Welcome to the last episode of the second season of The Micro Niche Mastery Podcast.

Our guest for today is Jono Petrohilos, the co-founder and director of Fitness Education Online and Course Creator Community. He is also an international speaker, bestselling author, and podcast host.

Listen to this podcast episode and discover how micro-niching can help you grow into a 7-figure business and expand into an additional business.

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fitnesseducationonline.com.au

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Click Below to see the full transcript of this episode

Voice Over:

Welcome to the Micro Niche Mastery Podcast, where we help you establish yourself in the perfect micro niche. So you will get noticed and grow your business faster. And now your host, he watched the first season of the squid game, Netflix show twice and found 12 hidden gems of business advice in it. Ziv Raviv.

Ziv:

Hello, and welcome to the Micro Niche Mastery Podcast. Hi, I’m Ziv Raviv. And today I have the privilege of interviewing Jono Petrohilos. I hope I spell it correctly. Hi, Jono.

Jono:

Ziv how are you? I’m impressed. Are you, are you Greek? How did you get that, that name?

Ziv:

Well, I practiced, but Jonno, let me introduce yourself properly. So Jono is the co-founder and director at Fitness Education Online, which is one of the largest providers of professional development courses for fitness professionals in Australia. He’s also an international speaker bestselling author, podcast host, and the winner of the Australian fitness educator of the year, which I have to ask, like, what is that competition or about how do you actually, like, how, how can you actually win that?

Jono:

Yes. Good question. So there’s a a governing body here in Australia, fitness Australia. Right now, if you have a, like a course that fitness trainers take, usually you get that registered with fitness. Australia is like an at accreditation kind of thing, right? And then every year, they have awards at fitness Australia. You know, the personal trainer of the year, the group fitness instructor of the year, the gym of the year, one of the awards is the fitness educator of the year. And it’s done by first nomination process. So they’ll send an email out to all the trainers and they’re like, you know, Hey, you know, nominate your, the course that you did that you thought was the, as to the educator, you thought was the best. If you get a nomination, there’s an application that goes through. So I got an email from fitness Australia that said, Hey, Jono, you know, you’ve been nominated for this award here. You know, fill out this documentation here, filled out the documentation, usual kind of questions. Who are you? What do you do? Why do you do it? All that sort of stuff there, it then goes into a finalist. And then, you know, there was four or five different educators, and there’s a panel of judges, experts who picked the best educator out of those, those finalists.

Ziv:

Sweet like, this is a real deal. This is not something that is easy to get, but I wanna ask you, like, I wanna hear the origin story of your business because you chose us to not sell directly to the end consumers. Like the people that are there that wants to become more fit. You decided to work with specifically the fitness professionals and even specifically teach them online. So tell me a little bit about how did, what were you thinking about when it was just like an idea?

Jono:

Yes. Awesome. Okay. Let me add some, how long do you want me to spend till on this story? Cause this could be anywhere from five minutes to 20 minutes.

Ziv:

Let’s start with the 5.

Jono:

Awesome. Mark. Cool. So simple version. I used to be a bootcamp instructor. Okay. So I used to run a bootcamp out in the park and run a business that way there, I worked at a franchise. There were like 75 different locations at this franchise. And you were ranked how good you were. All right. Based on how many of your clients would come back, your attention number one means you were the best number 75 means you were the worst. Take your guess what I was ranked. If when starting off,

Ziv:

I did you thought it will only work if you are the best, right?

Jono:

Well, but just to start off with, I was the worst. Wow. I was 75, right. I was the worst, but I loved what I did. And I was like, well, you know, if I don’t get better, I’m gonna get booted out of a job, you know? So I gotta get better. And I was like, well, what can I do to get better? Well, let me do some courses. Let me do some upskilling courses. Right. And I went and did a, you know, a course on how to run a better bootcamp. And it was good. You know, I did it and I learned some stuff. There was an issue though, that was like the only course out there for that specific style of bootcamp, there were courses, you know, you wanna be a personal trainer at the gym, you know, you wanna be a weightlifter, you wanna be a marathon runner, but you know, for running an actual bootcamp, that style, that was the only course.

Jono:

So I was like, I still wanted to get better. So I would do a heap of other courses that was still related, but not as directly related. And then I would sort of spin it and use that on my niche. So let’s just say, for example, I might do a course on, you know, how to get better at sales. Okay. But that might be sales for everyone in the world. And then I’m like, all right, how can I take what I learned from that sales course and then implement it specifically to my business. Okay, cool. Now I’ve put together my own little system based on what was there. All right, cool. Let me go and do another, another course. Okay. Now this course is gonna be on how to use kettlebells. Okay, great. You know, done this course here, and this is great now how to use kettlebells.

Jono:

But half these exercises are only for people where if you’re working in a gym and you know, everyone’s got their own kettlebells, and they go from eight kilos to 48 kilos. How can I just take what’s here and use it in an outdoor bootcamp setting where I might have three or four kettle bells of the same weight and 20 people. How can I do it from that? And long story short, I got really, really good at running a bootcamp. 12 months later, I went back to the, the same convention where they did the rankings. Now take it. Guess what I was ranked if, Ziv

Ziv:

But finally, yeah. Now you got to the

Jono:

Space now, number one. Right. And what sort of happened from there? What other trainers would ask me? Because they sort of saw me go from the worst to best and like 20 clients to 120 clients in two locations. And they were kind of like, Johnny, what are you doing? You know, how’d you do it? And I was like, well, it’s this and this and this and this and all these different things. And I was like, hold on. I think there’s a course in here. You know, I feel like I’ve, I’ve gone to all these other courses. I feel I can put something together that is better than anything else out there, because nothing is specific for this type of people here. You know, it’s like, if you want to go and run a bootcamp, there’s nothing. That’s like, he’s step by step a to Z. How to run a very successful bootcamp. You’d have to do what I did and attend a million different courses and then take it out and then, and then make it to work for you. That’s how the idea started there.

Ziv

And did you actually create debt costs?

Jono:

Okay. So yes. So what happened there? That’s another story in its own, but in a nutshell, what happened there is originally I was thinking of doing like a workshop, like a face to face workshop. This is back in 2014 online courses. Weren’t a thing. Right. But I was kinda like, I’m already working my, my butt off, you know, and the running the fitness boot bootcamp myself, you know, and I’m like, do I really wanna give up my Sundays to work again? And then, and what if I run this workshop and no one comes, or what if I run this workshop and only one person comes, you know, they’re gonna run it for one person. And I was like, you know what, let me look at this online thing. You know, maybe I can do this online thing. I didn’t know what online was, but I knew that it was there.

Jono:

And I got a quote from someone for a website. They were like, yeah, we can do this. It’s $15,000 or something. And I was like, oof. You know, it’s too much of a risk that I wanna spend at the moment. And I was scrolling through Facebook and I saw an ad for an e-book and I was like, oh yeah, an e-book I might let me, let me purchase this. E-Book you know, let’s see what this ebook thing is, purchased an e-book. And I was like, cause at the a time I thought an E to get, have an ebook. You, you had to be like a publisher, you know, or like an author, you know, and you had to that sort of stuff. And I got this ebook and I was like, hold on. This is just a Microsoft word document saved as a PDF.

Jono:

Now I’m a technological Dunst, but I know how to create a Microsoft word document and save it as a PDF. So did that, you know, created a Microsoft word document. Awesome. A really, really good solid course there saved as a PDF. And I was like, okay, I’ve got this course, but it was a limitation. It looked just like a Microsoft word document. And I was like, I think I gotta do a better job and make it look prettier now me being a technological Dunst. You know, I tried to make it look prettier and I made it look worse. You know, there were breaks and indents all over the place. And I was like, what am I gonna do? So went to my old friend, Google and realized there was a website called Fiver, where back in those days, you can get anything you want done for, for $5.

Jono:

You know, I still remember some of the things, there was a, a gig on there where, where a guy said, he’d slap himself on the face for five bucks. And I was like, what does his site even rule? You know? But anyway, paid someone $5, they edited the document. They made it look better. It wasn’t amazing. It was a $5 job on Fiver, but they made it look better than what I could have. And it no longer just looked like a Microsoft word document. It now looked like an e-book. And along that journey as well, I also discovered unlisted YouTube videos because I actually purchased the gig of the guy that was gonna slap himself in the face $5. And what he sent over to me was an unlisted YouTube. Like it was him slapping himself. It was awesome. He slapped himself hard. It was good, but it wasn’t like a personalized video.

Jono:

It was just, he did it once, you know, put it up on YouTubers, unlisted, you know, and then anyone that purchased his gig, he just sent it over to him, you know, had like a hundred or 200,000 views. By the time I saw it, he made like a million bucks from slapping himself in the phase once. But anyway, I learned to then unlisted YouTube videos. And I was like, okay, let me put a few of these videos together and let me insert these into the e-book as well. Now it’s a good course because it’s got all the info in the e-book. It looks nice. It’s edited by someone that’s good at that stuff. And it’s got some videos in there as well that people can watch there. That was the first course. I think I sold it for about 200, 250 bucks Australian to start with. Yeah. That’s how it, how it started.

Ziv:

So you had your first product, but once you, you have that, you also need like people to hear about it. So what did you next?

Jono:

Yes. So I did a few different things. The easiest thing for me was getting it approved with that body fitness Australia, because when you get it approved with fitness Australia, it goes up on their website. Right. And they’ve got, I dunno, 20,000 trainers there that go and check that website for courses and that sort of thing there. So even before I had a plan, I didn’t even know how to sell it. I had this document, you know, I got it approved. It was on my computer. I, I was like, I’ll get it approved. And then I’ll come up with a plan. Got it approved. And I was like, right on Monday or something. And I was like, right this week, I’ll, I’ll think about a plan. And then I got a call that day. Someone’s like, you know, Hey, I see your course on this website.

Jono:

You know, how can I buy it? And I was like, oh no, I didn’t even know how you can buy it. I was like, ah, look, I’m just in a meeting, let me call you back. So got their phone number and went on Google. And I was like, how do you take payments? And you know, or you could do it on PayPal. You know, got a PayPal link, you know, emailed them over how you can buy this. Here you go. You know, here’s, here’s how you buy it there. That person purchased it. And it was, was interesting there as well. That was where a bit of luck swung my way as well, because in those days, the, the courses on that website, we’re just listed alphabetically, right? If your course begins with a, you were the first one on there, they were like five, 600 courses on this thing.

Jono:

You know, it’s almost like a for personal trainers kind of thing. It’s like, if you have a course on U good luck, you know, if someone actually buys it. Right. But my course was called four steps to a successful bootcamp. Cause I had the number four, it was the first one there. Right. So, so with, you know, Udemy now they rank it by most popular, I think, or whatever it is, you know? So if you got a new course, you’re gone, you, you are number a hundred on there or, or something. Right. But because this was alphabet goal, your mind rank number one. And because of that, I would get not a lot, I’d get like one or two sales a month kind of thing. Right. But it was enough for me to be like, okay, I’m onto something here. I’m doing absolutely nothing.

Jono:

And people are, are inquiring and buying it. And the other key key thing was the feedback. Cuz the first couple ones I sold I would, was scared of the feedback. Cause I was like, man, are these people gonna email me back and be like, you just saw me a Microsoft word document, give me a refund, you know? Or were they gonna be like, I already knew this stuff, you know, gimme a refund. I, I didn’t know cuz I, I was only working in the, on, in the, the face to face world at that stage. Right. I only really interacted with people in my area. I didn’t know what people on the other side of Australia were doing. They, or even the other side of Sydney, I don’t know what they were doing. So, but I got feedback and it was really, really good. And I was like, okay, you know, I’m onto something here.

Jono:

And then I just did some really basic sort of stuff. Right. I just created a Facebook group because I already knew a lot of fitness train. Well, not a lot, but I knew a few as trainers anyway, because just from working in the industry, it’s like, I’d be working in the industry five years. Look like anyone. I don’t care what your job is. If you’re a magician, if you’re a real estate agent, if you’re a chiropractor, you’re gonna have some friends in that space. You know, you studied with them, you worked with them, you used to work with them. You met ’em at a networking event, you know, whatever it may be. So when I started a Facebook group and just invited all my kind of friends into that Facebook group there, and I would do the odd promotion in that Facebook group as well.

Jono:

And I would also just collect an E I’d have an email list as well, basically from anyone that inquire, even if they didn’t, if they bought great they’re on the email list, if they didn’t buy. Okay, great. You know, they also go on the, the email list as well. Right. And then from there it was like, all right, that’s I guess the, the start point of it there, those two things there, the next kind of thing from there was then the, the email marketing. I didn’t do a lot of it, but I just did kind of enough to see the result as well. It was just, I can’t remember what I, I think it was like once a month or something, I would just send one email out and to anyone that that was on my list and hadn’t bought was essentially like, Hey, if you haven’t bought, here’s the course register today and you get X amount of discount or whatever it is.

Jono:

And then I make a couple sales like that as well. And then from there I was like, all right, I can see all the pieces. If there’s just a way I can put it together. It’s like, if, if people do the course, they like it. If I can get in front of people, they’ll buy the course. And if I can get some of these emails, I can send this email and I can, I can do it that way there. How can I just essentially build my following? So that was the start point of it there.

Ziv:

And nowadays you have a lot of ways to build up your following. You have podcasts, you have, you know, your website, you have your Facebook what’s like, would you consider the one tool that is, that has brought you the most success in your business?

Jono:

Ooh, it’s tough to answer. I know the stats exactly. In terms of like revenue, it’s split dead even with my email list and my website. So give or take there’s about $15,000, 15, $20,000. That’ll come in every month, just from my website, just from people that have gone to the website via SEO, Google ads, and just gone on there and purchased the course. And then similar with my email list as well, you know, from sending out regular emails every month, there’s about 15, $20,000 a month that comes through just from that. But in saying that I’ve obviously had to do things to build that email list, right. That email list is 15,000 people. I didn’t just click my fingers and, and do that. You know, there’s been obviously a lot of things to build it, but right now it’s, it’s those two things there that generate me the, the most revenue,

Ziv:

I guess the next question would be like, how do people, like, what is the number one way for you to get people on your email list?

Jono:

Ooh, another good question. Because every trick in the book to be honest, but the best one for me is actually face well is two of them. No, I’ll, I’ll just simp. I’ll simplify it and say Facebook ads because the system I use for Facebook ads for that business anyway, is I’ll simplify it again. I put about $500 a week on a Facebook book ad, right. Promoting my course, which costs $500. Now I know the stats. If I put $500 on that Facebook ad, I’ll get about 25 inquiries right now. I know of those 25, about 10% of them will sign up and let’s call it two to keep it simple. Right? So I know if five put $500 on Facebook ads, I’m going to make $1,000 back. So it’s a $500 profit, which is okay, but the better part is I’m getting those 25 leads for free.

Jono:

And then it’s just like, you know, and obviously I can scale up and down on that sort of thing as well. But just with that, there it’s just a constant flow. I’m essentially getting paid 500 bucks a week to get 25 extra people into my database. And that’s happening week after week after week after week, I’m obviously doing other stuff as well. You know, my Facebook group, my podcast, organic social, the website partnerships, it’s a whole other heap of stuff going on as well. But I guess my one that grows consistently with me doing anything is Facebook ads.

Ziv:

And are you using it with like a lead gen campaign or with a conversion campaign? Like what type of campaign do you run?

Jono:

Yep. So lead gen campaign and the funnel is essentially lead gen campaign. So someone lead gen campaign on Facebook, I found that’s the best way to generate leads. Someone ops in, I’ll get a phone call from one of my team and they’ll also get some follow up emails as well. So it’s simplified version. They opt in, they get three phone calls and three emails selling them to that thing. They opted in directly if they don’t purchase that thing in that period, there they go into the main email list and they get my regular email marketing.

Ziv:

Basically, they signed up through Facebook on through the Lead gen form to get on the call with you because they wanted to learn more about the course

Jono:

Yeah, exactly. So the, the Facebook ad is essentially, you know, are you running a, you’re a personal trainer, you’re running a bootcamp. You want to get better at running your bootcamp and also get your, your CEC points as well. We’ve got this course here. It covers bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. And it’s currently on special if you’re interested into your details below and we’ll send you over the info, right. So it’s not, it’s not a free thing. They’re opting in for all the list. Like they’re opting in directly for that, that course there.

Ziv:

Did you add any additional products at some point, like group coaching or coaching or, or anything else?

Jono:

Yeah, so we now have 40 different online courses. So that was just the first one, that bootcamp one. And then the model was really good. So it’s like, let’s put another one, another one, another one, another one, another one, another one, another one of those 40 half of them don’t sell. I’ll be honest, but there’s at least 20 ones that sell and of those 20, maybe 10 that sell really, really well. So that’s fine. Cuz it’s just, it’s like a 12 week cycle kind of thing. It’s like this week, this course on special and this one, this one, this one, this one, this one at the end of the 12 weeks. Repeat that process again, back to course, number one, we do also do some group coaching as well. We focus more on the online course side of things just because it’s for lack of a better of term, it’s easier. It’s kinda like there’s no work to be done. You know, if you’ve already got the list, like, like in our situation where we’ve got the list, it’s like, okay. And you know, the traffic essentially like great, you know, we’ll just make these sales and then every sale is zero work. So we do coaching, but that’s more like a side side sort of thing.

Ziv:

These days. Like, do you also have clients coming to your business from outside of Australia?

Jono:

Not really, to be honest for that business. Very few. Like we, we do like, and when I say Australia, it’s, it’s mainly Australia and New Zealand. It’s pretty similar, but the New Zealand market is so small that it doesn’t really do it. We do a little bit of work in the US as well, but very minimal. I think it’s a couple thousand dollars a month from us. And the reason for that, there’s a couple reason and this, this might come down to micro niching as well. Not only am I just focusing on fitness trainers, but I’m focusing mainly on boot camp, fitness trainers, not only that, but just Australian boot camp based trainers because there are, even though like fitness is fitness and even in the business of Fitnesses are similar all around the world, but there are some subtle differences and because I’m targeting just Australia, to be honest, it’s more just the price point.

Jono:

Like I know the price points over here that are just no brainers or if a personal trainer is like, okay, I’m getting that for that price there, shut up and take my money. It’s a bit different in the US because there’s more competition over there. You know, there’s some heavier hitters over there and there’s also a bit of a, a lack of in Australia. Anyway, there’s usually a bit more trust if you’re working with an Australian person, cause it’s kinda like, ah, this American person, they can run off with my money and what am I gonna do? You know, this it’s Jon O down the road. If he runs off with my money, I’ll go and punch him in the head. You know, there’s a bit of yeah, so I do get SA like it literally like 99, you know, 90 plus percent Australian and then less than Australian New Zealand and then less than 10% American,

Ziv:

What’s your next step for growing your business?

Jono:

Yes. So that business there, the step is to be a hundred percent hands off, which I pretty much am. So that business there, I basically do absolutely nothing. Right. I’ve got a team that, that runs it there. And I just check in couple times a week, make sure everyone is okay. So what I’ve done now is starting new business, the course creator community, which is where I essentially help people do similar because I was like here, I was running fitness education online, really good business, only about a million dollars a year in revenue, but that business was kind of helping fitness professionals to make a hundred thousand dollars a year. And there’s a couple of thing. I felt I was selling myself short, like, man, I’ve got this skill that can make me a million dollars a year online, but I’m just teaching people this very small part on how to do the fitness business side of things. So that’s where I created the course creator community.

Ziv:

This has been really inspiring cause like kind of textbook example of how you take a very specific niche problem. Only Australian fitness professionals, only online education and only boot camps. You can’t go more niche than that. And, and even just an e-book, like an online course of an e-book and, and an unlisted video, because really what matters most is like is, do you have a solution, right? Did you actually solve problem? Did you provide value for people? And you did, you, you knew.

Jono:

That’s what I was shocked with. Well, that’s what I was kind of cause that’s the thing, like it was literally an e-book, but the feedback was great. The feedback was like, this is awesome. Such good ideas. This is exactly what I needed. Didn’t really, the production meant zero.

Ziv:

All that matters. It, it wasn’t the logo. It wasn’t the yeah, the, the, the website, it was just the fact that you took all those online courses and distilled them to what people actually need. They didn’t need to learn how to do everything. They needed to know how to learn, how to do those boot camps. And you provided that. And late now, now is like, you go into a very oiled machine with 40 online courses and selling them through emails and through your website organically and, and making money from like Facebook pays you money basically for growing an email list constantly and cons and growing. It just, it’s beautiful. It’s a textbook example. And I can see how just looking into your model and getting inspired by the details because there’s a lot of details in every single piece of, oh yeah. It’s what you do. You need to, to understand everything that you do well, like be good in, in that Facebook group and create you know, an engaged community and be good at your CEO. Right, right, right. You now have this community where you share a lot of wisdom and, and I’m part of this community myself and I’m impressed. So tell people where can they learn more about both of your businesses?

Jono:

Yes. So my fitness education, online business, just type fitness education online in any social media platform, it’ll, it’ll come up there. Same with the Course Creator Community, just type course, create a community that’s we are in all or platforms. I’m mainly a Facebook group guy. So you can find us on, on any platforms, but the, where, where most active is if you join our Facebook group, the Course Creator Community, Facebook group.

Ziv:

And I think that if you are into any type of business, not just course creation, then just following this community and learning more about how they grow and how they very engaging. That’s a topic for another interview, maybe one day about like how you manage to leverage Facebook groups. I wanna thank you Jono, for taking this time. I know you’re a busy guy, but taking the time of sharing with us, how niching down so specifically to such a now part of your audience in solving a problem well helps you create a seven-figure business and nowadays even expanding into additional business. Thank you so much, Jono.

Jono:

Thank you.

Ziv:

You. And thank you everyone for listening for another episode of the Micro Niche Mastery Podcast,

Voice Over:

This show was brought to you by daily cookie.co, where you can finally feel supported daily email love. Now delegatable visit daily cookie.co for a collection of free resources on how to use copywriting and daily emails to grow your micro niche business today.

The post Selling an online course in a micro niche, with Jono Petrohilos (MNM Season 2 Episode 14) appeared first on Daily Cookie.

Welcome to the thirteenth episode of the second season of The Micro-Niche Mastery Podcast.

Our guest for today is Ali Levine. A TV personality and a podcaster who helps people with fashion, lifestyle and authenticity.

If you’re afraid to be vulnerable and open about your life, this podcast episode will empower you to be confident in living life without masks.

From audio journals and blogs to producing a podcast.  Listen to Ali’s podcast journey in the first part of the interview

How did Ali strip down to her authentic self? Listen at 3:40

The best accessory and your life’s superpower are at 6:25

Learn about Ali’s turning point from a picture-perfect life to a real and raw one as a mother at 8:34

Ali’s healing stories have resonated with many. How did she start a business out of this? Check out 10:36

The truth about making money by being vulnerable is at 13:24

Listen to Ali’s success stories through the Everything with Ali Podcast in the second part of this episode

Looking for a stylist? Ali is a celebrity wardrobe stylist and NY Times Fashion expert. Details here

“When you choose to step into your authentic self and own every single piece and part and shadow of you that you are. That’s where the magic happens. That’s where the gold is.” – Ali Levine

alilevine.com

dailycookie. co

Click Below to see the full transcript of this episode

Voice over:

Welcome to the Micro Niche Mastery Podcast, where we help you establish yourself in the perfect micro niche. So you will get noticed and grow your business faster. And now your host, he published a fiction book about a spy who extracts information by being really good at talking with the kids of the targets, Ziv Raviv.

Ziv:

Hello, and welcome to the Micro Niche Mastery Podcast. I’m so excited to be here with Ali Levine for ali levine.com. Ali is a lot of things. She’s a podcaster with Everything with Ali Levine. She’s from Nashville, Tennessee. She’s a TV personality, and she helps people with everything around fashion and lifestyle and authenticity. And I came across you Ali and I was, uh, immediately, I fell in love with her, how you are authentic and, and the way that you help others become authentic. So hi Ali, how are you?

Ali:

Hi, I’m good. How are you? Thank you so much for that kind introduction.

Ziv:

Thank you for taking the time and being here. As a mom, I know you’re always super busy and you do a lot of things. So you’re busy naturally, too. I wanna ask you, where did the year to start a podcast for someone that actually makes a living from something so visual, like styling, where did you come up with the idea of a podcast?

Ali:

Absolutely. That’s a good question. So I had a podcast actually with one of my really good friends, uh, when I was in the Hollywood styling world called things which really easy to blog about, um, it a on hiatus, but it’s, uh, still does really well to this day. It was a really fun show of one of my closest friends that we kind of just talked about, all the things that we didn’t have time to actually blog about and talk about. And so it was a very kind of just fun flowing silly, but cool entertainment podcast. And so that was my first kind of dip into the podcast world. And then when we went on hiatus. I had gotten pregnant with my first daughter and I realized I didn’t have, you know, all the time in the world. And I was really sick in my pregnancies.

Ali:

So it was like, okay, we’re gonna table this for now. And then I went through my own journey in the beginning of motherhood, went through pretty heavy postpartum depression. And when I did one, I never expected it. I think most people that go through it don’t. And then when I did, you know, coming out of it, I was having a really hard time kind of healing and going through my own processes. I’m a very spiritual and more holistic type of person. And so I was doing a lot of my own work and I was, you know, working through a lot of just different holistic therapies and all kinds of things. And my therapist said, well, why don’t you start besides writing it down and blogging? Why don’t you start saying it out loud with things you’re feeling, the things you’re experiencing. And so I did, and essentially they were kind of just like audio journals for me, but a few of my friends heard them and other people around me, they were close to me and they were like, why don’t you actually like release this?

Ali:

And I was like, and do what with it. And they were like, I don’t know, make it a podcast or a show or something. And I never honestly thought it was gonna be that I just thought I was gonna kind of release and just, you know, use it to be able to get through more of my own stuff and ended up being so beautiful that it was actually originally called strip down with ally Levine two and a half years ago. And it was released. And, uh, for two reason since one stripping down to your authentic self was really, really important to me after going through all I had been through. Um, and it felt like I was truly naked and vulnerable in such a new way that I never experienced before, especially coming from the Hollywood space. So for me, it was really important to really have that picture painted and that visual way that when you saw that, you know, stripped out with Ali Levine, it’s like, we’re getting bear real and raw here.

Ali:

There is no filter. There is no BS, this is, this is it. And then the other part of it for those that, that maybe don’t know I was on a show on Bravo that was, uh, pretty, uh, well known and crazy about three and a half years ago now with my husband. And that was called stripped. And that kind of what gave me the idea of playing off of that. And so anyways, I started sharing journey and my postpartum depression, all the things I was going through as a new mom, things I didn’t expect to go through, especially in the public eye, um, was really hard for me. And so I really shared those kind of audio clips and they ended up becoming episodes and shows. And what was beautiful was as I was sharing them, I was having my own healing, but I was getting messages from all around the world from women and moms that having their own healing as well.

Ali:

And it was becoming cathartic to me because I was helping others heal. I was healing in the process and I was being more and more open and more vulnerable. And even in my social media space, I started sharing instead of just styling on my Instagram and my social space. I started sharing again, that more vulnerable side of me that I had never showed up in that space before and really sharing real and Rob my journey and what I was experiencing on a day to day basis and how hard it was for me. And so that was kind of where it, um, started. And then as always, you know, I think God always has bigger plans when, so as things kind of took off for me, mean that space opened up more than, of course the pandemic and everything shifted for everyone in our lives in 2020.

Ali:

And I just felt like I was no longer, longer doing a service to humanity by just doing moms and just focusing on mom struggles because everyone was struggling. And I felt like if I’m really gonna show up in an authentic way, how do I kind of let all these stories come through, but still really keep my idea of what was real and raw. And that was when I pivoted to everything with Ali Levine, because I wanted it to literally encompass everything and have everyone feel like, okay, I can share any story, whether I’m a mom or not. As long as I’m showing up here in a very vulnerable, authentic space, I will be sharing my story and hopefully helping someone else. And that was my whole thing was like inspire, empower, and hopefully help and transform because that’s how I always feel as a stylist.

Ali:

Why I love styling for so long is I want to inspire others. I want to empower them in what are wearing and what they’re feeling. And I’ve always said, confidence is your best accessory. And then once again, when I went through the journey of becoming a mom and really lost my own confidence, um, when everything happened with my postpartum depression, I kind of felt like a fraud showing up all these places in a quote, authentic space, because I didn’t feel authentic. I felt very fake because I didn’t know how to find my own confidence. And I realized as I went through this kind of dark journey and found my own light and the tunnel, what I was missing of that key piece of confidence was the authenticity piece. And when I started stepping into my own true, authentic self and not who people wanted me to be, or the I should be and showed up as me, that marriage of confidence and authenticity was truly this igniting empowering moment for me.

Ali:

And so now I always say, confidence is your best accessory, but authenticity is your superpower. And that goes for everyone. And so that’s kind of the little bit long story of how this all kind of started to play out and why a podcast. And now I’m getting ready to launch my second podcast where I feel very called to right now, because I feel as a collective, we’re being called on a very spiritual level to go into that authentic space, to really get uncomfortable with ourselves to further transform, to further shift our world, to further show up in our highest self and our highest power and do the most for ourselves and others. And so I’m really excited that hopefully the next month or so, if not less, depending on when this comes out, um, my spirituality podcast will be dropping soon.

Ziv:

So, uh, definitely there’s something to consider looking at into once you, once this show actually, uh, go live that the show my, I already be live your will be live. Will that be on the same website? Like alilevine.com?

Ali:

Yes, it’ll be on alilevine.com. It’s gonna have my name in it. I haven’t dropped the name publicly yet, so, but it will, you’ll be to find it. It has my name in it. It will be on alilevine.com and it’ll also be released on all my social and there’ll be also a Instagram handle for it once it goes live.

Ziv:

Sweet. So this is really very personal and I, I thank you for being vulnerable in sharing this here. And you started this podcaster originally back then as a healing process and something that was your way to use your voice and to actually share what you’re going through and what you’re feeling in such a brave way, because you were covering topics that are almost taboo like, the fancy, you know, shiny under the spotlight, world of people that are actors and whatnot, the entire industry, film industry, and TV industry, whatever, the people there are kinda had lot of pressure to always be glamorous and pretty yes. And to hide this very real part of life. And the part of who those people are, which is being a parent, being a mom.

Ali:

And I was there. That’s when I realized when I became a mom that that didn’t work for me anymore is when I kind of hit my own rock bottom of like, I can’t show up in this place. And like, pretend like I didn’t have the worst day because I’m a new mom and I’m struggling with breastfeeding and sleeping and all the things we all deal with as new moms. And we’re supposed to just pretend isn’t happening. And especially for me, it was like show up on the red carpet. You know, smile look amazing, even though my body did not quote unquote bounce back, which many women don’t. And I was under the impression mine would. And I was so shameful of myself of like showing up at this red carpet, not looking, you know, a hundred percent like I should look like and showing that I was tired and you know, that I was uncomfortable and all these things.

Ali:

And it was like, yeah, no, this doesn’t work for me. Like, I guess I could play in that space before I was a mom, because I, even though maybe there were things that were bothering me, I would just kind of push them to aside and just show up and put on a happy face because that’s what they teach you, especially in the industry to do. But when I became a mom that filter everything, I mean, it was gone. It was like, no, to know, there is no more showing up in this space. You’re gonna show up authentically as you, whether someone likes it or not. And that’s really where I got to.

Ziv:

And, nowadays like the fact that you are starting to, like you pivoted with the world with this COVID and, and, uh, found like additional people, that needs you. And then like moving from flipping down in the vulnerability sense in the like emotionally in authentic sense to everything. And now to the podcast that we will not name yet. All of this is amazing journey. And thank you for sharing this with us. I wanna ask you though, because you do make money from professionally from your services as a stylist. I wanna ask you for these moments where you started to see that started as a healing tool and created a lot of connections for you with, with other women who resonated, did it also affect your business in some way?

Ali:

Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, it’s funny when I first moved originally from New York a decade ago to California, and now I’m living in Tennessee, but I was living in California for a decade. I moved out beginning of 2010 to California, and it was just to, you know, follow my dreams, essentially. I just wanted to get into fashion. I had opportunities from amazing, LA costume designers that I’ve been working with in New York and Atlanta. And I was just jumping into the costume world, kind of had no clue what I was doing. And then just kind of baptism by fire, you know, doing what I needed to do and networking and all the things. And of course I was very much in my ego because I was around all these celebrities, all these major players, and I’m getting opportunities to work with all these people and, you know, know, and, and all the things.

Ali:

And then before I knew it, I was dialing all these kinds of random nobody’s for the moment in, you know, Hollywood. And then all of a sudden, certain people would become someone and they would go from being a D Lister to a B Lister or A Lister, you know, that thing, those things happen. And so all of a sudden my name was associated with this. And so then it was like, oh, she’s getting, you know, this client’s getting best dressed and this is the person associated with, with it and, you know, and so forth. And then I started getting asked to be on camera to give my fashion tips and, oh, Hey, how did you dress? So and so, or tell us about this magazine cover and all these things started happening that I never experienced, uh, expected, you know, to experience. And then fast forward to then the whole styling to then going forward into the social media space.

Ali:

You know, when I was showing up on social media, when I was a stylist, it was just that ego. It was just look at the pretty picture of this person. They look amazing, they got best dressed, look at the fashion, this, that, and other thing, which was amazing, but there was no context behind it. There was no, you know, depth. It was just, here’s the pretty picture. And here’s the accolade that came with it. And there was no blood, sweat, and tears, even there was a ton of blood, sweat, and tears that went into it. And so fast forward to then, you know, me sharing so raw on my podcast then because of that, it kind of gave me her mission to start to show up raw on my social media and start to who share and post pictures of myself raw that I would’ve never posted before.

Ali:

I was always posting like, you know, the best selfie picture and the best light and the best makeup and all these things that like I thought were important, which obviously we’ve all learned since 2020 are not. And I was very much in that ego space. And so I, you know, would always show up like, Hey, here, look at me, you know, I’m in my best out outfit and look at this and cause that’s how I thought it was supposed to be. And then, you know, again, after going through my postpartum depression, the different things I experienced, I started realizing that like, yeah, no, I’m not doing a service to anyone and definitely not to myself. And so when I started feeling that permission to post raw photos of my body and of my motherhood journey, not only it was just so beautiful that so many moms and community rallied around me, but it opened up this space and business for me of like, oh, there’s this space for people who want to be vulnerable, real and raw.

Ali:

There’s this space for people who actually want that and yearn for that. And there’s brands that wanna partner with you for that. And they want to be associated with you. And that was a whole new concept for me because I can’t from a world again. That was like, if I’m gonna work with any brands, if I’m gonna do anything, everything looks perfect. Everything is camera perfect. Everything is this, everything is that. And so that was how I always was. So it gave me this like amazing like permission and also kind of this like glimpse into this world of like, oh, I don’t have to be perfect all the time. I can show up on a bad day. I can show up row and raw and I can show the emotions I’m going through. And I’m actually gonna still make money of this. Actually I’m gonna make more money than I actually did ever before, because I’m showing up in a real, authentic, vulnerable space.

Ali:

And that was a game changer for me to see myself step into that true authenticity of myself and not only shift my own narrative, it within my own self-limiting beliefs, but also with others, I have brands come to me and say, you know, we wanna feature you. We wanna work with you. We wanna pay you X for this campaign because we love what you’re sharing about your body. Or we want you to talk about your C-section and talk about what you went through and partner it with this brand. And we want you to do this. And it was just amazing how fast things align for me. And I think think we, as people have been taught for so long in the different programs and narratives that we’ve been around, that we have to be a certain way. And that’s just simply not true when you choose to step into your authentic self and own every single piece and, and part and shadow of you that you are.

Ali:

That’s where the magic happens. That’s where the gold is. And you have to be willing to go through those traumas and those things that are, we all have in different ways and say, this is where my gold is. This is where I shine. No one else has this because this is me individually is my unique soul. And this is how I get to show up. And I inspire others to do the same. And now that’s all turned into businesses for me. And that’s all turned into parts of my journey. And the more I dive in deeper, the more I see come abundantly to me. And I used to think like, that’s crazy. And, and even now, you know, I had these limiting beliefs last few weeks going around the spiritual part, oh, people are gonna think I’m crazy. What am I doing diving into this? This is in my space, et cetera, et cetera, all these things. And I’m like, no, this is where I’m feeling called to. This is where I’m feeling aligned. I need to show up again as authentically as possible, where I feel I need to share. And I’m sure there’s gonna be, of course, you know, some pivots and hiccups, like there always is as an entrepreneur, but you have to know that you have to go through that growing pain in order to go to the next level.

Ziv:

Wow. This is really interesting how you started from something very a niche that is painful for you, that like that your experiencing your very own hurdles, but that are very painful as a mother and the, like the pressure and, and all of the hard experiences that you went through in your life, but you were sharing them in the light and you were sharing that you can be beautiful and not perfect, and you can be beautiful and authentic, and the mom and, and talk about these things, but then through  your personal growth and your self-development and helping other inspiring others. You could grow to do more than that to be even as big as everything with Ali Levine and later on, be acknowledged for your journey by brands that chose to work with you. I think that’s really, really inspiring. Is there one moment you could share with us, like where you knew that this is like some sort of the tipping point where you knew for, for a fact that your podcast made this happen?

Ali:

I think, I don’t know if it’s maybe a specific moment, but I think more for me is just feeling that alignment for me, everything is really a feeling. It’s an energy. And if you can really tap into that, you know what that is, and we all have that. It’s just, you have to be willing to go there. And I think for me, it’s when I feel like I’ve shared something and then I get an email maybe from a brand who’s like, you know, I heard this episode or I saw this post or whatever it may be. And they’re like, I want to work with you. This inspired me. Here’s the vision that we’re doing. We would love to have, you know, your vision come to life with it. Would you wanna partner with us? You know, I think it’s those types of things, but then there’s also times where sometimes it’s even just different people reach out and say like today I had a bunch of DMS about one of my latest guests, Jake who was on my podcast.

Ali:

And it was all about elevating yourself and living beliefs and how you step out of that. And people were, you know, DM me like, oh my God, this episode was just fire. Like the two of you together. Like it was just so inspiring. And I just kind of felt that like tingle inside of like, all right, people are being wit up by this, you know? And, and maybe I won’t get, you know, a quote, unquote partnership of this one episode, but it doesn’t matter when you get that kind of feedback and you can see you’re making a difference and you can feel that true frequency and alignment with yourself. It’s like, oh yeah, big things are gonna come from this. Because again, you’re digging into that gold. So I think there’s definitely been moments for sure. Like, I know a big one for me when I was going through my motherhood journey was bio oil.

Ali:

Who’s like a really big, you know, brand reached out and they were like, we wanna fly you to New York. We wanna do a photo shoot with you. We wanna show your body, all these things. And I was like, wait, what you know is really surreal. And it was like, we want you to talk all about your motherhood journey and what you’ve experienced and why you still love your body. And we wanna talk all about that because our brand is all about how you love your body through your scars and your impurities and all the, you know, imperfectly perfect. And, and I was like, wow, this is so amazing. And it was truly surreal for me. I mean, even being flown and going, and, you know, being put up at the hotel and everything, it was like, wow, this happened because I was vulnerable. Like, and it’s so funny because I remember like, there were so many times where I wanted to go on all these trips and I was so in that quote, unquote, ego of myself, of like, oh, I have to be like so perfect.

Ali:

And I have to be this. And I have to be that thinking like that was what was gonna get me, those opportunity and those jobs and those things like never happened for me. And then once again, I chose to be vulnerable. I chose to show up as who I am, and I truly do believe, yes, some things may fall off, but then they’re not aligned for you. Like, I believe when you’re truly in alignment of yourself and you believe that wholeheartedly and you don’t let anything else get in the way, everything that’s meant for you will come for you and you, you will not be chasing it. It will just come right to you. And that’s where I think you see, you know, that shift and where you can say like, oh yeah, that came from that moment that I share to my podcast that came from that blog that came from me sharing my truth. That’s what I really think it comes down to for me is the more step into that authenticity. The more I share my truth as scary sometimes, and as vulnerable as it can be. That’s where I see that alignment. And that’s where I get to say, wow, I’m so grateful that this has not only led me to this path of my own involvement, but it also has opened up so many doors in my business as well.

Ziv:

Wonderful. I wanna thank you Ali Levine for the moment of sharing this with us and inspiring us that, uh, you could actually become like a magnet of opportunities and of connections if you are in alignment and authentic. And if you trust the road and the journey, and it’s not just numbers, it’s about feeling that you are aligned and that’s sometimes the key for business, uh, especially it was for you. And, thank you for sharing this with us. Is there any way, uh, that people can connect with you or, learn more about you Ali?

Ali:

Oh, for sure. Well, thank you for having me. And I would say this resonated with you. Please feel free to reach out on my socials. I spend most of my time on Instagram, just because of DMS and answering. And I do always answer, it may take me a moment, but I do always get back. So if something resonated or if you have a question or you just wanna say hello, please feel free to slide up my DMS and say, hi and reach out. If you have a question, I am still styling, but mostly remotely. So if you’re wanting to be styled by me, either feel free to reach out via DM, or you can go to my website, alilevine.com. I also work with a styling agency called style life. I can give that to you for the show notes, but they, you can also book me through there and yeah, if anything resonated, just reach out.

Ali:

I’m on all the platforms. You know, my website obviously has all that there, but my Facebook, my Instagram, my Twitter, my Pinterest, my TikTok I’m on all the platforms. I don’t necessarily show up on all of them, but I’m on all the, Instagram, if you’re looking to really connect with me community wise, um, just send me a DM. I love to say hello and meet, you know, new people. Or you can send me a message via my website, and I’ll get back to you. I’m please. If you do find anything that resonates with you, jump on and sign up for my newsletter. It’s free. You can just jump on, my website and click, you know, type your email in and sign up. I would love to add you into any of the kind of monthly thing I send out that I always try to inspire and empower others.

Ziv:

Thank you, Ali, for being here, I will put all of those handles in the show notes, including the website, alilevine.com. And thank you everyone for listening for another episode of the Micro Niche Mastery podcast.

Voice Over:

This show was brought to you by daily cookie.co, where you can finally feel supported daily email love. Now delegatable visit daily cookie.co for a collection of free resources on how to use copywriting and daily emails to grow your micro niche business today.

The post The business power of your authentic self, with Ali Levine (MNM Season 2 Episode 13) appeared first on Daily Cookie.

Welcome to the eleventh episode of the second season of The Micro Niche Mastery Podcast.

Our guest for today is Nathan Bynum, an author and the man behind lemonlaunch.com, where people learn about affiliate marketing.

Listen to this episode if you want to learn how to earn passive income through affiliate marketing.

lemonlaunch.com

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Click Below to see the full transcript of this episode

Welcome to the Micro Niche Mastery Podcast, where we help you establish yourself in the perfect micro niche. So you will get noticed and grow your business faster. And now your host, he uses power naps about twice a week at 4:00 PM to allow his brain to recover from making hundreds of decisions by then. And to get ready for coaching again in the night shift, Ziv Raviv.

Ziv:

Hello and welcome to the Micro Niche Mastery Podcast. Hi, together with me today is Nathan Bynum, the author of Goal Setting habits to Achieve your goals and succeed in the life you want. And the person behind lemonlaunch.com where people learn how to do affiliate marketing. Hello, how are you? Good to have you here. How are you?

Nathan:

It’s good to be here. Doing well. Glad to be on your podcast.

Ziv:

It’s a pleasure to have you here. I think affiliate marketing is a topic that is a lot of time misunderstood and is, sounds scary. So let’s start with just understanding what is affiliate marketing.

Nathan:

Yeah, so the basics of affiliate marketing is that a company has a product or a service that they are selling, but they want to be able to promote that through what are called affiliates. And the job of the affiliates is to find those products, hopefully ones that they’ve actually use so they can have good testimonials about it and to have a understanding of what the product is. And they earn a commission through their links that they have after they set up that affiliate account because they’re referring people to that product. And so the first company is making more money because they’re not having to pay for advertisement. Affiliate is making a commission off of that sale because they’re basically a salesman for them. And then the, whoever their audience is, is getting the benefit of having those products told to them through somebody that they trust. So that’s the basic gist of what affiliate marketing is.

Ziv:

One of the keys, according to like, to what you just said is basically you need an audience. You need to talk with someone that trust you and tell them, Hey, this is something I actually believe in that this product was service will help you. So what type of an audience are we looking at in order to actually consider affiliate marketing as a way to monetize your business or your side hustle?

Nathan:

Yeah. So at this point in time, there’s pretty much an affiliate program for most companies out there. Like if you go to a website that you use for whatever your product is, like, for example, just a random example, a sewing teaching, like if someone and teaching people how to sew and they have a specific like sewing machine that they use, then they can go to that website wherever they got that from scroll down to the bottom. And that’s usually where the affiliate program is. They can sign up for. And then also Amazon is what I usually tell people to, to start out with. It’s not the best commissions, but it’s the easiest to get set up, to kind of get a feel for affiliate programs. And the benefit of Amazon is that people already have their credit cards ready to purchase in Amazon. Plus what Amazon does is they have a 24 hour cookie. So if somebody clicks through to look at that sewing machine, through your link and they don’t purchase that sewing machine with that 24 hour cookie, anything that they buy within those hours is gonna be a commission to you. So at this point, like really anybody is, has some kind of product or service that they’re gonna be able to help promote to their audience. And then just like, get that commission at no charge, no extra charge to the people who they’re promoting it to.

Ziv:

And basically like, it doesn’t matter what your audience size is if they’re interested in a very specific topic and you know, that there are certain things that they might need, like online courses or services or product, then by sharing an affiliate link with them, you have a monetization opportunity that is just out low hanging fruit, just waiting for you. You don’t need to actually pay anything to be a part of the affiliate program. Is that correct?

Nathan:

Yeah, absolutely. There’s a vetting process for most affiliate programs because affiliates sometimes have a bad name because there’s a lot of people who will just get tons of links and just kind of blast their audience with them or blast them all over the place. But that’s not how you grow a business. That’s not how you grow specifically a brand. And that makes whatever those brands are look bad. So it doesn’t cost anything to start, but you’ll have to give them some information so that they can kind of see you that you’re serious about this. You actually are kind of in the business of whatever that niche is. They’re wanting to see that you’re relevant to that audience and that you’re somebody who’s not just gonna spam people with like hundreds of links because that, that doesn’t look good for either party.

Ziv:

What about like the creation of the audience? Is it something that has to be exclusively from blogging and writing, like more and more on a site on your website, or could it be that you generate content and create an audience in another way?

Nathan:

Yeah, that’s a great question. Because a lot of people who think about affiliate marketing is just thinking like writing blog posts after blog posts, but I didn’t initially start out with affiliate marketing in mind. I was just helping people to create websites for their businesses initially. And that’s, I made a course around that and I was selling that and I realized that because of the products that I was recommending to people to save them time from having to look at all the different options, like the hosting services, the themes and everything, I was making a good amount of money through those affiliate programs because of that course. And that was something that like I created and sometimes I would run a special and just like give away the course for free. It’s a product that I already had in place that I was giving people value.

Nathan:

And as kind of you, you talk about in different places, like not to think of it as a funnel, but to think of it as a pyramid, like my, that free party at the bottom of the pyramid was teaching people through a PDF that I would give away to show them how to get all the components set up like the content management system, the posting service theme, all that, and teaching them how to get that for free. And then it was not having to just keep doing posts after posts, after posts, something that like I would go in have kind of what I call partnerships with people where I would do like a live with them or teaching a class or something and grow the audience that way grow, like the email list that way grow, have people go through that pyramid and to get to the top to where it’s a product, but also you’re getting that good commission off of those affiliate links. So it doesn’t always have to be just like blog posts or YouTube videos, which those are two good places to start with affiliate marketing, but those aren’t completely necessary in the long run.

Ziv:

So it’s, you can have your free party anywhere. Really. You might even have a free party, which is a Facebook group. You might have a free party, which is a LinkedIn profile that is just very active and people listen to you and, and follow you. And occasionally you, you tell them about something that you’re doing like a free course, and they go into your personal free party. It’s kind of like in the metaphor of the free party, it’s kind of like having sponsors or vendor booths where people go into your free party because it’s awesome. And you are getting some providing value with your content, but then they see that there’s a vendor of something else and they can choose if, to buy it or not. And if they do then you win and they win. Everyone wins. I wonder if you have some case studies with your clients or something like that, of people that were able to see some results with affiliate marketing, some, some yummy results, even with a relatively small email list. Do you have any example like that?

Nathan:

So the different clients, like they don’t have to have like huge audiences, they, before they start doing the affiliate program, like some of them have, have had small, small email lists and they’ve been able to produce some income from that because they’re such specified audiences. They’re like, they’re narrowed down to people who it’s relevant for. And that’s kind of like, as you talk about like the micro niches, like you want to kind of cater to that. So like there’s been different ones, like a survival blog type thing where like, people were interested in that specific niche. There, there wasn’t like a whole lot of people on their list. I don’t believe, but they’re able to make some money through that because of who they’re catering to. And they’re able to attract those people because they’re not just blasting them with those links. Like I was talking about they’re they provide value.

Nathan:

Like they provide like tips on survival. They’re provide different, like lists, they’re provide different resources. And so they’re able to ensure that their audience is the kind of wanting to have those products, whatever affiliate links that they sell, like the knives and camping stuff, that kind of general thing, because if they weren’t in that specific group, then they probably unsubscribe. If they start getting a bunch of emails about like, these are the top 10 bags to have for like bug out and to go camping, to survive, whatever, like they’re gonna kind of narrow down that audience because of what they’re sending them. And so that’s how they’re able to grow that list. They’re able to do that because of the different things that they teach. And they’re able to then after a certain amount of time, like promote to them like, oh, well, if you’re interested in this, then you may be wanting to know like what the best knife star is, because you’re gonna be camping a lot. You’re gonna be like doing all these things and you don’t wanna du knife while you’re out in the woods. So they’re able to monetize that regardless of like what their sizes are.

Ziv:

Love it. I can testify myself of the building big micro niche business. The first one I’d had an email list of 400 people before I launched my first program. In that program, I would show people an affiliate link for a hosting. It was a business program and I showed them a hosting service provider. And suddenly from every client that is paying 800 for the initial launch for the weather program, better said they were making me 850, because many of them were actually buying a hosting package. And it was a legitimate recommendation. I use that, I believe in it. And so it’s easy to give an advice and to even clear, say like, this is, I call it my ice cream link, buy this through my ice cream link and I’ll get some ice cream for my family and they love it and do it with pleasure. So what are some bigger success stories that you’ve seen with affiliate marketing?

Nathan:

So some of the ones that kind of come to mind are ones that have taken what they use like in their daily lives, like their ones that they’ve realized, like what tools that they’ve used. And they’ve kind of like honed in on that and shown to their audience because that’s one thing that takes up a lot of time is just the like research and figuring out like, what’s the best thing. And the like kind of navigating through different reviews that are online because a lot of the five star ones are paid and a lot of the one star ones are competitors from what I’ve seen and like on, on Amazon, that’s kind of like how a lot of it goes. So the people that I’ve seen that have been the most successful are the ones that like save their people a lot of time and kind of go through their own experiences, as opposed to other people that I’ve like seen do things that were the opposite of that, which is like just going directly to like click bank or other big, like conglomerates of a lot of different profitable looking links that they haven’t used.

Nathan:

They haven’t specified because audience can tell whenever it’s something that’s genuine, something that you truly believe in, or it’s something that is just that you think that is gonna make a lot of money. So from the successes that I’ve seen, it’s more people who follow those guidelines, follow those rules of providing value first, providing what they have that integrity in and ones that on the other side of that, I’ve seen just kind of fail because they don’t think about the long term benefits of having that brand. They don’t think about how it’s going to look like in a year from now two years from now, because people are gonna buy those products because they trust you, they’re gonna have those experiences, but then if they become bad experiences, then they’re gonna also kind of link that back to you and think like, oh, well, why is he recommending this to me? If this is a terrible product, like if has all these flaws with it. So kind of to answer that question in the long way is to the ones that I’ve seen most successful are the ones that kind of follow just like the customers first long term, thinking about your brand, instead of just thinking about the quick wins of having a lot of links that people can click through on,

Ziv:

And you actually help people in your business in lemonlaunch.com with anything that is related to affiliate marketing and making money with your business through this passive income type and how to do it authentically. So what would be like an ideal client for you? That should check out what you do.

Nathan:

Yeah. So an ideal client, I guess, would be somebody who kind of understands who they are as a brand, somebody who has that long term mindset, not just somebody who wants to get rich quick in the next, like two weeks, it’s somebody who understands that they’re gonna have to put that value first, they’re building this for the long term because it becomes a good source of passive income. Like once you have it set up, once you have those like funnels or the pyramid inside of your website, and think about it as just like a, another product for you, because you are the one promoting that, you’re the one who needs to have that trust and integrity with it. So somebody who has that in mind and has that mindset is somebody who I usually look for in that. And if they don’t already have that website set up, like it doesn’t matter as much because I have helped people with that as well. But it’s just the people who have the integrity is the most important thing that I look for.

Ziv:

I love that you, you shared your ideal client based on the values and the ethics and the vision, rather than, you know, the demographics or even the psychographic of just, oh, I need them to do this with this size of a list and this location or whatever. So good on that. And, and really understanding that that affiliate marketing will not be a good fit for you. If you are in the business of not building a relationship with thrive with your audience and just using your audience, then like actually any business will not be a good business model for you. Affiliate marketing is just one monetization system. There’s online courses, there’s products, there’s services. There’s other ways website as a service, learning as a service software, as a service and so on. But if your heart is in the right place, there’s a prequisite to want to serve in any business. Really tell me the story behind your book. Why did you, what made you write a book about productivity?

Nathan:

I’ve always been interested in learning myself and it’s kind of nerdy, but I’ve for the past, probably like seven years. I’ve fallen asleep, listening to Ted talks every night. And so I wanted to have a way that I could kind of assimilate all that knowledge that I’ve had and to assimilate the knowledge that I’ve gained from other people specifically that are a lot smarter than I am and a lot more successful than I am. And just like have that in a book that I could just like give to somebody or like tell them about this book, that they could come at it from whatever, wherever they are in their life, and to have kind of a roadmap to build that foundation because foundations are super critical for anything that you’re wanting to improve on. So having that foundation of those different pillars in our life, the different pillars that make up who we truly are. And so kind of, it was partly for myself, but also partly for other people to have all that knowledge in one place from all the books and podcasts I’ve listened to and the people that I’ve interviewed. So just like having it in one place that makes a lot of sense and has a lot of value from different resources.

Ziv:

Well, it’s definitely helpful to have a book in your track record and helps with credibility. And I think that it’s a generous thing to do. Thank you, Nathan Bynum for taking the time to share with us a few concepts about affiliate marketing. If anyone wants to learn more about you and what you do and get some assistance support for their business, with affiliate marketing, what should they do?

Nathan:

Yeah, they can just go over to my website, lemonlaunch.com and they’ll be able to find me from there and whatever social media links, whatever they want to connect with me on. They can find that there as well.

Ziv:

And lemonlaunch.com will put the link for that in the show notes on the cookie.co. Thank you guys for listening for another episode of the micro niche master podcast. You Nathan for being here.

Nathan:

Thanks for having me.

Voice over:

This show was brought to you by daily cookie.co, where you can finally feel supported. Daily email love, now delegatable visit daily cookie.co for a collection of free resources on how to use copywriting and daily emails to grow your micro niche business today.

The post Monetize your business with Affiliate Marketing, with Nathan Bynum (MNM Season 2 Episode 11) appeared first on Daily Cookie.

Welcome to the twelfth episode of the second season of The Micro Niche Mastery Podcast.

Our guest for today is Adam Hunt. A TV producer turned copywriter now the creative director of White Label Comedy.

Are you afraid of writing jokes in your copy? Listen to this episode to learn how to use comedy in your business.

The story of how Adam started using comedy for brands is at 1:20

Adam’s key to unlocking his company’s growth is in the first part of the episode

What makes an engaging and relatable joke? Check out 4:40

The two elements in writing an effective joke for a brand are at 8:39

White Label Comedy’s ideal clients are at 9:31

How to start a conversation with your audience using jokes. Listen to Adam’s success stories at 13:25

Get a mix of text jokes, graph gags, and meme-makers every month here

Download a free copy of 20 Jokes That Sell here

If you find this episode interesting, share it with a friend.

whitelabelcomedy.com

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Click Below to see the full transcript of this episode

Voice Over:

Welcome to the Micro Niche Mastery Podcast, where we help you establish yourself in the perfect micro niche so you will get noticed and grow your business faster. And now your host, he wakes up every, every day and tries to make this world a prettier place. One business at a time, Ziv Raviv.

Ziv:

Hello, and welcome to the Micro Niche Mastery Podcast. Today I have the pleasure to have with us, Mr. Adam Hunt, Adam Hunt is the creative director of white label comedy all the way from London, where you serve people from companies from all over the world with freshly retail comedy that helps them in their business. Wow, this is so specific. Hi, how are you, Adam?

Adam:

I’m really good. Yeah. Really excited to join you. How’s it going?

Ziv:

It’s great to have, you’ve been looking around at your work and, you know, from the GetGo, I thought, Hey, using comedy in business, that’s something that might be scary for some, and that by itself makes it very, very, you know, micro niche. Can you tell me a little bit about how did you come up with this idea?

Adam:

Definitely. Well, I think in a first thing, first, it’s only scary to use comedy when you’ve done what you’re doing. And, and I think the best jokes, the ingredients for those jokes come from a brand safe place. And so the end result is a brand safe joke and, and that, you know, that I think that’s kind of research, underpinned everything we do, but where all this came from, I used to be a TV producer. And so in that kind of half of my world, I had the luxury of working with comedy writers to punch up my scripts and make them better. And, you know, give me sort of funny ideas. I also would sort of Moonlight working for brands and businesses as a social media, you know, content creator. I used to write scripts for adverts and whatnot. And I just, it was really clear to me that on the marketing space, there were companies crying out for engaging content and they had no idea, like, not just how to commission that content, but like they had no idea what that content should even look like.

Adam:

They just thought, oh, I want good content. But they didn’t know. And, and they would hire me to write half funny stuff. And I was like, okay, this is fine. But I know from my time in TV that like when you get those grade a comedy writers working for you, not only is it way more fun, but you can just create content that’s way more effective. So is that right? Let’s bring these two worlds together and let’s build something that uses these comedy writers and their talents and puts them to work for brands, but in a way that is manageable, affordable, and sort of begins to build out a model of, of working because that’s the other thing is, yeah, there are funny ad campaigns. There are funny social media managers, but there was no model. There was no model for how to do it. And so, you know, by having a company that is only about comedy content or human ed content or relatable content, we can begin to develop like a, a proven model for how we do this. And that’s, that’s been my work for the last three years. And a lot of fun.

Ziv:

This is really interesting because you chose a very specific problem, which is how do you actually model comedy so that it could be like reproducible and yet still a very, very specific or relatable as you tell it. And you actually have developed the system you, you wanted to from the get, go to create something that is not just to keep you busy, but to keep it could team of writers busy. So I wonder, first of all, like how hard is it for you to grow your team?

Adam:

That’s an interesting question. And I think there are a number of important parts of the answer, because I think in terms of the kind of writers that have excelled in writing the jokes that we need for our clients, some of TV’s best comedy writers could not handle it. And they could, they’re used to writing funny stuff, but they can’t take this research and then turn that into, into jokes. It’s been a really interesting process because you touched upon the relatability matrix. And basically that was the key to unlocking our growth as a company and our ability to expand, because when we first started, you know, cards on the table, yes. I knew comedy. Yes. I knew marketing. I fudged a bit in the middle, you know, we just wrote loads of jokes and sort of hoped that they were well okay, interesting. You know, which ones work, which ones don’t, but we needed was a way to like, think about, okay, what, you know, the jokes that we are signing off here, the ones that work, what are they, why do they work?

What do they put that they work? And those jokes are the ones that are reflecting, you know, the fears, pains, desires of a given audience and letting that audience kind of the reason people engage with it is because of that representation. Cause it’s, they sort share and declare their ideal selves is, is my favorite for that process. And so what we needed to do was build a system of research that could get those fears, fears, pains, and desires, turn them into something our comedy writers could use, which are relatable truth. So basically sort of short, simple statement that even on its own would get a, that so true that’s so me response, and then let them use those to write jokes. And honestly, building out that model unlocked everything coz all of a sudden, and whereas before we had to write a hundred jokes to get 10 that I would sign off on.

Now we can write 40. And I, I still like to make sure we write loads, but it’s much easier. You know, now we’re giving them the best 10 of the 30 from the 40 that we could have signed off on. And it’s yeah, it’s much easier, but it it’s what I love about the system and the reason why now it works. And now it’s easier for us to bring on your writers and grow. The team is all we’re really doing is looking for the customers or the ideal customer’s own words, how they talk about the problem. We’re simplifying that so that you can understand the idea behind what they’re saying and that’s the relatable truth. And then we’re turning it into a joke and that it’s literally their own words back in their ears as if they wrote the joke themselves and they go crazy for it. So yeah, that’s I, I sort of I’ve rambled around the answer. I, I hope I answered the question, but if not prod me.

Ziv:

No, that’s clearly great because basically what you did is you reverse engineered the, a bunch of jokes. You already knew how to write them, but then you found out through trial and error, which ones of them are not just like as an editor, you know, they’re the best, but which ones also get better responses and why you can understand why. And then you created the system that allows you to produce more of these and teach that to new writers that are working for you, new comedy writers. And that, that must be very fulfilling, not just on the level of getting a system, but also on knowing that you can be predictable for your clients. They can depend on you to actually produce new jokes every month. And these days you, you do two things that I think are noteworthy with your agency, which is like available online on whitelabelcomedy.com.

Ziv:

One thing is that you actually teach the same systems that you teach your team. You teach them as an online course that is available for everyone. And the other thing that is very thing is that you, you have a subscription where people can have freshly written jokes written every month, both up freshly written for them specifically for the client or as a part of the membership where it’s basically it’s fresh content, but other people might use it too. So can you tell me a little bit about your clients? What type of clients will probably enjoy working with you with unique content and what type of clients from your point of view is a good fit for just being a part of your club and getting the same jokes that other people are getting.

Adam:

Definitely just to clarify that so that there are a couple of strands basically to the offer that we have and yet the best way to work with us. Absolutely. If you can afford it, TV’s best covers are not always super cheap, but we try and make it as affordable as we can is working with us as a done for you client, where we do the research, we write the jokes, we create the artwork, we deliver everything for you. And you know that we’ve got clients at every end of the spectrum, you know, all kinds of niches, all kinds of countries, people that came to me saying, ah, but there’s no way you could write for this industry or for, for this, this region. And we’re like, oh yeah, but research, this is the process that works. But at the other end of the, the spectrum is we have a game.

Adam:

Well, it’s kind of part game, part tool, part template set called brands against mundanity. And this evolved out of our, so we were developing a training. We tele training to help the people that couldn’t afford to hire us, but still wanted to learn everything we’ve learned over the last three years. But we needed to get a minimum viable product to market quicker than we could get the training. And you know, I’m not someone to release stuff that I don’t love. So I said, all right, I don’t think the training is there yet. It’s working for us, but we know too much about comedy. We’re not quite ready to release it, but within the training, we had this little idea that was right. Maybe we can teach people how to write jokes using templates using formally using, you know, fill in the blanks kind of elements because the truth is all the joke is, is two things that shouldn’t fit together, but you’ve made them fit together with a perfectly placed twist or a surprise.

Adam:

Simple as that. Sometimes it’s simple as a, a sentence that looks like it’s going in one direction. Actually it then goes in another, but it all makes perfect sense. You know, it’s, there’s always whatever the joke, there’s those two things. And the way to make it work for a brand is to make sure that at least one of those two things relates to what matters to your audience. Super simple. So we started building out these prompts that could sort of teach that and we realized that while we were we’re building it, we were playing them like a card game. This is a game as well as anything else. So very quickly, you know, and it’s called brands against, I won’t, I’ll let you draw in conclusions about the, the card game that that name is a past of. But when we launched that people went crazy for it because not only could they use it to write jokes themselves and, and by the way, also, I, I think the most powerful thing about it is because the blanks are quite big and relate to your, or, you know, your audience and their truths, actually 10 different brands can use the same prompt.

Adam:

They’ll fill it in a different way and you get a different joke and you start to sort of learn that structurally jokes are just these comparisons. So we initially released that this time last year, we then followed up with some expansion. So people wanted more cards. We gave them more cards. We also released a meme maker edition and a graph guide edition. And you know, those so really well. And it’s been so satisfying seeing, seeing people use the prompts and then go beyond prompts and, and kind of start writing their own jokes. It is really great. We’ve just launched the membership. So basically now it’s, every month you get 31 cards in your inbox and that’s, you know, the first month as, as with great feedback. And we’re really excited. We’re just about to send out month two. So in, in terms of, it’s funny, the question was, you know, what different kind of clients should be going from one or the other actually brand against mundanity is part of our sales funnel.

Adam:

A lot of people buy brands against mundanity because it’s a low-cost way to see what the funny version of their brand might look like. And some of them that’s as far as they can afford to go and they get great use out of using the prompts, using the formats, others, they go, ah, I want more of this. And they’re in a position where they can afford an agency and we can start working together undo for you content. So I would say that actually brand against mundanity is there for everyone, no matter how big or small you are. And then it’s just a question of how soon after that initial purchase that you book in a call and start hiring us is another matter. But yeah, it, it’s great being able to sort of take the principles that we work with on a, quite a high value basis and distill them into a product that people can use themselves. I think that’s, that’s been quite a satisfying moment

Ziv:

And the brand against mundanity, and is also available on whitelabelcomedy.com. I have to admit that this is so interesting that I personally purchased it and I find it to be useful and practical. And the, from my standpoint, I think it’s kinda aligned with the way you see it. At some point businesses and business owners, they become too busy to do everything by themselves. And when they do, they delegate and that’s delegate and yet still be special and still be interesting in, in front of your audience and your clients. That’s something that is hard today. You could, you could hire any social media person to do some, to just produce some busy work for you so that you won’t feel bad about not doing it. But if you want to be engaging and, and fun and special and, and unique and relevant, then sometimes you need to go to extra mile and be special and be bold. And that’s when you come into play, I wanna ask you, do you, you have some case studies, examples of clients of yours that could testify on the miraculous results that they got.

Adam:

Yeah. I think our, luckily our sales pages are littered with testimonies like that. I think the biggest reaction that clients it’s get when they start using our content, especially our done view, content is people start engaging as a business owner. The, you feel like you need to put social content out and you feel like it’s important, but you do it. And it gets no response. It’s just like, oh, it’s absolute crickets. And I think you keep doing it coz you you’re told all you need to do it. But the content that we put out for our clients, it begins a conversation with their audience. And I think, yeah, I won’t throw numbers around, you know, there’s there’s do you know, I’ll throw one number around coz one, you know, one of, one of my favorite case studies actually one, one of our earliest, which was there was a client who was posting our content and theirs, you know, side by side.

Adam:

And you know, they weren’t boosting either of the posts and their posts got something like seven likes and ours got almost 700 and it was just test like, you know, same brand, same audience, same day, even a similar topic. It was, you know, it was, it was a, an old people’s home trying to be edgy and, and appealing. And that particular statement that Joe was making really resonated. And again, kind of kicked off now what I would say, we don’t promise results like that. We don’t promise any results, but actually the best use for our content. It’s not about getting exponentially increasing your organic reach so that you can look cool and look good. We call them hand raise a post because what you’re really trying to do within that joke, you’ve got a fear of pain, a desire represented. And if, you know, like whoever engages, you know, that they have that problem and that’s a problem that you solve with your business, they’ve engaged and then you retarget them with paid ads to sell them and your, you know, your costs per acquisition costs per conversion fall to the floor.

Adam:

So actually, you know, the, our best-case studies, they’re not on the website, but they will be fairly soon is just the value of you can build with hand raiser comedy because not only you warming them up, but you are also qualifying them and, and finding out how to, just how to sell up the unit that that’s, that’s something we, you know, we’ve been doing for a confidence coach, client of ours recently we’ve been doing for a couple of tech firms. It’s powerful because they won’t respond unless they believe that. And they won’t believe that unless they have the problem you’re offering to. So, and so the second you then swoop in, they’re ready to be sold to they’re happy to be sold to

Ziv:

That’s so cool. I think that this is been very valuable to just share this concept with our listeners and details matters. So guys go and see the wonderful, if I may say so funnel that you’ve created of like, it’s really fun to go into it, to see how Adam Hunt is the creative director and founder and White Label Comedy have managed to just go into the niche of social media marketing and solve this one, one problem, which is how do you actually create a process that is reliable for, okay, using leveraging comedy in a safe way, in a brand safe way online and you solve that problem. And as a result got noticed by many and helping them from building up the relationship with you and building the trust in like easy to the right direction for, for a company, because they can start with a very low entry point with literally no risk.

Adam:

Definitely man. No. Yeah. I think it’s interesting. You say, you know, talking about it as a funnel rather than anything else. Cause actually some of our earliest clients basically bought the game, liked the way they were sold it. And then, you know, there’s, there’s like another marketing a to agency that hired us to rewrite all of their own web copy. They’re like, ah, I like the way you sold to me, can you help me sell? There’s a real lesson there in terms of, you know, whatever you are selling to your customers, embody that every stage in your own sales process, we can’t always do that. Actually I can afford to put big dog comedy writers on a client’s project. I can’t always afford to put them on my emails or ask our own social posts all the time. So, you know, we are sort of building out our own pieces bit by bit. It really shows when you embody everything that you’re telling other people to do. They’re like, okay. Yeah, I get, I get it. It makes sense. It’s your best case study is yourself in these kind of industries.

Ziv:

Love it. That’s such a pillar of reason. Thank you so much, Adam Hunt for sharing this time with us guys just stop your car, whatever you’re doing right now, go to whitelabelcomedy.com. You will be thankful if you can write it down, just go to daily cookie.co and check out our show notes about Micro Niche Mastery Podcast and you’ll find the link there, Adam, thank you again and best of luck to, with everything you do.

Adam:

Thanks man. Pleasure.

Voice over:

This show was brought to you by, by daily cookie.co, where you can finally feel supported daily email love. Now delegatable visit daily cookie.co for a collection of free resources on how to use copywriting and daily emails to grow your micro niche business today.

The post The Art of Using Comedy in Business, with Adam Hunt (MNM Season 2 Episode 12) appeared first on Daily Cookie.

Welcome to the tenth episode of the second season of The Micro Niche Mastery Podcast. 

Our guest for today is Jim Fricker II, a content creator and travel Spanish expert from spanishandgo.com, helping people travel to Spanish-speaking countries with confidence.

From learning a language to creating business opportunities. Listen to this episode if you want to learn how it was made possible.

Learn Spanish and Go Podcast

youtube.com/c/SpanishandGo

dailycookie. co

Click Below to see the full transcript of this episode

Voice over:

Welcome to the Micro Niche Mastery Podcast, where we help you establish yourself in the perfect micro niche. So you will get noticed and grow your business faster. And now your host, he reads a business book every two weeks, usually an audio format while walking or running Ziv Raviv.

Ziv:

Hello and welcome to the Micro Niche Mastery podcast. I’m so excited today to be with you and to share with you an interview with Jim Fricker from spanishandgo.com. Jim Fricker has been successful in creating a membership site on a micro niche together with his wife, May Larios I hope I pronounced that well correctly. Hello, Jim, how are you?

Jim:

Doing great, Ziv. Thanks for having me. And yeah, you got her name, right? A lot of people messed that up. It great job. You nailed it.

Ziv:

Cool. So are you, you created spanishandgo.com. Tell me the backstory, like the origin story. How did you get to the idea even?

Jim:

Yeah, so originally a studio producer, I helped musicians record and produced their music. And I did that for years, but I always had the travel bug. So I decided way back in 2010 that I wanted to learn Spanish so that I could travel to other countries and get around and, and learn a little bit more about the world rather than just sitting in a dark studio all the time, all day, every day. And so, in doing that, I started on this journey to learn Spanish and coworker of mine. I was working part-time at a food co-op. She told me about this website and it was a language learning exchange website, kinda like Facebook, but mainly just for meeting other language partners in there. I met my wife. I met May and we practiced learning each other’s languages and learning about each other’s culture.

Jim:

And from there, we just really hit it off. She invited me to come down to Mexico. I had never been there before and we began to travel around a bit and it was just so much fun for both of us, for us to share our cultures with each other and to get to know some new places. And we thought, wouldn’t it be great if we could combine our forces, she was a language teacher. That’s what she went to school for. And, and that’s what she was doing professionally when I met her and work together and to be able to share Spanish culture with English speakers. So basically doing what she did with me, being able to share Spanish culture with gringos, with native English speakers, primarily from the US and started an online business that way. And so we started looking at the different options. There were to do that, and we eventually decided that we’re gonna make it happen. And first it started out as a podcast idea. Then we thought, oh no, we should maybe go down the YouTube route. And, and so we started there and then eventually circled back around to doing the podcast. And now we also run Spanish immersion retreats. So it’s become quite a bigger than we originally anticipated, but it’s going great.

Ziv:

So you took this idea of teaching Spanish and you started to create free content on YouTube and back to the podcast. And you chose to do it in a very special way, your podcast on purpose, they provide a lot of value. Can you explain to me what you’re actually doing in your podcast?

Jim:

Yeah, so the podcast is aimed at anybody who’s around the late beginner, early intermediate learning stage of Spanish. The podcast themselves are all in Spanish, I’d say 95% in Spanish. And the content is focused on helping people connect to the Spanish speaking world. So, so that could be any different Spanish speaking country. Our goal ultimately is to travel to every Spanish speaking country and interview different people from different Spanish speaking countries about the culture, the food, and also give some language advice. So it’s not really grammar lessons. It’s more so a conversation. And mainly between my wife and I. So my, and I, we have half hour episodes speaking on these different topics. And then there is a membership component to that where listeners can join to get additional content, to help them better understand what they heard in the podcast better to test their comprehension of what they heard in each episode. And we provide full transcriptions. Like I say, quizzes, a breakdown section in English. There are different tiers to the membership, but the podcast itself is free. And obviously we can upsell to those other tiers to help them out more.

Ziv:

And this is very interesting because one of the membership levels that you choose to present is actually for people that going to focus only on the podcast content itself. And just go through the transcript of them, almost like a minimal, kinda like a patreon type of support, even where they basically support occasion of the podcast exclusively and enjoy the transcript, which helps them learn Spanish. And then there are other levels that are more immersive in all the way up to a level where you can study with you guys once a week, after being used to listening to you through the podcast, it makes total sense to upgrade to an experience that is more one like one on one, but it’s a group lesson, but it’s a deeper relationship. So can you tell me what’s the most successful package that you offer in your subscription, in your membership?

Jim:

Yeah, the basic level is the most popular level, which is great for us because it doesn’t overwhelm the classes that we offer, which is the higher tier. And we have about 80 students at that level right now. And that’s just that one single tier. So with that, we’re able to provide all of the content that we promise once a week, that goes along with every episode of the podcast. And then they have access to that whenever is convenient to them.

Ziv:

And what happens in the next tier?

Jim:

The next tier is the plus membership. And that’s where they have access to the group classes once a week. And with that, we don’t focus on grammar much ever because we don’t think it’s the best way to learn a language. So in general, we have a class that’s related to the subject of that week’s podcast episode, for example, let’s say one week we talk about, which is like this mythical creature in Spanish speaking countries, sort of like Bigfoot or maybe the Loch ness monster, but it, this mythical creature that some people really believe in that goes around, sucking the blood of goats of farmers in the middle of the night. And then the farmer will wake up in the morning and find their goats dead and having these two or three bite marks in their neck, for example. So we might do that week since that was the episode, a class that’s related to mythical animals or something like that. Or if there’s a cultural episode, maybe we’ll talk about cultural differences between their country and Spanish speaking countries.

Ziv:

And one of the things that make you more specific in more niche is that your promise is a promise that you actually fulfill yourself, which is that you will be able to travel. You’ll be able to understand the culture and you’ll be able to speak Spanish and you did it yourself, and you are helping other people now with it. And it’s more of a specific type of people that wanna travel. Do you see any like over time, any additional type of avatars being attracted to your podcast?

Jim:

Well, we are seeing more people attracted to the podcast maybe from, from different parts of the world or different motivations for learning Spanish with the podcast versus the YouTube channel. So the YouTube channel is geared a little bit more towards people, specifically from the United States who want to learn Spanish, who are interested in this, or possibly moving to a Spanish speaking country. We try to keep that a bit more accessible to a broader audience so that we can kind of funnel people in and say, oh, okay, this is a bunch of free content about cultural differences in, in Mexico, or maybe how to tip in Mexico, how to get around different Spanish speaking countries. But then if you really wanna take your Spanish to the next level and take it more seriously, we offer the podcast. We’re affiliates of a number of different Spanish programs, different travel programs that we can sort of upsell to our audience.

Jim:

We also have a, our Spanish immersion retreats. So that’s an opportunity for them to join us in person. Obviously, as the pandemic begins to wind down, we’re able to offer those a little bit more. We actually just finished two weeks of Spanish immersion retreats here in Mexico. And that’s where we can bring a group of up to 10 people each week. And they can join us for an immersive experience where we have classes every day, we have tours, we have different cultural experiences for them, so they can really immerse their immerse themselves in the Spanish speaking language.

Ziv:

And in terms of the reasons why people wanna learn Spanish, is it mainly for traveling or is it now also getting to the point where people want to learn Spanish for business reasons? What can you tell me about that?

Jim:

Yeah, that’s a great question. So more specifically with the YouTube channel, it does seem like we get a lot of people who are interested in possibly retiring in a Spanish speaking country. And often that has to do with the lower cost of living. Maybe people really love the food, especially in Mexico. That is one of the most common places that people from the us retire to is, is Mexico. So it’s a cheaper cost of living great food, great culture. Aside from that, we don’t get too many people outside of just the travel space or the retiree space. We do see that occasionally, but generally the people who follow us and are interested in our journey, which is to visit every Spanish speaking country. They have similar motivations, you know, they wanna get around and know the world and maybe see what Spanish speaking country fits the most to potentially live in or retire in someday. So that’s generally the audience we see for the podcast and the YouTube channel.

Ziv:

How long did it take before you started to make this into your business? Your full-time gig?

Jim:

Yeah, so we started late in 2016, a but neither my wife or I were full-time at that point, I was still running my recording studio. She was still teaching at a school in, in my hometown, had to go through the whole immigration process. So eventually she was able to, to work in the US, but it was, and until 2017, but the summer of 2017 that we went full time. And that’s where we were really working hard on the YouTube channel. And we didn’t actually start the podcast until about a year and a half ago. So we’ve been doing that every week, a new episode every week for about a 80 weeks now.

Ziv:

Wow. Right now what’s working better for you in terms of generating traffic. Is it the YouTube or is it the podcast?

Jim:

It’s quite a mix. Actually, we kind of view this as a three pronged approach to attracting leads, right? So we have the YouTube channel and in our videos, we do our best to add lead magnets. So people will come check out the website either for more information or to download a PDF that goes along with each episode. And so that’s one prong. We have YouTube, right? Another prong is the podcast. So we have the podcast on our website as well, that brings in a certain amount of traffic. But then we also have the blog and much of the blog is basically our YouTube videos converted into blog form, but that does great for SEO. So that brings in people and we’re starting to see for the first time people joining us on our retreats, who found us just because they were searching for were Spanish immersion retreats in Mexico, which is interesting to us because at first it was usually people who came from our YouTube channel. And now we’re starting to see kind of across the board. Some people are coming from YouTube. Some people are coming from them, a podcast, and some people just found us because they were searching for an immersion experience in another country.

Ziv:

Sweet. So YouTube, podcasting and blogging altogether. But these days you basically generate content mainly for the podcast. Do you do the audio editing yourself?

Jim:

So we actually do have a team that helps us produce the podcast and helps us with other aspects of the business. So we have a woman who helps us with the editing of the podcast, as well as our videos and another woman based in Mexico. She helps us with the whole membership aspect. So she’ll take the edited podcast, she’ll transcribe it for us. She’ll pick out the most important words and phrases from each episode that we wanna break down in our breakdown section audio, which is basically a whole another podcast, that’s exclusive for our members. And so every week, along with a half hour podcast, we do another half hour in English breaking down the most important words and phrases from each episode.

Ziv:

Nice. And how do you present the exclusive podcast? Is it through a membership site? Like as an online course? So how what’s the technology stack around behind that?

Jim:

Yeah, so the breakdown section is available on a few different tiers. We offer one, we recently started experimenting with, and this is the lowest level in terms of financial commitment that we have in the podcast. And that’s available through apple podcasts, it’s through their membership program. So you can offer premium content on apple podcasts, and that allows people to try it out. We offer a three day free trial period. And then after that, they’re converted to 499 monthly payments to access new breakdown sections every single week. But we also offer the same breakdown audio in other tiers. So in the basic tier, our most popular tier for the podcast, it’s available in the materials in that. And we also have it available well in the plus membership and they get basically everything plus the classes.

Ziv:

How do you technically share the audio file with your members?

Jim:

Yeah, so we’re using two different platforms. If you don’t count apple podcasts right now, because that’s exclusive to apple listeners, we use Teachable run most of the membership, but we are slowly transitioning over to Hyax, which is a newer, similar to teachable platform where you can run membership sites and different courses.

Ziv:

Sweet, one last question. This has been very informed, not even very inspiring by the way. I don’t know if you guys are listening to this can hear my excitement. This is such a, a brilliant case study of taking something you’re passionate about and not just getting a content business, but getting a lifestyle business as well. And just choosing about something very specific, just traveling niche and retiring niche a bit over time and helping people with something that you actually do yourself. So my last question is about email marketing. What’s your opinion about the frequency of sending an email to your list?

Jim:

Yeah, it’s been difficult for us to stay consistent with this, but generally we have a weekly newsletter where we’re sharing the most recent content that we have since we do have content basically on three different platforms between the blog, the podcast and YouTube, we try to share what we came out with every week and then a little bit more information about, oh, okay. Maybe one affiliate program that we enjoy using has a sale. So we’ll share that in a newsletter or if we’re announcing some new Spanish immersion retreat dates will include that as well. So we try to include as much value in each of our newsletters as possible, kind of give our audience an update in terms of what we’ve been up to, maybe what country we’re in or what location we’re in and then a bunch of additional resources that can help them out. And that works really well. We’re able to maintain a much deeper connection with our audience that way, because we can write to them in a bit more casual of a manner. And it’s more so for the people who wanna stay up to date with what we’ve been up to. So in my opinion, that works great.

Ziv:

Cool. It’s been inspiring, Jim Fricker. Where can people go again to learn more about what you do or connect with you?

Jim:

Yeah, you can find us on spanishandgo.com. Also, if you wanna listen to the podcast where anywhere you listen to podcasts, Apple, Spotify, Pandora, and we also have the YouTube channel by the same name, spanishandgo,

Ziv:

And we’ll put it in the shownotes of today’s episode are the links to both the website and the YouTube channel. And you can find spanishandgo in any podcast player even right now, as you’re listening. Thank you so much, Jim, it’s been a pleasure to connect and to share your story through this podcast. And thank you everyone for listening. See you next week in the Micro Niche Mastery Podcast.

Voiceover:

This show was brought to you by dailycookie.co, where you can finally feel support daily email love. Now delegatable visit daily cookie.co for a collection of free resources on how to use copywriting and daily emails to grow your micro niche business today.

The post Creating a membership site on a micro-niche, with Jim Fricker II (MNM Season 2 Episode 10) appeared first on Daily Cookie.

Welcome to the ninth episode of the second season of The Micro Niche Mastery Podcast. 

Our guest for today is Phil Fraser, who is known for his multi-award-winning online gaming affiliate business and now a Business Sounding Board. 

Wondering what type of help you need to grow your business? We’ve got the answers in this episode. 

How did Phil generate income from his website? The two business models he used for monetization are at 4:02

No cash to spend on advertising? Check out 6:34 to learn how Phil sustained his start-up business

Phil’s story of becoming Ex Mr. Online Bingo is at 8:32

Learn more about business sounding board services at 11:21

The parameters Phil used in niching down in this micro-niche are at 14:20

Is there a specific industry for this micro-niche? The answer is at 22:18

The common issues business owners deal with can be found at 23:13

Need free advice and guidance for your business? Get the Nous of Fraser newsletter here

If you find this episode interesting, share it with your friends.

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Click Below to see the full transcript of this episode

Voice Over:

Welcome to the Micro Niche Mastery Podcast, where we help you establish yourself in the perfect micro niche. So you will get noticed and grow your business faster. And now your host, he loves practicing singing with his 14-year-old daughter, and they often share songs from their playlists with each other. Ziv Raviv

Ziv:

Hello, and welcome to the Micro Niche Mastery Podcast. Hi, I’m so excited today to share with you a double story, a story of both a micro niche success in the product field, and also a story of micro niching on a specific problem with the service. Let me introduce you to Phil Fraser from philfraser.co.uk. Hello, Phil, how are you?

Phil:

Hi, Ziv. Good afternoon. I’m great. How are you doing?

Ziv:

It’s great to have you here. I’m really excited about getting to the point in the interview where we talk about your service as a business founding board, which sounds really interesting and unique and, and specific. But before that you also have a story, a success story of getting a product in a micro niche. Tell me all about that.

Phil:

Okay. So this goes, this story goes all the way up to 2000 and I, I took a, a business idea out to the market to get some angel investment for what would’ve been the UK’s first ever pay to play online bingo site that failed. We got no support whatsoever, but what fell out of the back of it was a comparison in effect comparison website for online bingo sites for initially in the US. And then eventually in the UK and online bingo sits within the whole online gaming space. So within that, you’ve got sports betting, you’ve got online casino, you’ve got online poker, you’ve got online lottery, online slots. We stuck to online bingo throughout, and that was our niche. The great thing about that was if you think about the, those products I’ve just listed in online gaming, you know, casino, poker, sports betting, they’re very male orientated.

Phil:

So online bingo is very female orientated and pretty much in the early days, we were just left to it because it was such a different niche to every it’s easy to take a sports better and go, okay, you like betting on sports. Do you wanna play online roulette or do you wanna play online poker? The further step to online bingo is for a lot of companies was too big, too early. So we were just left to our lane and we became by niching because we were alone. We became a, the whole niche thing was very much a case of big fish in a small pond.

Ziv:

This is fascinating. So you were basically doing like a website and I’m guessing a lot of search engine optimization and you started to generate traffic and you tell me what was your monetization strategy?

Phil:

Okay. So we had, in fact, we actually had two business monetizations, route one, my background pre-launch of the business was selling advertising in newspapers and magazines. So that was where I came from. So our initial business model was simply selling advertising space on the website. So it was a case of, we will advertise your product on this many pages for a month and that’s X pound or X dollars, or we would do it by just by impressions. So we will run your banner until it’s delivered 500,000 impressions, and that will cost you again, X thousand pounds. So that was our initial model. And the other aspect of that initial model in the very early days of online gaming, it was a bit wild west and there was some, some interesting characters within it, let’s say. So we ran with a, a prepayment model. So we said, you send us your money and we will then run your ads rather than how you would normally invoice a product.

Phil:

You know, we’ll pay the product and, and you pay afterwards. And that was brilliant because that gave us fantastic cash flow. So that business, the initial business model was advertising the model that the online gaming industry generally had within it was an affiliate model. And in very, very simple terms, that model as you run our ads for free, but we will pay you back a percentage of the money we make from the players you send. Now, the reason that model works so well within online gaming is it’s quite simple. If you signed up from my website, you spend $50, a hundred dollars a month, we get back $20. It’s very straight line. It’s very simple. And the beauty of that model, and this was fantastic about the model was I, you are my player for lifetime on that brand. So if you keep spending month on month on month, I get money from you month on month on month, which is a great model on one hand. However, going back to the first sentence, I run the ads for free. If you don’t spend any money, I don’t get any money. So there’s a, there’s a sort of risk reward. So we had two business models running. We had a, a straight advertising model and an affiliate model.

Ziv:

And how long did it take before you started to be becoming really profitable and excited?

Phil:

It’s interesting. The first five years of the business were you ran from home. So it to myself and my wife, and basically a couple of freelancers. And when you started a business, a lot of business books and podcasts and, and webinars say, you know, you’ve gotta have your exit planned and, and, you know, seed funding and a, and B and all that sort of thing. The vast majority of people, I believe setting up a business to pay the bills. And then what comes after that is the added bonus. So for five years it took us before we took on staff and an office. And I think that’s probably the point where we go, okay, we’ve got a business now that’s making money rather than just paying bills and maybe buying a new car, or maybe having a nicer holiday than going to the beach locally or something like that. So it’s it sort of grow. So it took about, I would say it took five years before we became a proper business. Well, we put, or we saw ourselves as a proper business.

Ziv:

What was the, like the lives that the yearlong cycle for business like this, is it basically just writing more content and just getting more traffic in it? Or did you experiment maybe with additional traffic sources? Like, I don’t know, Pinterest or Instagram or anything of that sort

Phil:

Bearing in mind? The business, as I say, started back into 2000, so we were quite lucky in the SEO was very early. So I, and those who who know their SEO history, it was sort of gray copy on white backgrounds. So the search engines didn’t see the words and, and keyword stuffing. And then we got into link exchange and all that sort of stuff. So a lot of our initial work, it was SEO and it eventually we got in-house content writers. We got in-house SEO guys, partly because we were as a zero investment startup. So we had no cash to spend on advertising. What we did do, we did a lot of email marketing where we exchanged lists with people. So we’ll promote your product. And again, this is within the niche. So, you know, we’ve got a bingo, a client who has a pay to play bingo site.

Phil:

So he’s got a database of players, some of whom spend money, some of whom don’t, we’ve obviously got a database of a newsletter. So we would say, okay, we’ll, we’ll market your product on our database. And then if you market our product to make, even to, to people who aren’t spending money. So there’s no, you know, there’s no cost to them. Look, these are dead players. These, these are players that don’t spend and, and we’ll do it as a Contra. So actually that gave us some inexpensive or cost negative or cost neutral marketing. And this is, I think one of the things that that’s interesting, and one of the other things I now do is I’m an angel investor. A lot of the stuff we did was driven by the fact that we didn’t have any money. So you have to get creative in how you promote and market your product. If you’ve been given half a million dollars or a million dollars or 2 million by angel investor you go, yeah, fantastic. We’ve got loads of money to spend. And perhaps, and won’t say everybody does this. Perhaps you end up it in ways or places that you probably wouldn’t if it was your money out of your pocket.

Ziv:

So what happened to this business? I understand that you, at some point did do an exit tell us that story.

Phil:

So we grew the business, there was initial website. We created multiple websites and we ended up with the free game and we expanded it to Spain. And we expanded to the UK all within the niche of online bingo at no. Well, I was gonna say at no point, did we expand outside that we did a three or four month trial to get into poker when poker started growing and I don’t play poker and I don’t understand poker. And it took us about four months to go in that can, that we had a domain, which we tried to work on. We sold the domain got out. So we stayed within online bingo. So 18 years later. So it’s quite a long people talk about, oh, we’ll exit in three to five years. That’s nonsense. Most people don’t do that. 18 years later, we become the preeminent brand as a comparison website in online bingo. So we had an annual industry awards ceremony. We got that big, we wrote an industry report for the whole industry B2B report. We advertised on TV all within this simple niche of online bingo. So we became the biggest fish in this pond. And eventually one of the, there was a number of aggregators within the business. One of them came to us, this Israeli company, actually one of us came to us and in effect said, here’s some money. And we said, okay, here’s the keys? Bye-Bye.

Ziv:

And I imagine this is like a secret information as for the details of the actual agreement of the exit.

Phil:

Yes, but it was when people launch their own businesses and, and as they grow, they do tend to get very, very emotionally attached to them. Whereas I’d always had, once we got to a decent size and it was generating revenue and is generating revenue on a regular basis, I’d got to the point of, if somebody gives us enough money, I’m happy to exit. And these guys gave us enough money for me to able to exit

Ziv:

So that was like a long journey, but ended nicely for you and, and for your company and all started by choosing carefully, a very, very specific micro niche that you can actually establish your dominance in it. And you went going through the ropes of constantly optimizing your traffic generation and get got to the point where you had so much traffic. You, you were established in the industry as the number one, the fish in the pond, and was able to even afford a TV spot and commercials and your own award. And all of this is just very inspiring. But what you do right now is also quite peculiar. Like you are offering this sound board service. What is that all about?

Phil:

Okay. So post exit, a number of friends of mine sort of came to me who have their own businesses and were saying, oh, I’ve got this issue. Can you help me about it? Or a couple of people said, I’m thinking of selling the business. You know, what does that feel like? What, you know, what’s the process, all that sort of thing. And I’m love talking to other people about their, and I, I get quite infused about it and all that sort of thing. And just by me, just talking to people about their businesses, like, hang a minute, this people seem to be getting a benefit from this and I enjoy doing it. So, Hey, I could do this professionally. So somebody said to me, who’s a business coach said to me, you should be a business coach. Now, one of the things entrepreneurs will always find is imposter syndrome.

Phil:

I’m just making this up as a go along. I just hope nobody finds out that I’m making it up. I had that despite selling out and all that sort of thing, and this guy said, you should be a coach. And I said, well, who’s gonna listen to me. No, nobody’s gonna listen to me. But having these friends in contacts, sort of getting a benefit from what I was doing, I said, okay, I wanna do that. And within the, so what I do now is falls within the coaching market, but I don’t push myself as a coach. There are too many people out there who claim to be a business coach either, coz they’ve read a couple of books or they’ve been on a course or they’ve bought a franchise I’ve been there and done it and, and run a business. So what I do is I offer what I call a business sounding board service.

Phil:

A lot of time when you are a business owner, you just need somebody to talk to about your issue about your problem might be a problem, might be an opportunity, but often there is nobody there to talk to about it. And it’s difficult if, you know, as you grow a business, you know, you take on a team and you take on other people, they come to you for the answer, you know, hey Ziv,  what, you know, what we gonna do next? What’s the strategy for the next six months in your head, you are thinking, I don’t bloody know I’m making this up as I go along, but I’m, I think I might do this or I might do this or I might do this guys, how do these three ideas sound as to our next strategy? Now they’re gonna think, hang a minute, Ziv doesn’t know what he’s doing, but if you’ve got somebody outside the business to go, Phil, I’ve got, can I just bounce this off you, I’ve got this idea and this idea or that idea, what do you think?

Phil:

And that’s what I do. I work with business owners to help them become better business owners just by being a sounding board, by listening to them, I don’t go. I’m not a sort of a business consultant who goes into a business and says, Hey, your strategy’s all wrong. Or your supply chain’s broken or your HRS got a problem. I will talk to business owner about what they want to talk about and they go, can we talk about this? Can we talk about this? Can we talk about that? And I will, I will ask questions. I will prod and poke them. I will ask those stupid questions that people go, why’d you do that? Or why’d you do it like that? And they go, well, we’ve always done it like that. Or we did it in my previous company. So I carried on and unless you’ve got somebody from the outside prodding and poking, you tend not to sort of query things.

Phil:

You tend not to improve things. And my niche is not only small business owners and I position that between. And there’s two ways I, I niche that one is by staff size. So I use sort of eight to 20 as a staff size and in currency, probably half a million turnover to 5 million. So that sort of middle growth bit. And that’s my niche now, but it actually niches itself by the person who’s gonna come to me. Cause unless you’re a business owner who wants to improve, who’s happy to hold a hand up and say, I need some help. And bearing in mind, the sort of person who sets up a business always has a bit of ego about them. And they all know, they know, right? So the, the niche is by my parameters of size and revenue, but it’s also all almost self-niche by the sort of business owner who identifies that they need some support and wants to improve.

Ziv:

So this is very fascinating. It’s almost like because your clients express vulnerability from the get go, the type of people that are value you being able to speak, be able to be heard and to kind of brainstorm with someone that understand well, a business in their type of levels are then already you niche down to a relatively small, nice and small a group of people that, that are well connected to each other a lot of times. So those business owners in these levels, they know other business owners of that level. And the way you explain your service, it’s almost like psychotherapy for on business. Like I’m not saying that your psycho service, but, but it’s not just about like, okay, so you will talk with me for three sessions and then we will be done forever because you don’t need me anymore. It sounds like you’ve positioned the service in a way that provides value, no matter how long you keep, as long as you’re in business, really, and you are happy, you could continue to enjoy this experience.

Phil:

That’s right. And I’ve only been doing this for about a year now. And the way I see it developing is I might work with somebody for maybe six months and then they might stop and then they might come back in a year’s time. And it’s, it’s actually, I’ve already seen it. Business owners need support at step change points. So it’s, we all know business graphs. Don’t just go from the bottom left hand corner to top right hand corner. They often step. So you’ll grow a bit. Then you’ll get to a, a problem issue or, or a growth issue or a, an opportunity. And it’s that step change that makes the difference. And actually the, since I’ve been doing this as a service, the more I’ve realized, actually in my business life, we had four or five major step change points. And at each one of those, I reached out for external support.

Phil:

So actually not only have I sort of worked the work as a business owner, I’ve actually worked the work as a business owner who needed external support and the benefit. And each time we did that, the benefits were huge because the last sort of external support we had was a guy who came in and, and entrepreneurs will recognize shiny new object syndrome. You know, oh, this is exciting. And this is exciting. And this is exciting. And I used to do that. And he did an exercise with my team where he sort of asked all of their opinions on the whole business. And one of the things I was told was Phil, get out of the way of the business, leave us alone, take all your stupid ideas somewhere else and just let us get on with the business. And if anything happens that we need your support, we’ll let you know.

Phil:

But I couldn’t see that I needed somebody outside to get that from my team and do that. And we did that. I actually ended up creating a separate company to put all my stupid new ideas into. So it didn’t disturb my existing company and that worked brilliantly. So I could see the benefit of having an external support, like a business sounding board or a coach or a mentor, whatever, however you want to position it. And they all do different things, but I can see the benefit of doing it. And what I do with my clients is the first question I ask them in every session is okay, what do you wanna talk about today? Your meeting, it might be an issue. It might be an opportunity. It might be a problem. And that’s the, I haven’t got a set of agenda. I haven’t got a, a training schedule to go through or a 10 different X or anything like that.

Phil:

We will talk about whatever they want to talk about. And that’s the support I can give. And the other benefit as well is I’m independent of the business. So not only it’s independent and it’s confidential. So I don’t care whether they do X or Y or Z. Cause it’s not gonna affect me was if you were, maybe let’s say talking to your sales manager about something within the back of his or her mind, he’s got a bias because he, he wants whatever the outcome to be, to benefit him. Whereas to me, I’m just trying to give best advice. And that’s what I hope to offer.

Ziv

Do you ever get to a point where your client asks for more specific advice where it goes more into the realm of almost like coaching? Like here’s what I would do in your shoes. And what do you do in this situation? Do you go that route?

Phil:

The answer to the question is yes. So I’ve had clients, who’ve said, Phil, I’m thinking of doing this. One of them said, I’m thinking of doing this. Is that okay? Is that okay for business owners to do that? And they just want approval in some cases, in other cases, it is, I’ve got this problem. What should I do? And my question, I will not say what I might say is we had something similar. This is how it played out. This is what we considered, and this is what happened. But what I normally do inherently, I would just say, you know, okay, let’s talk about it. What are the, what’s the upside? What’s the downside? What are the pros? What are the cons? What else have you considered? Have you tried this before? All those sort of questions. And what I’m aim to do is to get the client, to get to the point where they walk away and go, right. I know I’m gonna do now, but I haven’t told them what they’re gonna, I do

Ziv:

Fascinating on the practical level, like do you meet them every week? How long are the meetings?

Phil:

It’s not. I find unless it’s a very, very, very specific problem and they go, Phil, I’ve got this problem. I wanna talk about this, which I tend not to do. I tend to go, okay, let’s do a sort of, and I don’t sell, I don’t sell it as packages. I haven’t got a rate card. It obviously depends who the client is and what they want and all that sort of stuff. But a basic start point for me would be a monthly face to face meeting and then interject connected with that on a two week point a monthly phone call. So it’d be, let’s say on the first of the month, it’d be face to face 14th of the month. It’d be a phone call. First of the next month, it’d be a face to face, et cetera, et cetera. Now, obviously we’ve been through the pandemic.

Phil:

So some of that’s been zoom. I normally put a time on it, but in the, I think every single instance, the meeting will go on longer than, than is, is set. And it’s really down is down to the client. It’s once the client has then covered all the points they want to talk about today, we’ll go right. We’re done. And then normally the follow up will be okay. We discussed, you know, ABC last time. How did that get on? And they’ll go, yeah, we did this, this and this. And they’ll be okay. I now wanna talk about X, Y, Z. We’ll talk about that, et cetera, et cetera. So it’s very, very fluid, very, very flexible. The benefit is for the client, not for me. I haven’t got an agenda to go through. It’s their, it’s their agenda.

Ziv:

Is there any preferred or ideal industry for the qualified business owner when he’s considering you for this sound board service, what would that be? What type of an industry?

Phil:

This is a really interesting question because when I set out to do, when I said, okay, I’m gonna do this professionally. I went through the classic let’s design, a customer avatar, an ideal customer avatar. So my background is, is advertising and digital and online, I thought, okay, we’ve got that sector. And the business size I got to, I thought, okay, I feel comfortable ad advising at that size. Cause I’ve been that size. And I thought, okay, I’ll, you know, I’ll go with that. My first client was way bigger than I’d ever been, was in a sector. I knew nothing about and was multi-location and I’d only ever had one office. So completely blew my client avatar apart. And that then brought me round to the point that I said earlier, which actually is the type of client is self-selecting. So the customer avatar is actually, it’s not industry specific.

Phil:

It’s, it’s the type of person. It’s somebody who wants to learn. It wants somebody who wants to grow somebody who, who will listen and take on advice. And actually, when you think about it, you know, most issues are either marketing strategy, staff, finance product, that’s pre much where your problems lie. And I’ve had all of those problems in all of those different parts. So the type of company it is, and the size of the company to a degree is actually irrelevant, cuz it’s probably gonna be a strategic issue or a marketing issue or an HR issue or a finance issue or a product issue.

Ziv:

The way I see it, it’s almost like what your client, your avatar is. Marathon runners like business owners that consider business as a marathon run instead of a sprint. And if you’re willing to look at your business like that and be vulnerable in the size that is relevant, then you could really get a lot from getting some external support. I wanna thank you, Phil, for raising the awareness of getting support in your business. And on of course the awareness for niching down. I think it’s so important that people will know that there is help out there and that they don’t have to be alone in all of these decisions. So many decisions, every single day we business owners is it’s quite lonely. And sometimes just knowing that you have someone that will listen and, and we’ll ask you the right questions, the smart questions, and will help you realize what you should do. That actually builds confidence that will affect other things that you do as a business owner. So I think this is all really important stuff. And I wanna thank you for being here in the Micro Niche Mastery Podcast. Where can people go to learn more about your Phil?

Phil:

Okay. So the easiest place to find me is my website, which is www.philfraser.co.uk. Don’t go to the.com because.com is a medieval costume company. So you, if you land on a website, that’s got a, a man in a medieval costume holding a bow and arrow that isn’t me. That’s not me. So it’s dot. co UK on there. I’ve got a free newsletter, which I call the Nous of Fraser. Cause we have a brand here in the UK called Nous of Fraser. So I use Nous of Fraser or connect with me on LinkedIn. I’m on LinkedIn, most days to search for Phil Fraser and happy to talk to anybody. You know, it doesn’t have to be a, a paid for consultancy or anything like that. Anybody wants to chat, give a shout, happy to talk to you.

Ziv:

And we will put the, the links for your LinkedIn and for your website. philfraser.co.uk on our show notes at dailycookie.co. So it’ll be super easy to connect with Phil. I wanna thank you again, Phil for being here and thank you everyone for listening for yet another episode of the Micro Niche Mastery Podcast. See you next week.

Voice over:

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Welcome to the eighth episode of the second season of The Micro Niche Mastery Podcast. 

Our guest for today is Devin Miller, a podcast host and the founder and CEO of Miller IP Law who helps startups and small businesses with their patent needs.  

If you need help protecting your business ideas, you’ll learn more about how to do it in this episode. 

Such an informative episode! Share it with your friends.

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Click Below to see the full transcript of this episode

Welcome to the Micro Niche Mastery Podcast, where we help you establish yourself in the perfect micro niche. So you will get noticed and grow your business faster. And now your host. He hired us first, all time, virtual assistant as soon as he reached the six bigger milestone, Ziv Raviv.

Ziv:

Hello, and welcome to the Micro Niche Mastery Podcast. Hi today, our interviewee is Devin Miller, the founder and CEO of Miller IP law, where you can get help as a small business owner with all your patents and trademarks all the way from Utah USA. Hello, Devin Miller. Hi.

Devin:

Hey, how’s it going? Thanks for having me on.

Ziv:

It’s always a pleasure to have a fellow podcaster here on the show, you run the podcast at the inventive journey podcast, where you interview people, small startup owners, small business owners about all the, these things related to patents and trademarks. And I want to damage it down first just because, you know, some people don’t even know what’s the difference between a trademark and I don’t know some other things, what do we do? What do people really need at the beginning? If you had to give like the introductory explanation of what do you do and explain it to someone in the eighth grade as we copywriters, like to look at, like the sixth grade seventh grade, eighth grade is like the level of understanding that it’s really easy to understand. How would you describe the differences between patents and trademarks and what do you actually need to do as a business owner to protect yourself?

Devin:

Yeah, and I, I’d probably just take one step back because depending on what your business is and what you’re doing, it’s the answer’s going to vary. So maybe just say baseline, we can establish what is a patent and what is a trademark, what is a copyright? And then talk a little bit about kind of when you would consider them or what their, how that might line up. So with that, if I were to break it down, patents are basically for inventions. If you invented something, you created something, whether it’s software or hardware electronic, or, you know, anything of that nature. But if you’re creating something that has utility a functionality does something that was what a patent protects, a trademark is gonna be on the branding site. So if you were to think of a name of a company, a logo, a name of a product, a cash phrase, any of those are gonna all be associated with branding and they’re gonna be protected via trademarks.

Devin:

The last one is gonna be for copyrights and copyrights are going to be for something that’s more on the creative nature. So if you’re to think of a book, a painting, a sculpture, a movie, any of those type of things are all on the creative nature and they’re gonna be protected by a copyright. So kind of when you’re at, you know, as far as what you need for a business, a large part depends on what the type of business you’re doing or where the value of the business is. So you’re thinking of, as an example, if you are a service based business and your real value of your business is going to be on the brand and the reputation and the establishment of quality, then you’re gonna wanna really protect the, the brand. You’re gonna wanna get a trademark. But on the other hand, you’re saying, no, we are really a innovation company.

Devin:

We create really cool technology. That’s really valuable and that people are gonna want, and that’s the core of our business. Then you’re gonna go from, go toward more for patents for the inventions. On the other hand, you’re say, no, I’m a aspiring writer I’m gonna create or write the next Tom Clancy or Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings or whichever genre you’re in. And that’s where the core of business is. Then you’re gonna wanna copyright the book you’re writing. And so that’s kind of where I would start is when you’re looking first, understand the different options you have for protection, but then also look at where’s the value, where’s the core of your business. And that’s where you’re gonna start to look to protect.

Ziv:

I want to narrow it down to like two specific industries and see where you help in those cases and what people need to, to know. And we’ll start with the niche of online course creators. So we’re talking about situation where people can learn from you and improve their lives in all sorts of ways. But those also the risk of someone going into your online course, maybe even getting someone to buy it and looking at it, and then potentially like being very inspired by what you teach and teaching that same thing elsewhere. So what type of protection an online course creator can, can take?

Devin:

Yeah. I mean, if you’re an online course creator, that’s typically, unless your course is so innovative and out of the box and you do a new way of presenting the material and you had to have a software platform and you had to have different backend, which generally isn’t the case. I’ll assume that isn’t the case. If it was the case, you’d maybe go down the patent route, but generally as a course, creator, it’s much more of the, the content you’ve create. So you’re, you’re basically looking as a course creator for kind of two values of your business. One is the actual content. So the videos or the written material, or, you know, or however you’re conveying the information, all of that information is gonna fall under a copy grade. So if you really come up with a good system that explains it, well, you have some great video courses and you’re providing the it that way.

Devin:

You’ll want to protect that actual content via copyright. So that way all that material you created, you can establish ownership of it. The other thing you’d look at is also as a course provider, a lot of times you’re gonna look and say, we are also creating a brand. In other words, there are a lot of different courses out there for a lot of topics. And a lot of people are doing different variation of courses and overall they have some of the same content material, but it’s how they convey the information, whether they’re trusted brand and everything else. And so that one, you know, as you’re establishing the name of the company, the product line or the core, you know, name of the course and those type of things, you’re gonna be looking at a trademark to do it. So, you know, gimme an example. Let’s say you were going to create a financial or financial course of how to manage your money, how to get out of debt and how to do it.

Devin:

You know, you’re gonna do something similar to like a Dave Ramsey or someone else that has a, a large following of how to you manage your finance answers on how to, you know, set yourself up for success on the financial front, then all the content you created, go get a copyright on it, on the brand, you know, the Dave Ramsey brand or whatever that might be. You’re going to get a trademark in order to be able to maintain this or the, the brand or the brand that you’re using such that other people don’t come along and use it. So in that case, that kind of how you’d start to tackle it.

Ziv:

Can you give us like this rough estimation? And I know it might be very different from one client to another, but what type of cost are we looking at to get copyrights into maybe take a name of an online course or a name of your brand, a trademark?

Devin:

Yeah. So if you were to take a copyright and they said, all kind of quote, our fees is a baseline because different firms or different law firms or attorneys can, will charge different amounts based on how, what their, what their service offering is typically a copyright you’re gonna look at is gonna be around three to $400. You can, with most copyrights, you can include, you know, different videos or know a good amount of the course. And so if you’re having a course, you can typically include it under one copyright, and you’re gonna be looking about three or 400. If you were to go to a trademark trademarks, work a bit differently in the sense that when you’re filing a trademark, one of the things you’re doing is you’re identifying the goods or services offering and associated with the trademark. So give you an example.

Devin:

Nike has a trademark for the word Nike, they use Nike for athletic wear sports gear and apparel. They don’t do anything with automobiles. And so when you’re looking at it, they have a trademark for the use of the word, Nike, for athletic wear sports gear and apparel. They don’t have it for auto because nothing with the brand associated with automobile. So as you’re building a brand, you have to include the categories or what we call classes of saying, here are the different types of products or the types of services we’re going to be using our mark for. And so there is the government, basically, there’s a governmental fee for each category or each class, and you’re gonna be using the, the, a trademark for, and you have to pay for each one separately. So, you know, if you’re gonna take a standard trademark, you’re usually looking, you’ll have a fee to prepare the trademark and file it, and then you’ll have the, a fee for each category or class that you’re gonna be doing it for.

Devin:

So if you’re gonna take ours for one or one trademark that has one category or one class about 850 flat fee, if you’re to add on a second category, it’s an additional 450 or so 450. So then you’d be at 1300 and kind of, so on that, you’re going to add kind of four 50 for each of those additional categories or classes. So that kind of gives you at least an idea of the cost a little bit you were looking at. And like I said, varies a bit firm to firm and a bit different, but it kinda gives you a baseline as to what to reasonably expect.

Ziv:

What about like, okay, so I ha I’m an online course creator and let’s say I have four different online courses, all of them with a very fancy punchy name that I really want trademarks, or that no one will go and say, oh yeah, I teach you the, I dunno, skyscraper, SEO technique or whatever. So sure. And I want my business name probably to be trademarked. And maybe even my motto, my tagline that I think is unique. So if I come to you and have all these six things my course names, my company name, my tagline will that mean I will probably pay 850 plus 450 for each class, or do I, will I probably pay more than that?

Devin:

No. So you would be 850 or that class is per application. So if you had six different things, let’s say you had the name of the company, you had the name of four courses, you had a couple logos or a cash free in a logo for each one of those applications. You would then be paying that 850 if you had one class. And so you’d basically say 850 times six, and then you would file six applications because each application has to be prepared separate or prepared separately. And you also have to, I guess, examine separately. In other words, once a trademark receives the application, they have to do an examination as to whether it’s trademarkable or not. And they have to do that for each application. So they charge the fee on a per application basis.

Ziv:

How long does it take?

Devin:

Yeah, I mean, varies in the sense that the backing up, I would say what it varies on is whether or not you’re how trademarkable the term you’re wanting to get is the biggest standard. There’s a few, but the primary standard they’re looking at is whether it’s confusingly similar with what other trademarks are already out there. And confusingly similar basically means is, Hey, if somebody to see your brand, they to see somebody else’s brand, would that look like it? You know, would people think it’s the same brand or the same company or the two are associated, or they readily understand that there are different companies or providers of that service or that good. And so when you file it, they’re going to do an examination of that. So usually after you file a trademark application, it takes about six months before they start to examine it.

Devin:

Once they start to examine it, they look at that trademarkable standard. Is it confusingly similar with anybody else? If not, then they’re going to there’s about another or one to two months of the process for them to get an issue. If on the other hand, you are confusing. Similar, somebody else is using the exact same brand or the exact same trademark for their business or something that’s similar. Then you’re going to have to, or go back and forth, argue with them and determine whether, or try and work to convince them that how you’re different, how you would be confusingly similar. So if you add that on you’re, you’re looking at another, around three months or so. So typically to get through the full process from filing a trademark where you have a, a registered or an issue trademark, you’re usually looking at about nine to 12 months overall.

Ziv:

Definitely a significant time that you need to be aware of. So next I wanna talk about coaches online business coaches. And this is really, really cool that you like, just tell us the bottom line, cause that’s the type of value we wanna share here. And I’m really thankful for that. A business coach sometimes will have a method of how to take someone and from point A to point B and help with some sort of transformation in their life, in their business. And they might think, Hey, my method is unique. I do certain things. I have certain briefs that I send to the client. I don’t teach it anywhere. So I don’t have videos that I can copyright. And it’s not ne it’s not really a pattern that I can put out there, but how can, what type of remedy can a coach choose to protect something like his method of coaching people?

Devin:

Yeah, the shorter, the honest answer is you’re gonna have a difficult time with protecting the method within which you coach, because there are a lot of coaches out there to stop someone else from teaching material. And I’ll go back to the same thing. Let’s say you were a coach helping people get out of debt just as to kind of follow on the previous conversation. And that’s what you’re coaching on. Well, people have been coaching people on how to get out of debt for a very long period of time. And so there isn’t necessarily anything within that core of idea of what you’re teaching, probably also the material. You know, there’s some people that you reduce, you know, you reduce your amount of debt, you pay off loans, you do other things. And so the content again is not necessarily gonna be that protectable because a lot of coaches are probably already used that type of material.

Devin:

So you’re usually typically gonna be looking primarily just the brand. In other words, you’re going to get out there, how are you going to market? How are you gonna sell? How are you going to show good customer reviews? How are you going to let others know? You provide a better level of service or better content. It’s really a lot tied up in your brand. So that’s where you would still look to as a trademark. Now, the other question, a lot of times you’re gonna have to look at is, is it worth protecting your brand? In other words, yes, you can get a trademark on your brand, but Hey, really, if you’re serving this a local community and I always kind of say, mom in pop shop where, Hey, really my geographic location is in this 10 block radius. And that’s usually who I’m working with and talking with, and that’s the only place I’m ever gonna do my business.

Devin:

It probably doesn’t make sense for you to get a copyright or a trademark or anything else because you’re in a very small geographic location that you can, you just be worthwhile just to continue on in the best, your money elsewhere. Typically when you get into a copywriter and mark or any of those, it’s when you have aspirations that, Hey, you know, I’m building a brand, we’re gonna be online and we’re gonna reach a much larger clientele or we’re going to start to franchise and we’re going to teach other people how to be a coach. And we’re going to actually have a system set up or we’re going to do, you know, I’m going to go around and do speaking tours all across the country, around the world. All of that is such that no, you have a much bigger presence and you’re wanting to protect that brand because it’s not just in a small geographic location. It’s not just in your city or your town, but it’s all over the place. And then you’re gonna look for brands. So one is I would look and what is my aspirations? How am I gonna build this business? Who’s my clientele and where am I gonna be at? And then two is based on how you answer that question, then you’d look to protect it or protect it as makes sense.

Ziv:

Great. One last question before we wrap up is about copy. Like the works that we write in an email. So let’s say we write something and we spend off time in making sure that it’s really nicely put, and maybe even there’s like these sketch phrases that we always use that represent who we are in essence, we call it the voice. Like we, we created some voice that is our own, and yet anyone can subscribe to an email list and just be inspired in a way that even looks like someone else might even steal our ideas, still have a copy and whatnot. So what in the world of even communication can be actually protected.

Devin:

So I would probably flip around or flip the question around slightly in the sense of why would you want to protect that? You know, in other words, okay, let’s say you have some really catchy emails. If it’s just, you’re sending it to your clients and somebody else use the same emails and it doesn’t hurt you, you don’t really care if other people use it. I probably wouldn’t worry about it in the sense that it doesn’t have enough value to go after and protect it. Because even if somebody else were to knock it off and completely copy you, it doesn’t hurt your business. It doesn’t impede it doesn’t or create any issues. Then while you could go probably get a copyright on some of that material. It probably doesn’t make sense. Now, on the other hand, you know, what you’ve got sometimes is, you know, what’s called a click funnel or you have a, you know, a structure of, or, or very templated emails that try and get people to convert or otherwise use or buy your service or your product.

Devin:

And they’re saying, okay, no, we spent a lot of time crafting these, you know, these templates. We spent a lot of time actually going back and forth and, and figuring that out. And so with that, then you’d probably be copyrighting those emails, but it’s not because you necessarily care if any one given individual uses them, but more selling this as a package of how you’re going to actually use that information or, or, or you’re going to sell it as a product or as a service to others. So that’s kinda where I would step back is if it’s really just, Hey, I got some, I think, cool email templates. So I’m gonna use ’em internally. I don’t really care if anybody else uses ’em because as long as I can use ’em, that’s what I care about to correspond the clients. It probably doesn’t make sense to protect them. You’re using it as a, Hey, we’re going to sell this as a package or we’ve spent a lot of time and crafting and making it beautiful, then you’d want to do it as a copy. Right. Great.

Ziv:

I wanna thank you for being on the show and some important questions. If people have additional questions and just want to an advice that is more specifically tailored to their needs where can people find you and get some supports? Yeah.

Devin:

If people wanna reach out to me, you know, as you mentioned, they’re more than welcome to find out more about us on the, our, or my podcast, the inventive journey run all the major podcast platforms. If you just go and search, the inventive journey, you’ll worship to pop up you know, if they wanna reach out to me, they wanna chat more about their business, patents, trademarks, copyrights, how they protect it and how they can grow it and what they should be doing there. They can reach out to me. They can go to strategymeeting.com that links right to my calendar. They can schedule a one-on-one strategy meeting or consultation where we can chat for a few minutes about what they have going on and what they should be looking for. So if they wanna grab some time with me, they can just go to strategymeeting.com

Ziv:

And I’m taking my hat off for securing such wonderful link strategymeeting.com. You can’t make any mistake on that one. And if you go there, you will get to Miller IP law website, where you can actually schedule the free strategy session. But just in case, we will put a link to the strategy session option and to the podcast which is really important podcast. You should check it out. We’ll put all the links in the show notes of Micro Niche Mastery Podcast, all the way in daily cookie.co, Devin Miller. It’s been a pleasure to discuss with you, connect with you, and I hope that’ll meet again soon in positive circumstances.

Devin:

Absolutely. I appreciate you having me on, I had a great time and definitely look for, to hopefully meet me again as well. Thanks.

Voice Over:

This show was brought to you by daily cookie.co, where you can finally feel supported daily email love. Now delegatable visit daily cookie.co for a collection of free resources on how to use copywriting at daily emails to grow your, our micro niche business today.

The post Protecting your intellectual property as a content creator, with Devin Miller (MNM Season 2 Episode 8) appeared first on Daily Cookie.

Welcome to the seventh episode of the second season of The Micro Niche Mastery Podcast.

Our guest for today is Lora Cheadle. A former lawyer turned author, now a speaker and a Betrayal Recovery Coach.

This episode is a story of turning the pain of infidelity and betrayal into self-transformation and empowerment.

NakedSelfWorth.com

loracheadle.com

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Click Below to see the full transcript of this episode

Voice Over:

Welcome to the Micro Niche Mastery Podcast, where we help you establish yourself in the perfect micro niche. So you will get noticed and grow your business faster. And now your host, he meets his team every day and considers this time investment worthwhile because it is significant rather than important or urgent, Ziv Raviv.

Ziv:

Hello and welcome to the Micro Niche Mastery Podcast. I’m so excited to share with you today. An interview with Lora Cheadle. Lora from Littleton, Colorado USA is a former lawyer turned author and speaker, and also she’s a betrayal recovery coach. Listen, and learn all about what that is. Hello, Lora. Hi.

Lora:

Hi. So nice to be here.

Ziv:

It’s a pleasure to meet you and you have a story that is very personal, that have changed your life journey in many ways. I hope it’s okay if we start with your origin story, even though it is very, very painful and I’m sorry for everything that you went.

Lora:

Thank you. It, it was a very painful journey. After 23 years of what I thought was a really good marriage and a strong partnership. My husband and I were both attorneys. I left the practice of law and stayed home to help support him and his career and raise our family. And then I started my own part time women’s empowerment, coaching business. After 23 years, I learned that he had been cheating on me for 15 of those years with multiple women. And as you can imagine, it destroyed me and my world because everything I thought to be true, wasn’t all of the sacrifices I had made for this greater good. All of a sudden I realized there was no greater good and that I had only hurt myself. And yeah, it really truly threatened to destroy me.

Ziv:

Just hearing you your voice and imagining the magnitude of the betrayal of trust in the betrayal period, it sounds devastating. You probably close to being devastated. How old were your kids back then when you found out.

Lora:

In a lot of ways that made it so much worse? Because my youngest child was just about to graduate from high school. So in my mind, I’m like I’ve made it, you know, I’ve done it for all these years and I’m finally free. I can travel with my husband. It’s gonna be just he and I again, and I can start pursuing my dreams and start working out and enjoying myself and let the mom thing go a little bit. I I’m back to me. And my life is just about to begin. And literally two weeks before graduation is when I found out and it was, I mean, the rug was literally jerked out from beneath my feet. And all of a sudden I had to reprocess what does this mean? Going forward and are my kids going to have a home to come home to? And they’re both boys and they’re kind of in this formative dating years. What is this gonna mean for them? And for me and for everything going forward and my business, what is it gonna mean for my business too? Because working with women on female empowerment, how do you reconcile all that? How can I have authority or credibility? When my husband, cheated on me for 15 years and I didn’t even know it like who’s gonna listen to me. Now. The whole thing was so utterly devastating.

Ziv:

How odd and ironic it is the power of vulnerability that actually exposing your very private, painful story to more people have helped you feel a lot of the wounds, including grow your business, not just to recovery. So tell me what was the process looking like it for you?

Lora:

Yeah, that’s a great question. When I first learned of the betrayal, I was confronted with so much judgment from other people and that actually became very painful. You know, people would tell me what I should do, what I shouldn’t do. Some people had the nerve to question me and what I did wrong. And it was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, this isn’t about me. And what I didn’t do wrong. And you’re not in my marriage. You’re not in my, all of the judgment made me want to shut down and hide, which really was the catalyst for change because all of a sudden I started thinking, okay, you look at the statistics. I started learning through all of my betrayal recovery. I started learning those statistics, 20% of marriages, face infidelity, and some surveys go up to 70% because that’s something that people don’t even wanna admit to, even in an anonymous survey because of the shame around that.

Lora:

And I thought, okay, this is a huge problem. And nobody’s talking about it. Especially the men and women alike, who are, who are all together on the outside, who wants to admit I was duped, I’m falling apart. There’s so much shame. And there’s such a stigma around being the betrayed partner. And I was like, okay, I’m a lawyer. I solve problems. And I’m a female empowerment coach. I really help people step into their power. This is a place of power that we all need to step into. If I am covering up my pain and my shame, you have power over me. But if I can own that pain and yell on myself and be like, this is what happened to me. I was victimized, but I am not a victim. Then I reclaim my power. And the more I did that, the more I started seeing how yes, infidelity and betrayal is a thing, but we also betray ourselves all the time. And I started realizing betrayal is huge. And the more I niche down into doing betrayal recovery, the more it expanded because the more I saw that everything is betrayal and we’ve all been betrayed and we’ve all betrayed ourselves. And we’re all protecting ourselves and our hearts and our businesses from betrayal all the time, which is shutting us down.

Ziv:

So in a way for you and for women that you work with as well, I dunno, do you work exclusively with women by the way?

Lora:

I don’t work exclusively with women, but I use burlesque the concepts of burlesque in my coaching. So it resonates more strongly with women, but yes, I have worked with men as well.

Ziv:

Not only have personally experienced that in this painful moment or time, you can actually collect instead of hiding and losing your power, you can, your power and step into it and like own your situation as an opportunity. Yes. But that’s also not something you do privately, but you also teach others on how to do so. Tell me a little bit about what you do in terms of, if we step a little bit into the business side of things, because you share your story and, and naturally people resonate with it, but what are some of the things that you do in order to actually attract people that need your help? Because you can’t really just find, you know, in events, when you look at the people, the person, if he suffered from this problem or not, you need them to notice you in some way. So what do you actually do?

Lora:

Yeah. Couple of different things. I show up on social media in a lot of the betrayal recovery sites. And I just listen, I try to provide as much value and as much information for people who are suffering as possible. I have got a free monthly Sunday sanity group for people who have been betrayed. So they can just without obligation dip their toe in the water, hop on zoom for 90 minutes once a month and talk and see what it’s like to connect with others. I run that through a platform called meetup. I also posted on event bright. So a lot of the free places out there. The other thing that I do is I just try to remain open, remain open on social media, remain open in talking to friends, to family, you know, to people that I meet. And it’s surprising the power of word of mouth, you know, in this digital world, word of mouth is still really powerful. And just sharing my story with people that I know then their sister has been betrayed and then their, you know cousins, and stepdaughters, whoever has been betrayed and it all circles back to me.

Ziv:

Wow. So you also have certain things that you do that pay things because that weekly, that monthly zoom coaching meeting which is so generous of your, to zoom and provide some first aid, but it’s very hard to, you know, just wait for another month in all of these emotions and all of these like little moments of in a day. And I imagine that also, maybe you can enlighten me, but the process of recovery is not a short process.

Lora:

No, it’s not, it’s not. And my signature package is a six month one-on-one coaching package because you’re absolutely right. It’s, it’s a roller coaster ride and there’s moments where you’re like, I’ve got this. And then there’s moments where you’re like, I literally cannot get off my bathroom floor. So yes, I do a six month one-on-one coaching package that includes weekly emails, it includes a monthly hour long coaching session followed by a half an hour of hypnotherapy to help people restructure the subconscious portion of their brain. It includes the creation of performance art, because it’s really important for us to get out of our head and into our heart. And what I mean by that is we literal move. You can create a story, a dance routine, a song, a painting. And I have people use that creative aspect as they’re coaching with me so they can get into the creativity, get into the right side of their brain connect and heal on all levels, not just say, oh, I’ve processed it. And I’m over, I’m healed. And you hit the nail on the head when you said it’s a difficult process, because one of the key aspects of my program is I do one-on-one Voxer support, which means people can process out loud with me any time. So it can be the middle of the night and they can hop on the app and talk it out because there is huge power in getting out of our own heads and talking things out. And it’s truly transformative. A lot of progress can be made in six months.

Ziv:

I dunno, it works in the same way. Like in a lot of businesses, you would look at case studies and testimonials as a way to, you know, just create social proof. Is it also working for you? Do people actually overcome the shame and are willing to share with you case studies after working with you and testimonials?

Lora:

Absolutely. Absolutely. And it’s interesting because what people really are able to do is untangle. They’re able to untangle what was done to them. They’re able to untangle the judgment that comes in from other people. And they were able to stand with themselves and to be able to correctly identify, this is me, this is them. They have this opinion, I have this opinion. We don’t share that. And when we’re untangled from everybody around us, it just becomes normal and powerful and calm to be like, yeah, this is me. And this is what happened. And if you’re judging me that says more about you, then it says about me because I’m fine with me. And that’s really the bottom line is for all of us to just be fine with ourselves because we know who we are and what we’re worth.

Ziv:

Tell me a little bit about the story of your book launch. What is this book about and where can we find it and what learn from it?

Lora:

Absolutely. It is such a fun book. It’s called flaunt, drop your cover and reveal your smart, sexy, and spiritual self. And flaunt is an acronym and flaunt is truly the antidote to betrayal. It’s the antidote to burnout. It’s the antidote to the, that pain. We feel where we’re like this really isn’t the life that I had planned. And now I’m neck deep in this life. And I don’t really feel happy or fulfilled or free. And the book, it it’s so much fun. It takes you through the acronym. Flaunt is find your fetish. And that means really moving into doing what you love of because you love it. Not to try to impress somebody or lose 10 pounds, but to do something that you love L stands for laugh out loud because the power, the healing power of laughter is enormous. And it is so overlooked, especially in an entrepreneurial context when we’re all like I gotta get ahead.

Lora:

A you U stands for except unconditionally. And that’s both except where we are at unconditionally and accept others and their choices and where they’re at unconditionally, because otherwise we waste so much time and effort trying to change other people. And then being really frustrated N stands for navigate the negative life is filled with roadblocks and detours. And, you know, as going back to that, laugh out loud, just navigate around them and flow when you expect to navigate you navigate. And that’s really what life is all about. And then T stands for trust in your truth. Like I was saying earlier, truly our power comes from knowing ourselves and showing ourselves for exactly who we are not for, who we think we should be. And the book breaks down those five steps and gives you exercises and tips and tricks and creative games to play around all of those and interspersed with that is my story. You know, my story going from corporate attorney to mom, to burlesque dancer, to empowerment coach, to betrayal recovery coach. And it’s an enormously fun book and you’ll absolutely get a lot of insight and aha moments out of it.

Ziv:

And you also podcast and share some of your insights through that. What’s your strategy around the podcasts?

Lora:

Yeah. My podcast, it’s also called Flaunt. Find your sparkle and create a life you love after infidelity in betrayal. And what I notice being in this space is when something bad has happened to us, there’s a tension between wanting to vent and validate how bad it was, and also wanting to move on. And my podcast, the strategy around that kind of bridging that gap, it’s allowing people to know that what happened to them was painful. That they are entitled to grief, to mourning, to rage, to shame to whatever it is and that it’s healthy to vent. And at the same time, it’s also healthy to have a stopping spot and to have something to lean into and to look forward to that is realistic. And that’s what I really like to do on my show. Like here’s why forgiveness doesn’t work. Here’s why you have to start with acceptance first. Here’s some of the things that you’re told that don’t really work and that’s okay, let’s look at it this way and let’s take this step a over here. So no matter what range of emotion or trauma or whatever people are feeling, that there can be an episode right then and there that they can download, you know, in the middle of the night, in the middle of a crying and get some relief and perspective perspective is huge.

Ziv:

You have to have like over 130 episodes whether it’s continually growing, it’s a very active podcast. And so I just wanna say, I really take my head off for you, Lora, either because you’ve been willing to be in that vulnerable spot for a very long time and share and help others in their own breaking point and water recovery, but doing that and being out there again and again, showing up as some call it, that’s very admirable. I wanna ask you because you do so much, I imagine that some of it is stuff that you do because you choose to be there. You choose to be there for people. But I wonder if you had to only do one platform or only do either through the blog that is active on your side or podcast or the book, or if you had to choose one, which one would you choose?

Lora:

Hmm, that’s a really tough question. Probably podcasting because of the speed. You don’t have to go back and constantly, I’m a wordsmith and I love writing, but I can edit and re-edit use the  and pick up new words and blah, blah, blah, where podcasting is just from the heart. Bam. And it comes out.

Ziv:

I wonder if you can share with me because I can see that when, when you are as active as you are in, as prolific, as you are surprising things happen. I wonder if you have, have a story of some surprising moment that you noticed that the world have responded to you, and what did that look like?

Lora:

You know, what’s interesting about that. It’s usually not what you expect. Like sometimes I’ll be writing something while I’m thinking, oh, this is genius. Everybody’s gonna love it. Blah, blah, blah. And it’s fine, but it’s not a great reception. And then other times you come out with something and you think, well, this is pretty basic, you know, where it doesn’t really mean a lot. And then people come into you and I had a moment that just actually happened to me last night. I had done a few different posts about a spiritual pilgrimage that I just recently went on in Peru and I had posted about it and I had done some RA podcasting on it. And I wasn’t getting a huge response. Well, last night I met some people in person and I probably had, I mean, it was a fairly small event, but I probably have 15 people say I had been watching that online, but I didn’t want to a comment.

Lora:

And it was like, wow, that’s really interesting to know that sometimes the things we’re putting out is really being received, but people aren’t commenting. And I pushed back on a few of them and said, well, why not? And they said, because I needed to sit with it for a while and process it. And I didn’t wanna open myself up and start commenting on it, but wow, there was a lot of, of depth there. And that’s kind of the, the backside of the coin of the question that you asked, but I really wanted to bring it out because it’s great. When you get a thousand likes or people are saying, this is great. But to me it was more meaningful to have very few likes, but to have people really say, I need to sit with that. That was powerful.

Ziv:

So, so to how engagement can look different and quality sometimes is why more important than, than quantity, especially when you create your own tribe of people that going to talk about you in the right moment with the right person that actually needs you. So I wanna ask you, where should people go when they either want to just be inspired by all to do, or maybe they either personally or know someone that went through the painful journey of finding out that they will betrayed? What can they do? Yeah.

Lora:

The best way people can get in the loop and start learning and healing and growing is by going to nakedselfworth.com. It’s just nakedselfworth.com. And they can download my free sparkle after betrayal, recovery guide. And then that also puts them in the loop for my podcast, for, you know, my fun events, freebies, my paid work, connects them to my social media, and then we can just start interacting and learning. But the starting point truly is nakedselfworth.com.

Ziv:

And we’ll put the link of that in the show notes and also put the link to loracheadle.com so that people could go and check out everything you have, including the book. I wanna thank you, Lora, for taking the moment here to share this message with lot of people. This is inspiring in many levels. I think that being vulnerable and is a part of stepping into your power and you chose to niche down as a coach and to like just honor yourself and bring out to the world something that lot people need. So thank you so much for sharing your story with you and thank you everyone for listening for yet another episode of the Micro Niche Mastery Podcast.

Voice Over:

This show was brought to you by daily cookie.com, where you can finally feel supported daily email love. Now out delegatable visit daily cookie.co for a collection of free resources on how to use copywriting and daily emails to grow your micro niche business today.

The post Stepping into the power of niching down, with Lora Cheadle (MNM Season 2 Episode 7) appeared first on Daily Cookie.

Welcome to the sixth episode of the second season of The Micro Niche Mastery Podcast.

Our guest for today is Kim Krause Schwalm, a top-a-list copywriter, an “OG” in the direct response arena and a copy mentor who helps copywriters be dangerously good.

If you want to be good at copywriting, this episode is filled with valuable insights to improve writing copy. 

kimschwalm.com

dailycookie. co

Click Below to see the full transcript of this episode

Voice over:

Welcome to the Micro Niche Mastery Podcast, where we help you establish yourself in the perfect micro niche. So you will get noticed and grow your business faster. And now your host coined the 10 hour rule of getting results work for at least 10 hours a week on one marketing tunnel. And that rule gets his clients consistent results. Ziv Raviv

Ziv:

Hello, and welcome back to the Micro Niche Mastery Podcast. So excited to have an interview today with a top a list copywriter. Some of it has been writing for years for decades, and nowadays even trains and mentors, copywriters, and business owners that want to know how to use copywriting. Hello Kim Krause Schwalm. How are you?

Kim:

I’m doing great. It’s great to be here. Thank you.

Ziv:

Well, it’s an honor to have you here. You’ve been promoting a lot of free advice online and in your email list, and I really appreciate your generosity and I just love talking about copywriting with people that understand it so well like you. So can you just for the sake of context, just have, give us the one minute version of your journey in copywriting?

Kim:

Well, I was always a marketer who could write copy. I worked for a couple large companies in various marketing roles. I’ve been a brand manager. I was a publisher for publishing company. I actually helped launch and run supplement business. That was a subsidiary. So I’ve always copywriting had, was always a little bit of what I did in the bigger picture. And I actually realized that I was actually kind of good at it and I enjoyed it. And then I saw what freelance copywriters were able to do in terms of working a lot less and earning more than I was in my 50 hour work weeks. And so after I had my first child, I went back to work and I decided, you know what? I think I’m gonna take the leap. And I walked out of my a hundred thousand dollars year job back in 1998 and became a freelance copywriter and just never looked back and it’s worked out really well.

I’ve been able to, I had a couple of children. They’re young adults now, but it was just a really great way to work from home. Have the flexibility still continue my climbing, my career goal, reaching my career goals and, and having a satisfying career. So I’m at a point now where I’m kind of getting my marketing hat back on. I’m not writing as much copy for clients. I’m be teaching and mentoring other copywriters and finding that really gratifying to help people like copywriters and entrepreneurs be able to have the kind of flexible, more rewarding life that they want. So it’s kind of full circle.

Ziv:

So, I think we just dive right into some of the topics that we are passionate about, and we want to know what you think about it. And we’ll start with the million Dollar question, which is how often do you think should people send, should business owners send emails to the audiences?

Kim:

Why honestly, if you do it every day, that is the best. If you can do that would not just email people every day, just for the sake of emailing them, make sure you have something to say something new you wanna share. I’m actually somewhat guilty sometimes of packing so much into my emails. I probably could stretch them out into five or six different emails. So some people find their audience really likes just getting regular short and sweet emails with one idea every day. And, and yes, maybe there’s an offer every day too. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with selling it to your list. I mean, they’re there because they want to be sold to, they want to hear from you. Yeah. I think every day is really the best.

I mean, sometimes you can do two to three times a week. That’s fine. It’s only when you, you step away and you don’t, they don’t hear from you and you only come to them. Maybe when you have something to sell of them, you know, it’s much better to use your list to build that relationship. And in that spirit of giving, you know, sharing demonstrate what you can do with your knowledge or what your business can do for them or the service that you’re offering. And yeah, so that’s how you, I would use it to build relationships and that takes consistency. Whether it’s every day or two to three times a week,

Ziv:

You did mention that you don’t just send an email for the sake of sending it. You actually want to provide some sort of value. What would that look like?

Kim: 

So value and all use quote marks can be anything from teaching something. Maybe it’s demonstrating a concept like here’s some really great headlines and here’s what I do. Here’s my top three tactics that would be like serious value. Right. All the way to the other end of the spectrum could really just be sort of infotainment because people like to be entertained. I mean, I sent out a, a kind of funny tongue and cheek email the other day to my list. And it was strictly to promote an event that I was an affiliate for, but I just had fun with it. And it was people, I got a lot of engagement. I got people emailing me back. You know, people thought it was fun or they had some kind of reaction. So it doesn’t always have to be a serious lesson. So I think there’s a really broad range there, but you want it to feel like it was worth them opening it up, whether they got like a little bit of a laugh or they actually got some kind of value. And

Ziv:

What do you do to like come up with more ideas about your specific audience when you wanna send them some piece of value, either an entertainment piece of, or some teaching, but how do you find ideas for those?

Kim: 

Well, I mean, first off it’s you wanna make sure you really have a good idea who it is that you’re writing to. And for me, because I was that person or have been that person for a couple of decades, it’s, it’s pretty easy. And I also continue to mentor people. So when you have a picture of who your target reader is, or prospect or avatar in your head, and those there, people that maybe you have some regular interaction with, it’s one reason why a lot of times, I like to invite people to email me back with maybe some kind of comment or reaction. I have so many people on my email list that I’ve actually developed relationships with just because we’ve emailed, you know, back and forth. In fact, I went to Hawaii a few months ago and somebody on my email list showed us all around Kauai and gave us this amazing tour and had us to his house for dinner.

Those are the kinds of things that can come out. Just a few little emails with people on your list. But yeah, it’s important to, to really have a picture of who it is you’re writing to, whether it’s somebody on your email list, or if you’re sitting down to write a promo, whether it’s a sales page or direct mail promo, I’ve been known to actually call up and interview people who have bought the product from my clients, I’ve done maybe anywhere from six to 10 interviews completed. And I’ll just call and say, Hey, I’m just, I’m not selling you anything. I’m just when I had a few questions about such and such product, and it’s not so much like market research, it’s really more are getting that picture. Who is this person? So when I sit down to write, I have this picture of Joe from Tennessee and he buys financial newsletters. And here’s why, and kind of that idea of who that person is. So, yeah, I think it’s really important to talk to people and interact with them, not just go on a screen and do all your on online research behind the scenes.

Ziv:

I wonder if there’s someone or something that you think about this world that is like to really dislike, like who is the enemy in your world or the way you see things.

Kim: 

Okay. I think it depends on what I’m selling. So I’ll put my copywriter hat on. I write a lot of copy for the supplement and natural health alternative health industry. So the enemy is often big pharma or big food. You know, they’re putting all this crap in your food and that’s why you’re overweight and it’s not your fault. Or people are seeking better alternatives to costly drugs that are with side effects. So, you know, those are some pretty common enemies with financial copy. It can be the government, right? It can be government regulation. It can be the wall street fat cats who keep all the good stuff to themselves as far as copywriters. I don’t know. I think it’s more people get really anxious about bad clients, right? We all want good clients. We want clients that value copy. There’s a lot of clients. There’s a lot, I’ve heard so many horror stories over the years.

Kim: 

I actually remember going through some of these situations myself, where, you know, you get into a bad situation, some client SIFs you on payment, or they hire you. You send a copy, you never hear anything, you know? So those kind of client nightmares, I think, would be sort of nightmare. Clients are definitely an enemy. Competition. I mean, there’s so much more competition for copywriters today than there was 15 or 20 years ago. Right. Right. And it’s not just, especially if you’re a US based copywriter, you’re not just going up against other us based copywriters. You’re going against a whole globe of copywriters. And in some cases, these people can be just as strong of copywriters, but then they can charge maybe a third or half as much because maybe they’re costly thing is a lot less. So yeah, I think there’s a lot of stressors affecting copywriters. The good news is there’s more opportunities for copywriters than there ever has been too, because everything’s requiring words. The more we do things online, the more people that are doing email marketing or whatever, kind of online advertising, the more words we need and we need people to write those words, not robots.

Ziv:

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Totally. Do you find it hard to convince copywriters that you teach, that you find it are being trained by you? Do you find it hard to convince them that daily emails is the way to go? Do you see any, any resistance?

Kim:

So most of the copywriters working for me, don’t have their own email list that are studying with me. They’re usually working with other clients. They might be helping the clients with their email list. So, no, I don’t know if it’s necessarily that I’m trying to convince them to do that. But I think just on a different note, kind of similar, I think writing every day is so important to getting good at copywriting. It’s just like a muscle, you know, it’s like, if you let it atrophy and you don’t work it out very regularly, it’s the kind of thing that when you’re just starting out, even if you don’t have back to back client projects to work on, it’s so important to whether it’s hand copying promos, if you find that helpful or giving yourself projects to just write practice copy. And so one of the things we do in my mentoring group is we pretty regularly, there’ll be a homework assignment. You know, no one likes homework, but this is how we get better. Right. That’s how we work out that muscle. And so they bring their completed assignments and then I critique them in the group call and they get feedback. And again, this is, we’re it so many of the aha moments, right? It’s doing, it’s not buying a course and then tucking it aside. It’s actually doing the course and doing the work and practice every day. And that’s where I see people really getting dramatic improvements with their copywriting.

Ziv:

What is your opinion on triggering shame in copy? Is it okay? Is it, how do you overcome it?

Kim:

Hmm. It’s not a tactic that I have used overtly if you know what I mean? I think it’s one of those things that you can tap into that emotion, but you have to be careful. You don’t want to necessarily call that specific prospect out, but you can maybe call up a situation or this happens to, so and so, or some people experience this or some blah, blah, blah. And you know that they’re gonna relate to one of those scenarios, but they won’t feel like you’re attacking them or threatening them. You gotta be really careful with that. I think.

Ziv:

Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes shame can really make someone stop reading an email, of course. And there’s so many ways to describe it as the problem that some people face and implications or the, to tell a story as if it’s of a specific person not use the rhythm

Kim: 

Yeah. One of the things I like to do with an, if there’s any kind of negative emotion, like let’s say fear, you know, fear is a very common emotion to tap into is very effective with financial or health copywriting or for business success, or really a lot of other things. Right. But you always have it with some kind of positive emotion when you give them hope, you know, you can use fear, but you gotta give them some hope. And whether it’s health financial, I found that to be a really powerful combination. So, you know, you kind of let ’em know kind of what is that worst thing that they fear the most that could happen, but you’re gonna show them know their Salvation. There’s a way to avoid it. There’s a way to reverse it. There’s a, a great example would be talking about a hidden cause for, let’s say Alzheimer’s, I mean, you can’t usually use that obviously in a supplement promotion, you can’t say a disease name, but let’s say scientists just uncovered this hidden cause, and you’re not hearing about it.

Kim:

And here’s how you can easily reverse it using this natural method. I’m about to reveal or something like that. Right now you hook ’em in, it’s like you haven’t just hit ’em with a negative where they’re just like, ah, I don’t wanna think about that. Right. You know, and they move on, but you gotta immediately say no, but there’s this hope, there’s this secret, there’s this easy thing that’s going to reverse this problem that I just raised. And yeah. So you have to really combine that and give that to ’em fairly quickly to get them to want to read.

Ziv:

Do you have any method of going into like a new type of client or something that, or maybe that’s a method that you teach your old copywriter, where for example, in the supplemental world, you had to learn a lot of jargon words or maybe what was to avoid and how to explain the different, different topics in a way that makes sense? So how do you actually go into this new field and present copy while you need to be an expert potentially?

Kim: 

Right. So you’re talking about like, when you’re talking about something more complicated, like maybe a health. Yeah. Cuz sometimes I find that I’m, I’m spending all this time digging into these scientific studies and all this, these terms that I don’t understand and yeah. Google’s your best friend, look, everything up, make sure you understand it. And then you need to be able to write your copy in a way that it sounds like is at the fifth to eighth grade level and that you were able to explain it in language, not getting scientificy or not getting using sophisticated words, just, you know, how would you explain it to your grandmother or to a friend or to, to your spouse and make it conversational? I have actually sometimes found going to like middle school science. I forget the names that there’s like different websites out there that are for eighth graders and fifth graders.

Kim:

Right. And I have found out, okay, like for example, I was writing a joint promotion, a joint supplement. And I, I like wanted an easy way to explain this complicated inflammatory process. And I was my, well, my brain was sort of exploding going through all these studies. And then I went to like the eighth grade science website, whatever the name was. And it was this beautiful explanation about it, what inflammation was. Right. Because it, it actually can be good is one of those things, like if you start to form a scab, it’s because your inflammatory triggers are there to help you heal. But when you have too much of it, it’s a bad thing. And your body turns against us. That’s the kind of language you wanna use. You don’t wanna, when your cytokines get really high and your blah blah. And no one, like no one cares what that is.

Kim:

Right. So yeah, those are some short cause. But yeah, because I’ve done a little extra digging with the help of Google. If I’m looking at a study that’s talking about, they use this certain type of test, like, you know, and they had them all do this. All the participants I’ll look it up. Oh, that’s when they hold up a series of pictures and they have you do a me recall how many of these can you recall after seeing them one time after? So then I could just explain, well then they, they sat down with the participants and they showed them a series of cards and 30 minutes later, 90% of those could, whatever you tell it, like a story you don’t just say, oh, they did the blah, blah, blah, test that no one ever knows what that is. So you just wanna go that step further with your research and then translating that back to, how would you explain that in a way that’s engaging in the copy that educates and continues to lead them towards, you know, your sales message.

Ziv:

What are some of the things that you are really proud of?

Kim:
Why back when boardroom was this major direct response company. And it was so hard just to even even get hired there as a copywriter to write a promo. One of my first promos that I wrote for them, actually it was the first promo I wrote for them. It made me the first female copywriter to get a boardroom control. So yeah, I was really proud of that. I felt like I kind of broke through a little bit of a class ceiling there. I also beat Paris from Papas control and that I beat the great, the late Jim R’s control. So when I beat like these legendary copywriters names and I’m like this still fairly young woman and up and coming, it really put me on the map as a copywriter. But it was funny for years and years, I never kind of bragged about it or never even talked about it.

Kim:

I sort of felt like, well, you know, I shouldn’t do that. And everybody’s like, why aren’t you telling everybody that you’ve done this? You know, I think sometimes it’s not just women. I think a lot of us tend to not be comfortable about talking about like our wins or our successes. And I would say that when you do get some wins, you should let people know. I mean, not in an annoying braggery way, but use that as an opening. It’s like, well, you know, I’ve gotten some successful promos. I’ve written some for some of your, you know, companies you go up against, you know, and would you like to see them? Don’t be shy about sharing your successes that can open many, many doors for you. But yeah, those were some successes I had early on. And then I would say, I’m also proud that several of the copywriters I’ve worked with just over the last few years have really gone on to either having their own products or their own email list or, you know, becoming in demand copywriters and making six figures or more. And, you know, again, this is part of what, you know, kind of the full circle thing I talked about earlier. I just feel grateful that I was able to get into copywriting when I did and have the kind of lifestyle that it gave me. And if I can teach other people how to do that successfully and navigate or avoid bad clients along the way, I really get a lot of satisfaction from that. I can’t hear you right now. You’re muted. Thanks.

Ziv:

One of the ways that people can learn from you is actually through one of your courses, which is called copywriting velocity. And you explain the, the concept also of successful control. Can you expand on what is a control and what is covered in the course?

Kim: 

So the term control is used by a lot of direct response companies. Usually it refers to a long form promo, which could be a sales page or a video sales letter or a direct mail promo. If I have one, like, you know, here’s an example of like a big direct mail promo. So whatever the promo is that they can use and know that they’re gonna get a certain response, the one that’s tested and proven to work, that’s what they might refer to as their control. You know, it’s almost like a scientific experiment. You have your control where you kind of expect certain things and then you’re constantly do different tests against it. So smart companies are always have new tests in the works has no controls last forever. Although I’ve written some that have mailed or been controls for eight or 10 years or longer, which is great.

Kim:

If you can have a multi-year control, that’s wonderful. But yeah, most companies are constantly testing. So if you’re a copywriter who’s been hired to write a new promotion and you always wanna find out, well, what is the existing control? And you wanna study that control and you, you wanna tear it apart and you wanna figure out why is it working, right? But what are some potential weaknesses because your goal is to beat it. In fact, I have a course, actually, that’s all about this called million dollar controls. And in it, I break down actually seven of my most successful promotions that I’ve written. And each breakdown is about an hour, 10 hour and a half long where I go through it. And I talk about my process for each one of these controls that I wrote. But an important step is looking at what is that existing control promo and where do I think I can do something a little bit better or try something different that they didn’t do that I think’s gonna make it work better.

Kim:

And so when you can start beating controls, that’s when you really start to get a lot of respect as a copywriter, you also can earn royalties. If you’re able to negotiate arrangements where basically, if you have the control, you’re usually getting a Royal based on either the number of names at mails, or if it’s an online promo, you can get a percent of the sales. And so this is not becoming increasingly common. Now you may not get these kind of deals the first or second promo you write, or even the third. But I guarantee once you get a few controls under your belt and you prove that, Hey, I can write successful promos. You can definitely start negotiating some royalty deals and you can get like a, a passive stream of income that can come in for many years, depending on how long it runs in return for that.

Kim:

Whenever your headline starts to fatigue, or maybe the, you know, an ad or email is, you know, needs some freshening, that’s striving traffic to your promo. You just go ahead and you, you do whatever copy needs to you done. You don’t charge for that because you wanna, you’re a vested partner. You want it to be successful and continue to keep it going. And if you’re earning royalties, you have a stake in the success. So, you know, a lot of business owners don’t always realize, you know, that it’s a, win-win when you can work with a good copywriter and create those kinds of arrangements where they have a stake a in the success, and then it becomes more of a partnership and it can last for many, many years.

Ziv:

Wonderful. Where can people learn more about you team?

Kim:

They go to kimschwalm.com, K IM S C H w a L m.com. They’ll find out all about me, my different courses, my mentoring programs. I’m gonna be updating my mentoring options soon and beginning to fill those for next year. So yeah, that would be the best place to go to find out. And also more importantly for free, you can become a copy insider and get on my email list. And I do any letter called copy insiders. Plus I do occasional promo breakdowns called what’s in Kim’s mailbox where I analyze promos that I’ve seen out in the wild, either online or in my mailbox. And so yeah, people really seem to love those breakdowns.

Ziv:

Amazing. And we will put in the show notes link. So in case anyone is typing right now, just go to the show notes and you’ll see kimschwan.com link. And I think it’s very important. If you are learning copywriting or you want to use copywriting in your business, then you have to also sign up for a few, a list copywriter email list, and just be influenced by the pace and by the style and, and by the generosity.

So, I wanna thank you Kim, for being here in this show. And I want to thank everyone for listening for yet another episode of a Micro Niche Mastery Podcast. See you next week, guys,

Voice over:

This show was brought to you by daily cookie.co, where you can finally feel supported daily email love. Now delegatable visit daily cookie.co for a collection of free resources on how to use copywriting and daily emails to grow your micro niche business today

The post One Million Dollar Controls in Copywriting, with Kim Krause Schwalm (MNM Season 2 Episode 6) appeared first on Daily Cookie.

Welcome to the fifth episode of the second season of The Micro Niche Mastery Podcast.

Our guest for today is John Bejakovic, an author and a copywriter who helps businesses in micro niches to meet their copywriting needs.

If you’re afraid to send out daily emails, John’s personal experience will prove how effective it is for marketing your business.

bejakovic.com

dailycookie. co

Click Below to see the full transcript of this episode

Voice Over:

Welcome to the Micro Niche Mastery Podcast, where we help you establish yourself in the perfect micro niche. So you will get noticed and grow your business faster. And now your host, he is able to manage five active podcasts because he runs them in seasons and allows himself to take breaks between them according to his business needs Ziv Raviv.

Ziv:

Hello, and welcome to the micro niche mastery podcast. Hi, I’m so excited today to talk with John Bejakovic a copywriter that helps businesses in micro niches and in all sorts of business styles to actually get some of the copy needs met. And what I love about John is how prolific he is and how generous he is on his website, which is bejakovic.com. Start with J and C it end B E J A K O V I C.com. You can go and check it out in the shownotes, us as well, but there so much to cover. Let’s just get right into it. Hello John.

John:

Hi Ziv. Thanks for having me.

Ziv:

Thanks for sharing some time with us here. John, can you tell us a little bit about just for the context and everything that your journey, how did you actually become a copywriter?

John:

Sure. So I have a background in Math and IT so nothing to do with marketing. I worked in an office. I really got sick of working in a, an office and I decided to try to make it on my own. And basically I stumbled into it. And in the beginning I was working for very low fees, but gradually I got better and better clients. I got better and better at what I was doing. And now it’s been a while. I’ve had a lot of personal success. I helped a lot of businesses make money and there’s still a long ways to go. So I feel like when I got into this field, I thought all you have to do is put a how to headline and that’s gonna be a magical way to make money. And it turns out that the field of copywriting is very, very deep and there’s a lot of really subtle psychology. It might not be obvious when you read a very good sales letter, a very good sales email. So that’s what keeps me going.

Ziv:

What type of client for you is the ideal client?

John:

I’ve worked with really a lot of different types of businesses. I, right now I’m working with an agency which has several different clients and we kind of have a revenue share agreement with them. And that’s, this is probably I, I’m very excited about this opportunity in the past. I’ve worked with supplement companies with e-commerce companies with real estate investing Gurus. And before that I’ve even worked with many more, but as I’ve kind of progressed, I’ve started to niche down and specialize into a few fields. And over the past few years, that’s mainly been real estate investing and eCommerce stuff, both kind of the front end acquisition part, and also the backend. So emails.

Ziv:

So you write both the emails and like the copy that compels people to buy stuff on Ecommerce. Like, do you have maybe a favorite client or a favorite case study that you can share with us?

John:

Yeah, sure. Well, I think something that you read your listeners might find valuable is specifically related to email marketing. So one of the clients that I worked with for over two years, they were doing e-commerce. They were selling products in the dog niche. So they were selling dog seat belts and dog harnesses and all sorts of unique products to fix problems for dogs. And we were doing very well because we had a few different funnels that were running on cold Facebook traffic, and we were getting lots of buyers. And that was all interesting. But for me, the more interesting part was the back end. So were they had a lot of clients or a lot of customers coming in, but they weren’t doing anything with those customers. And I kept kind of going back to my own clients and telling them, let me handle emails.

John:

Let me just send these people emails all the time. And for over six months I came back to them and they would say no, and maybe, maybe later right now, we’re not ready to do it. We’re know very well in front end. Eventually they kind of broke down. They said, okay, fine here. Just send emails, you handle it. And then I did. And it was, it was very, very effective. So we started sending daily emails to these people who had bought some sort of a dog product. And the emails were on the one hand, very simple. And on the other hand, very kind of endearing because all it was would be me going and finding some sort of dog related story, which I thought would be cute. I like dogs. So it wasn’t very hard. I went in, I found a story where I said, okay, this is something that makes me kind of smile, or it’s interesting where it’s kind of fascinating.

John:

I take that story, rewrite it a little bit, tighten it up, put it into an email in the middle of it. I’d stick a little picture of a cute dog that was doing something funny. And then at the end of that email, I would tie it into an offer that we had. So it was either an internal product or an affiliate product and doing this. We had a big list, so it wasn’t that big a stretch, but we started making tens of thousands of dollars a month just pulling in a pure profit just by sending out these super simple emails. And by sharing something with people that they like to read, people kept coming back. They kept responding and saying, oh my God, thank you. This was such a cute story. This was such a valuable story. And it was done in a way where it was very consistent with the brand and customers loved it. And that’s why it worked really well is a really good illustration of how well the email can work. If you just have, if you have like a simple mechanism that works.

Ziv:

Wow. And how often would you send those?

John:

Those went out every day, seven days a week. Wow.

Ziv:

So how like, can you share the details if you can of like, did you write them in one day and then scheduled them? How did you manage the, the actual

John:

We had, we had a few different brands and so I was actually writing a couple of daily emails a day and what we were doing was, yeah, these would just go out day for day. So I would, this was part of my regular work for these clients and I would go research a story and again, find a story that I thought would work well, shorten it up, tighten it up a little bit and put it into an email. And after a few weeks or months of doing this became a very quick process. So maybe 20, 30 minutes of day, a day to do all of this, to do the research and to write the email and to schedule it. And even so we were making tens of thousands of dollars just from this simple process.

Ziv:

Wow. That’s wonderful. So tell me your journey into like starting to understand the daily emails actually work. Cause a lot of people are so afraid from what if I send too many emails and people will unsubscribe or they will be very upset. And yet you’ve decided to go into this direction. Can you tell me your journey of making that decision?

John:

Sure. So I started doing this for my own stuff first. So at the same time I had clients who were hiring me to write emails. And I even had a few clients who were fine with sending daily emails. So I, I kind of approached clients who were already pre-sold on this stuff, but in my own experience because I was doing this, I said, okay, I want to practice this and I wanna get better at it. So I still started writing my own emails at the beginning. I had a alternative health blog, which had to do with essential oils and I started writing emails there. And later I started my own blog, my own domain about marketing and about persuasion. And for a long time, all I was doing was just creating content, just daily emails, because I have anything to sell. And I think through that, any kind of fear that I had about people not wanting to read daily emails went away because a, I was practicing and writing and I could see that people were reading.

John:

And I realized that what I was sharing was valuable enough that people would want to read it. And if I had all things that I could sell on top of that at the end of the daily email, it really wasn’t turning people away. And of course there were people who would occasionally unsubscribe, but that’s kind of a part of, of email marketing. And that’s why having good emails is very important because that’s how you keep people around longer. But at the same time, it’s not the only part. And you need, you do need to work on grow your list at the same time. But all I can really say is that if you put in effort into having daily emails and if you make them consistent and you make them above a certain threshold of quality, then there will be people who are happy to hear from you every day.

John:

And the only proof that I can give you is, you know, my own experience, the experience I’ve had for maybe probably around 10 different clients that have at different times had engagements with writing daily emails for, and all of them. It was a big profit center for them. And for me, it’s been absolutely transformative. So over the last you found me not too long ago, and that’s how we got in touch. And a lot of other people found me recently and I’ve had a lot of success very quickly that came or rather I had a lot of success that came very suddenly and all of that success came through daily emailing. So I didn’t do any kind of additional marketing all myself as a personal copywriting brand stuff to write a daily email, to put it onto my blog. And eventually I kind of broke through some threshold where people started finding me and they started looking at me as an expert as kind of a leader in this field. And it was amazing how easy it was from that point on to make progress. So all I can tell you is that if you do daily email, it really can work.

Ziv:

What I love about this is that the way you speak it, it qualifies fully for the question from the book. The one thing which is the question, what can I do today that will make everything else easier or not needed. And by you choosing to do this daily habit of daily emails to your list, at some point you got to a point where marketing became an easy task. People heard about you and you were getting offers to, you know, either featured in this case on a podcast or to get actual copy gigs and clients that are result really with your quality. But I have to also mention that you, your copy, your work, your emails, that later become a part of your website. They do two things for you that I want you to tell me. What do you think about it?

Ziv:

One day show your quality because the copy is, is high quality. You actually put in some work into the research and you provide value. Not just, it’s not just an, another story about the dog. You actually think about deep stuff and share them with us insights. And the second thing you do is actually you are doing search engine optimization, you are growing your footprint in, in front of the search guards. And then like you might even get people to find you through Google because they search for something that you talked about. So what do you think about that?

John:

Yeah, absolutely. So I think both of those are really good points. First of all, if you are constantly writing to people and people are reading your, your emails regularly, then I think one point is exactly what you said, that it’s not a only that you start to build a relationship where they sort of know you and they trust you and they feel that they’re connected to you. But specifically if you’re selling your own services or even a product, you can start to shift people’s opinions in a way, and you can become an expert and you can position you, you basically, you get positioning in a way that you couldn’t get almost in any other way, because in any other way, you have a very limited time to work with daily emails, you’re building, changing the way that people see their own worlds, their own problems, and the way that they see you and you’re creating positioning.

John:

So that’s one very valuable thing. And yeah, the absolute, I mean, I put my emails onto my website eventually, and I wasn’t doing any kind of other SEO work. And so I wasn’t getting a tremendous amount of organic traffic, but the organic traffic that I was getting was very relevant again, because on my own blog, I’m writing about very niche things. I’m writing about direct marketing and famous copywriters and people who wrote books. And it’s a, it’s a very small part of the overall marketing world and the people who are in it though, are very interested in it. And they recognize those names. They might be searching for those specific terms and ideas. And when they find me and they find me on Google, there is a very good chance that for some obscure keyword that I didn’t even think about, I’m gonna be ranked highly and they’re gonna find my blog.

John:

And immediately they’re gonna say, oh, this is somebody who’s, who’s in, who’s in, on this secret world. And so even before I kind of broke through and people started finding my blog and my email newsletter, or a little bit more actively, even before that I had a smaller list, but that list was made up of some of the biggest names in the space, in that direct marketing space. Just because again, a few really key people found me through really, really niche searches. And whenever I talked to them, they didn’t even know how they found my website. It wasn’t that they were searching for my name. They weren’t searching for email marketing. They were looking for something very specific and they found my site and they saw that I have hundreds of blog posts up there and they said, okay, this is somebody I should be in touch with. I should somebody I should follow. So it’s been very effective in a few different areas.

Ziv:

Let’s try and give some people to just starting out with daily emails, some tips like how do you come up with ideas? I mean, with the story about the dogs, it was a very specific template that worked really well for you, but this is not what you will do in every micro niche. So how do you come up with ideas for what to write about?

John:

I think ultimately it’s a matter of knowing your audience because you’re absolutely right. So I, I couldn’t send the same copywriter story to my own list every day and make it interesting. So for dogs, I knew that people who love dogs, they love dogs, and they’re happy to see pictures of dogs every day. On the other hand, it’s not really clear that people who love horse says might want the same story or might want the same format. So you need to know what your audience would want. And there’s no real shortcut to that except to do research, to either be a member of your audience, to talk to your audience, to go spend some time online and see what people are already consuming, what kind of content they’re digging into. And again, if you, for example, for me, a great resource for research is Reddit.

John:

Because if you go on Reddit, you can see the kind of content that people are spontaneously sharing. If you go on a dog subreddit, you’ll see the people are sharing pictures of dogs and stories of dogs. And that way, you know, that that kind of thing might be very good content for you as well. On the other hand, if you go to a subreddit where it’s moms talking about their own problems, then you’ll find stories that are relevant there. And you can talk about questions that moms have or stories that moms are sharing or frustrations that moms are experiencing. And all of those are potentially good topics for a daily email. I think the dog thing was very unique because I could basically have the same format every day. I think in most niches I’ve been in, you wanna mix it up a little bit.

John:

So you wanna have one that’s maybe about a problem. One that’s based on the story one, that’s some sort of case study one way you’re ads answering a question that somebody asks. So you wanna keep it very interesting. And yeah, there are a few key places that you can look. I think Reddit is another one or maybe the primary one that I use, but again, if you’re writing daily emails, one good thing to look at is the kind of content that people are already consuming. Take that type of content, make it a little bit more unique to your own brand, your own product and tie it into what you’re selling. And that’s really all you need to do.

Ziv:

Wonderful. Thank you so much for sharing. And I wanna ask one more question, if that’s okay for you to share, like what do you use to grow your list? What tactics do you use to go your copywriting list?

John:

I think that’s a great question. And I’m a terrible person to ask that because I did a very bad job of doing that until now. All I’ve really done for a long time was that SEO stuff where I would put my own emails onto the blog. Another thing that I did, which actually worked very well was I took a lot of the emails that I was writing. I expanded them a little bit and I bundled them together into Kindle books, which was not very difficult to do. I put them onto Amazon and I get regularly people buying those, including again, some of those people who found me were very kind of key people in that copywriting space who bought my book. They said, oh, this is really great. At the end of the book, I had a little link where people could sign up to my email list.

John:

And that is fantastic because on Amazon, you can actually run ads to promote your book. So in effect, you are getting free marketing and you might even make some money off of it. And it’s all promoting your list. And then a large, a large part of it is again, just reused, reused emails that I was already writing. That I took bundled together, expanded a little bit and put into a book. And recently, I guess what I’ve started doing is I’ve gotten out to a couple podcasts like with you. I think that’s a fantastic way of doing it. I’ve been in contact with a few people. Daniel Throssel is an Australian copywriter who I think maybe we got in touch through him. He was absolutely fantastic. And he, he reached out to me and he has a much bigger list and a much, and a very engaged list of copywriters.

John:

And he suggested that we kind of cross promote each other, which was very generous of him because he has a much big your list than I do, but he suggested that. And it was fantastic for me because a lot of people who really liked my stuff came through his list. So in general, if I had to kind of sum it down to what you can do to grow your list is either find people who have an audience already where you can tap into their, which is a relevant audience. And the second element of it would be that you again, need content. So whether that’s a podcast interview or whether that’s a book that people are gonna read, or whether that’s a long piece of content on your own site, but if I’m not a huge fan, at least for my own personal brand of just getting people to opt into my list, by in some way, making them a big promise or tricking them, or getting more names onto my list. I want people who are qualified leads, who want to hear what I’m talking about. And that’s why for example, a podcast is a great resource or having a quality endorsement from somebody who has that excitement audience is probably the most valuable thing. So there’s a lot of stuff to do, but I think that these kind of slow burn ways of growing release can sometimes be more effective than maybe just trying to get big numbers very soon. Wow.

Ziv:

Thank you so much for being transparent and open and sharing. It’s been a pleasure to, to talk with you. I wanna ask you one more thing. Just tell us what books have you written. And I give us an overview so that we could go and enjoy your work.

John:

Sure. So as far as books I’ve written, I’ve got only two. One is about my experiences getting started as a copywriter. So I went from having zero experience and no background and no portfolio. And I started working up work and I was charging $15 an hour for that first two weeks. And then within a couple of years, I’d gotten up to having a hundred percent, I don’t know, favorability rating or whatever it was on Upwork. And I was charging $150 an hour and I was making good money. And I was working with clients and clients were actually paying me that rate. So I wrote a little book kind of step by step with my own journey of what I did. And I’m no longer on Upwork, but I feel like a lot of those same ideas are still relevant. And then the other book that I wrote was last year, and it was about 10 commandments of A-list copywriters.

John:

So A-list copywriters are kind of the, the copywriters who’ve had the biggest success. And I took 10 ideass that each of these copywriters shared, and I kind of again, bundled it up in some stories and some illustrations, and I put it together in a book and that’s all I’ve got on Amazon right now, but I am working on a new book, which I hope to have out in another month or two. And then I’ll talk about that later. But those two are really the only ones I’ve got now. But then if you go on my site, I’ve got more than enough content. If you wanna read about copying your marketing. So there’s a lot of stuff.

Ziv:

Sweet. And once you do ready to launch, I would be very happy to promote your new book also to our list of the listeners. John, it’s been a pleasure, absolute pleasure to meet you in person here in over zoom, and to be inspired by your journey and your ideas. I love how just implement stuff. You, you, you get it done and you do a lot of work, but it’s high quality and then it shows and it shines. So thank you so much again for being here and thank you everyone for listening for yet another episode of Micro Niche Mastery Podcast. See you next week.

Voice Over:

This show was brought to you by daily cookie.com, where you can finally feel supported daily email love. Now delegatable visit daily cookie co for a collection of free resources on how to use copywriting and daily emails to grow your micro niche business today.

The post Building a brand through daily emails, with John Bejakovic (MNM Season 2 Episode 5) appeared first on Daily Cookie.