Sought After Educator

Sought After Educator waitlist: https://www.jodiebrown.ca/sae

Jodie Brown Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/itsjodiebrown Escape to Elevate retreat: https://www.escapetoelevate.com

Misty Jayne Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_mistyjayne_ Website: https://www.mistyjayne.com

Find Misty on Instagram at @mistyjayne and at mistyjayne.com. You can also catch her as the host of the Starting Messy podcast. Learn more about Escape to Elevate at escapetoelevate.com.

Six years ago, Misty Jayne wanted nothing to do with marketing. She was a full-time hairstylist who had started moving into online education, and the whole thing felt like a box she was being asked to squeeze herself into. Fast forward to today, and she just launched a retreat that hit 30K in its first week with a year still left to go. In this episode, Misty joins Jodie for one of the most honest conversations the Sought After Educator podcast has ever had.

This is not a highlight reel. Misty walks through the full arc of her journey, including the group coaching launch that only one person signed up for, the phases where she was ready to burn the whole thing down, and the period where the disconnect between her brand, her offer, and her audience was costing her more than she realized at the time. She's candid about what the messy middle actually felt like, and what started to shift when things finally clicked.

One of the biggest themes in this conversation is the difference between pivoting reactively and evolving intentionally. Jodie breaks down the three questions she uses to figure out whether something actually needs to change, and why the answer is so often not what we think it is. They also get into why so many educators stall out between launches, what it really means to have equal parts audience attraction and audience activation, and why burnout tends to show up when foundational systems are missing.

There's also a real conversation about what it means to find your voice in marketing when your instinct is to replicate the people you admire. Misty talks about learning to use templates and structures as a place to brain dump her own thoughts rather than a script she had to sound like, and why that shift changed everything for her when it came to writing copy.

At one point, Misty turns the interview around and starts asking Jodie the questions. That portion of this episode is worth the listen on its own.

If you're in the part of your educator journey where you know what you do changes people's lives but you can't quite get that to land in your marketing, this conversation will meet you exactly where you are.

If you've been showing up, posting your offers, and still feeling like your launches aren't landing the way they used to, this episode is going to click a lot of things into place. Jodie is breaking down one of the most common reasons educators stay stuck on the visibility-without-sales hamster wheel, and it has very little to do with how much you're posting and everything to do with what you're actually saying.

There's a real difference between announcing your offer and marketing your offer, and most educators are doing one while thinking they're doing the other. Announcement is the date, the modules, the price, the link in bio. It's necessary, but it only speaks to the small slice of your audience who are already solution aware and already bought in. That works once, maybe twice. Then your warmest people have purchased and you're left wondering why your reach isn't translating into enrollments.

In this conversation Jodie walks through why this happens, including market sophistication, evolving buyers, and messaging that hasn't caught up to where your audience is now. She unpacks what your audience is actually asking when they're considering your offer, things like will this work for someone like me, why now, why you, and how to shift from announcing to marketing in a way that builds demand consistently between launches.

She also gets specific on the three things your marketing should actually be doing. Speaking to the transformation, positioning the offer around the problem your audience is actively trying to solve, and leading with your unique point of view, because information is everywhere now but your perspective and lived experience aren't. Plus a real talk moment on the rise of AI-generated funnels and sales pages, and why so many of them are landing flat with buyers right now.

If you've been on the announcement treadmill and you're ready for a real system underneath your education, the doors to Sought After Educator are how you build it. Comment WAITLIST on any of Jodie's Instagram posts or head to jodibrown.ca/sae to get on the list for the next time enrollment opens, plus the best pricing and bonuses available only to waitlist members.

Links mentioned in this episode

• Apply for Escape to Elevate in Italy: escapetoelevate.com
• Follow Jamie on Instagram: @jamiedanahairstylist
• Watch Jamie on YouTube: Jamie Dana
• Follow Jodie on Instagram: @itsjodiebrown

Jamie Dana has been an online educator in the hair and beauty industry for ten years, which makes her one of a handful of people who can actually speak to what it takes to build a sustainable online education business over the long term. In this episode, Jodie and Jamie go behind the scenes on Jamie's full journey, from launching her first Instagram course for hairstylists in 2016 to the season she is in right now, where she is pivoting toward financial education for creative business owners.

This conversation gets into the things educators rarely talk about publicly, including:

• How Jamie went from working behind the chair to running a full time online education business, and the brand contract that gave her the financial runway to make the leap
• Why three years of focus on a single course laid the foundation for everything that came next
• The launch of Ember Retreat in 2018 with her business partner Piper DeYoung
• Building one of the only in depth hair technique YouTube channels in the industry
• The membership launch that brought in twelve hundred founding members

A big chunk of the episode is about something the online education industry tends to glamorize, which is top line revenue. Jamie shares why her revenue went down last year while her actual take home pay stayed about the same, the difference between a seven figure business and a seven figure profit, and the mastermind moment that made her realize how many impressive businesses have very little to show for the revenue they are generating. If you have ever felt the pressure of needing every year to grow by twenty percent, this part of the conversation is worth slowing down for.

Jamie and Jodie also dig into the myth that online education is oversaturated, what shifted during and after COVID, and why the barrier to entry is still low but the barrier to building a long term business is high. They talk about the importance of listening to your audience, running real surveys, and being willing to evolve your messaging as your audience evolves with you.

Jamie closes the episode with the three pieces of advice she would give any educator who wants to stay in this for the long term:

• Share your journey in a specific, intentional way that actually builds an audience
• Find a niche or point of view that sets you apart
• Keep showing up and lean into the testing, tracking and tweaking discipline that quietly separates the people who last from the people who fizzle out

Jamie is also the first ever guest educator joining Jodie at Escape to Elevate in Italy this October, where she will be sharing her decade of behind the scenes wisdom with attendees in person. A couple of private spots are still available at the time of recording, so head to escapetoelevate.com to apply.

Send Jodie a DM on Instagram

After six years as a full-time online educator and marketer, Jodie is pulling back the curtain on where her money has actually gone in her business. In this episode, she's sharing the investments that have moved the needle, the ones that quietly fell flat, and the filters she uses now before spending another dollar growing her online business.

She walks through the early bets that paid off, including the first $5,000 mastermind she invested in before she'd made a dollar online, the launch coaching program that taught her how to launch a digital course (a skill she still uses today), and the social media management certification that became the foundation of her agency. She also talks about software for online educators, why she made the move to Kajabi, and how the right backend setup changed how her clients experience her business.

But this episode isn't just about the wins. Jodie gets honest about the hires she made out of desperation, the peer-led mastermind that didn't deliver, the paid event listings that went nowhere, and the AI tools that promised to do the work for her and didn't. She shares what she learned from each one, including why generic marketing isn't converting anymore and why AI can rarely fix something that wasn't working in the first place.

By the end, Jodie breaks it all down into the four categories she'll always invest in to grow her online business: expert consulting, specific skill building, support, and experiences that give real ROI. If you're an online coach, course creator, or educator trying to figure out where to put your money right now, or you're a few years in and rethinking what's working, this episode will help you spend with a lot more intention.

In this episode, Jodie covers:

→ The first coaching investment she ever made and why it changed everything when she built her education business in the beauty industry

→ Why launching a digital course or any kind of education is a skill worth paying to learn properly

→ How the right software shifted both her workflow and her client experience

→ The hiring mistakes online business owners make and what to do differently

→ Why peer-led masterminds haven't worked for her and what kind of group containers do

→ The truth about AI tools for online educators and where they fall short

→ The four categories of investment that grow an online education business long term

Connect with Jodie: Instagram: @itsjodiebrown

Send Jodie a DM with your own best and worst business investments. She'd love to hear them.

Feeling like you never have enough time to create content? You're not alone. In this episode, Jodie is sharing 12 micro tweaks you can apply to your existing content right now, plus a full step-by-step strategy for building an entire week of posts without creating anything new.

This one is all about working smarter, not harder, and getting the most out of the content you've already made.

1. Add readable text captions to your spoken reels (and use Instagram's outline feature to improve contrast)
2. Make your hook crystal clear so your ideal client knows the content is for them within the first two seconds
3. Clean your lens and prioritize good lighting before filming B roll or face-to-camera content
4. Refine your hooks with specificity. What does "next level" actually look like for your audience?
5. Break up walls of text in your captions and carousels by hitting enter more often
6. Use multiple clips in your B roll reels and switch angles every few seconds to keep viewers engaged
7. Address one specific thing per post instead of trying to showcase everything you know
8. Use a content series to go deeper on complex topics over multiple posts
9. Swap stock photos for your own B roll and dedicate a batch day to building a custom content library
10. Revisit your Canva carousel templates to make sure they reflect your current branding
11. Study your top performing content to identify what it has in common and apply those patterns going forward
12. Build a full week of content without creating anything new using the three-post repurposing strategy Jodie walks through at the end of the episode

For the full week strategy, Jodie breaks it down into three posts. Monday, take a top performing or underperforming post you believe in, rework the hook, and turn it into a carousel with one to two sentences per slide. Wednesday, find the best question in your comments, hit reply with video, and record a face-to-camera reel answering it. Friday, pull your best performing static post or carousel, write a clear hook, and pair it with B roll video.

Jodie also shares why revisiting your own content is a far more effective way to find inspiration than scrolling the Reels tab, and why specificity in your messaging is only going to become more important as markets get more sophisticated.

Escape to Elevate retreat: www.escapetoelevate.com

Send Jodie a DM on Instagram: @itsjodiebrown

If you’ve ever felt like you’re doing everything right with your content, posting consistently, trying different formats, following trends, but still not seeing results…

This episode is going to give you a completely different way to look at what’s actually going on.

Because the problem usually isn’t effort.

It’s strategy, messaging, and how you’re measuring success.

Inside this episode, Jodie breaks down the five biggest content mistakes that are quietly holding educators and beauty pros back and what to shift instead so your content actually starts working for your business.

This is the kind of episode you’ll want to come back to when your content feels frustrating, inconsistent, or like it’s just not converting.

• Why chasing the algorithm is keeping you stuck and what actually matters more
• The difference between content strategy and content tactics
• How to stop measuring your content the wrong way
• Why some of your “low engagement” posts might actually be your most valuable
• How to use your data to create better content and better offers
• Why storytelling is no longer optional if you want your content to land
• What happens when you’re speaking to the wrong audience and how to fix it
• How inconsistent brand voice can quietly break trust with your audience
• The small shifts you can make this week to start seeing better results

You don’t need to create more content to get better results.

You need to refine how you’re approaching it.

When your messaging is clear, your strategy is intentional, and you’re speaking directly to the right people, your content starts to feel easier, more aligned, and a whole lot more effective.

Pick one of the five mistakes that stood out to you most, the one that made you slightly uncomfortable, and make a small shift this week.

That’s where the momentum starts.

• The Content Edit private podcast series
• Comment EDIT on Instagram @itsjodiebrown
• Or go to jodiebrown.ca/edit

Ever had a launch that didn't quite land and immediately started questioning everything, your offer, your model, your entire business direction? You're not alone. In this episode, Jodie digs into one of the most common and costly mistakes she sees educators make: confusing reactive pivots with intentional business evolution.

Using a relatable analogy about a kid who quits soccer after a few bad kicks, Jodie unpacks how we as adults and entrepreneurs do the exact same thing. She breaks down the critical difference between strategic evolution and emotionally driven pivots, and explains why constant changes are quietly costing you audience trust, sales momentum, and long-term growth.

In this episode, Jodie covers:

• The soccer analogy that perfectly captures why we abandon what's working
• How to define the difference between business evolution and reactive pivoting
• Real brand examples (Netflix, Apple) that show what strategic evolution actually looks like
• Why the momentum from your marketing doesn't always translate into an immediate sale and why that's okay
• How constantly changing your offers, model, or messaging confuses your audience and erodes trust
• The key question to ask yourself before making any major business change
• Why some parts of building a business are supposed to feel hard and that's not a sign to quit
• Two specific times when pivoting frequently actually makes sense

Key Takeaway

Strategies need time to work. If you're changing direction every time something feels slow or uncomfortable, you're not giving your audience or your offer a real chance to build momentum. The businesses that win long-term are the ones that commit, analyze, refine, and keep going.

Resources & Links Mentioned

• Previous episode on messaging and meeting clients where they're at
• Tag Jodie on Instagram: @itsjodiebrown

If you loved this episode, leave a rating or review on your podcast app, it helps more educators find the show!

If your audience is engaging, clicking the link, checking out the sales page and still not buying, this episode is your first line of defence.

Jodie is breaking down the one messaging shift that makes your ideal clients actually see themselves in what you do. This is not about overhauling your offer or showing up more. It is about understanding your people deeply enough that your messaging cuts through all of the vague noise online and speaks directly to the right person at the right time.

In this episode Jodie covers:

1. Why your ideal client might love your content and still not think it applies to them
2. What it means to speak to your client at their current awareness level and why it matters more than whether you use pain point or desire based marketing
3. The difference between describing a problem and describing the lived experience of that problem, and why one converts and one doesn't
4. Real copy examples that show exactly what this shift looks like in practice
5. How to do simple research to find the exact language your ideal clients are already using
6. Where to apply this in your messaging, from your sales page to your content to your about page

The core idea: Your ideal clients may not recognise themselves in the way you are describing the problem you solve. They have mentally checked the box and moved on. When your messaging speaks to the specific, everyday experience of what they are going through, they stop scrolling, feel seen, and realise you are talking directly to them. That is the shift that moves someone from "I love her content" to "I need to work with her."

Loved this episode? Send Jodie a DM or tag her in your stories on Instagram @itsjodybrown and don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss part two of this series.

This is not an anti-AI episode. It is a pro-strategy, pro-integrity, pro-your-actual-voice episode. Because here is the truth... if your content sounds like everyone else, it does not matter how brilliant your ideas are. Your audience has no way of knowing those ideas are yours.

The core problem with AI content editing Using AI as your final editor strips out the lived experience, the nuance, and the natural language patterns that make your content actually connect. Large language models are trained on everything on the internet, which means they naturally format your ideas to sound like everything on the internet.

The AI tells showing up in your content right now Jodie breaks down the most common signs that content has been over-edited by AI, including:

1. The em dash epidemic (yes, this is a thing)
2. Suspiciously perfect structure where every paragraph is the same length and every thought is neatly resolved
3. Hollow filler phrases like "in today's fast-paced world" and "it's worth noting"
4. Zero opinion, all information content
5. The enforced negative pattern ("you don't need more education, you need this") and why it damages your message
6. Overly balanced conclusions that hedge instead of take a stand

Why it doesn't matter if the ideas are originally yours... This is the part people need to hear. If your genuine, original thinking gets run through AI and all your natural language patterns are removed, your audience has no way of knowing those thoughts belong to you. Perception is the whole game. You can have the most brilliant thinking in your niche and still lose credibility by outsourcing your voice to a tool that has zero perspective of its own.

The data behind why this matters

1. 75% of marketers now use AI tools, yet human-created content gets 5.44x more traffic
2. Nearly 60% of consumers already doubt the authenticity of content they see online
3. Only 20% of consumers say they trust AI itself
4. 50% of consumers in a recent study could correctly identify AI-generated copy, and that number is climbing
5. Brands with a distinctive personality see 20% higher retention (and for personal brands and educators, that number is significantly higher)

The integrity line Jodie will not cross This is where the conversation moves from strategy to ethics. Using AI to generate content on topics you do not fully understand is a breach of trust with your audience. It is especially critical for educators, coaches, and service providers. If a client makes a decision based on content you did not actually understand when you posted it, that is on you. AI can help you say what you know better. It cannot be the source of what you know.

The busy vs. productive trap Feeling productive and being productive are not the same thing. If it takes 45 minutes to go back and forth with AI to get a caption that finally sounds like you, it would have taken you less time to just write it yourself. Jodie shares her own experience with this, plus the research: 77% of employees report AI has actually increased their workloads, and a Harvard Business Review study found that AI output requiring rework costs nearly two hours per instance.

How to actually use AI well The rule: AI belongs upstream in your process, before your voice enters the content. The best use cases include:

1. Brainstorming and ideation
2. Market research and finding out what your audience is searching for
3. Using AI to interview you (Jodie shares how she built this into her On Brand Social Refresh program)
4. Repurposing content, like turning a podcast transcript into a blog post
5. Admin tasks and show notes
6. Using AI output as a swipe file to rewrite in your own words, rather than publishing as-is

The one place AI should not live: the final layer your audience actually reads, watches, or hears.

"You could have the most brilliant original thinking in your niche, and if you run it through AI for that final edit, you are outsourcing your credibility to something that has zero perspective of its own."

"It does not matter if these were your original ideas. If it does not sound like you, your audience has no way of knowing."

"AI can help you say what you know better. It cannot be the source of what you know."

"I am not anti-AI. I am anti lazy AI use."

"Anyone pushing the use AI for everything or fall behind narrative is profiting from your fear of missing out. Without exception."

Sources referenced in this episode are linked below:

1. Human content vs. AI content traffic data: Averi.ai
2. Consumer trust in AI-generated content: Trendwatching / Accenture Life Trends 2025
3. AI content identification study (Bynder, 2,000 consumers): Bynder
4. Consumer trust in AI (NIM study): NIM
5. AI and workload/productivity: Findem
6. AI rework costs (Harvard Business Review / BetterUp Labs + Stanford): HBR

Instagram: @itsjodibrown

Send Jodie a DM and let her know how you are using AI in your content process, what is working, what is not, and whether you want more tactical content on using AI to grow your business without losing your voice or your credibility.

The Sought After Educator Podcast helps online educators, coaches, and service providers build standout personal brands and create content that actually converts. Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.

If your sales page isn't converting the way you want it to, this episode is for you. Jodie breaks down one of her all-time favorite copywriting tricks, the "so that" method, a deceptively simple two-word phrase that will completely shift the way you write about your offers, packages, and programs.

Most educators and service providers make the same mistake: they get excited about what they've built and lead with features, the number of modules, the workbook pages, the hours included, without ever connecting those features to the outcome their client actually wants. In this episode, Jodie walks through exactly how to bridge that gap.

In this episode, you'll learn:

1. The real difference between features and benefits (and why it matters for conversions)
2. Why clients make purchasing decisions based on emotion, not information
3. How to use the "so that" statement to pull out the benefit behind every single thing you offer
4. Why you should list out all your features before writing copy and what it reveals about your offer
5. How to use this method to audit existing sales pages, social posts, and coaching packages
6. What it means when you can't finish the "so that" statement (and what to do about it)

Jodie uses her own Escape to Elevate retreat as a real-time example, walking through the mastermind component, the luxury retreat experience, brand photo shoots, and one-to-one support, showing exactly how each feature gets transformed into a compelling benefit-driven statement.

Whether you're selling a digital course, a coaching package, a service offering, or a retreat, this episode gives you a repeatable framework you can apply to everything you write.

Mentioned in this episode: Escape to Elevate Retreat, Italy October 2026: www.escapetoelevate.com

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