Brilliant Business Moms with Beth Anne Schwamberger

Goodness! I always feel like I have so much content to teach you all, that I constantly want to do solo episodes. I almost feel greedy to take over the podcast schedule...but not THAT greedy!!!

Let’s get to it!

Listen Now 0:30 - The Struggle We All Face

The constant struggle we all face is getting more sales.Of course we need to make sales (we’re running businesses!) but we don't want to get the sale by being annoying or manipulative.

I often hear Mamapreneurs say, “I’m just not that great at marketing.” or “Selling just isn’t my strong suit.” And they almost use those phrases to excuse away the fact that their product sales just aren’t great.

Here’s the thing.

You don’t have to be great at marketing or selling to see great results!

What I want for you is to create an amazing, fabulous new product. I want you to structure a product launch that makes your audience crazy excited, gets them to show up, and leads them to buy your new product in crazy numbers. And you feel GREAT because you haven’t pressured them, you’ve not once been pushy or manipulative.

But you can only accomplish this goal by having an organized process in place that helps you launch your product well.

2:30 - Big Business Misconception

One of the biggest misconceptions in business is when business owners say, “I’ll create this awesome product. I know my audience wants it.” But they don't follow through to part two. Creating a product is great! But that’s only one part of the equation. You still have to build excitement for that fabulous product and give your potential customers a reason to come and buy NOW.

People will always have a reason to not buy immediately. That won’t help you or your business! And frankly, it won’t help your customers because you’ve got something fabulous for them and they need it in their hands as soon as possible!

In this episode, we’re going to talk about 3 ways you can get your audience excited about your new product.

3:36 - #1 Hint at What’s Coming

The first way you can get people excited about your new product is to hint at what’s coming.

Use the principle of curiosity and pique the interest of your customers. You want people to know you’ve got something secret you’re working on. You’re testing and experimenting behind the scenes, and something exciting is happening. People love that sense of intrigue!

Ways you can do this:

• Share a photo of your computer screen. Maybe you cover most of the screen and show just a glimpse of the landing page you’re working on or your new course.
• Share shots of sketches, or bits of a new material you’re working with.
• Instagram stories are a great way to show behind-the-scenes of your shop.
• Use the P.S. line in your emails to hint at what’s head. (P.S. I’m working on something extra special, more news next month!)
• A fun twist to building curiosity: ask your customers what they think the new product might be!

But the big rule is this: DON’T GIVE THE WHOLE THING AWAY AT ONCE!

Most people spend so much time creating the product, but they put no time or energy into getting people ready to enjoy their product.

You can’t work, work, work, and then - Surprise! - give your audience this product they weren’t ready for. You’re almost catching them off guard.

Use the weeks, or even months, before your product comes out to prep your audience for the excitement ahead.

6:01 - #2 Get Your Audience Involved

You can actually get your audience involved in the creation of your product, and that goes a long way towards building excitement. You want customers to feel like they’ve had a part in creating the product which gives them a sense of pride and ownership in your business.

It might seem counterintuitive to the previous point, but both methods can happen at different stages in your customer journey. And if you time it correctly, your audience may not even remember exactly what you asked their input over by the time you build curiosity about the upcoming launch.

We’ve got several ways for you to get customers involved - and invested - in your product creation:

• Use a free survey tool like Google Forms to run an audience survey. While there are other paid options, like SurveyMonkey, you’ll actually have a good bit of options without spending money.
• A fun way to integrate social media and surveys is to use the app Polls for Pages by Facebook. Just search ‘Polls for Pages’ using the Facebook search bar. You’ll have the ability to ask practically any type of survey question you can think of, powered free of charge to you by Facebook. (Hint: Brilliant Business Moms did this back in June! What we heard from you is that you needed cost-effective tools to help you grow your business. And you needed time effective tools, since you’re busy ladies. In our Polls of Pages survey, we also asked what you wanted to learn about, and the highest voted topic was social media. That’s how we created our latest class, How To Be Brilliant On Social Media! This class was a huge hit because we delivered information our customers directly asked for.)
• When my sister and I wrote our first book, Time Management Mama, we involved the community at every level of development. We constantly asked in our Facebook group for advice and tips from our audience, and we included that collective wisdom in our book. This type of crowdsourcing really got people invested and willing to share with friends
• Another strategy we’ve used is to invite our customers to vote on covers of both our book and yearly planner. Inviting customers to vote on how your product looks is a simple and fun way to include them! You can ask their opinions about anything from covers, to packaging, to style.

11:30 - #3 Give Samples To Loyal Customers and Influencers Ahead of Time

Giving an early look or sample of your product to influencers or loyal customers who always rave about your business is a really smart move.

Oftentimes, you’ll see this happening with book releases. An author almost always sends out advanced release copies of her book to a group of people she knows will post great pictures and honest reviews of the upcoming release. (Which also taps into the building curiosity we talked about in #1!) People want to be in on the secret. You can use this strategy with any physical product, or online course, as well.

13:25 -  Surprise! A 4th Way To Get People Excited!

I know I said I’d give you three ways to launch your product, but I’m so excited I’ve got a fourth! This may seem like a no-brainer, but make your launch date solid, and start mentioning it several weeks ahead of time if you can.

What I often see happen is a business owner gets the first few tips right, they have their product in the hands of influencers and have been hinting at it, but they’ll say things like ‘Coming Soon!’ or ‘Coming Next Month!’ That guesstimate is way less powerful than giving people an actual date.

You want them to put a date on a calendar. Make your launch an event, and get people ready and waiting to grab your new thing! When you open the cart, you want customers who are ready to go and rushing to the page the day your product is live.

And as you can guess, there’s a lot more I can teach on the subject of launches!

15:30 - Introducing Our Newest Mini-Class

I’m happy to announce our newest mini class is here! Last month we did a live class, How To Be Brilliant On Social Media, and it got rave reviews.

This month our mini-class is:

Brilliant Product Launches: Throw your Product the Party it Deserves + Earn Passionate Customers in the Process

And, as of today, the cart is open! You can get your ticket for $15.

The class will be held LIVE on Thursday, August 24th at 6pm PT and 9pm ET.

If you can’t show up live, still snag your ticket before Thursday, August 24th because we’ll be selling replays after that for $27. When you grab your ticket now, you’ll get access to the class and bonuses forever!

bit.ly/bbmlaunchclass

In Brilliant Product Launches you'll learn:

- How Launching a New Product is just like Christmas (plus how to ensure you're not coming across like the grinch!)

- How to Build Excitement and FREE marketing around your product.

- How to use Simple Psychology to Give your Customers just what they want

- How to Launch in a Way that has your Customers Thanking You (instead of running away in horror!)

(This happens to us at BBM every time!)

- Grab Plug and Play Strategies that you can use to Build Buzz so you'll have a Launch toolbox at your fingertips

(I don’t want to give you 20 exact ways to launch a product. That’s actually a lie! There are lots of ways to do it, and you have to figure out what works for you and your audience.  We’ll teach you principles, but you won’t feel frustrated over not being able to jump through tons of hoops.)

- Get Real Life Examples of my Own Product Launches and their results

(Even the ones that didn’t do well!)

Plus, we’ve got some wonderful bonuses for you:

• Email swipe copy for all different kinds of products from all price ranges
• Email templates to know what to say and when to help you get the sale
• Landing page template to know how to show off your product in the very best light
• Product launch checklists so you can know how to prepare for your launch, including: photoshoots, the graphics you need to create, what landing pages you need to create, and so on

We hope to see you in class!

22:30 - What Our Past Students Are Saying

Our social media class received some rave reviews, and I’ll share a few with you.

“I really loved the class. I’ve done a lot of research on social media, so I thought I knew a lot, but you really broke it down and the lightbulbs started to go off for me.”

• Jamie

“Class was fantastic and chock full of goodness and goodies as always.”

• An Anonymous Student

It means so much to me that this last student said our class was great ‘as always’! We work really hard around here to be so confident that our products will wow you, our refund policy is rock solid. If you’re not amazed, we don’t feel right keeping your money. Period.

Thanks for turning into this episode. I hope we’ll see you in class!

Brilliant Product Launches - Throw your Product the Party it Deserves + Earn Passionate Customers in the Process

bit.ly/bbmlaunchclass

Have you written off Facebook or Instagram ads as “just not for you”?

I want to encourage you to take a look at ads with fresh eyes this month as we explore how many different types of Mamapreneurs are using them to build their businesses.

You’ll hear from Etsy sellers, designers and membership site owners, bloggers and eBook writers, and course creators.

All of them are scrappy Mamapreneurs working with tight budgets - just like you! And all of them are finding success with Facebook and Instagram ads.

On this episode, we’ll hear from Melissa Kaiserman, who’s using Facebook and Instagram ads to bring in more sales for her Handmade Cash Envelope Organizers.

Melissa sells an affordably-priced product, and she’s able to bring in brand new people to her shop and make profitable sales.

Press play on the podcast player below to learn how you can make sales using ads too!

Listen Now

If you've been around Brilliant Business Moms for long, you probably know Melissa Kaiserman. She’s basically an honorary team member of Brilliant Business Moms and an active member of our Facebook group -- always ready to answer questions and help people out.

It’s been way too long since we had her on the show and we're so glad she's here today. (Three years, can you believe it!?)

Melissa is the Etsy shop owner of A Time for Everything, where she sells amazing cash wallet systems for adults and kids. She’s also the founder of Makery Space, an online business providing practical help for Etsy Sellers.

Follow her on Facebook to watch her wonderful weekly show, Etsy + 1. She’s a total pro when it comes to selling on Etsy successfully.

Since most of you know Melissa already, let’s dive right in.

1:20 - Using Facebook Ads in Her Business

Melissa enrolled in FB Brilliance but had a slow start to actually running her own ads. Her fear of getting something wrong, and hesitancy to do the work knowing it would require tweaking, stopped her for several months. But in the summer of 2016, she decided to dive in.

The very first campaign she ran, she targeted interests that she thought would be a good match for her product. She knew people who followed organizational blogs would be her ideal target market. Interestingly, not as many budget-conscious folks who follow Dave Ramsey or frugal blogs buy her products, since they’re not big spenders. Melissa’s campaign targeting organizational groups did okay, giving her a cost per click in the $0.20 range.

Then she decided to do a lookalike audience of her email list. She had been building her list for a while with content centered around living on a budget and, naturally, her blog matched her shop well. Once she targeted a lookalike audience, Melissa’s cost per click went down to $0.08! “This is a lot smarter way to target my ad set!” she thought, rather than focusing on a general interest.

Finding that perfect combination is all part of the learning process. And thanks to Melissa’s commitment to test and not give up, one of her biggest wins was right ahead.

She decided to do a Christmas campaign and then she decided she would use her customers as a lookalike audience. She downloaded her orders from Etsy and uploaded the customers to Facebook and Facebook was then able to create a lookalike audience. This audience was even more targeted than an email list since it was created from the emails of actual purchasers. Her cost per click in that campaign was around $0.04! And to cold traffic! You guys, that’s crazy!

4:00 - Defining a Lookalike Audience

Let’s stop for a moment and define what a lookalike audience is, for those who may not know.

To build a lookalike audience, you give Facebook a piece of data, for example, Melissa’s customer list, and what Facebook does is take the people you have and go find you about a million other people on Facebook who are really similar to that initial bunch. Then, Facebook shows your ad to those similar people. You can see why lookalike audiences are so powerful!

4:50 - Womp, Womp. A Few Bummers!

With Etsy, you can’t directly track how people get to your shop. (Although, following our advice, she sent people to a page on her blog and then redirected to her Etsy shop.)

However, Melissa could see her shop sales and traffic increase during the time frame her ads ran, and she realized “here absolutely was a correlation, even though she couldn’t pinpoint one for one.”

Another slight bummer, Melissa noticed her cost per click did go back up after the first of the year. It was hard to get back to that $0.04 to $0.08 cost per click range. Her current campaign averages $0.09 per click.

Also using lookalike audiences, Melissa ran another set in the Spring that received about $0.12 a click. But still, Melissa is happy with the performance of her lookalike audiences! Facebook knows what it’s doing!

6:58 - Melissa's Successful Ads

Let’s dive in and look at some of the successful ads Melissa ran to drive traffic to her site at an amazing rate.

In this slideshow video ad, Melissa focused on her bread-and-butter cash wallet system. She showed a selection of those wallets in the slideshow. Her content appealed to the concept: “Are you trying to find the right envelope in your purse, but it’s a mess? Try something that’s pretty and will last for years!”

For those listening, we’ll describe the ad below.

Ad: During the ad she shows the cash envelope at different angles, and at the end, she uses the tagline, “Find the beauty in budgeting.”

Body: Does living on a cash budget have you rummaging in your purse at the register for the right, beat-up, paper envelope? Find the beauty in budgeting with this handmade, laminated, cotton envelope system wallet that’s lovely, durable, and will last for years.

Headline: Organize your budget with a cash envelope system wallet.

Coupon Code: For Free US Shipping, Use the Code: FACEBOOK

(But Melissa tells us that only one person has ever redeemed that coupon code! Isn’t that interesting!?)

9:38 - What Program did Melissa Use to Make a Video Ad?

Melissa just used the native slideshow creator within Power Editor. That’s how easy it is to make an ad! Have fabulous product photos, upload them to Facebook, and let them do the heavy lifting for you.

10:08 - What Sales can She Attribute to Her Ad?

The only time she ever tried to figure a sales percent increase was from her ad campaign from last August. During that time period, she saw a 63% increase in sales from the same time frame a year prior.

Summer can be pretty slow for Etsy shops unless the shop is seasonally focused. What a great strategy to run ads to create sales during a slow time! The ad ran for just 5 days and had tremendous success.

Moody Sisters Skincare also used ads to overcome their summer slump, resulting in their best month ever! To go from a very slow month to the best is pretty cool! You really can get started at $5 a day.

12:30 - ROI

I know these questions are a bit theoretical, but I love asking them! Even if you can’t use the Facebook pixel on Etsy, you can still do detective work and see how it’s helping your shop. Especially if you're getting affordable clicks like Melissa!

So, doing guesswork while looking at her Etsy sales, Melissa compared the difference in sales from the same time period in previous years. That’s where she came up with that 63% increase we mentioned earlier. Her return on investment was 5 times what she spent on ads, which was $50. And, half of her ad sets were the organizing interest sets that weren’t as effective. The other half was her highly effective lookalike audience.

Because this particular ad was so effective, Melissa has kept the same ad and changed the copy a bit as needed. For example, at Christmas, she might mention how her wallets are a great gift. She also changed her coupon to be more versatile and simple. Melissa now uses the same ad and ad set repeatedly and just runs it when she wants some more affordable traffic with targeted potential customers.

Can you see why ads are so fun!?

Melissa has received some criticism for not spending money on promoted listings. In general, her Etsy relevancy has always been pretty good and she shows up in search. For Melissa, why would she spend all her ad budget to get people already on Etsy to her shop? It’s more worthwhile to find people who haven’t gotten there yet and send them over.

15:56 - Pattern by Etsy and the Facebook Pixel

I wanted to talk some about Pattern, Etsy’s new selling platform, and the Facebook pixel. Melissa has the scoop! She recently started a free trial of Pattern. In the beginning, she wanted to try out Pattern but didn’t see great benefits right away.

At this point, the platform has gone through a few iterations, and Melissa can see the benefits.

Someone who can’t manage inventory or shipping for more than one shop would probably enjoy Pattern. You can send people to a domain without the distraction of Etsy. It’s your own space, in a way, but still connected to Etsy. Everything from inventory to orders to shipping is managed in one spot.

As of this recording, it is possible to install the Facebook pixel on Pattern. You can’t do the standard event code, but you can use your Pixel ID code. Pattern also allows for Google Analytics tracking, which is a huge advantage! If you have a Pattern shop, you could send people there directly and not to Etsy through a redirect, giving you a clearer picture of what’s happening.

Plus, you can get back in front of those who haven’t bought yet with retargeting ads!

18:29 - The Etsy Scoop

Melissa is our Go-To Etsy Expert! We had to get her take on what’s new at Etsy.  

“The main thing right now is that there’s a ton of testing and experimenting happening,” she says. Melissa cites tons of changes coming from Etsy since about February of this year, including:

• A New Shop Manager
• New Stats
• Yes Checkout
• even a CEO Turnover!

Through all the testing, Melissa’s best advice is to be patient and hang in there. Don’t panic and don’t go changing a bunch of things.

Often Melissa says she’ll see something tested and then hear people making definitive statements about a change Etsy made. Don’t panic over theories! Keep doing what you're doing that’s working well.

Sometimes you can make small changes, but don’t stress about them. For instance, Attributes is a new factor Etsy added that affects relevancy. This feature is actively being tested and constantly changes. They haven’t made any permanent changes, but you can choose attributes that might naturally fit the listing. Don’t stress!

This is exactly the kind of stuff she addresses in her Etsy + 1 show... it’s on Thursdays at noon Pacific. She addresses Etsy changes, her thoughts about it, and practical applications. Like Makery Space on Facebook to catch the show.

(Isn’t Melissa totally an encyclopedia of information!?)

23:16 - Melissa’s Adorable Mom Moment

Right before recording, Melissa had a funny moment! Turns out that one of her teenagers with YouTube ambitions had swiped her recording equipment, and Melissa was scrambling to find the pieces before our interview!

Beryl Young is the founder of an online community for deeply feeling, giving moms called Recapture Self. Ready to reclaim their identity beyond storyteller, snack maker, and boo-boo kisser. (I love that!)

She offers photography classes, both in-person and online, and has a fabulous community that helps moms capture everyday moments and make creativity part of their lives.

Listen Now 1:07 - Beryl’s Sad-But-Important Start to Photography

Like many moms, Beryl didn’t set out to start a business. Her story has a sad beginning, but we hope you will be able to listen because it’s a very important part. (Beryl's story includes infant loss.)

In 2009 joined a 365 Project challenge with her friend. 365 Project is a visual photo diary, which challenges participants to take a photo every day for an entire year. Beryl quickly began learning from the community of other 365ers on Flickr.

Around the same time, Beryl and her husband were talking about planning a family and one thing she knew she wanted was amazing pictures of her family. A quick look at newborn photographers was enough to give Beryl instant sticker shock! Though she totally values professional photography now, Beryl was determined to learn how to take amazing photos herself!

3 months into the photo project, she got pregnant...and wasn’t feeling super great, so her photography project was put on hold. Sadly, at 20 weeks gestation Beryl found out that her daughter was very sick and she passed away. Losing her daughter, Bella, was hands down the hardest trial Beryl has ever had to walk through. But, yet, through that loss, she was inspired to start photographing again.

Eventually, Beryl launched a small blog and began to share her photography with short captions. People starting reading, responding, and eventually asked her to photograph their families. And a business was born out of this sad chapter in her life.

5:25 - Sometimes The First Business Isn’t the Right Business

Beryl started to receive requests from friends and family for photo sessions. Though she booked sessions for a solid year, she knew it wasn’t quite the right thing for her.

The more she worked as a photographer, the more she realized that it meant the most to her to photograph her own sweet girl! (Yes, Beryl welcomed a second daughter!) Beryl knew something was lacking in the industry: photography workshops for parents.

6:34 - Teaching Photography In Person

During her entire photography journey, Beryl worked full-time as an elementary school teacher. She taught technology, which was a unique role in that she got to work with both the students and teachers, training each group in relevant tech tools.

She had an ah-ha moment! Business for moms is a place where skill sets and passions collide.

During maternity leave, she developed the idea for a class to teach moms how to take beautiful photos of their own kids. She developed the bulk of her class and then got to the hard work of promoting her newly developed course.

Initially, Beryl partnered with a local moms group and asked them to advertise the class for her. (Keep in mind, she was promoting her course before Facebook offered ads!) In the first hour, she had 12 registrations. That’s truly amazing for an in person class!

She taught this in-person class quarterly. And eventually built a suite of online classes.

9:36 - Teaching Photography Online

The transition to teaching online was harder for Beryl. Her very first online class was free, geared toward any mom who has experienced pregnancy loss. She learned a lot in that course creation process.

MOMTOGRAPHY™ ONLINE felt a lot different to create.

Her baby loss class was a lot more heart centered. And MOMTOGRAPHY™ ONLINE required far more technical details. It took two years to really develop her content.

Actually creating her content was fairly easy for Beryl. Which her background as a teacher, she had lots of experience breaking down a  complicated concept into its easiest parts. Finding time to put together the course (while holding down a full-time job!) and figuring out which tech tools could best help her execute the class was the hardest part. Not to mention, how in the world would she market the class??

Beryl’s tech tool tips:

• Scrap together a combination of your favorites.
• Less is more.
• Beryl hires a web designer on retainer, so she always has the ability to change up what she needs. Her designer custom built a framework for Beryl’s site.
• WishList Member is the plugin she uses to deliver passwords to her customers.
• Password delivery is run through ConvertKit.
• Beryl says her workflow isn’t super automated. Since her course is live run, she does benefit from a buffer time between cart closing and class start

Her very first course simply consisted of password protected pages on her site. She put trust in her students that they would hold the password in confidence.

14:30 - Less Is More Marketing

Her very first MOMTOGRAPHY™ ONLINE course ran the month between when her school year ended and her entrepreneurial journey began.

The stakes were high! Beryl knew it HAD to work to be able to quit her job.

Connection marketing works really well for Beryl. Knowing who your product is meant for, and where you can connect audiences in different ways is key. She ended up connecting with a lot of parenting bloggers.

Beryl’s first launch went really well! Her system of connecting herself with the right influencers and people really worked!. She did lots of free classes, webinars, and guest posting to get the word out.

17:37 - Analyzing a Webinar

Beryl recently did a webinar for our BBM audience. And while we had a great time, Beryl discovered that business owners aren’t really her focus! Though she delivered a great presentation, the sales just weren’t as strong as they had been before.

We both thought the class would be a great fit for you all! But while every mom might have the desire to take great photos of her kids, the time and energy of a business mom isn’t necessarily going to photography.  You ladies are like, “If this won’t built my business, I don’t care!”

Not everything will be a huge win! And it’s ok! You have to see what sticks and what doesn’t.

We are happy to report that Beryl’s class DID find great success with Facebook ads. (And you ladies KNOW our feelings about Facebook!)

19:35 - Beryl’s Facebook Ad Strategy

Beryl’s ads for MOMTOGRAPHY™ ONLINE run to a free 1-week experience. Then, she uses an email sequence to kick off a promotion of her 6-week paid class.

Beryl has discovered that marketing to parents is tough! Her live webinar attendance isn’t huge; most students usually watch a recording after. Her launches aren’t built around ‘how many sales can I get live?’ She finds her customers usually need a few days to get all the pieces of the free class, then be reminded to buy the paid course.

22:38 - Beryl’s Newest Business Venture

In the last year, she has been asked to teach MOMTOGRAPHY™ ONLINE in many different places.

She’s explored creative coaching and mentoring, wanting to blend one-on-one help and teaching. Then she thought, “I bet I have alumni students who’d be willing to teach in their hometowns.”

Currently Beryl has 4 online course alums going through a 3-month training program to teach the local, in-person version of the class. These alums hail from California, Ohio, Florida, and Oklahoma. MOMTOGRAPHY™ will truly be a nation-wide business. Isn’t that just brilliant!?

Beryl truly has played to her strengths, turned that into a product, and is serving her customers.

26:45 - Business Training for Licensees

Beryl’s new venture is much like a business coaching program that allows other moms to start their own businesses.

The 3-month training course focuses on three primary areas:

1. Mindset
2. Methodology
3. Marketing

Her students get lots of materials, like PowerPoints, and coaching along the way. They’re licensed for a year, and then pay a fee to relicense every year to stay an official teacher.

29:19 - Photography Tips

We couldn't let Beryl go without asking her this important question: what’s the biggest mistake new photographers make?

In her opinion, it’s overshooting. She finds that new parents are so invested in photographs, “I have to get this moment!” so they put the camera behind their eyeball, and shoot away, but come home to 1,000s of pics on their hard drives that they’ll never sort through.

As a photographer, Beryl remembers that she’s the director of her photos. If she can pause, take a step back, and sink into the moment, she can start to watch and notice more. Then bring the camera up when you sense the right moment coming. Shoot with intention. What is the purpose of the photo you’re about to take?

(And this philosophy totally fits with Beryl’s less is more mentality.)

31:18 - Beryl's Adorable Mom Moment

You know these are always cute! You’ll have to stay tuned through the end to hear Beryl’s!

This episode is dedicated to another repeated question we received in our community survey: How do you manage your time? Or one of my favorites, “Can it be DONE??? Mother and businesswoman???”

Yes, it can be done! At the time of this recording, I have a newborn baby at home, a 6-year-old in school, and am a military spouse - and, of course, I run Brilliant Business Moms. It does take some finessing, and you have to be creative. I’m hopeful that this episode will spark some ideas for you.

Listen Now

I do want to mention that I got several questions on specific life circumstances, like:

• How can I have a full-time job and build a business on the side?
• How can I build a business while I homeschool full-time?

Since I have never been in either of those situations while growing my business, I do not want to pretend I have any expertise answering that particular question. I have time management tools and tips that work for me, but it would be glossing over your specific situation to pretend like I can speak directly to your circumstances. (And one day we will bring ladies on the show who have more expertise in those areas.)

Alright, let’s get to it. How is it that I’m doing everything I’m doing? How do I even get sleep!?

The #1 Thing You Have To Know

You guys don’t realize I’m doing a lot less than it appears!

Remember my fabulous team? It’s thanks to Ellen, Carlee, and Victoria that I appear to be doing much more than I am! These three ladies work quite a few hours every week and they have all sorts of expertise. They can write posts about Pinterest, webinars, Facebook ads, or a new tech tool - just like I would. They write a lot of our weekly emails. (Have you noticed that our emails are now signed ‘The Brilliant Business Moms Team’?) They regularly answer our Facebook group questions and pass along the more complicated ones to me. They post on social media.

I never want you to think it’s me writing, when it’s actually not me! We’ve decided to use a collective voice when we write much of our content. That ‘team’ language frees me up to do things only I can do: podcast episodes, course creating, group coaching calls, developing and designing new products. (We’re excited for the new planning and time management products we’ll be releasing over the next few years!)

My hand in the business is very much taking part in our big-picture strategy and growth for Brilliant Business Moms.

For example, in this community survey we’ve been talking about, I made sure every question was what we needed it to be. I’m driving our content plans and creation of future products. The main role I have is painting the big picture, planning growth, moving forward, and identifying how best to serve our audience.

I know a lot of you may not be at the point of being able to hire a team. But I really think if you just hire a few hours a week you’ll be amazed at how much more quickly you can grow. Have a growth mindset with all your decisions. For me, I’m not willing to work even 40 hours a week because I want more time with my baby. My paycheck isn’t as big as you assume it is. Because it’s worth it to hire out a few tasks to have that peace of mind, invest in the lives of other women, and have quality time with my family.

How My Work Life Looks With A Newborn

Levi was born in April 2017, and for the first 6 weeks after I didn’t do anything in the business. I was very hands off. I thought I would be off a lot longer than that, but with the slower pace of life I had a lot more time to think and the ideas just came rushing in! (Raise your hand if you can relate!)

Some things are not possible without childcare!

Levi is not in any sort of daycare. He’s primarily home with me. Just this week, I hired a babysitter for Levi, a high school neighbor. She watches him a few hours at a time, a few days a week for me, so I can do tasks that wouldn’t be accomplished otherwise. Tasks such as: conducting podcast interviews, recording tutorial videos, and hosting my live coaching calls for FB Brilliance students.

Especially when I know my students have spent good money for my courses, I don’t want their time with me to be interrupted by a baby.

Leverage one-handed technology.

I’m nursing my son Levi. So, when I’m feeding him, I often have my phone with me. The fact that I can answer emails while feeding Levi or on-the-go is great! I love being a mom in the 21st century!

I also use the Google Keep app to save notes for myself or my team. Just hit the mic button and do a voice recording.

Using the phone as my office, in 5 min increments.

Okay, but what if I was still a solopreneur? Having any sort of life balance with a newborn would be tricky. It certainly is a time to work in the margins. Literally, sometimes, 5 mins increments. If you’ve got a new baby in the house, you probably won’t have those clean start and stop times without childcare help.

I work all over the place now, and I don’t have a neat little office setup. Things are way more fluid. My phone is my new office! Google Keep and Wunderlist are my go-to apps for getting things done.

And remember, I’m the lady who makes and sells planners! I do love time blocking and having hard stops and starts. But when you’ve got a new baby, give yourself lots of grace. Do what you can.

Okay, but what if I REALLY need to work!?

When I need to get some hardcore computer work done, I’ll often have Levi on my lap. I maybe can get 15 mins of really good work in, or more if I’m lucky.

If your kids are still around age 3 or age 4, you could really leverage their naptime to get work done.

If your kids are older than 4 (like my little guy Holden, who’s 6) still facilitate quiet playtime! You’ll be amazed at how your children’s creativity can blossom during those moments.

Balance it all? Give it up.

Here’s a big secret.

You don’t have to do it all. (Promise!)

You can give up those things that don’t provide value to your business or your customers. Especially if you’re feeling crunched for time, only do those tasks that will support your goal.

For example, our Brilliant Business Moms community has told us time and again that you prefer the podcast much more than blog posts. So we do try to make sure at the bare minimum a podcast goes out each week - everything else is icing.

The same is true of social media. We’ve scaled back in a lot of ways there! And just a tip, if you’re listening to me scale back social media and thinking, “But! But! Social media is the only way I’m making sales!” Focus on building your email list. If you’re afraid about tanking your sales potential by focusing on your email list, I promise you’ll be surprised if you focus more on email!

And if you’re wondering how to increase your sales by building an email list, we’ve got a free resource for you. 20 Optin Offers Your Subscribers Will Love.

 

Focus on big, high impact things. And I’m telling you, your email list should certainly be one of them!

Throw the routines, and find the time.

I used to have really solid daily routines, but they’ve gone completely out the window with a new baby in the house. Levi doesn’t have a great routine, yet, and I’m finding myself working bit by bit during some pretty crazy hours.

Some mornings when he wakes up around 4:30am, I will just stay up after and get some solid work accomplished. Now, I do NOT do that every day! I may do this every other day, at the most. But it’s a great way to fit work in with a new baby.

If you’re SUPER struggling to fit work time in, I almost wonder if you’re not super excited about your business anymore. That may be more of your problem than not having time. (And if that’s the case, go back and listen to our episode ‘Do You Ever Feel Like Giving Up’.)

Most of the time, I work 2 hours a day in teeny snippets. But I love the business so much that losing a bit of sleep here and there, or giving up a Saturday morning, isn’t a huge deal. Again, if you feel like you’re forcing it, maybe your heart isn’t in it. I think it is easy to find time to work when you’re passionate about what you do.

And also, I say no to a LOT of things. I don’t go on other people’s podcasts, I don’t do joint webinars, I’m not part of group programs or masterminds. I don’t add extra things to my calendar. Even though I’ve seen tons of mastermind-type groups lately I’d love to join! I just say ‘No’.

What I have been saying yes to are courses and training programs. If you have unexpected down time, or a slow time in business, maybe you can commit to a training program to watch and take time to learn, while growing your business. (I watch my classes while I feed Levi!) Maybe you’re not getting lots of interviews, and that’s okay.

It's time to relieve my babysitter, so this episode will have to come to a close! This is work / life balance, friends. I hope you took away some helpful pieces of information.

Now it’s your turn to head out there and Be Brilliant.

Brea Albulov is a stay-at-home mom of 2 littles and founder of an online shop called Hope Carried. Hope Carried creates high quality, handmade, babywearing products - and employs mothers who face barriers to entering the traditional workforce.

Listen Now

1:02 - The Birth of a Babywearing Business

Brea, like many mompreneurs, opened her business by accident.

She used baby carriers, but didn’t really love the ones she found. When her kiddos were tiny, she wanted a ring-sling type carrier, but her family just didn’t have wiggle room in the budget for one. So, being a savvy mom, she pulled out her sewing machine and made one for herself. Brea says she then became obsessed with creating baby carriers! She started playing around, making carrier after carrier, and perfecting her design. People started asking if they could buy Brea’s carriers, and early on she simply sold her carriers for the cost of production. But seeing how popular her products were becoming, she knew that she wouldn’t last for long unless she made a few adjustments.

About six months after she started experimenting with carrier designs, Brea raised her prices, opened an Etsy shop, and grew from there! But one important piece of Brea’s mission was still missing. Brea never thought she would be a business woman, but she DID know that she had a passion for helping others and her business would reflect that. After hearing a story on NPR about refugee women who have barriers to employment, Brea found her mission. About six months after opening her Etsy shop, she hired her first employee who was experiencing a barrier to employment, and Hope Carried was in truly business, creating an amazing product and helping others.

5:23 - Adding Team Members

The number of team members she can hire varies based on whether or not the shop is in a busy or slow season, but generally she has between 4-6 ladies working for her.

In fact, after Brea listened to our episode about hiring Virtual Assistants, she has since added an Operations Manager to her team!

6:05 - Hiring People Facing Barriers to Employment

Brea found her employees through her local community. She teamed up with a local non-profit that supports all populations who face barriers to employment to get employee referrals. Brea is especially interested in hiring moms, which fits her business model and mission.

The local non-profit hosts open houses where Brea can talk to job applicants and work with their case managers. At the first open house she attended, Brea was blown away! There were so many people who came, literally walking or taking multiple busses to get there. She couldn’t hire nearly as many people as she wanted, but she could hire some and that’s where the change begins.

Brea runs a training session with her new hires, either working through a translator or using Google Translate to teach them how to sew her baby wraps. Thanks to a non-profit generously providing sewing machines to any Hope Carried employee, Brea’s employees are able to work from home. This gives them a tool they can use to make all sorts of things, not just Hope Carried products.

We are just so excited for the business Brea is growing!

Brea’s Resources:

• Freedom House
• Jewish Family Service
• Inside a Missional Business with Rebecca Smith

10:06 - Business Logistics

So Brea has multiple seamstresses, working in different places, all making the same products. How does that work?

About 2 years ago Brea’s family was able to move out of their tiny apartment into a house with more room, including an unfinished basement! The move was, in part, thanks to Hope Carried taking off.

Brea’s mom designed a cutting table for her to use, complete with a pulley system and custom tracks for different cuts and dimensions of fabric needed to create Hope Carried wraps and slings.

Here’s a peek at her process:

• Bulk fabric gets shipped to Brea’s house.
• Either Brea, or a helper, will cut the fabric.
• Her seamstresses will come and pick up the precut fabric, plus all the other parts they need: thread, labels, rings, and so on.
• Seamstresses assemble the products in their workspaces.
• Seamstresses bring the completed products back to Brea’s house, where Brea checks them and stocks them in her basement.

It’s pretty amazing that her operation is all local!

11:38 - Sourcing Materials

While Brea’s systems are down pat, she does say one tricky part of business is sourcing materials. The certified babywearing non-welded rings are pretty easy to find. But she’s had more trouble consistently sourcing quality fabric. On a few occasions she’s gotten a great order of fabric from a supplier, but has had to send a second shipment back because the quality is just different. And, of course, those are often the most popular colors, cutting off that revenue stream.

She’s not a big enough operation to buy in bulk, wholesale, but that’s the long term goal.

15:15 - Returning Fabric

How do you even deal with returning fabrics work? Often, Brea never gets her money back. And it’s rare to get back her shipping costs. A lot of times she’ll order samples as a safer bet, but it’s not a guarantee. Eating the cost is painful! It’s a bummer when manufacturers don’t hold up their end of the deal. It’s an unknown and a setback, but Brea doesn’t let that stop her.

16:30 - Keeping On Keeping On

Even though Brea always wanted to be a SAHM and not a business woman, the passion of the difference she can make keeps her going. It’s worth it to her.

There comes a point in business when the mission is bigger than you, and that’s what keeps you going through all the tough business moments.

Brea is not only changing the lives of people who wear her products, by giving them a high-quality product to use to cuddle their babies, but also the lives of her employees. It’s just beautiful!

Little Levi and I using one of Brea's beautiful ring slings!

19:08 - Baby Product Safety Checks

Do Brea’s babywearing products have to go through more safety checks than other products? Yes! There’s an alphabet soup of organizations that have to certify her products.

Baby wearing products have to be tested for weight limits, suffocation hazards, flammability, lead, and small parts, as well as the structural integrity. She has to have a recall registration system in place. It’s a lot!

How does a mom even get started?

• Don’t freak out! Take a deep breath, and get involved with whatever governing body fits your industry.
• Find Babywearing Compliance Facebook pages and support groups
• Baby Carrier Industry Alliance has great resources for this niche.
• Print off whatever you’re reading on the internet; it’s just easier to keep track of that way.
• Bring someone else in to read over the rules with you.
• Prioritize your tasks, and go one step at a time.

By breaking down her goals one at a time, before she knew it she realized she was certified.

24:00 - Instagram Marketing Strategy

Brea says her strategy is certainly evolving. She gets a lot of photos for Instagram from her customers. But a lot of her social media photos are from professional photo shoots.

Brea says one of the things that has grown her business the most is having a professional photo shoot.

Seeing beautiful images compels people to buy. It was a total game changer to invest in a high quality photos!

There are a lot of ways you can get creative with your photos if you don’t quite have the budget for it yet.

• Find a local business owner you could pay with your product. (In Brea’s case, she worked with a mom photographer who accepted part of her fee with money and part in free baby wraps for any future baby showers).
• See if you can borrow, rather than rent, a photo shoot space. (One of Brea’s friends has a beautiful home that she allowed Hope Carried to take over for a photo shoot.)
• If you’re part of a Facebook group that deals with small business, you might find a photographer in that setting.

You’re sharing a lifestyle with your photos. That’s the key to social media marketing.

The other key to Instagram is to be engaging. Share your life with your followers! Think about what else your target demographic might want. In Brea’s case, it’s not just babywearing. They are interested in healthy lifestyles. If the mom might be expecting, she could be thinking about a birth plan. Or if a mom is adding more children to her home, she might be wondering about managing time.

Think of your instagram profile like a magazine. It needs to encompass all of your customer’s life.

29:40 - Influencer Marketing

Digital influencer collaborations are a big part of her strategy. She looks for pictures of people who embody joyful motherhood. She’ll reach out and ask if she can send them a product in exchange for beautiful photos. Sometimes she goes further and will ask the influencer to write a few thoughts to share.

Tips:

• Sometimes she reaches out to people, sometimes people reach out to her.
• The app Collabor8 has been really useful for matching Brea with digital influencers: http://www.collabor8app.com/
• Be super clear with expectations. If you want 5 pictures and in certain settings, oh and a blog post, say that clearly!
• Brea made a contract to be incredibly clear with her expectations. (Even saying something like, “Don’t feature other products, just mine!”) Since instituting the contract, she hasn’t had an issue.

34:50 - Getting Featured in a Mag

Brea’s babywearing products have been featured in Pregnancy & Newborn Magazine. How did that happen!?

Brea just reached out to the magazine. She keeps a stack of media outlets that she’d like to be featured in, and has crafted an email template that she’ll use and customize for each one.

She wrote to Pregnancy & Newborn in May, but didn’t get featured until the holiday gift guide. And that’s the way that press works. It’s all planned months in advance, so be mindful of that if you’re sending out any emails.

Tips:

• Share who you are and what your product is, and what the benefit is for them. Why would that particular outlet be interested in featuring you?
• Brea pitches all over the place! You never know who’s going to bite.
• Attach three or four photos to that first email.
• She hired a graphic designer that made Hope Carried a media one-pager. It’s got beautiful images of her product, what their mission is, and other interesting tidbits.

37:37 - Etsy vs. Self-Run Shop

Like Brilliant Business Moms, Brea uses both Etsy and a self-run shop with Shopify. We had to ask what she thinks about each!

Brea loves Etsy because:

• It’s more personal.
• People engage with her brand more. (Brea finds that Etsy users are more prone to communication before they buy, which can set your brand apart if you treat them well!)
• Her shop isn’t promoted, but sales stay consistent.

Brea loves a self-run shop because:

• It’s much more customizeable.
• She can add more tutorial videos about how to use or products or to educate her market.
• She can do more hands-on marketing and advertising of her shop.

40:46 - Adorable Mom Moment

You know you love these! You’ll have to tune in to listen for Brea’s.

Site: HopeCarried.com

Instagram: @HopeCarried

Facebook: Hope Carried

Now it's your turn to head out there and Be Brilliant!

Hundreds of you answered our community survey (thank you!) and over the next several months we’ll be using that information to bring you the content you said you need from us. Seriously, I wish I could call everyone who responded and give you a business coaching session, a pep-talk, or a long distance hug! Since that’s not exactly practical, my team and I will do the next best thing. The next several solo episodes we release will my very raw and real answers to questions that came in through the survey. These podcast episodes are just one of the many ways we’ve got planned to use this survey to bring you actionable information.

One of our favorite questions we asked you was, “If you could ask Beth Anne anything, what would it be?”

And an interesting, often repeated reply was this cut-to-the-chase one, “Do you ever feel like giving up?”

My honest answer?

YES.

Listen Now

 

To be even more honest, I'll tell you that it’s not a feeling that ever goes away. There are certainly moments where I think maybe all the work and stress aren't worth it and it would be much more luxurious if I could just read books at naptime.

Especially for those of us who are fortunate enough to not require a second job for our families to make it, the temptation to close up shop can be incredibly tempting! It makes staying motivated to keep going that much more difficult.

In this episode, I want to offer a few takeaways and truths that I hope will help.

• Everything in life worth doing is hard. Like marriage and motherhood and almost everything else worth doing, business will be hard! But, in our home, hard work is a virtue. We don’t value staying comfortable, we value pushing boundaries and limits.
• You, my community, keep me going. If I’m being very honest, one of the greatest motivators I have in my business is YOU, the Brilliant Business Moms community. You’re here week after week and you keep me going. If you’ve been helped by our courses or products, thank you! It’s an honor to serve you and I couldn’t imagine letting you down. There are lots of people starting businesses these days, but I’m only interested in you ladies: the gutsy mamas putting their families first and businesses second.
• You’ve got to balance pursuing passion and making money. Never, ever start a business where your only goal is the bottom line! If you’re not passionate about improving the lives of your customers, you will fizzle out. I understand this advice is totally counter intuitive. The purpose of a business is to make money, but you’ve got to have a "why" bigger than that. I will freely admit that once I could take home a consistent paycheck, that was major proof for me that my business was working! The desire to quit does go down as your sales go up. But it can’t be your only motivation.
• When you feel like giving up, take a breather. I mean it! Even if you put your Etsy shop on vacation mode because you’re just not feeling it, do it. You run the show. Give yourself permission to do whatever it is you need to come back refreshed and recharged. If you need to take a week off, do it. And if you’re thinking, “I have tons to do! Are you nuts!? I can’t take a week off!” maybe you really do need a breather, more than ever. If you’re feeling overwhelmed because you’re working so hard and it’s not working out, you’ve got to see where the issues are. Ask yourself these questions, and leave the other stuff behind:
  • What do I  love doing?
  • Why am I doing what I do?
  • Where are people connecting with me?
  • Where am I starting to get a few more visitors or subscribers? 
• Have supportive friends and family. I’m so fortunate that my husband Chris is my biggest supporter! Even last night I was in tears over something. It wasn’t one particular thing, but I was talking about it - and then there were 10 things that had built up throughout the day. Chris was right there for me saying, “You’re doing a great job. It’s not your fault,” offering me nothing but encouragement and reminding me of the important things. A year ago when I was working so hard to grow the shop and nothing was taking off, Chris was right there saying, “You cannot quit! You’re really good at this. And I know you can do it.” He told me this on plenty of days I wasn’t sure I could! Surround yourself with people like this as much as you can. What if your spouse isn’t supportive? Maybe you’re not making progress and it’s frustrating everyone. In that case, a breather could be that much more important. Have honest conversations when you’re not all emotional, but do have them. (And maybe the Brilliant Business Moms community can be that for you, virtually. I am blessed by how encouraging and supportive you all are to each other.)
• Find some help. I can’t emphasize enough how much hiring help has helped me. I was overwhelmed. I was working way too many hours. The business had taken over many of areas of my life. As soon as I hired help, I was able to scale back. How do I sleep? How do I have time with my family? People think I do much more than what I actually do! There are a lot of things that appear like I’m doing them, but my team is actually doing them and that’s how I sleep and have time for my family. There is a trade off. I definately take home a lot less of a paycheck, but it’s worth it. I’m in business for the big picture, but I knew I couldn’t be in business for the long haul if I kept going at my unsustainable rate. Also, I value being able to support my team (and their families) with the work I can provide.

The Heart Behind Brilliant Business Moms

Something else you all wanted to know is how I stay so positive, perky, and happy. It made me happy to hear from a lot of different people that you get that perspective. But, once again, I may need to burst your bubble. I’m not that happy and perky all the time! This is real life, I’m a real person and I’m super flawed.

I’m a person of extremes. That super mellow, calm and steady type? That’s my husband! Me? I’m either super happy, or super frustrated. Believe me, there are tons of times my team gets to see the spitfire side of me. Don’t get me wrong, I truly am happy and positive a lot of the time, but not all the time. Because I have supportive people in my life who pick me back up, and I can be happy and positive for you all. Chris, most of all, and my wonderful team members are always there to encourage me when I’m feeling down about the business. I hope you have wonderful people like this in your life.

But the biggest reason I can stay happy and positive is because of my faith. I am a Christian, and I believe that there’s a purpose for everyone who exists on this planet. I believe that I’m called to more than just taking care of my own selfish desires. That is a huge part of how I stay happy and encouraged. I want to be real and authentic and I simply could not create this episode without sharing what’s at the core of my heart.

Another thing that keeps me going are the even bigger goals and visions for how Brilliant Business Moms can serve others. I want to use the income I bring in from Brilliant Business Moms to build orphanages in India and other places! Thinking about the ways we can minister to orphans and children with special needs totally keeps me going.

And while we’re talking about it, let me share a bit more about these future plans. To lay the foundation, income and profits are two different things. Right now, a big portion of my revenue pays my team and another chunk goes to Facebook ads to keep things growing. And then I take a portion for my paycheck. But there is SO MUCH MORE I want to do. I want to make giving back a huge part of my business. And to be honest that’s what can really discourage me the most. I want to see bigger growth, bigger profits. Not to pad my pockets, but to help others in bigger ways.

Right now, my primary job is to be a wife and mom. I can’t run myself ragged and neglect my own family in the process of building this business. But I do have crazy big dreams for the coming years. Stay here with us, and you’ll get to join along.

That’s it for this episode. I hope if you’re having a rough week or month, you’ll be ready to take a breather, or get right back up again! Know that you can use your business to make a difference.

Laura Clark of Whole Food Nanny is a busy mom of 3 crazy cute kids, and wife to Mr. Clark. Whole Food Nanny is dedicated to helping families make healthy eating part of their lives. She focuses on eating less processed foods - especially sugar - and a lot more whole foods. (I have to admit I need help with this!)

Listen Now On the Podcast

1:15 - Eating Healthy as a Mompreneur

7:16 - Getting More Energy

12:20 - Simple Substitutes for Sugar

14:28 - Final Thoughts on Healthy Eating

16:40 - Custom Diet Recommendations for Me

19:50 - Turning A Passion for Healthy Eating Into A Business

27:24 - Course Idea to Creation

31:08 - Making Sales

32:40 - Laura’s Adorable Mom Moment

Eating Healthy as a Mompreneur

Before asking Laura how she started and grew her business, I wanted us all to benefit from her knowledge around healthy eating. So many moms struggle with making healthy eating part of our daily lives, particularly getting our children to enjoy healthy eating! What tips does Laura have for busy moms to get and stay healthy?

#1 Get away from packaged items at grocery store!

One of the biggest ways moms can set themselves up for health is to eat mostly whole foods, instead of processed. How? Ditch packaged items - it’s that simple, and that hard! Over the years, Laura’s family has found ways to seamlessly incorporate this choice into their diet - keep reading to learn how.

And to give a quick definition, whole foods are foods that come from the Earth, are nutrient dense, and make our bodies work as they should. Foods with artificial colors and flavors disrupt our natural processes, and can sap our health and energy and are largely why we have so many health issues occurring today.

#2 Swap the Quick and Easy for the Whole and Healthy

Keep it simple. If you want a snack, grab an apple or banana. Grabbing a piece of fruit is just as simple opening a snack from the pantry. Not only will you feel fuller from the whole food, but you’ll get nutrients to help you and your kids feel good inside.

(Now that Holden is older, I can just give him a whole apple! It even tastes better to him than cutting into slices. It’s such a simple thing: but just eat the whole apple!)

Cook in bulk. Believe it or not, Laura hates to cook! She loves giving her family healthy food, but she’s ALL about not spending an entire day in the kitchen. One thing she does is always cook in bulk. So if she makes a batch of muffins, she will make more to add to lunches or use for snacks after school. (Make Laura’s Banana Blueberry Muffins!

Soups are a quick and easy dinner. It’s simple to put the leftovers in mason jars and freeze them for lunches another day. Laura’s family loves soup and I love that these dinner ideas aren’t gourmet, but they taste good and don’t take all day to make.

#3 Get your kids involved with meal prep.

Learning to cook teaches our kiddos basic life skills, not to mention saves you time! Feel free to give your children age appropriate ways to help: setting the table, helping with dishes, or cutting the carrots.

Really, we often just lack creativity or knowledge to make things simpler in the kitchen. This is where places like Laura’s site come in handy! There are so many great ideas and recipes at WholeFoodNannycom.

Getting More Energy

What mom business owner DOESN’T need more energy!? The number one culprit of our lack of energy is sugar. Really! But what sugar are we talking about, exactly? Added sugar. Not sugar straight from the cane, or the sugar found in fruit and dairy. What we’re talking about is any sugar added, either by you or a factory.

When you start cutting back on sugar, you’ll really notice how much better you feel. You might feel worse at first, because you’re going through sugar withdrawals. (Eeek! How bad is that!?) 90% of all processed foods include added sugar. And added sugar, well, adds up quickly!

Being a busy mom can make us tired already but believe it or not, over consuming sugar is making us even MORE tired. Not to mention we might be parenting unnecessarily badly-behaving kids who have eaten too much sugar.

Simple Substitutes for Sugar

What could we use instead of added sugar in our foods? Laura had several ideas for us.

1. Honey (or something like it, agave nectar)
2. Natural sweeteners like bananas.
3. Cutting the amount of sugar called for in half. (Instead of 1 cup, use ½ a cup!)
4. Changing your palette by eating less sugar. As you cut sugar out, you’ll begin to taste even small amounts of sweetener really easily.

Final Thoughts on Healthy Eating

It’s easy to automatically think of brownies or chocolate or sugar cereal when we mention cutting out sugar. But the reality is that there is sugar added into 90% of the processed foods in our grocery stores! That’s right, sugar isn’t even primarily found in desserts

Everyday items like flavored yogurts, spaghetti sauces, and crackers all have added sugars. Even inconspicuous items like breakfast drinks and protein shake powders are sugar culprits! It may not seem like much, but when you consume it all day long, it adds up fast. Laura says most diets we could consider to be “healthy” have quadruple the amount of recommended sugar because they’re full of processed foods with added sugar.

Laura provides an unprocessed grocery list you can use even at mainstream grocery stores, and that list is a great place to start--no weird items--at Get Eating Clean.

Custom Diet Recommendations for Me

Okay, so when Laura said yogurt often has added sugar, I had to press! I love yogurt, but I usually choose the flavored kinds. What would be a good alternative for me?

Laura pointed to Stonyfield brand as the most natural brand-- but make sure to get their plain kind as even a vanilla will have added sugar to bring the flavor. And Laura recommends full fat yogurt, as it is less process than low fat.

You can always check the ingredient list and nutrition facts to get the scoop on sugar levels in food.

But let’s be real, I may feel a little sad because plain yogurt wouldn’t taste great at the start, how could I change it up? Laura had great ideas!

• Add in maple syrup
• Make a berry puree sauce from frozen berries
• Use fresh berries to sweeten the yogurt

The big idea here is that YOU are the one in charge of how much sugar and what type of sugar you’re putting into your food.

Turning A Passion for Healthy Eating Into A Business

Laura was getting more and more into working out and started listening to podcasts while she did. (Great idea, Laura!) She really loved Chalene Johnson’s Courageous Confidence Club, and it got her thinking maybe she could start a business too.

Like so many other SAHMs, Laura believes that moms need something for themselves. For example, before starting her business, Laura taught Zumba classes. And Whole Food Nanny was a project she thought she would really enjoy, and could make some money from at the same time.

The Clark family’s journey to whole foods started with Laura’s 7-year-old daughter. For an intense two-year period, Laura studied health and nutrition in an attempt to treat her daughter’s symptoms: asthma, ear infections, and debilitating food allergies.

As she researched, she found her daughter had a diet problem because, as she learned, food will always affect our bodies, either now or later.

Laura’s family decided to make small changes and those changes really started to add up. Laura wanted other moms to see the difference that sustainable changes, not crazy extreme diets, can truly make. We love her heart to help other real moms!

Course Idea to Creation

Much like her approach to whole foods, Laura’s approach to course creation is refreshingly simple.

She started by sharing this transformative information on Periscope (a live video social network), and this try at her beta course was very successful! She had a link in her bio to PayPal (so smart!) and was blown away by the response.

Next, Laura upgraded to a full website, and created a course on reducing sugar intake.

First, she outlined her course modules, then she filled out the content. She first sent it out as an ecourse, and once again the response validated the idea.

This fuller paid course does offer more hold handing to help people understand which foods benefit them and how students can practically implement those diet changes. Once again, Laura outlined her content, wrote it, and recorded her modules.

First she did her recording from her manuscript, then created her slides, and then purchased a place to house the course.

As we all know, there is a ton of trial and error with a business!! She got some helpful feedback from her initial students and has currently pulled off her course for editing, but it’ll be back soon.

Making Sales

Initially Laura took payments via a Paypal link on her Periscope bio. Is that still an effective way to make sales? Laura says, for sure, her best tool for making sales has been live video. It’s great to have a way to connect with people directly and sale your product. (Definitely! Periscope isn’t where I hang out, but I love Facebook Live and live Webinars are an incredible way to build a following!)

Laura’s Adorable Mom Moment

One Sunday Laura styled her hair differently for church, but felt really self-conscious about it all morning! Coming home, she asked her daughter if her hair looked good that day.

Her daughter replied, “No mom, it looks terrible. In fact, you should have asked me before church!”

Kids are SO brutally honest!

Connect with Laura

Site: Whole Food Nan

We appreciated the new perspective that Sarah brought to today’s show! Even if you don’t have your sights set on celebrities, her tips are great for any business owner wanting to grow through influencers.

Sarah Shaw is a 3rd generation entrepreneur, and she has done it all. She’s worked in the film industry, had a successful handbag business, and is particularly skilled at reaching out to celebrities to get her products more recognition and make more sales. She now teaches others how to do just that at sarahshawconsulting.com. In addition to all of this, she’s a single mom to 9-year-old identical twin girls (so fun!)

Listen Now On the Podcast

1:10 - Launching A Handbag Business10:15 - How Do You Even Get A Celebrity’s Address!?11:36 - Filling Huge Department Store Orders17:20 - Hitting $500,000 in Sales In 2 Years20:05 - Tenacity in Business24:00 - Setting Your Business Revenue Goals28:30 - Getting Your Products in Front of Celebrities37:00 - Leveraging Self-Confidence40:28 - Sarah's Adorable Mommy Moment

Launching A Handbag Business

How did Sarah get started in business? What made her handbags a smashing success? She started her handbag company on a whim while working in the film business, doing costumes for movies. She had this random idea, which surprised her because she never thought she’d be an entrepreneur. “I am a third generation entrepreneur, but I thought no way would that life be for me! I want a steady paycheck and retirement!”

But when small business is in your DNA, it’s hard to fight! Sarah worked on this handbag idea during her nights and weekends, shuffling around her schedule to do it. She asked everyone she had ever met in her life for help! It felt a bit dumb, but she didn’t let the feeling deter her from trying.

One of her big early mistakes was that she didn’t have any insights on figuring out pricing structure. When you have a product-based business and are laying out money to create your items, if you’re not correctly pricing your work you’ll go out of business fast.

Service-based businesses have it a bit easier in terms of pricing. Their ROI is generally higher, and oftentimes the startup costs aren’t as steep.

As her business grew, Sarah knew she had to get on top of pricing. Let’s say a bag cost her $25 to make, she might be selling those wholesale at $50, while a store sold it for $100. She didn’t know how markups worked and her numbers didn’t add up. When she would sell bags person-to-person, she would maybe sell a bag for $30 or $40 and feel good about it because she just wanted her money back. Profitability was not on her mind, and it would have driven her out of business if she didn’t realize her pricing structure wasn't sustainable.

The one business aspect she totally DID get right off the bat was marketing. She wasn’t afraid to ask people, even those she knew randomly, if they wanted to buy her bags. Then, friends of friends started asking for a Sarah Shaw Handbag and word spread around LA. Some of Sarah’s friends worked on movie or television sets, and she asked if she could set up a table of her handbags at lunch. She sold a few more bags this way.

Over dinner one night, a costume designer friend of Sarah’s was lamenting the fact that she had to outfit Donald Sutherland in only Donna Karan clothes. (Donna Karan was a big name designer in the late 1990s.) Then Sarah had a lightbulb moment: I can get my products to celebrities and let them market for me!

Before the age of social media, what a brilliant way to get your product in front of more eyes!

“I called everyone I knew who had film connections and started to get bags into the hands of agents and publicists.”

As Sarah built business, she started an email list of people who purchased her bags. When she started her celebrity product project she sent an email to her list of 1,000 and told them what she was doing, letting them know that she was getting bags to celebrities. (This was a great practice run to some promotional emails she would be sending later!)

About 5 to 6 months after sending those initial bags, Sarah had an unexpected payoff! Liv Tyler showed up on the pages of InStyle magazine holding one of her bags she had sent over months and months earlier. Another day Sarah was waiting in an office and flipped open US Weekly to find Kristen Davis carrying one of her bags, too!

“I started sending those pictures to magazines, mentioning the celebrity holding my product, and they started writing about it. Not many people were seeding celebrities with products at that time, but it seemed logical to me. I was sort of a pioneer in that field.”

After that, her business took off!

She got her bags to over 70 A-List celebrities. She made bags specifically for Julia Roberts in Oceans 11 and America’s Sweethearts. Those bags were purchased by Bergdorf Goodman and Sundance Catalogue, respectively.

One of her most business-changing connections, Sarah was asked to make a bag for the Legally Blonde movie. Though the bag was never seen in the film, it did make the cut of an advertising poster. Thanks to the publicity, her company went from half a million in sales to a million that year. Nordstrom bought tons of bags, over $150,000 worth. And Sony Pictures was so excited about it that they sent over mini movie posters to include in each bag.

Sarah appeared on E! Entertainment and Access Hollywood. She found that success really builds on itself. “And I have to thank my lucky stars that my friend complained to me over dinner one night!”

Sarah is grateful for this unique way to have validated her product. “You need to make sure you have something to keep you going, and to know that you have something more than just you and your mom think is cute!” And Sarah’s celebrity endorsements certainly prove that.

How Do You Even Get A Celebrity’s Address!?

We had to ask, how do you even go about getting the address of a celebrity!? Sarah’s business started before Internet use really took off. Back then, she just called up agencies to ask who represented So-and-So. Sometimes she would write a letter or send the product with a note, “Could you please get this to Sarah Jessica Parker?” But there was no way to verify if her bag got into the hands of the celeb.

Now, Sarah recommends using ContactAnyCelebrity.com. This site has contact information for pretty much any famous person on the planet. Nifty!

Filling Huge Department Store Orders

A lot of moms listening are thinking that it would be a dream come true for a big store to place orders for their products! Does Sarah have tips to help make sure this mega-business dream would work out? Is it even profitable?

Sarah strongly cautions mompreneurs to take any relationship with department stores very slowly. “They’re not always your best friend. They could love you today and hate you tomorrow.” And one return of a mass order from a department store could easily bankrupt your business.

Sarah recommends to get a solid base of small stores (think boutiques and shops) who actually know and support you first. Then you could turn to department or mass market stores (think Costco and Target). Really think about working with those bigger retailers as icing on the cake.

Sarah explained that these days, most stores work essentially on consignment - though it’s more complicated than that. Usually in the small print they’ll have language referring to either a 30, 60, or 90 day period after which all of your products would get returned if they don’t sell through!

For moms who do want to pursue bigger stores, Sarah recommends you test the waters first. Either suggest or agree to a small test run of products before going big time. She says most stores will want to start small anyway, but really encourage it - and be thrilled with the chance! “If it doesn’t go well, it won’t be a financial disaster.” (Hard words to hear, but true!) Picture a store chain with 80 to 90 stores. You might suggest to test your product in their top 10 stores first.

Sarah also warns that working with the buyer can be SUPER important. You want to ensure they’re purchasing your best bestseller, not just their favorite product. (And you’ll have to listen to the podcast for a fun entrepreneur family story Sarah has!) Bottom line: you know your products best, and send what you know will work. You’re the expert on your product! Her wisdom was SO good, and applies to lots of areas of business.

Hitting $500,000 in Sales In 2 Years

One of Sarah’s businesses made an impressive $500,000 in sales during her first 2 years, with just one patented product!

“I’m kinda an animal when it comes to business!” Sarah says. She had lots of investors in her handbag company, but had to close the business in 2002 when she lost most of her investors after 9/11. She hobbled along in business for a while, but realized she couldn’t function without that investor money.

She tried a few ideas, but realized how much she didn’t know about running business. With Sarah Shaw Handbags, a lot of her day-to-day operations were hired out. So she started teaching herself Photoshop, email marketing, and website building.

In 2003 she created the genius idea of a handbag organizer. She patented the product and thought she’d have an easy time getting it into the hands of all the stores she once sold handbags to. Her attitude was very carefree, “I have all these stores who sold my handbags and they love me! I’ll sell a ton!”

But none of those handbag reps wanted her new product.

‘It lit a fire under my rear end!” Sarah said. And she thought, “I’m going to show you all you’re missing something huge!”

And she set out on a mission.

Tenacity in Business

Sarah initially kept her focus on high-end stores found in the pages of fashion magazines. (Remember, this was in 2003-2004. There was very minimal search engine optimization and no social media!) Then she had a shift in her strategy. “I started looking for distributors overseas. I wondered what it would be like to work with mass distributors like QVC and Walmart.” She took a closer look and realized that the small stores were really making up the bulk of her revenue. She made enough to get personal revenue for herself, about 85 stores in her 1st year, and at end of 2nd year she sold in 400 stores

The business snowballed from there.

Much like her handbags, she got the product to media outlets and to celebs. She even made custom handbag hangers for Jennifer Aniston! She also scored a magazine feature in Redbook and sold about 900 hangers after that. “Living in Los Angeles you can get lost in celebrity magazines - the Marie Clarie’s and Harper’s Bazaar - but don’t think about the other magazines that actually have some of the largest reaches in the country.”

Needless to say, Sarah’s tenacity paid off. She called a minimum of 10 stores a day trying to get her handbags in. “I’d psyche myself up and gather all my selling materials around me, then I’d pick up the phone. I don’t take no for an answer...as long as they leave the door open, I’m going to keep putting my foot through it.”

Setting Your Business Revenue Goals

No matter your business, Sarah says you’ve got to spend the time on the avenue driving your business. “I don’t like to think about how much the company as a whole will make. What I like to do is figure how much money I personally want to make and go from there.” A $1M goal, for example, is huge! Take the money goal and divide it by how many products you have to sell to hit that goal. Maybe I need to sell 1,000 products to make $1 million. And you need 100 stores to order 10 units. If you don’t think you can get 100 stores in a year, and they each ordered 4 times a year, you’d still make the money. Break down your goal into more manageable bites and work on hitting those goals one at a time. (Maybe it’ll be something like every 10th store you call gives you a yes, then you know that you need to call 10 stores each day for 10 days to get the number that you need!)

In Sarah’s case, she wasn't getting anywhere with the stores she usually sold to. So what did she do? She found sales reps who could help her, and also help her product get licensed. “Suddenly I could turn my one product in twelve colors into something to support my family.”

Getting Your Products in Front of Celebrities

Sarah has carved out a real space in the marketplace for herself, getting businesses owners connected with celebrities to promote their products. I had to ask if she could give us specific advice on how other women in business can reach out to celebs and actually get noticed but getting products into the right hands.

Sarah had a few really solid tips:

1. Know your customer base and which celebs would resonate with them. If you go after Celebrity A but they don't necessarily care about her, no matter how much you push it the news will fall flat because they like Celebrity B better. You really want a return for all this effort!
2. Be clear about why you’re getting your particular product or service to THAT particular celeb.
3. If the celebrity is never seen out and about, it may not be worth your time to source them with products. Make sure you’re sending to celebrities who keep a public profile. (For example, if you make baby hair clips you could send it to someone who just had a baby. And if they’re the type to take their baby on walks in the stroller, it would be a good bet to send your product to that celebrity.)
4. When you find that perfect celebrity, reach out to them and write a honest note about why you want to send them your product. Most of the time celebrities are happy to receive the offer; it’s rare that you’ll get a no.
5. Follow up with the agent or publicists to ensure that the celebrity has received your product.
6. Once you have confirmed that the celebrity has your gift in hand, Sarah thinks it’s great to put up a landing page on your site featuring everyone who has your product. If you do this, it is very important to get the disclaimers right. Something like, “We know these celebrities have received their product as a gift, and were not paid to receive the product as a gift. These individuals have not reviewed this product.”
7. Sarah is a huge fan of the media blitz! She thinks it’s a great idea to write to popular magazines and tell them which celebrities have your product. (Fun fact: you do not need to purchase permission to reprint a photo featured in a magazine. You can simply scan the image into your computer and put it on your press page.)
8. Or, you could write to various bloggers with the same news. The blogger may not necessarily be interested in finding and featuring celebs, but the news that your product is in the hands of an A-lister may give you credibility!
9. If ever you do spot your item in the same picture as a celebrity, Sarah says it’s important to act fast on the news! You want to really publicize the moment.
10. But if you’re worried about not being able to meet demand, you can simply write a note in your shop that, “Because this item was featured in People Magazine, it’s on backorder until blah blah date.” Don’t worry about the windfall, just take it as it comes!

I thought her comments about how to handle an unexpected windfall was SUCH a good point! I did something similar with a product in which I did a Kickstarter. I did preorders, and was able to then go place the big order with my manufacturer knowing I already had sales. It makes sense that if you get a ton of unexpected traffic because of a celebrity being seen with your product, use the momentum to take the pre orders or backorders, whatever you call it! That way, you have cash to make the product. Or if you’re a handmade business, now you have the cash to find your assistant to help you produce more product.

Leveraging Self-Confidence

Calling stores in the blind can be really scary! Or maybe you’ve loved a celeb since you were five and are trying to send them free product. It can be intimidating! What you need is to boost your confidence. Get in the mental space of “We all eat, poop, and sleep!”

Celebrities aren’t any different from other people! Store buyers aren’t better than you and don’t know more than you. They’re all normal people with a job that makes them famous. We all know their face, but not really them.

Sarah told us a story of one time when taking her kids to the pumpkin patch in LA, Amy Adams was also there with her son. But just outside of the patch, there were tons of photographers standing on hay bales set up like a grand stand taking photos of them. “Celebrities can’t even go to the pumpkin patch without being hounded. It makes it more humbling to think of them as real person. They can hardly have a personal life that isn’t scrutinized.”

And of course, it is exactly being in the public eye that makes celebrity attention so valuable - but it’s good to keep this all in perspective.

Sarah's Adorable Mommy Moment

Sarah has identical twin girls. When they were around 3, they were at grandma’s house to celebrate her birthday.

Sarah’s sister said to one of her daughters, “Go and see your mother.”

And Sarah’s daughter said emphatically, “That is NOT my mother!”

When asked what she meant, her daughter replied, “That is my mama, NOT my mother!”

(Sarah said she’d spare us the diaperless twin story that ended up with poo all over their cribs! But safe to say, they never slept in just a diaper again!)

Connect with Sarah

SarahShawConsulting.com@SarahShawConsulting

If you find yourself answering the same questions over and over (and getting super excited about answering those questions!) maybe you need to think about adding a teaching element to your business. That's what today's guest did, and we learned a ton from her!

On the Podcast

00:30 - Meet Alice + Our Surprise Co-Host1:46 - Stocking an Ecommerce Store5:25 - Figuring Out Order Fulfilment7:26 - Rebranding & When Your Business Has Two Customer Groups13:45 - From Service-Based Business to Teaching Others17:42 - How Do You Run Two Businesses At Once!?20:10 - Growing An Audience for Your Online Course22:08 - Leveraging Video Marketing26:20 - Alice’s Embarrassing Mom Moment28:26 - Doula Labor Tips for Beth Anne

Listen Now Meet Alice + Our Surprise Co-Host

Beth Anne: I’m so excited to welcome Alice Turner of Your Doula Bag.com. She’s a birth doula, a Lamaze Certified Childbirth Educator, and an online business owner which is SO cool. She has over 10 years of experience working as a doula and has translated that into having a successful e-commerce store as well as selling online courses. She’s a mom of 4 kids and has a supportive husband, too. Welcome to the show, Alice!

Alice: Hi!

Beth Anne: And I forgot to let everyone know, this is an extra special interview because Victoria from our team is also here! Welcome!

Victoria: Yeah, thank you! I didn’t want to let the cat out of the bag too early. A lot of you may know I’m also a doula as well, and I’m a customer of Alice’s business. It’s a fun connection. Hopefully, it’ll be helpful for the interview.

(Also, if you’re a keen listener, you might notice that part of our conversation got cut out at this point. Due to some tech issues, we lost part of Alice’s interview. Technology works until it doesn’t, am I right?)

Beth Anne: I love that! Victoria, do you want to jump in with a question?

Stocking an Ecommerce Store

Victoria: Alice, I would like to ask you about your e-commerce store. I want to talk about that before your online courses. One thing I’d love to know is how do you choose what you’d like to stock in your store. How do you choose which products to keep? I imagine it’s a bit different than keeping a brick and mortar storefront.

Alice: It’s definitely different! The store has been around since 2009. I really started out with just practical tools, thinking doulas mostly wanted tools for their bag. But it seems that doulas are also interested in more fun products! So I started to add fun things like tee shirts, buttons, and stickers.

It’s been a balance to know what to stock but I get some ideas when I go to a conference. I might attend a doula or childbirth education conferences, have different products on the table, and see what draws people’s attention and what they get excited about. From there I can change what I’m offering online to match the needs of my customers.

Sometimes I get emails asking why I don’t carry a certain product. Or they’ll say something like, “I can buy everything I need except one thing, can you start carrying that?” That’s easy!

It’s always fun to see what’s lacking and where I can make up.

Victoria: I do have a followup question, but first I want to say going to conferences is a good strategy. Attending conferences is a great idea for people who might be struggling to work online, wishing they had an in-person connection. Set up a booth and see what people gravitate toward on your table!

My follow-up question is this: do you have tools to manage your inventory? Do you use online tools? A spreadsheet?

Alice: My store is on the Shopify platform. It’s pretty easy to manage inventory that way. I use their built-in tools to keep an eye on it. It’s still a bit challenging, trying to balance between selling products and teaching. I thought these two arms of my business would be more alike, but they are actually very different. I thought there’d be a lot of back and forth between my customers, and that the same person who bought a T-shirt would want also want to buy a course, but it’s not the case. That has been a surprise to me!

Figuring Out Order Fulfilment

Beth Anne: My online store is also on Shopify. I love it! It’s so easy to set up.

And I do want to touch on the point about your customers being different in a moment, but I’m curious about one thing first. Do you stock everything out of your home and fulfill orders yourself? Or is there another system you’re using?

Alice: That’s a great question, and it’s changed along the way. Starting off I was all on my own with a closet full of inventory. But as the business grew with more orders, I contracted out shipping to someone in my neighborhood actually. They had all my inventory and did the shipping for me, I just passed the orders through. That arrangement worked out well until she was unable to continue doing it late last year. It’s back to me and it’s pretty challenging.

I haven’t formally announced this yet, but I will be looking for a buyer for the products part of my business sometime this year. It’s a new development, but I’ve found that there isn’t as much overlap as I thought between my customers. I think it might be time to formally separate the two businesses.

Beth Anne: Very interesting! I think it makes sense. At some point, you can spread yourself too thin, and you want to dig deep into one branch of your business instead.

Alice: Yeah, exactly. It is a time for growth, but also sad to a point. I do love the product aspect of my business but if I really want to focus on helping doulas run their businesses, I should spend more of my time there, which is my company mission. It’s all in the works.

Victoria: So our BBM ladies can follow you and keep out an eye for your all-call for a buyer! Awesome.

Rebranding & When Your Business Has Two Customer Groups

And as you were just saying, the customers of your courses and products are different; can you talk a little more about that? How did you notice? Do you have ways of talking specifically to one group and then the other? How do you manage to talk to two separate people in your business?

Alice: Yes, that’s been challenging and fun to figure out. I would say I try to do blog posts and videos about the business side. And we’ll do sales and share about that on Instagram on more of a product side since that really lends itself to pictures. But when I write blog posts or make videos, it’s not really about a product or how to use a product; it’s more about the business, like how to set up an electronic contract, for example.

Beth Anne: We’ve certainly found the same thing to be true here. Victoria runs our planner Instagram account, but when it comes to selling business courses that’s where I use webinars and videos to teach and sell.

Alice: That’s awesome!

Beth Anne: So I know you’re rebranding, going from Your Doula Bag to 100% Doula. The whole idea of rebranding seems overwhelming and scary to me. All sorts of stressful things! I’d love to hear more from you about what that looks like. What are the steps you’ve gone through?

Alice: It is very daunting. And it has taken a while for me to come to the decision to break out of the product-side of my business. I found that when I started offering different types of things like products, classes, and webinars, it was confusing to my customer.

For example, they’d say, “Don’t you sell those backpacks I love?” and I’d respond, “I do! And I also sell courses to help you grow your business.” It just wasn’t consistent.

Especially keeping the name Your Doula Bag felt more like a product-based business to me. 100% Doula was a name that had more flexibility and is more of an umbrella over all my products and services. But getting the word out has been a slow trickle. Instagram made it easy to change my name, and Twitter was super easy to rebrand. No one actually said anything after I changed those two platforms! Facebook is much harder to change, and more of an involved process. I’m not completely there with educating all my customers. A lot of people still know me as Your Doula Bag.

I have even had some customers seem sad that I was changing my business name! That’s been interesting to handle, too.

From Service-Based Business to Teaching Others

Beth Anne: I love, Alice, how you took your service-based business, which you still do, and turned it into an online business course. You have an awesome online business course for doulas, and you still practice as a doula. A lot of women out there have a fabulous skill they could teach on, but would be nervous to turn that skill set into a course. What advice would you give that woman? How did you move to that online business space?

Alice: I love being a doula. I love talking about the work, reading about it, and thinking about it. It just really gets me excited. I keep talking about attending conferences, and even though there aren’t that many, the ones I’ve attended have had a big impact on my business decisions.

When I would go to a conference and talk informally with people, I found that I was answering a lot of questions. Maybe a doula would say, “I’m trying to balance childcare and being a doula.” I could say, “That was hard for me too, but I figured it out this way.” Or I might be answering a question about how I use Twitter to grow my business.

I realized I didn’t know anyone who is out there talking about running a business as a doula, or selling products to doulas. Maybe that was something I can do. There was a gap in the offerings, and maybe I could fill it. Since then, definitely, other companies are filling that gap, which is exciting. But after I found that I was answering a lot of questions, I thought I could be the one to give information. I’m thinking about someone who might be on the fence about their business, but finds themselves often to be the person in a group answering everyone’s questions; it only makes sense that they would be a great person to teach and help others.

I’m still doing the work of a doula because it really is what I love. Some of my customers see a picture on Instagram of where I’m at a hospital at a birth and will write back surprised that I’m still working as a doula. Of course, I’m still a doula! I don’t want to give that up because I have other stuff going on. It’s a job I can learn from. And if I’m teaching about it, I think it’s important to stay relevant.

Victoria: I have two thoughts. 1) I think it’s great you noticed you were getting the same questions a lot and thought you could be the one to answer it. That’s the spark of an entrepreneur! You’ve got a problem? I’ve got the solution. Hopefully, that’s inspiring to others. You also don’t seem to have a scarcity mindset, which is really refreshing.

How Do You Run Two Businesses At Once!?

And 2) Could you talk a bit more about practicing as a doula while running a separate business? I know a lot of our ladies have many interests and sometimes you can feel crazy pursuing two things at one. How do you keep those two businesses separate? Or does it feel like one in the same?

Alice: Well in my case, the businesses are certainly connected. In my doula service business, I have the luxury of having a lot of repeat clients. Many of my clients go on to have other babies, so I’m able to slack off a bit in the marketing side of my personal doula business and spend the marketing energy on my other online programs. I feel lucky I’m able to get enough clients just by referrals from prior clients and repeat clients.

Victoria: One business can coast, and one is more in hustle mode.

Alice: Exactly. I am trying to teach more childbirth classes, and I’m working with a new group we formed of Lamaze educators here in Atlanta. Unfortunately, I don’t have as much time as I want to devote to that, but I try to make peace with that in my head that I at least keep myself in the game, but not having to spend tons of energy on growing that particular business.

Growing An Audience for Your Online Course

Beth Anne: Okay, so this is what I see a lot of women maybe struggling with. You had essentially your service-based business on autopilot thanks to an awesome referral network, but then you go online. Maybe a mom is wondering how she’ll get those first customers for her online course?

I know you have some conference connections. Was it word of mouth to get those first students in the door? Or were there other marketing strategies that helped you grow?

Alice: I think what helped with getting the course started and growing it is that I was already doing a fair amount of regular blogging and videos. I would do videos on topics related to growing a doula business, and as my email list was growing I could send them new info about what I was doing. Because the course is video based, that helped since people already knew my style from my YouTube video and could assume a course would be similar.

Before I launched the course, I was doing a few Google Live Hangouts to talk business. That helped get the word out about what I did and what I was talking about.

And, of course, social media. I tried to post about the same topics I would be teaching in the courses.

(You can watch Alice’s videos on her YouTube channel.)

Victoria: I think it’s so great to see solid marketing strategies as a base. If you have a good base, you can turn it to whatever direction your business needs to go.

Leveraging Video Marketing

We were just talking about social media marketing and using videos and you definitely do a lot of that. And I'm a fan! Why did you start using video? What makes a good video? How do you know what makes a good video?

Alice: I love using video! When I was hearing your question I was thinking how I got started. I can’t remember what exactly forced me to turn on the camera back then, but I really love learning from video. And I just know that YouTube is so easy. When I started, Facebook Live wasn’t available, but just the fact that you can turn on a camera and reach people easily is so cool.

And blogging isn’t my favorite. I hire out people to help me write. I don’t really love just sitting down and writing; I would much rather have a conversation about the topic. If I could sit down to coffee with someone and tell them how to get clients, I would love that! But if I had to write a paper on it, I’d hate it! 

So I did YouTube videos pretty regularly. And this year I’ve done more Facebook Live. They’re both good, but a bit different. The live component is really fun. I don’t mind winging it when I'm talking about a subject I love.

Victoria: With using YouTube, were you always cognisant about SEO and tagging and keywords? Or did you not worry about it?

Alice: No, I did try to get the description right, with a link back to my website. I do put thought into that. But usually, my ideas for YouTube come thinking about what I should blog about.

Alice’s Embarrassing Mom Moment

Beth Anne: Alice thank you so much for chatting with us today! It’s been really fun seeing how you’ve mastered so many different areas of business. You’re really rocking and rolling, and I know it’ll inspire other moms to get clients or students.

As we wrap up, we always ask our guests to share a funny or adorable mom moment.

Alice: I do have a funny moment, but I don’t look like the best mom in it. I was having a particularly busy day. I was probably packing up boxes, sitting in the shipping area of my house and trying to get stuff done after dinner. I was tired and busy, you get it. So my oldest daughter, who’s in high school, started telling me about something at school and I was getting frustrated with her because she was slowing me down. I didn’t say it, but inside I was thinking, “Can you just go do your homework?” I asked her why she needed me. And she said, “I’m writing a speech about why you should have a doula and I wanted to interview you.” So I don’t know if that’s a funny moment, but I felt bad and laughed at the same time. And I told her I was so sorry to be getting frustrated with her when there she was wanting to write a speech about me.

Beth Anne: I think that’s the epitome of being a business mom. You’re always feeling busy and overwhelmed, and it can be hard to always stop and be attentive to what our kids need. But our kids are always watching and viewing us as these role models even when we don’t feel like we’re being a role model.

Alice: The good news is she made a very good grade on her speech and was very knowledgeable!

Doula Labor Tips for Beth Anne

Victoria: I’m throwing in a fun question. We know Beth Anne is expecting at the time of recording, so I’d love to hear a fun pregnancy or labor tip for her.

Alice: What baby is this?

Beth Anne: This will be my first birth. We have one son, Holden, and we adopted him. This is my first pregnancy and will be my first birth.

Alice: Oh, exciting! Victoria, I can only give one!? Okay. If I could tell all pregnant women one thing, it would be to move around in labor - it’s so much better. A lot of people think (and pictures often show) women in labor should be in hospital beds. And certainly there’s a time for that, and if you’re doing an epidural, of course, you need to be in bed. But before your epidural, or if you’re not having one, move around! A lot of women don’t know they can. And a lot of nurses don’t know to tell their patients that they can!

Beth Anne: And here’s my “plan” for now: To stay home as long as I can. Move around a ton at home. Try everything possible. Then when I can’t stand it anymore we’ll go to the hospital and I want an epidural right away.

Alice: Yeah! That’s a really good plan. Laboring at home is wonderful.

Victoria: You can even move with an epidural using a peanut ball, rotating hips. And sometimes you can move a lot with an epidural depending on how strong it is. Even when you get there, keep gravity working in your favor.

Beth Anne: Yes! That’s true. I’m already so impatient. I have 4-6 weeks before he’ll be here, but I’m so ready now.

Alice: It is so hard! Those last few days are hard and can be long. I love that you said 4-6 weeks. You’ve got the range.

Beth Anne: I’m trying to be realistic.

Alice: Best of luck! That’s very exciting.

Beth Anne: Thank you! Thanks for talking with us. I love your business model and all the ways you’re using your skills and talents and passions.

Connect with Alice

Site: 100percentdoula.com

Now it’s your turn to head out there and Be Brilliant!