WP Elevation WordPress Business Podcast

Watch the video of this podcast here.

Bob has been in the WordPress industry since 2007, but he started freelance graphic design in the late 80s. He and his wife ran a graphic design business for over 20 years, focussing mainly on print work. Bob didn't start working on the web until the mid-90s, but he wasn't a fan of HTML sites. He discovered WordPress in 2007, and that began his current career trajectory.In 2010, he was involved in coaching and training but now focuses on podcasting,

In 2010, he was involved in coaching and training but now focuses on podcasting, blogging and monetization through those mediums. He enjoys the creative side of podcasting and content creation, and now runs three podcasts and publishes content every day. Needless to say, he's a busy guy!

At the 7 minute mark, you won’t want to miss how Bob feels about multitasking! He also shares how he uses a schedule to juggle content creation and marketing.

Bob has spent the last several years focused on WordPress for beginners, but the podcast focuses on more advanced topics like eCommerce. He is enjoying building a new audience centered around eCommerce. The advantage of having multiple podcasts is being able to relate to a broad customer base. It's also a nice venue for transitioning to a more lucrative audience than just beginners.

In-Person Networking and Meeting People to Build Relationships:

1. Be yourself and don't have an agenda
2. Test different events to see if the attendees are the right fit for your business
3. Look for people who are alone and introduce yourself
4. Introduce people you meet to someone else - share the love!

Being a little bit old school, thinking of networking reminds Bob of the old days when people would go to the Chamber of Commerce to the network. A lot has changed, yet many things still stay the same. Online technology has opened up more opportunities, but in-person networking is still popular at conferences, meetups, and more. Sure, there is less social anxiety with online social media, but meeting in person builds strong relationships.

In-person networking can have the added challenges of being nervous, needing a master plan, and having to come up with an elevator speech. The elevator pitch can sometimes come off as insincere, and Bob knew there had to be a better way. What worked best for him was going to events with no expectations. This can eliminate some of the nerves and help relationship building to be more natural.

Building strong business relationships can benefit all of us in this industry. Challenges in the WordPress community include isolation or hanging out with the same people at events (and just partying with them instead of meeting new people who could potentially improve your network). Meeting new people is the key to networking success. Even with online opportunities, meeting people face-to-face creates a different type of connection and future benefits. You’ve heard the tips here...now give it a go!

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Watch the video of this podcast here.

Dee’s been in the web world since the early 2000s and has done everything from web development, community organization, training, blogging, and even running her own freelance business. She truly is the Web Princess!

She joined Human Made recently and made the transition from independent business owner to project manager on their team. A lot of her friends worked at Human Made before she joined their ranks, and she’s happy to have done so. On today’s show she explains why she made the transition and how it’s been a good fit for her.

She also tells Cath about a big project she and her Human Made team are currently working on. Right now they are creating a new CMS and newsroom management workflow based on WordPress for a big newspaper publishing company. It incorporates the client’s different workflows, so it is unique to this company. There is a massive amount of customization, so much so it'll nearly be unrecognizable from WordPress at the end.

It’s such a large project that Human Made will spend nearly a year on it. They started last October in 2016) and the site will go live in August of 2017.

Since she’s working on such a large project right now, Cath and Dee segued into the keys to project management (whether the project is big or small). Dee explains one key is to remember you are always starting from nothing and creating from there, whether your project is small or large or in-between.

But when you’re working on a large-scale project there are some things that are different. For example, you have to remember you are coding for performance ( you may have to code for a particular web host that allows some types of code and not others).

You also must have really strong revision control and processes so no one is tripping each other up and breaking things that have already been coded.

But the advantage in large-scale project management is you can build in teams and multiple people will be working on the same pieces; it's a much more agile and flexible process than if one person was building a web site by themselves.

At about the 15 minute mark Dee gives 3 pieces of advice based on her own personal experience:

1. Stop being scared of the client.
An important piece of any working relationship is transparency, be transparent with your client while staying in consistent, regular but not constant contact with client.

2. At the top of the project analyze what you are doing.
See the big picture and the parts that are needed to create that big picture. Then have conversations with clients around those pieces explaining what you're doing and why.
get to the bottom of what the project is that you are building and doing so in consultation with the client and the people using the project. If you do, you'll build what they want, rather than what you think they need.

3. Do the stuff that is going to help build their business value first.
You're winning yourself over to the client in many ways when you do. Even with a standard WordPress project you can break down all the parts you need.

So when creating a project make a backlog (which is just a list of all the things that are needed), and then use other tools to organize that backlog. You always want to be working towards something you can show the clients that is working so you create easy wins and valuable milestones, and you're partnering with your client rather than creating an adversary who "gets in the way".

Cath and Dee finish up with tools Dee recommends, including the one you can start with now, and Dee's takeaway on the most important thing necessary for good project management. Join us for that and more on this edition of WP Elevation!

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Watch the video of this podcast here.

Currently, Brian Richards runs WP Sessions and all the training they offer for web developers. They focus on WordPress related subjects and topics about running a WordPress business, including creative problem solving and client relationship management dynamics.

Brian explains to Mike that today to be a great web developer, you have to do more than just write code. You also have to know and understand project management, contracts, and client management.

He has come to this understanding through his various interests and experiences. Brian discovered Photoshop at a young age, which led to an interest in CSS and HTML, then PHP. He also earned a photography degree in college; he wanted to expand beyond the world of coding and computers.

The more he studied and learned, the more he understood the business aspects of service offerings. He could see the importance of having the best practices mentality in any service business, whether it was web development or not.

Mike asks where to start when we’re creating a process for our projects. If we want to create a process for building a website, for example, what’s the first thing we should do?

Brian says to start by first looking at how you build the website. What are the steps involved and how does that layout in a process? Write them down; you can add and improve as you go along but write down the steps you take as of now.

Then you can look at what you can offer your clients as add-ons. This opens the door to creating monthly packages and in turn, monthly recurring revenue for you. Equally important is the fact that it also gives you additional touch points for offering new features and services for your clients down the road.

For example, you could start offering security audits or offer an ongoing package where you do regular reviews and check-ins on their site as a service. This leads to more opportunities to talk to and interact with a client who you otherwise might not have spoken to again. With a monthly package and regular communication with the customer, you stay top of mind as a resource. When they need additional web work done, they will most likely come to you first.

And all of this starts by having processes.

Brian also recommends that you have checklists for all aspects of any project, everything from onboarding your clients, to the completion of the project. When you do this, you’ll find things you can outsource.

Whenever you hire someone, he suggests you start by giving the person a checklist, a consistent process, and targets or goals to achieve. Then be sure to check in with them throughout and encourage them to ask you questions, too. Spend more time with them in the beginning, and once they figure it out you may never have to do that task again! You don't have to come up with the best way to do something, just document how you do it now and improve the process over time.

Even if you don’t hire someone and you're only doing something once or twice a quarter or once or twice a year you should still write down the process for it. The reason? When you come back next quarter or next year you'll have to spend time remembering how you did it the last time.

Around the 20 minute mark, Mike and Brian dive into what to do if you think you have lots of pieces of your business that you can't write a process for, and how to get over that barrier.
They also talk about how to find step one of your process (for any task or project) and how to get past the "fuzzy beginning."

Be sure to check out this process gold on today's show!

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Watch the video of this podcast here.

Nemanja explains ManageWP started the way a lot of companies begin: someone was looking for a solution that wasn’t yet available in the marketplace. The solution they were seeking was an all-in-one service that minimizes some of the day to day tasks of the typical WordPress professional.

Today ManageWP is a service that does just that; it helps WordPress professionals handle things like logging into multiple websites with one click, backing up hundreds of sites with one action, etc. It was an idea that took off! As of now, the service helps 27,000 people manage almost half million websites!

They grew so much that GoDaddy took notice and last September acquired ManageWP. One of the misconceptions people had when this occurred was that it was an exit for ManageWP when in fact, the opposite is true.

ManageWP had grown to a point where they realized they were more than just website management. Nemanja says they knew if they wanted to change people's lives, they had to figure out more ways to provide a higher quality service.

For example, they experimented with hosting. It worked really well, and they wanted to start offering it but realized they would need to add a lot more people to their staff. About that time, GoDaddy approached them about an acquisition. ManageWP could see the GoDaddy team was excited about doing positive things, and that they had big plans for the future. Nemanja and the rest of ManageWP wanted to join forces and be a part of those possibilities with GoDaddy.

According to Nemanja, the acquisition has been fantastic! In the past ManageWP has always been learning as they go, but with GoDaddy's help and their Silicon Valley expertise, the staff of ManageWP now have easy access to a goldmine of answers to their questions and challenges.

When Kristina asked him how he’s changed, grown and evolved over the years in business so successfully, Nemanja had some simple yet wise advice: put yourself in a position to learn.

Nemanja was nowhere near the tech industry originally, but he got involved when he started building websites as a hobby. Then he was given the chance to join the ManageWP team, and he jumped on it.

Like most of their team, he started in tech support. At ManageWP they believe you can't do anything within a company if you don't understand the users, their needs and how products help them. So that was his training ground before moving to the growth team where they handled business analytics, marketing, and content.

He grew into that role and became the leader of a 5-person team until they were acquired by GoDaddy. Now he is part of 5,000 strong multi-national teams! Nemanja says that what he has realized from all of this is that it’s important to look for jobs that are learning opportunities. Every time he pushed himself outside of his comfort zone he learned a lot, he recommends you do the same. Put yourself in a position to learn; and if a job doesn't help you learn, consider changing it.

Also on today’s show, Kristina and Nemanja talk about WordPress Camp in Europe and why it’s in Belgrade, Serbia. You’ll also hear about the cool stuff they have planned at WP Manage including a new hosting option for WordPress professionals.

It’s all on today’s episode of the WP Elevation podcast!

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Watch the video of this podcast here.

The first thing Gin asks Ian is why should we livestream on Facebook? Why will it benefit our business and our audience? Ian says everyone needs to come up with their own why, and not just because lots of people are doing it and it's the "hot" thing to do right now!

First and foremost understand live video is a more intimate platform between you and your audience, there's more of a connection there. Live video brings back the human interaction and authenticity, something many are missing in today’s digital age. Live video allows you to be more authentic, to share your thoughts and show how you work behind the scenes. This medium creates empathy, authenticity, and human connection through interaction.

Gin also asked Ian if this medium is for everyone. Surprisingly, Ian responded with a no! However, he goes on to say it's probably for more people than we think! We all can come up with a lot of excuses about why not to do it, but it's worth considering as an option because it can work really well. Embrace your fears and try it!

And remember you don't have to do it by yourself, you can do it with a guest. Ian has a weekly live show with a friend, and they’ve created a show that is basically a friendly conversation between themselves. Then they air that conversation on Facebook live.

If you’re nervous about going solo, try following Ian’s lead and pair up with a friend.

When asked if there is a strategy or format he uses, Ian said he started with no strategy. He just went live and talked. If you're nervous about doing this, you can ease into it by changing your privacy settings to “only me” as your audience, and then go live and talk. Let yourself get comfortable using the tool and the medium. Don't worry too much about your strategy at this point, that will come when you’re comfortable.

When you’re ready to go live in front of people Ian recommends having a plan, he believes it is absolutely vital. At the 8 minute mark, Ian outlines his strategy and his recommendations for creating the most engaging and useful content for your audience. He also explains how long your video should be, and why consistency is so key to successful live streaming.

Gin asked Ian to breakdown the steps to follow for your first livestream, even if you’re completely new to the process. The first step is to realize most of us will have two fears going into this: being in front of the camera and the gear.

Don’t over-complicate things; you only need a smartphone and a good internet connection according to Ian. If you’re wondering about your upload speed, you can go to Speedtest.net and find out. He recommends having at least 10mpbs up but also says you can get away with 5mpbs. Anything less than that and your quality will suffer.

In terms of additional gear, Ian says getting a lapel mic will really improve your sound. You can also get a tripod to keep your phone stable and use a clip-on selfie ring to give you great lighting. These aren’t necessities but are nice add-ons.

When you’re ready to go live you do so through your Facebook app on your phone, and go live to your profile, your page, or your group. You can use Live Leap to go live to multiple channels (page, group, and profile) at the same time. When you’re done recording, you should post it to your profile or your page. To make the content evergreen you could add timestamps and show notes.

Gin and Ian also discuss some of his insider tips on making a quality video while providing value to your audience. They wrap up with Ian sharing how this has changed his business, including how it's made him an expert in the public eye!

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Watch the video of this podcast here.

After graduating from University with degrees in both commerce and clinical psychology, Adam began his career as a forensic psychologist in maximum security prisons, then headed into the world of advertising.
He positioned himself as an expert by writing a book (“The Advertising Effect - How to Change Behaviour”) and landing some TV appearances. When Troy asked him if he needed to overcome any self-doubt in order to do this, Adam replied that surprisingly, he had no problems with it. He believes that being different is sometimes better than being right. And that people often want to hear a new or different opinion to break through all the noise out there. And luckily, Adam claims to have both an opinion and a voice!

Ten years ago, it dawned on him that both psychology and advertising are in the business of changing behaviour. He has fascinated by this and wanted to explore it further. Adam explains that he has a love/hate relationship with consumerism. He explains that advertising is good for the GDP, but on the other hand, it creates anxiety, depression and false promises. The idea of becoming a consumer psychologist meant that “...the more I talk, the more I can inform people on how marketing and advertising works, how they try to change your behaviour and what you can do about it.”

How to Influence People’s Behaviour
Troy asked Adam for some tips on how we can start influencing potential customers’ behaviour. They briefly touched on Robert Cialdini’s principles of persuasion and Adam said that it doesn’t matter who you follow, the important thing is to set yourself a foundation of how humans work, then build into that. If you like a framework, stick to it.

Adam has found that the two key factors in consumer behaviour change are:

1) Motivation
2) Ease

If you graph these components on an X and Y axes, you can see that the higher the motivation and higher the ease, the more likely people are going to do what you want them to do.

As a marketer, it’s difficult to increase someone’s ‘motivation’, so the aim is to increase the consumer’s ‘ease’ of choosing you over a competitor. The exception to this would be aiming to increase ‘motivation’ by creating something desirable enough that there aren’t any competitors.

Adam and Troy discuss the “Share a Coke” campaign as a perfect example of the above strategy. It’s the campaign where Coke asks you to buy a Coke for a friend. This was one of the most successful campaigns Coke has ever rolled out. Adam attributes it’s success to the fact that Coke is asking people to do them a favour - enlisting the principle of reciprocity. Consumers get a sense of ownership and are rationalising Coke as being worthy of buying for a friend.

At the 15 minute mark of the interview, the boys discuss the Australian Jeep campaign - another hugely successful marketing campaign that Adam was involved in developing. The premise of the campaign was to make an extraordinary purchase sound ordinary.
Interestingly, although this has been the most successful social campaign in Australia, no money was spent on social media advertising at all! (See the shownotes for links to the ads.)

Back to Adam’s tips for how a brand can influence consumer behaviour…

Firstly, Adam says to ignore the consumer and think about what you want to stand for. Build your assets and communicate what it is you want your company to stand for - your proposition and goals. You need this to be crystal clear.

Once you understand this and are fully consistent with your suite of assets, only now should you start to think about how you are going to market your product or change behaviour. To do this, you need to ask the following questions:

 - What’s my business goal?
 - Whose behaviour do I have to change to reach my goal?
 - What are the barriers between motivation and ease to achieve these goals?

Finally, you can work on developing your strategies from these answers.

On Thinkerbell…
Thinkerbell’s proposition is: Measured magic - scientific enquiry meets hard-core creativity.

Adam loves ideas and creativity and finds the whole advertising world fascinating. He gets so much satisfaction from building an agency from the ground up - developing the name, the logo, finding a suite of clients etc. He thrives in mess, chaos and being unstructured (which kind of goes hand in hand with starting a business!) and believes that when starting a business, it comes back to being clear about what you stand for “...then so much of your decision making is taken care of.”

Tune into the 26:30 mark of the interview where Adam gives some sage advice on owning and embracing your weaknesses. “Don’t try too hard to get it all perfect.”

This was such a fascinating interview! If you want to hear more about Adam’s experience you can listen to his podcast interview with Troy’s wife Amy of the “We All Wear it Differently” podcast.

Be sure to leave us a comment and let us know your take on the conversation. Time to go elevate!

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Watch the video of this podcast here.

A big Green Bay Packers fan, Lisa first appeared on the WP Elevation podcast back in 2014 where she spoke about publishing her books and speaking at SXSW. Only a year into her partnership with WebDev Studios back then, she still agrees that it’s one of the best professional decisions she has made.

Remote Challenges
With 42 staff, the entire WebDev Studios team work remotely. Lisa concedes that like all remote businesses, communication is the number one challenge, but due to some dynamic tools they are able to work extremely efficiently. The number one tool used for daily staff communication by the team is Slack. It’s set up using different channels for each area of the business. Kristina was interested in some of the random, not-quite-work-related channels that they use to encourage team cohesion and Lisa mentioned some fantastic channel discussions…

• Parenting channel: team chat related to working and having children
• Homeowners channel: renovations and home improvement
• Gaming channel: for all the gamers
• Health channel: the team is encouraged to all have Fitbits. Regular challenges are set up to encourage a healthy lifestyle through fun competition. Lisa recognizes how easy it is to sit the whole day in front of the computer when working remotely in the tech business, so the team is encouraged in self-care through ideas such as this one.

Once a year the whole WebDev Studios team meets up at ‘WDS Camp’. They fly everyone into a separate location and hang out for a week together. Lisa sees this as a hugely healthy and productive week, jam-packed with high-quality collaboration and creativity that comes about due to the face-to-face connection that the full week allows.

Mental Health
When Kristina asks Lisa about the extra pressure working mom’s in particular face, Lisa discusses how she managed to work as a single mother for many years. She acknowledges that for working parents, not just moms, the extra pressure of running a business from home whilst trying to organize schedules and maintain balance is challenging.

With many WordPress professionals working remotely or from home, Lisa is encouraged by the increasing conversations around mental health and work-life balance. She uses WordPresser Cory Miller as an example of a true champion of the cause. (You can hear Cory’s interview on this topic in his recent WP Elevation podcast interview.)

Kristina mentions how supportive the WP community is of each other, especially around topics like this, and Lisa expands on how the WordPress community fully embraces human beings as a whole. One of the points Lisa makes is that working remotely, we need to be mindful that we’re not abusing the hours that people work. Developers, for example, can work into the night on high-attention tasks. It’s important to ensure that your team is looking after themselves.

What’s New for WebDev Studios?

WebDev Studios recently launched a ‘product and plugins division’ called Pluginize. With around 80 percent of WebDev Studio’s work being in client services, they often receive requests for new features. So occasionally they come across a feature or functionality that they think would help WordPress users or developers and turn it into a cool new tool.

WebDev Studios release a lot of free product (such as the popular CPT UI plugin that has over one million downloads) and recently released the extended version of the CPT UI plugin which has more features and support. Lisa loves being able to take something that’s been created in another CMS and bring it to life in WordPress.

Where Do You See Wordpress Headed in the Future?

Lisa has worked with WordPress since 2003. Right now it has a significant market share, so as things evolve on the web, Lisa believes that WordPress has done a great job evolving with it. She mentions that Matt Mullenweg in State of the Word points to JavaScript and API interfaces being important in the future of WordPress - and not just WordPress, but the whole web. “I see it moving in this direction of API driven interfaces pushing WordPress development to a whole and a new streamlined interface,” says Lisa.

She also touches on the acquisition of WooCommerce by Automattic at the 24-minute mark of the interview. Because of this, Lisa predicts that we’ll be seeing more easily integrated options with e-Commerce around WooCommerce and WordPress.

That concludes the interview with Lisa Sabin-Wilson. If you’d like to reach out and thank Lisa, you can reach her on the links below. Please leave us a comment and let us know what take-aways you got from this interview with one of the WordPress Greats!

Time to go elevate!

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Watch the video of this podcast here.

Lee is a self-confessed serial entrepreneur who came to WordPress in version 0.9! He hosts the successful WP Innovator podcast and runs Event Engine - a business building WordPress websites for event organisers - as well as Angled Crown, working with design agencies who need help building their designs into WordPress themes. Troy considers Lee to be well qualified for the job of generating leads for their faux online business, so he hands him the baton and asks what Lee intends to do first.

1) Define who you are targeting

Lee explains that the first thing you need to do is establish the exact type of client you want to reach and decide what their problem is (the problem that you are going to solve for them).

The best way to do this is by setting up a ‘perfect client avatar’. In the case of Troy and Lee’s faux business, they introduce us to Mary, the new perfect client.

By creating a narrative around your perfect client, you’ll better understand what makes them ‘tick’. This will assist you in creating helpful, targeted content for your audience.

Tips for Writing Your Avatar

• Give them a gender, age, and name
• Give them a story: what interests do they have, what do they value, how do they spend their time both in and outside of work?
• Have fun with it!
• Create a narrative to understand what makes them tick.

2) Understand the purpose of the content you’ll be creating for Mary

Before you start generating any type of content, you need to clearly understand how and why you’re creating content in first place.
Lee explains that in the initial stages, the idea is to create super valuable, lasting content that will help your ‘Mary’ with the main problems she/he is having. The goal isn’t to make money off of them on the early stages, but to build rapport and trust.

Tune into the 16 minute mark where Troy and Lee engage in an interesting discussion about why it’s ok to give away your ‘secrets’ for free. It’s all about having an abundance mindset and not being concerned that people might copy you, or that you could lose out on business by giving too much away.

Tip: Lee emphasises that building an audience is a slow process. It takes time and quality content to build rapport and trust.

3) How do you get content in front of your Mary?

Lee speaks from first-hand experience when he says that the best way he found to build his audience was by starting a podcast. All you need to do is find the influencers/suppliers who already have Mary’s attention and get them on your podcast! By starting a podcast, you are simultaneously adding value and building your list.

4) Once you have Mary’s attention and trust, what’s the call to action?
Lee recommends beginning with a soft call to action. His suggestion is to create a community of Marys. Invite them into your private Facebook group and further support them via the group. You now get them to be part of conversations, build further rapport and help them build their knowledge and network.

The next stage after this would be to begin selling products, eg. courses

Troy concludes the chat by asking Lee for a couple of tips on what you can do to generate content quickly if you are tight on time. Lee offers two easy strategies:

1) Podcasting: Lee works on the premise that if you can arrange a 30 minute meeting with a client, you can organise a 30 minute podcast interview. He sees it as an easy way to start uploading content. The bonus is that it gives you useful content for social media as well.

2) Blogging: Even if you’re not good at writing, you can easily draft a post using this cool method of Lee’s. He recommends starting with a question. Answering the question will formulate the bulk of your post. Go for a walk and record yourself talking (answering the question) for 5 mins. Once you’ve finished your walk and talk, send the recording to Rev to transcribe. And Bingo! There’s your blog - evergreen content that will bring people in on social for months to come.

Let us know what you do to conjure up useful content for lead generation. If you like any of Lee’s ideas, leave us a note in the comments below and tell us why. You can reach out and thank Lee, or continue the conversation using the links below. Until next week, it’s goodbye from Lee, Troy and Mary, with warm wishes for you to go implement and go elevate!

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Watch the video of this podcast here.

Emma and Carla are so much fun that we highly recommend you listen or watch the podcast to get the most out of this episode! Their enthusiasm is infectious, and Gin had to make an extra special effort to stay on-topic and not get carried away. The girls begin by telling us about their journey to becoming successful businesswomen. It started in 2012 when they changed their lifestyle habits and Carla began posting on her personal Instagram account about it. There was huge interest in their content, so they began blogging about their story. They loved what they were doing, so started attending blogging conferences and learning everything they could about making it a full-time gig. The sisters eventually quit their government jobs and started making eBooks, courses, and even an app.

Instagram
They started their Instagram domination by sharing photos and hashtags, but are the first to admit that these days, so much content gets lost in the online noise that a more in-depth strategy is needed to grow. Carla explains that Instagram is a useful platform for connecting with people with similar interests.

The sisters use Instagram to:

• Raise awareness
• Entertain
• Inspire
• Educate

But be warned, it’s not a quick route to success. People may be followers for six months or more before even clicking through to your site.

Their recommendation for WordPress consultants is to use social media differently. If your content is a little dry, “Give them the option to fall in love with the whole story.” Be authentic and it will resonate with your followers.

They also use Facebook a lot, which has now taken over from Instagram for the number of click-throughs to their website.

Emma explains that MeetEdgar has been a game changer for them in terms of ease of promoting evergreen content like their most loved recipes. “This has tripled our traffic from Facebook to the blog.”

The girls usually publish around four Facebook posts a day and four Instagram posts a day, but are quick to add that there is no magic number and that the main thing is to be consistent with whatever you are posting.

Final words to the wise: It takes time and needs momentum. Like blogging, seeing results from social media requires a long-term strategy.

FaceBook Ads

1. The Merrymaker Sisters use Facebook ads in two ways...
   When they launch a product, they use the old ‘pixel on sales page’ strategy for re-targeting.
2. They use it as part of their Opt-In funnel. For example, they offer a free 7-day meal plan that then goes to a trip-wire product. If the person doesn’t buy the trip-wire, they are then targeted for something else.

Gin asked the girls how they pinpoint exactly what their audience likes. As well as using surveys, they also ask questions directly on Facebook, finding that people love to feel as though they are contributing.

Build Trust Through Connection
“We build trust by personally responding to all emails and posts on Facebook. People then get to know us. It feels so good to connect one on one and help someone. It’s why we’re here in the first place - to help people. Sometimes you can forget this because you’re stuck in the numbers and the measurements, but it’s the reason why we do what we do!”

Blogging
When the business first started, the girls were blogging every day because they loved it so much. They’ve experimented over the years and now post about three times a week. The key is knowing what your target audience are searching for online, and then tailoring that to an article that gives away engaging, good quality information for free. For the girls, that content topic is easy - free recipes! From there, they focus on optimising the page and getting people into funnels.

“Every Business should be prioritising blogging” Merrymaker Sisters on the WPE Podcast

“Whenever anyone asks me what I can do to market their brand, I always tell them by blogging,” says Carla. And here’s why…

1. You can do it for free
2. You are letting people into the business and they are getting to know you and the business
3. You’re helping people and building trust which means they are more likely to come back and then eventually buy something.

The girls give a fantastic example of Bronnie Ware, who wrote a blog post about what she knew and felt strongly. Her post, “Regrets of the Dying” resonated with so many people that she went on to write a best-selling book based on the article. The link is below - you HAVE to check it out; it's a great example of how writing about something that resonates with you might just strike a chord with more people than you think.

Merry Tip:
- Remember that it’s about consistency and quality over volume.
Write about something that you want to write about; something that resonates with you; something that is authentic and real to you or your business.

Living a Stress-Free and Fun Life
Continuing from Mental Health Month, Gin knew the Merrymaker sisters were the perfect entrepreneurs to ask for tips on how we can prioritize mental health.
Carla’s advice was to always come back to the present moment.
Emma explained that it’s impossible to live a totally stress-free life and that you need to find the thing that helps you get rid of that stress and do it! Do what makes you feel happy, calm or gives you joy every day.

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Watch the video of this podcast here.

Adam has been in business for 16 years, running a design agency for nine of those years. Born from his frustration with the tedious time taken to write proposals, he asked his development team to make a basic web-based tool that gave them some tracking stats on the proposals that they sent out. When he saw that more and more people were interested in the proposal template that they were sending, he bought the domain name BetterProposals.io, put up a basic landing page, and got more leads in one week than they had in the whole previous year! Adam knew he was onto something.

Adam begins the interview by explaining that we need to stop looking at proposals as a necessary evil and start looking at them as one of the most important components of your business processes. “Afterall, if your proposals suck, you won’t land the job!”

Adam has seen time and time again that people don’t realize proposals are a thing that can be improved upon. More often than not, a business puts in place a standard proposal when they get started and don’t bother to reassess or improve it over time.

Mike asks Adam to outline the most important things to include in a solid proposal. Adam delivers some extremely helpful pointers…

1) Make sure your introduction is tight

Adam let us in on a little secret - the two most important elements in a proposal are the introduction and the price. In his experience, he’s seen that people usually read the intro, then skip straight to the price page.

So the introduction needs to be perfect!
Understand exactly what the potential client wants for their business and repeat their needs and goals concisely back to them in this section of the document. “Write your proposal through the filter of what they want to achieve.”

2) Stay away from jargon

Adam is dumbfounded by the fact that people can talk themselves out of the job by adding things to the proposal that simply shouldn’t be there.Technical jargon only serves to confuse the reader!

“Stay away from the jargon!” Adam Hempenstall’s advice on writing better proposals on the WPE Podcast

3) Include case studies

“Adding relevant case studies is a must, ” says Adam. Tailor the case study for the person you’re writing the proposal for. Be mindful of the overall budget though and do this in relation to size and scalability of the project. Mike asks him to give some specific examples of what you’d include in the way of case studies for various sized budgets. Here’s a good, general guide that Adam outlines...

-Small budget (say $500): Think about what projects you’ve done that are similar to this and include them. It doesn’t necessarily need to be industry specific.

-Bigger Budget (say $2K - 3K): Find a bank of case studies that tackle the problem the potential client is facing. Keep it industry specific, but if you can’t, focus on the goal of the client and use a case study of a project with a similar goal.

- Even Bigger Budget (Say $5K and over): Personalize the case study. Re-write it specifically to draw attention to the potential client’s business, problem, and goals.

"Writing a good proposal is about knowing what to include and what needs to change."

4) Include Next Steps
Give them instruction on what to do next. So many people leave this part out of the proposal! Adam suggests this as a rough guide...

Step 1 - Sign the document
Step 2 - We’ll lock in a meeting (phone / in person)
Step 3 - We’ll send the first invoice

Adam’s Secret Weapons to Winning the Job

1) Send the proposal as soon as you can - while the rapport and details are still fresh in their mind.
2) Make it easy for them to buy. Reduce the amount of steps needed to seal the deal.

If you’re worried about seeing too forward, don’t. You need to start looking at yourself as “the marketing doctor” (learn what Adam means by this at the 29-minute mark). You are the expert. You need a certain level of authority, belief, and conviction to carry it out. Adam likens this to the NLP concept of “Go First. ”

You’ve heard it straight from the horses mouth. Now it’s time to implement and elevate! Leave us a comment and let us know what gems you’ve gleamed from this insightful interview with Adam Hempenstall!

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