.blogspot.com. Back then, as is true now, you couldn’t monetize a wordpress.com site but you could monetize blogspot.com domains.

Erin’s blog was completely DIY’ed. Though one crucial step was Erin getting into a mastermind group from the beginning. The group provided her tons of resources, one of which included a friend who was eager to design her site!

It was about 2 years before Erin was making more money online than her husband made as a teacher, and it was 3 before she was making a very good income from her blog.

Erin and her husband Will thought a LOT about whether or not  he should quit his job. In 2014, he went down to teaching 4 days a week, and in December 2016, he totally quit his job as a teacher

One reason her husband didn’t make the leap to quit his job was because they weren’t sure if their marriage would survive working together!! It’s a joke, but with a bit of truth to it! The first 6 weeks of working together in early 2017 went really well...and then their 4th baby was born!

As with most newborns, a family adjustment was required. But 8 months in, Erin says it’s gotten better as time has gone on.

Blogging as a business isn’t easy, and comes with lots of work. (Pssst. Another venture Erin had a big hand in was starting the Ultimate Homemaking Bundle with Stephanie Langford!)

With all of these activities spinning at once, when Erin’s agent signed her, she was in a stage of burnout. But thankfully her agent did not pressure her to write a book proposal right away. (And it is highly unusual for an agent to not put pressure on writing a book proposal!)

Some authors will receive a launch budget from their publisher, but not most! You have to do a LOT of marketing yourself, even with a traditional publisher. Erin did receive a marketing budget but is still pouring a lot of her own time and money into the book.

One benefit of a traditional publisher Erin enjoyed is that she didn’t have to hire an editor or designer for her book. The quality of those services was very high caliber.

Receiving a marketing budget depends largely on the publisher and the size of the author’s platform. But even with a marketing budget, Erin says that a publisher would not cover 100% of those expenses. The publisher may have a plan in mind, but the author will lead the way. In fact, some of Erin’s marketing ideas were covered by the publisher, while others were not.

It’s possible to make more money by self-publishing if you know how to market well, so why traditionally publish? Erin says working with people has made it really worthwhile! She loves the accountability, and it fits her personality well to work with a publisher. That’s not to say she would never self-publish another book, but she’s really enjoyed this experience!

Let’s talk about the book money, honey! It is traditional to get paid part of the book’s advance before even writing the book! Erin’s publisher pays the advance in thirds. She got one third when she signed the book deal, the second 3rd upon getting the completed manuscript, and the final third when the book is published.

Other publishers offer 50% upfront, and 50% when book gets published.

Erin’s blog has taken somewhat of a backseat to the book, and so having that advance money is a really nice cushion as the blog is her family’s primary source of income!

Erin already has her 2nd book on contract! It is a gift book that will come out in 2018. (And, yes, Erin wrote 2 books and had a baby in a twelve-month period, which she tells us isn’t necessarily recommended!)

The upcoming book is a gift book, and it’s called ‘You Can Stay Home with Your Kids: 100 Tips, Tricks, and Ways to Make it Work on a Budget’. Actually a team at her publishing house came up with the concept and title, and asked her if she would write it!

Erin was amazed that books go up on Amazon while they’re being written! (Like the book Erin is still writing which will come out in 2018.) Why the early-bird treatment? In the book world, preorders are everything.

I just loved sitting down with Erin and chatting about her story, her incredible book, and her business wisdom. I hope you’ll go grab your copy of More than Just Making It, because I know you’ll find it incredibly encouraging and chock full of practical advice!

You’ll have to tune in to the podcast to hear all about the sweet moments that are happening between Erin’s girls and their new little brother. So much cuteness!

Erin’s New Book: More Than Just Making It

Erin’s Blog: The Humbled Homemaker

Facebook: The Humbled Homemaker

Instagram: @thehumbledhomemaker

00:54 - Getting Started with Pink Lemonade Company

Kellie started toying around with the idea of Pink Lemonade Company in 2009, and it came to fruition in 2011. She was working in a hospital as a respiratory therapist, pulling 12 hour shifts, and never saw her son! “Things had to change,” Kellie said. She was always drawn to graphic design and art, so she pulled a 180 and changed directions.

Kellie knew she wanted to design products and marketing materials for boutique business owners, so Pink Lemonade Company was born.

1:52 - Graphic Design & Online Shop

Pink Lemonade Company’s bread and butter is graphic and web design. In 2013 Kellie’s sister came on board, and now they offer t-shirt screen printing too.

In May, they started a graphics membership site. These days, Kellie’s baby project is that membership site.

2:40 - Getting Her FIrst Clients

When Kellie knew she needed a change, she exchanged her scrubs for school books. She earned her Bachelor’s in Information Technology, and started learning design through Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. Kellie laughs now at that stage in life, “I was either really stupid or gutless , but I just threw myself out there. It started happening!”

Most of her first clients came through Etsy, before she transitioned over to her own website.

4:34 - New Membership Site

We were so curious to hear about Kellie’s new membership site! Kellie says she has been procrastinating on this dream project forever. “It was overwhelming, and I had a lot of fear about it...But you just have to jump for it.” We’re so glad she did! Kellie’s product received instant proof of concept with new members joining quickly.

The Need for a Membership Site:  As a new business owner, Kellie was having trouble getting affordable access to graphics. Many graphics require expensive licenses to use for business purposes and are just out of reach for new business owners.

Thanks to a community of designers who welcomed in Kellie, she saw how great it could be to have open access to any graphic a business owner needed.

With the help of a business friend, her membership site got off the ground. All members of her site get extended commercial license access to ready-made graphics (and social media posts, what!?) There are two plans: All Access ($97/six months) and Digital Box ($9.99/month)

All of the graphics on the site are from Kellie’s own stash.

Kellie is solving a real problem, here! There are only so many extended commercial licenses any business owner can afford! How great that her customers don’t have to worry about seeing those three dreaded words - ‘Personal Use Only’. They can just opt-in to Kellie’s membership site, and use ANY graphic they see that will be PERFECT for their creative projects.

Kellie’s numbers show just how brilliant her idea is. She started her membership site in May 2017 and already, in August of this year, has 325 members. “I had no idea this club would be this big or this fun!”

She marketed the site via her email list and Facebook (Hint: her email list grew through Facebook!) She sees 98% of her traffic come directly from Facebook.

11:25 - Perfecting Your Customer Email Funnel

As a business owner, I’m constantly trying to hone and tweak my email funnel. It’s tricky! I wanted to hear how Kellie nurtures her leads.

Her biggest trick is: test, test, test! She uses short funnels, and longer funnels. Her shorter funnels seem to work better at the moment. And with ever-shrinking attention spans, it makes sense! She’s hit a sweet spot with her shorter funnels.

Kelli’s also seen a big change in that people just seem to want tons of free content. That has been challenging to navigate. But at the same time, she has also seen big changes in businesses wanting to invest more in courses and coaching.

In Kelli’s experience, making those decisions to invest in her business was a turning point. (We have found the same at BBM!) If you’re not growing, have you dug deeper and tried to learn more? If not, you’ll stay stalled!

In 2013 Kelli was at that stall-point. She remembers vividly the feeling of sitting on her back porch and wanting to close up shop. But the business HAD to be a money maker for her family. “I decided to start acting like a business woman and stop treating it like a hobby,” she says. And that can-do attitude made all the difference.

17:20 - To Discount, or Not to Discount?

So at the end of her fabulous email funnels, how does Kelli get the sale? A limited time offer or bonus? Or just straight up pitch her product?

She usually offers a small discount, just to pique interest. Kelli’s finding that balance between valuing your brand (She’s not a Walmart!) and winning the sale. I love our discussion about value versus discounted products. SO many gurus say never discount, because then customers always expect it. But on the other hand, customers really do love a good discount! You’ll have to listen to us talk shop. I love the sweet spot Kelli has found for herself and her customers.

21:23 - Kelli’s Boosted Post

So let’s dig into the ads Kelli ran. First, we’ll look at an ad she ran over the weekend. This ad is unique for two reasons: 1) Kelli doesn’t usually run weekned posts and 2) this ad was a Boosted Post! (I know a lot of you might think I’m against all Boosted Posts always. Not true! I just want business ladies to understand there’s MORE to Facebook advertising than just hitting the blue BOOST button.)

So here’s her ad:

“We love drinking coffee out of our new funky mug, get yours here.”

And in the picture it’ s a cute photo of a coffee mug she designed. Her company has a great Texan vibe. It’s vintage, funky, and fun. Very colorful, but in a muted way. She’s really on brand, and drawing in people with that feel!

She boosted this post for $9.00. And it only cost $0.07 in engagement, to get 137 reactions. And 64 clicks to this $9.00 ad, for $0.14 a click. Kelli was able to track lots of sales and Facebook messages about her product from her ad! Which is great because the main purpose of her boosted post wasn’t even sales, it was market awareness and proof of concept. She wanted to know if the mug would be worth it to develop.

Kelli has a pre-set target group she often uses for ad promotion and will create duplicates or lookalikes of that audience. This particular ad was shown to a lookalike audience, so a cold audience who has had no prior engagement with her brand. These numbers are fabulous!

26:43 - Kelli’s Lookalike Audiences

Let’s dig into Kelli’s lookalike audiences. Which ones look the best? It’s split between a lookalike of her Convertkit list. And she uses the most lookalikes of certain website pages - which makes sense since those people are all interested in a particular topic.

27:17 - Fine Tuning Your Audience Targets

Sometimes ads don’t go quite as well as we hope! I certainly have experienced ads gone bad. (And on that note, one trick I’ve learned over time is to look back to your purchase values. Maybe you’ll have more purchases attributed to that customer you brought in through Facebook ads!)

A particular strategy Kelli uses to nail her perfect audience is just brilliant! Often she will use the same type of ad and freebie, but with different goals for the campaign. One campaign goal might be to get subscribers, one might be conversions, and one might be brand awareness. She wants affordable subscribers, like all of us! And this is a fine way to test out which ones are most affordable.

Kelli admits she doesn’t let her ads run as long as she could. But even so, her freebie ‘10 Ways To use Digital Graphics’ got Pink Lemonade Company 400 new subscribers. Her average cost per subscriber was $0.80 to $1.20 per subscriber. And that’s the power of testing! Try out different ads, different offers, and different audiences.

Amazingly, Kelli has great groups of cold audiences doing really well! She’s keyed into her unique Texan flair, and used that to find people to get her ads in front of. One of her best target audiences is the singer Miranda Lambert! This is so smart, you guys. She also has found success targeting boutiques, like Junk Gypsy Company - which is really popular in Texas.

Business focused sites don’t do as well for Kelli, even though her clients are all business owners. Kelli just knows they’re the people who would follow Miranda Lambert before Marie Forleo!

This is why branding is so important, you guys!

34:40 - Kelli’s Email Signup Ad

So, getting to Kelli’s ad.

Text: “Grab our latest free download, 10 Ways to Use Digital Graphics, here.”

(I love this! Show people how to use your product, and eliminate the barrier to entry. And Kelli has had potential customers tell her, “I love your graphics, but don’t know how to use them.” She also has a course coming, teaching others how to use digital graphics!)

Then a link to her site, and “Includes ways to make money off digital graphics, too!”

Image: Her image shows tons of digital graphic examples. Vintage arrow sign with bulbs on it, and yard flamingos, and an old blue truck.

And this freebie has gotten 400 new subscribers for her in a 14 day range! Such a huge boost for her list. She ran the ad in June, and has seen tons of new members join her membership site. She was maybe spending $10-$15 a day, and securing 1-2 new members to pay $10.00 a month! Kelli does anticipate that Pink Lemonade Company will shift to this membership model in the future as it’s truly where her passion lies.

(And don’t you love that Kelli says her ad spend is on the cheap, but she’s making a profit right away!)

39:40 - Membership Site Launch Plan

Initially, Kelli launched her membership site to her list. Over the course of a year she would offer free graphics here and there every. She thinks her audience became accustomed to, “Hey! She’s got graphics. We’ll stick around!”

To her list of 1,200, Kelli made 90 sales that initial weekend!

She eventually used Facebook ads to launch her membership site, primarily posts for engagement. Even drawing more engagement to your posts means that you can retarget those people later.

And to those of you struggling with self-promotion, Kelli says she pitched her list Friday, Saturday, and Sunday - AND got sales every day! The few unsubscribes didn’t bug her at all. Listen, we KNOW it’s not comfortable to send tons of emails, but even our favorite business gurus do it! Last chance emails are a proven way to get more sales, and if you do get a few unsubscribes due to the volume of mail, Kelli says, “That’s fine! Get off my list.” Be comfortable with your tribe.

46:12 - Some Additional Questions

You’ll have to tune in to hear Kelli answer these final two questions:

• What kinds of things does Kelli test in a new campaign?
• Does a certain type of campaign consistently perform better, or does it vary per promotion?

49:54 - Kelli’s Adorable Mom Moment

Stay In Touch With Kelli

Site: PinkLemonadeCompany.com

Graphic Membership Site: PLC Creative Living
Facebook: Pink Lemonade Company

Shalene Massie is the founder of Rhythm of Birth and Postpartum Journey. She is a doula as well as a birth and postpartum educator.

And, she personally gave me fabulous tips for my own delivery and postpartum time surrounding the birth of my baby boy!

Today we’ll be chatting about how she grew her online business using Facebook ads.

Shalene got started in the birth world when she was living in South Sudan, Africa with her family. She found out she was pregnant and thought, “You know, so many women give birth without the option of medical care. I want to experience birth in a primitive culture.” When she came back to the States, she knew she wanted to hire a doula to assist in her birth.

Living in a new culture also made Shalene want to learn as much about birth as she could. She knew she might be called on if someone was in labor - in South Sudan, it’s all hands on deck - and wanted to be as prepared as possible. Unfortunately, she, her husband, and daughter had to evacuate South Sudan due to warfare. But on the plane back, Shalene knew she could carry that passion with her. She knew it was time to start her doula training.

Shalene’s family moved back to the states in 2012, and she jumped right in. To date she has attended about 114 births and has been teaching for five years.

One of Shalene’s greatest business successes is that from the time she started, she’s been able to stay constantly busy with her in-person doula clients and classes. Her doula training process lasted three years, and after that time she needed to decide how to grow her practice. Shalene was at capacity with her in-person clients, so she turned to the online world.

Shalene says she actually started backwards. Though she teaches birth classes, she started an online postpartum class. There is a huge gap of information related to the postpartum period, and her class grew like wild!

A popular way to use Facebook ads is to get new webinar sign ups, which also builds an email list. Shalene did just that for her postpartum class.

About four to five months ago, she ran Facebook ads to a webinar signup page.

Shalene had a videographer help her create a video ad that she felt was powerful and this really increased the number of people who signed up for her webinar. She was pleased with how the ads were working.

Shalene is a student of our FB Brilliance course, and says she learned a TON of information in that course to guide her ad development and lead generation strategy.

(Side note: Shalene says that since FB Brilliance, she’s become very geeky when she looks at other websites, wondering, “Are they using Facebook pixels!? Are they targeting me?!” You’ll have to listen to this episode for a great business idea Shalene and I cooked up!)

And just a reminder, statistics say only 6% of businesses on Facebook are currently using ads. There’s a huge opportunity out there!

Let’s dive right into Shalene’s ad to see why it was so successful.

Ad Copy: Hello pregnant mama! Join a free, live, postpartum planning webinar.

(She gets right to the point and says ‘this is who I’m talking to’. That’s one thing that’s so important with ads! Talk ONLY to your ideal customer. Ok, back to the ad!)

“In preparing for baby, I spent so much time thinking about the birth that it’s easy to forget about the weeks of change after baby comes home. If you’re expecting, sign up for this webinar pronto! - New Mama” (Confession: that new mama was me!)

In this webinar, you’ll learn 5 ways to begin planning for your postpartum transition and life after your baby is born, a secret myth about postpartum, how to feel at peace and minimize the risk of postpartum depression, and 5 things you’ll be so glad to know postpartum. Plus, get a fun, free gift at the end of the webinar.

If you can’t make the webinar live, sign up to get the reply sent to your inbox.

Click this link to join a tribe of mamas for postpartum planning: (LINK)

(There are so many killer strategies Shalene uses in this ad: bolding important words, incentivizing viewers to stay til the end, and adding a sense of mystery.)

Headline: Free, live postpartum webinar.

And then she has her bit.ly link, and the fabulous video she created along with her videographer.

Shalene has 64 likes, a few hearts, 23 shares, and 8,200 views on this particular video ad.

These stats are really solid! Trust me, even ads I run to 100,000 people don’t always get that amount of sharing!

If you’re outside of the business space, sometimes you really do have an advantage. People don’t share business webinars with their friend! But if they have a pregnant friend, they’ll share a great free class with them in their feed.

Shalene’s video opens up with soft, lovely, music and a full-screen logo for her brand, Postpartum Journey.

She cuts to scenes of women caring for their newborns, and then text throughout, “Anxious about the postpartum transition…and caring for your baby? Feeling overwhelmed? 50%-80% of new mothers experience some form of anxiety or depression during the postpartum period, and many women find it hard to immediately bond and connect with their newborn.”

(That stat REALLY hits the pain point of her ideal customer, doesn’t it!? If someone was on the fence, she’s really reminding them that they need to take time for her class.)

And then we see the face of a new mother against a white background. She says, “You’re stronger than you think you are, and more equipped for this than you realize.”

And another mother saying, “You can do this. You are so much stronger than you realize. And you’re beautiful, too. The beauty comes from that strength.”

Then text on top of a lovely scene of Shalene helping a new mother, “Confidence and guidance in caring for your baby.”

Then cut to a mother giving her new baby a bath with a caption that says, “Peace of mind...” followed by more scenes of mothers and newborns, “as you care for your baby, and enjoy your postpartum experience.”

Then a shot of a hand tracing an outline, “Preparing your heart.”

We see a mother from earlier in the video telling viewers, “Be gentle with yourself.”

Then we see Shalene’s lovely face with these words, “You are beautiful and you are strong.”

Then a text slide outlining the details of Shalene’s class:

• Postpartum Plan
• Nutrition
• Setting Up Nursery
• Baby Basics
• Placenta Encapsulation
• Stories
• Encouragement
• Family Preparation
• Newborn Care Procedures
• Postpartum Depression
• Infant Sleep Consulting
• Healing and Strengthening after Pregnancy
• Babymoon
• Returning to Work

Followed by another text slide which reads, “This program is a great way to begin your preparation and learn ways to practically, emotionally, and mentally to prepare for the postpartum transition.”

Visit courses.postartumjourney.com to register.

WOW!  This is a jam-packed video that really conveys the value of what Shelene offers!

I was so impressed with Shalene’s video, I just had to know how she created it. “It was an exciting endeavour!” she says.

Shalene’s videographer worked for Virginia Tech, and lived close to her. Turns out, his wife was pregnant, so they traded services! He also taught her a lot about video editing, so she had skills she could take with her for future business videos.

Shalene turned to former clients to act as the stars of her video. And we love her strategy for getting the most out of the videos she recorded. During one longer video shoot she recorded a ‘10 Baby Basics’ videos. She ultimately included this content in one of her courses (genius!)

Along with recording the ‘10 Baby Basics’ video, Shalene asked about 10-12 women to come into her makeshift home studio and asked them to record words of validation or encouragement for other mothers.

A few scenes of the mothers giving encouragement, as well as clips from her ‘Baby Basics’ footage, made the final cut for Shalene’s video ad. (And you can bet a beautiful montage of those moms made it into her online course!)

So to recap, Shalene used several brilliant strategies to create her video ad:

• Trading services. This way, everyone can let their skills shine and get what they need - it’s brilliant.
• Thinking ahead to repurposing content. Shalene created course videos by using these generous ladies and their babies, but also took bits and pieces of those videos to create an ad.
• Something we didn’t mention earlier: Shalene got photo and video release forms signed by all participating clients.

I love talking numbers, so let’s get to it. (And if you’re on the fence about video ads, this will be the kicker to convince you!)

Shalene received 354 webinar signups from a cold audience, which means these were brand new people who had never heard of Shalene or her classes before. She got each of those leads for an average cost per lead of $1.38.

These are fabulous stats, guys. And this was the very first ad Shalene ran!

Another thing to point out:  Sometimes the number of leads you get can increase over the following week or so. Even with the campaign off you can get a few more along the way from people sharing the post or tagging their friends. Pretty cool!

Let’s dive into the audiences Shalene targeted for her ads.  

BabyCenter is an app and website for new and expecting parents. Shalene targeted fans and people with an “interest” in this website. Note:  When you target a particular website interest on Facebook, you’re not just reaching everyone who ever liked that Facebook page, Facebook is so genius they’ll be sure to show your ad to people who have also visited that website very recently too.

Other interests Shalene targeted: the book What to Expect When You’re Expecting, and the general interest of ‘Natural Childbirth’.

Another brilliant move by Shalene:  She created a webinar lookalike audience. To quickly define, a webinar lookalike is a Facebook audience created by users who look similar to your webinar attendees. You can create one by uploading your list of webinar signups in the audiences section of Power Editor.

Surprisingly though, Shalene’s webinar lookalike didn’t generate leads! She reached about 663 people but had no signups. Like any smart business owner, Shalene quickly pivoted her strategy, turned off that ad set, and focused on ad sets that were generating affordable leads.

A quick note if you’re discouraged that you don’t have a big enough audience to create an effective lookalike, don’t despair! You can create a strong lookalike audience by creating a lookalike of your customers.

This audience can be small but mighty ecause you already know those people are interested in your products and not just freebie seekers. And chances are, people similar to them will also be interested in purchasing from you too!

Shalene also targeted the online app and community The Bump.

And an especially brilliant ad set that she created with the help of a friend:  Her friend suggested to target people looking at psychological-based material on Facebook, and add in the filter of pregnancy. This is so smart because Shalene’s course is largely geared toward moms wanting to avoid postpartum depression and other psychological complications after birth. Such a smart strategy!

Finally, Shalene created a super broad audience to target of pregnant women. She then narrowed this audience to:

• Women living in the United States
• Ages 24-35
• Who make at least $50K per year

Then Shalene excluded people matching one of the following criteria:

• Already had children
• New parents
• Parents with toddlers
• Parents with preschoolers
• Parents with adult children

She did this to reach women who were expecting a baby for the very first time, but hadn’t had that baby just yet.

Even with this narrowed audience, Shalene’s potential reach was 3.4 million people!

Bottom line, your business shouldn’t have any trouble finding audiences to target! The sky is the limit when it comes to who you can reach on Facebook (and why shouldn’t it be with more than 2 billion active monthly users?!)

As we mentioned previously, Shalene’s lookalike audience did not produce any leads. From the leads she did receive, Shalene paid anywhere from $1.26 per lead at her lowest (from The Bump US ad set) up to $4.66 per lead (from Natural Childbirth General Interest).

This range does have a huge variation, but it’s actually very good! Shalene’s ad and copy are very compelling. It’s easy for a new Facebook advertiser to try 5 different ad sets, but maybe none of them work. And it’s not that the ad itself isn’t good, it’s just that some audiences don’t respond.

One of the biggest factors that will determine your success with Facebook ads is your ability to continue testing new audiences to find the biggest winners!

For future ads, Shalene asked her current clients what top apps or pages they follow, and will target those audiences. SO smart!

Shalene’s ads started on just $5 per day for each ad set. (To refresh:  Each audience she targeted hangs out in its own ad set) and she increased her ad set budget from there as her ads performed well. Once Shalene identified those top ad sets, she came up with a budget that felt comfortable to her and stuck with it.

Drawing in attendees to her webinar through ads worked well, but Shalene learned an important nuance to her ads strategy:  She set her campaign too far in advice for the webinar in hopes of getting more attendees.

Shalene discovered that she needed to narrow the time frame between sign up and webinar. To prove the point, her very first webinar had 100 signups and 20 live viewers. The next webinar, with the longer lead time, had 300 signups but only 10 live viewers.

With a longer time span between signup and webinar date, people were more likely to forget about her class! A valuable lesson learned. Shalene says she’ll only do a 7-10 day window for future webinar ads.

(Just a side note here:  Even a year ago it was easier to get live viewers to my webinars! The online business world is constantly changing and competing for people’s time and attention continues to get more difficult, but being committed to experiment and adjust as needed will help you to succeed.)

While Shalene’s ads were on point, she didn’t see the sales numbers she was hoping for after her webinars. The reason? Her site wasn’t truly optimized for conversions.

Shalene didn’t have a video about her or her courses on any of the pages. So while she got a decent amount of traffic, people didn’t buy because they didn’t know enough about Shalene.

In the last 6 months she’s really taken the lead on strengthening her business in this area! She recorded a ton of sales, welcome, and thank you videos. Now, Shalene’s site is much more inviting to potential customers.

(At BBM, we are constantly tweaking our site and our pre and post webinar sequences. There is so much to that! It’s a conscious and continuous process.)

Simply put, there’s more to the sale than a Facebook ad to get an email subscriber. Of the people who attended Shalene’s webinar, she had a 10% conversion rate. That’s truly a fabulous rate! But now she’s got to work on getting people to show up live and tightening up her site for even more sales.

One of the best decisions Shalene ever made was to hire a nanny. Having a nanny on retainer is THE reason Shalene says she can meet clients during the day, and live an on-call lifestyle.

She used to pray and be on pins and needles that her clients would deliver in the evenings when her husband got home. And now, she doesn’t worry a bit!

Shalene did increase her fees to account for this expense, but she thinks it’s an absolute necessity for Mamapreneurs, particularly if you’re serving clients. Add this expense into your business budget for peace of mind.

I seriously can’t wait to see how Shalene’s next Facebook Ad Campaign goes when she tweaks her entire sales system!

She says she may not use a webinar as a freebie, but has a huge library of resources to offer via Facebook ads. She’s working with a business coach this month to answer those very questions.

We are so excited for Shalene’s testing of sales funnels. (We’re also testing new funnels constantly!) We can’t wait to see how her growth mindset, continuous testing, and heart for pregnant and new Moms helps her to scale her business over the next year!

It means so much to Shalene that her husband and daughters really support what she does. Especially with the crazy, on-call life of a doula. In fact, her family was so supportive they hustled to get her to a Christmas Day birth! You’ll have to tune in to hear how this whirlwind story turns out.

PostpartumJourney.com

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