"In between selling is when you're building that loyalty for them to know, like and trust you - to buy from you again and again and again and it's really done with your content.
Welcome to Thrive by Design, the podcast for ambitious, independent jewelry brands looking to profit from their products. Get ready to make more and sell more doing what you love without spending every single waking minute doing it. Hey, and if you're a creative fashion or product-based business, I want to welcome you to the show. I'll be dropping big tips on launching, growing and scaling your business, so you can spend more of your precious time using your creativity to make money. You ready? Alright. Let's do this.
Tracy: Welcome to the Thrive-by-Design podcast Episode 222. Hey there, it's Tracy Matthews, Chief Visionary Officer of Flourish & Thrive Academy and Creatives Rule the World and I'm stoked to have some of my friends on the show today. I have Jacqueline Snyder and Minna Khounlo-Sithep on the show today. They are the hosts of The Product Boss podcast. I love interviewing other product bosses and podcasters and you're going to hear how we met a little bit in this interview, but we have so much synergy in what we teach and what we talk about that they had me on their show a couple of months ago and I wanted to them on my show and since we teach a lot of things that are very similar, it's always awesome when you get to hear a different perspective, and in particular when it comes to content marketing, I know that a lot of you who are listening to this show get overwhelmed because you don’t know what to actually create or post or do and all the things and it becomes frustrating and you might not even know what the next step is. So today we're going to be talking about the 3 Pillars of Product Content that you can use on all of your social and email channels. It's going to be awesome. I'm really excited about it. This episode is fantastic and you're going to love hearing from Jac and Minna. The other thing I want to talk about is we just finished our last intake of SOS, our coaching program, and it was so fun because today, Jess interviewed and I'm recording this the day that we actually recorded the interview, but you heard this last week. Jess interviewed one of our students, Mary Ann Saville and she is awesome. You know, she was terrified…terrified to make the investment in her jewelry business and to invest in a program like SOS and her business has grown so much over the last few years, it's been epic. So if you haven’t listened to Episode 221 yet, I want you to go back and listen to it because I think you'll be really inspired of what's possible, especially if you're doing more than one thing or you're kind of wondering like what you need to do to actually get work done. She's talked about how she reframed her mindset, how she kind of got through some of those difficult times when she felt challenged by her business and how she got re-inspired to actually love her business again. The result of that, when you can do all those things properly, is that your sales and revenue increase and so do your profits, which is super exciting. So if you're interested in getting on the wait list for the program and/or applying for a strategy session, we love to invite you over to FlourishThriveAcademy.com/SOSNow. Over there, you can get on the wait list for the program and see what it's all about because at the end of the day what we're trying to do is to explore how we can help your business. So if you're someone who's already doing at least, you know, $40,000 a year or a minimum of $4000 or so a month and you have big desires and dreams to do multiple six figures or seven figures in revenue, this program is really greatly suited for people who are already at that six plus figure mark, who are trying to really scale their sales, but if you're ambitious and you're really ready to take off and fly with your business, we want to invite you to book one of these calls. On this call, it's really an exploration to see if the … how the program can help you, and when you get on the wait list to apply, you'll be first in line the next time that we open up some slots. We're going to be talking about your three-year vision for your business. This is your time to really paint that picture of what it is that you're trying to create. Then we're going to talk a little bit more about your business now and some of the realities of what's going on, and then we're going to share with or kind of dive deep into some of those road blocks or things that you're really struggling with to get to the next level. We're going … you're going to walk away from this call with a really clear path and we're also going to share with you if we think the program is a good fit or not, and we're going to talk a little bit more about that. And if not, you have this clear roadmap for you to move forward and carry on, my friend. So let's do this.
Alright. So you can head on over to FlourishThriveAcademy.com/SOSNow to get on the wait list right now. So let me introduce Jac and Minna. Jacqueline Synder and Minna Khounlo-Sithep are the cofounders of The Product Boss podcast. They have a great community of high achieve product-based female business owners and have helped them scale their physical product-based businesses through masterminds, group coaching and courses designed specifically for product-based business owners ranging from start-up, conception and multimillion dollar companies. Jacqueline is a product start-up expert who has helped launch and grow thousands of product brands over the last 12 years, and Minna is a product business expert with a vast knowledge of Amazon and product-based growth strategies. She has a Masters of Business Administration, an MBA, over 15 years of entrepreneurial experience and so much more. Together, their goal is to change the landscape of product entrepreneurship by connecting women around the world through modern leadership and a blend of business tactics and motherhood. We were talking in the after show because since we're friends and chit chatting, and they're like, "We live vicariously through you because you're always traveling and doing all this stuff," and I was like, "Yeah, you would be too though if you didn't have children and you weren’t mothers, but that's like more rewarding. Probably a little bit more rewarding than traveling all over the world." There's pros and cons to both, which are both good. So let's dive into today's episode.
Tracy: I am so excited because I have my friends, Jacqueline and Minna, from The Product Boss podcast on the show today. Ladies, thanks for being here.
Jacqueline Hey Tracy. Thanks for having us.
Minna Yeah, thanks for having us.
Tracy: We're doing a 3-way today. I think 3 is going to tie into a lot of different things in this interview. So, I'll give a little back story about how we met. Shall I?
Jacqueline Yeah.
Tracy: So, Jac and I were introduced through another entrepreneur and we ended up going to lunch here in New York. We totally hit it off, had a blast and then we're like, we have so much in common - we should be hanging out more. It was so funny, I ran into you at Marie Forleo book launch party, unexpectedly, which was super fun.
Jacqueline: Mmm-hmmm.
Tracy: And we just had so much in common. You guys had me on your podcast a couple of months ago and I have just been so excited to have you on this show because, you know, bear in mind, messages and businesses, but just in different niches. So it's super fun to have you guys. Then we met … Minna, I didn't even meet you until I was on the podcast, but I had heard so much about you because you have an amazing business on Amazon. So, I'm excited for you guys to share some of your back story. So why don’t we get started and dive into that and talk about like how you guys started the podcast and your other businesses.
Jacqueline: Sure. So… this is Jacqueline and we're both co-hosts of The Product Boss podcast but my background is I'm actually a fashion designer by trade. I worked for bigger businesses as a designer and then I went out about 12 years ago - I went out on my own and started consulting fashion apparel and accessory brands. So I basically was full from design through product development through production and consulting on sales and what not. So, I've helped over 1000 brands at this point, from start-up. People have really cool ideas that don’t what they're doing and they need someone to kind of take them through every single step of it. And from that, from consulting, now I've moved on to full on virtual consulting. This is through Designer Consulting Co-op because both Minna and I both have two businesses - one together and both our own separate businesses, and so I still consult fashion brands and then we started The Product Boss together, which is actually a podcast geared towards all product-based entrepreneurs, so all of us that are having to design, develop and produce and sit on inventory of product and sell physical products. So outside of this, you know, we're also speaking to the same listeners where we're not talking service. We're talking physical product.
Minna: Right, and I … like Jacqueline mentioned, I own my product business. It's called Lil' Labels. We sell waterproof labels for baby bottles at day care and for clothing. Typically, parents use it for day care. So it really took off on Amazon, Wal-Mart, Jet. Jacqueline usually refers to wholesale as her love language. Retail, online retail is my love language and we … but still, being both product bosses, we just hit it off when we first met and then now we coach people, other product-based owners, on all the things and all the ways that they should be selling their physical goods because as a product-based business owner, it's just so much harder and you make so much more revenue than a service-based person. It's … because you have cost of goods, inventory, production, reinvestment, lots of things that we touch on for that.
Tracy: 100%. How did you guys meet first?
Jacqueline: Good question. So we met through the BizChix Podcast, through the kind of like the group and Natalie had actually introduced us and she basically said, oh you - I had a product. I used to have an accessory called Cuffs Couture that I wanted to liquidate and then she's like you should contact Minna, who is an Amazon expert, and we got on a coffee chat on Facebook. She said, yeah, you don’t go on Amazon to liquidate anything. You go there to build a business. And so somehow, we went from this video coffee chat through Facebook chat, Messenger to talking to each other off line and then the first time we met was the day we kind of started a business, an official business together where I was speaking at the L.A. Tech Sales Show in L.A. and they asked me to host a panel. I needed to get panelists and I asked her to come on as an Amazon expert and then I was, you know, I was like, well, you should… I was already consulting my fashion people and I said maybe we should start a mastermind for like as what we sell after we teach about what we were teaching about and she's like, yeah, sure. So we met for the very first time in L.A., her on the panel and we sold seven seats into our mastermind after that and then only after we started this mastermind did we then start the podcast, which now we have gone into masterminds. We have a course and we help people, you know, 2 to 1.
Tracy: That's so cool. I love it. I remember listening. I started stalking you when Natalie told me about your podcast. So I was like listening to it before I met you.
Jacqueline: Yeah. We all kind of were brought together by the same person. So she's an excellent matchmaker.
Tracy: Real good. And I remember you guys talking about your mastermind and I remember you saying like they put some little tiny deposit down and I was like, that's such a small deposit - like how much are you charging - and you're like, no…
Jacqueline: We know you were looking out for us.
Tracy: Yeah, I was like. I'm like, I must say something. Hilarious. Okay, so let's dive into like today's episode, what it's really all about. We talked about we're doing a 3-way today but really we're talking about the three pillars of content for product-based businesses. So why is content so important for a product-based business? I know so many people in my community; they just freeze up when it comes to posting on Instagram or creating content for their blog or Facebook or whatever.
Jacqueline: Yeah. It's something I hear over and over. I think a big part of it is when you're coming out with a product, you can kind of sit behind your product line. Right? Like not every brand has a face, a person behind the brand. Right? You just want to be able to sell your product and so in the day that we are today, people are buying from people. That's the thing that's defining us and making us different than you know going into Nordstrom and buying out of the jewelry case there. Right? Or at the clothing line. You want to sometimes buy from people and what we're realizing is that with all of us having our own platforms now that we can all show up on, you know, Instagram, for example and do stories and do IGTV or Facebook Live or whatever you're doing to be in front of your audience. A lot of times, people are like, I have no idea what they want to hear about. I don't know what to talk about. What am going to talk to them about my kids or my dog because that's unrelated. So what we …we came up with the Three Cs, The Marketing Content Pillars because we want to give you guys - we know that product entrepreneurs have their platforms and they need to speak to their customers to engage with them. If you want to increase your visibility, you have to engage and it's more than just always trying to sell your product to your customers.
Minna: Right. It's really about building that loyalty, to get them to buy from you because in between selling is when you're building that loyalty for them to know, like and trust you, to buy from you again and again and again and it's really done with your content.
Tracy: Amazing. Amazing. So yeah, we're always trying to build that know, like, trust factor because when you can take someone through that buyer journey and they actually like make that conversion step, which is the fourth phase that, to actually buy the product then you can have brand advocates for life if you do a good job. Right? So, let's talk about your content creation strategy because I know you guys have like a little bit of a formula.
Jacqueline: Mmm-hmm.
Tracy: So what type of content are we supposed to be creating?
Jacqueline: Minna, do you want to go first?
Minna: Yeah, I'll go first. Just because I think this one is the most relatable. When people think about content, they think about calendar content and that is the first C in our 3 Cs of content. Calendar content is what we think about when we're thinking about event-based content or calendar date content. So holiday sales, holiday promotions, holiday discounts right now is all, everything right now. There's also big industry news. Sometimes you'll see things that are trending like Game of Thrones, for instance, winter is coming, and time the announcements. So we're talking about the goal of calendar content being to generate sales or traffic and to pick up visibility. So, really it's to talk about, you know, the season that your product is in. That's why I keep mentioning the holiday sales right now and then working off the calendar to see what's happening on specific dates. This is what most product-based business people start to do when they're first thinking about content but that's only one of the 3 Cs. So Jacqueline, you can… do you want to just dig in to the other 2?
Jacqueline: Yeah. Tracy, did you have any questions about that?
Tracy: No, keep going.
Jacqueline: Okay. On a roll. So the second C is conversational content. So conversational content is that the content that you're doing that's building engagement and awareness and so these are typically things like social media posts that prompt answers from your audiences that just, you know, short videos or posts start with conversations or give opinions to encourage comments on it. So most of the time this is entertaining content that has instant interaction with your audience and it helps build like a connection and a touch point. So you might want to try and include relevant hashtags here, questions, polls or humor. So for example, if you have a lot of moms in your audience - you know, a lot of times people will post things like you know, mom problems or they'll post quotes from other brands that are sharing things. It might be that you're coffee filter or coffee versus tea and you're asking people to talk to you about coffee versus tea. This is also stuff where you get to bring them in and have them make choices for you. So where they feel like they're part of growing the brand. So let's say you're deciding to add a product to your business or like this morning, one of our masterminders, she was talking about adding a bag to her brand. Well we were saying, as she's starting to build that bag and bring it in, maybe she brings it to her audience or her customers and says "Vote. Do you like this color or this color? Do you want this size or this size?" You know. "Gold or silver?" And so, basically what you're trying to do is have conversations with them as if they're sitting in your living room and you ask them, "Would you like coffee or tea? Do you like this color or do you like this color?" That's the kind of thing where you feel like, oh we're … it's more of an intimate relationship with your customer.
Tracy: Ooh. I love that. You bring them in. So I have a friend. She has a brand called Wholesome Culture. It's a vegan tee shirt brand. Anyway. She's like a hardcore vegan, so like all of her shirts… the tee shirts and the apparel that she creates is all focused on like not only culture but like fun phrases or concepts that sort of encapsulate what she's trying… the community that she's trying to create and she does a really, really successful business. She said that the way that she gets around having to produce a bunch of inventory before she knows if it's going to sell is preselling it. She will do voting and whatever, whichever shirt or tee shirt or sweat shirt or whatever she's making wins, then those get put into production and people have already purchased it, so she has a promise and then they tend to sell out but she does that through the same kind of voting process, but she's built an audience for it. It's pretty cool.
Jacqueline: I love that. It's a little bit like Kick Starter, where you're, you know, kind of like preselling to see if people want it. There was a company - I'm not sure if they're still doing it, but it's called Beta Brand where it was the idea of Kick Starter for apparel brands where you would put something on there and then people would vote with their dollars and you'd have to hit a certain minimum. So like I want 50… I have to hit 50 leggings for me to go into production on 50 leggings. So it's cool, though because now we have access to our customers through social media and through our lists and we can actually get that. We don’t need to use this alternative platform sometimes to be able to engage with them and get them to, you know… if you're doing that, that's scarcity too. Like you guys pre order and I'm going to make it and then it's done.
Tracy: Yeah. Exactly. It's a great way. You know, we have many designers in our community who are - they show like behind the scenes work in progress of the …they do these one-of-a-kind draws and those can be really successful to production lines because they have their production line of jewelry but then they also have these one-of-a-kind things that are just like … they're like… they drop it and they sell out within days. They create that sense of urgency by allowing their customers to be involved in the process.
Jacqueline: Yeah. Absolutely.
Tracy: So, what's the third pillar? Are we…do you have something else to say about that?
Jacqueline: No. I was going to say the third pillar. The third pillar is your cornerstone content. So the cornerstone content is the stuff that gives value. Right? So it's like evergreen content about your brand and product. So things could be like how to post, educational blogs, infographics, behind the scenes videos, case studies, testimonials. You want to make this educational or informational content based on sometimes like your product keywords or your client avatars line of interest. Someone that I see that does this really well is I think it's called Rebecca and Genevieve. They're on Instagram. I had found her because she popped up in my IGTV and she had How to Style Your Kitchen Counters, and another thing was like How to Style your or How To, you know, Do a Gallery Wall or How to Style Your Bed. Well she sells rugs and pillows, and so when she was showing you how to have the most adorable kitchen counters, her rug was on the floor. When she was showing you how to style, you know, how to actually like make your bed and make it look like it's …you're in a hotel or you know, she was using her pillows. So she's showing…she's creating content that is helpful to the end consumer that is like a how to that you're adding value, but then it's also somewhat incorporating your brand. So you're coming back to them for something else, but it also supports what you're selling.
Tracy: Who was that again? I am like obsessed. I want to hear about this.
Jacqueline: Let me…let me look it up while Minna adds to this one.
Tracy: Okay, perfect. Because I want to view something about that. I'm like, my kitchen counters do not look that good. Right? The whole purpose is like captivating. I'm like what is that.
Minna: It is captivating and that's what …that's why you should be asking yourself these three questions. Whether or not you're doing conversational, calendar or cornerstone, you should be always asking yourself these three things: Does it build know, like and trust? Does it matter to my ideal customer avatar, which is exactly what you're talking about, Tracy. Is it intriguing to them? Right? And third is does it have a call to action? When we're talking about those polls earlier, it's because that call to action is so simple. That's why it's like the instant gratification, that instant engagement that you get with your customer. That's what they love on social media. So is there a call to action on every single thing that you're putting out there? So it's those three things that will really make your content matter to your customer and also be effective because it's within one of those categories, but it's doing always those three things too.
Tracy: So you know what's interesting - I love this and I love that we're talking a little bit about using not only content to build know, like, trust but like specifically video content when you were talking about these other people or this brand, which I can't remember the name now - Rebecca and something.
Jacqueline: So it's Rebecca and Genevieve and I just sent it to you on Instagram DM.
Tracy: Okay, cool. So we'll have them the link because I want to check it out. But the one thing I think people get so caught up about, they think it has to be about the actual product, but it's like it doesn’t and the thing that is so brilliant about someone…you know, we teach how to create epic video story telling and with video content and using video to sell and all these things over here at Flourish Thrive Academy for jewelry designers and we have a huge framework for …not a huge … it's like a… we have a framework for it, but one of the things that I find interesting is we had this one student once who I kept trying to help her work with video and she kept..she wasn’t following the instructions and she's like, "It's not working." I'm like, "It's not working because no one knows who you are because you're not talking." She would do these great videos … the videos were great. It was like there was no… like you said, there was no call to action. There was no words in it so no one knew what was happening. It was just her like changing outfits and putting necklaces on and whatever but with no voice over or anything. So I think sometimes if you don’t do it right, it can get confusing to your customers because they're not really sure what they're looking for or looking at. So I love the idea of being able to do something that's captivating and kind of makes you look and it's interesting and you're like, oh, that's a pillow brand but why is she teaching you how to make a bed, but it's like subtle and people kind of get the gist of what you're trying to do. I think there are so many different ways that you can do this - like video content and static content, etc. that literally, the world is your oyster. Right?
Jacqueline: Yeah. I think… so this is… let me just as a case study because now she's turned into our case study and if you go back and watch her IGTVs, one of her first ones, I think she might actually have an accent. One of her first ones is her talking to the camera. Right? Standing there talking and talking about something. The ones that she has the thousands and thousands of views on are actually time lapse. So she uses some words. Like she edits on top of it with words and it's like how to do this and then she has that like music playing and it's just a quick time lapse video of her doing something. So you can see in like.. and so she may not be the best person to speak on camera, but she knows the content her people want. So she's got 90,000 followers on that one page. The thing that I want to say about that is if you think about like Nike, right, or you think about a big, big brand, it's more than the product you're selling. It's about the entire brand. Like you don’t build a brand or you don’t build a business based on a single product alone. It's all the things you bring to the customer and so much of that is the what surrounds it. Does your customer care about styling her bed? You know. Does she care about how to do fresh cut flowers in a vase? That's when, you know, that's like the Instagram, the instafamous, beautiful homes people. But for you guys, like you know, if it's engagement rings or you know, there might be …there's other stuff that they…especially like let's call it wedding. There's other things that they might be interested in that you could bring value to them or you know, conversational, cornerstone, calendar content that applies to them outside of what you're selling because now you're useful to your customer.
Tracy: Exactly. I'm like … now I'm like I just checked my Instagram and I'm checking them out and it's so subtle, everything that's she doing. I mean, it's a lot of interiors and pictures of her in her home, it looks like. It's like I can see what you're talking about, like how you can really create the content that is going to like captivate people and get them drawn in. So what… I know what everyone really wants to know is like how do you really leverage it to make sales?
Minna: It's that call to action.
Jacqueline: This is really about it being just as important what you're doing when you're not selling to them. You're building that know and that like. So when you're asking for the sale and they're trusting you, they will only buy from you if they trust you and it can be accelerated. Right? A lot of times when you meet somebody in person, it's super accelerated. You'll probably buy from them immediately or be able to say "yes or no," but when you're in social media, it takes more touch points - they say seven. Now, I think it's way, way more than that for them to be able to bring out their pocketbook because when they're on social media, they are not arriving wallet in hand like they are to Amazon or to Walmart.com or Target.com or whatever. They're just to peruse and to socialize. So to get them to the point of trust, which is where the wallet comes into hand, you need to have built that up by touch points, which is the content and then you need to do it by things that matter to the client, you know, so then they start to like you, and then the call to action is really the trust factor. Do they trust you enough to pull out their wallet, take their time to type it all in and buy from you?
Tracy: Exactly. So on video content and stuff like that, would you suggest having like a link and a call to action URL where they can shop or look at what's in the video or … how do you guys handle a call to action there? Is it in the like the copy in the post?
Jacqueline: Yeah. I think it depends on what you're doing. Right? So, IGTV, for example, is, it's a newer thing where people are testing it out and IGTV is something where it's not as competitive and so you can definitely just kind of get in front of more eyes. What you're hoping, I think, is through IGTV is that then they will start to follow you on your normal page, for example, and start to just follow along with the posts, which then you should do, you know, in your feed and link it to your Shopify and they can actually purchase off of it. I think you just … I think it's … it depends - you could … we have a jewelry company we work with and she always posts her own QVC, HSN show. Right? And so that's another …
Tracy: For real HSN and QVC?
Jacqueline: No. Like through her own Facebook community, she has a weekly time that they show up and she sits there and she goes through each piece. Right? Shiny lights, touching all the parts, showing all sides because that's what they do on QVC and HSN - like look how beautiful this is, oh, it glistens, you know - their hands are touching everything. So you guys could treat wherever you're showing up, you could do - I would say just be consistent. So if you're going to commit to something like that, it could be a once a month. It could be … you know who else does this really well is Fab, Fit, Fun. Whenever they launch their box, they have videos of the products that are within the box and they sit around and they talk about it. Wander Beauty is also another really good one. They were on the podcast recently and they do a lot of video. Then you could repurpose that video, whether it's in an email, whether it's in ads, whether it's through your social media. However you're showing up where your customers are. Then this call to action - it just depends on what you want them to do. You may not always … I wouldn’t always say buy. They don’t always want you to tell them to buy. We need to know when we're educating them, when we're delighting them or kind of like engaging with them like from the brand's perspective and then what do you want to sell. So I would probably say like engage, you know, engage, engage, sell - engage, engage, sell. Like don’t always sell. That's the difference here.
Tracy: Yeah. It's like the job, job, job. Right?
Jacqueline: However many engages you think you need.
Minna: Right and it's … it could be as simple as hey, if you like this, throw a raised hands emoji in the comments. Right? Or red or white - click on that. Because those are really, really easy engagements that you're prompting them to take action and engage with you. So when you're asking them to finally buy, the action from them doesn’t seem as brand, you know - it's like, oh, I'm used to interacting with this person. I trust them. So when they finally ask me to buy, it's really easy for them to do that, you know. You're not constantly asking from them and they already had, you know, interacted with you, commenting on this or hey, what's your favorite place to go on vacation - beach or you know, city and things like that that can be very, simple.
Tracy: That's awesome.
Jacqueline: When you're asking for that, let's just say we have another client that does jewelry and she was like… she is such a maker and so she was making a ring and she was doing a whole Instastory on hey guys I'm being creative tonight and I’m building this ring. Right? She's making it out of gold - what do you think, you know. So first, she was bringing in with them, that's conversational - participate with me in my creation. What do guys think? Do you love it? Would you buy it? And then, she's polling them. Right? Would you buy it? And then if they say yeah, you could actually get into the DM for example because you can see it on your - we're talking Instagram now - but you could see the people as they yes or no. You could then go to the yeses and then send them a personal message. You could send a voice note. You could do … you could sell so much stuff in the DM. Let me just tell you all. You can say like, do you love it - okay - so we're going to …we're thinking about bringing it out - I'd love for you to be one of the first people to get it - send me over your email address. And then you do that or you could be like, hey, I'm going to make a couple tomorrow if you want one, and you can actually like, you could probably close this down right there in the DM. So that's a way to engage and then you're actually … I know it sounds like a lot of work, but depending on the size of your business, that's a way for you to start selling through direct messages or through these click engagements.
Tracy: I love it. That's such a great… we talk about that all the time. It's like starting a conversation with people that you bring to the DM and you know, transition that way and that's a really clever way to do it because it's fast. It's not so much back and forth. I love that. So one of the things - this is, I remembered my question - so the one thing that a lot of designers who are just starting out and don’t have a huge Instagram following are frustrated with is that they don’t … they feel like they're talking to no one because their following is small. Their engagement is low. Like all the things. So any advice for people like that when they're developing content? To stay like excited to continue keeping it forward?
Jacqueline: Minna, do you want to jump in or me?
Minna: You can go ahead. I have some opinions too, but I will let you go first.
Jacqueline: Alright. So we're in a world and Minna and I came up with our business like a couple of years ago. We are post algorithm, working in our favor so it is hard. Each person that we earn following us is hard. Do you need to have 50,000 people following you in order for you to have a profitable business? Absolutely not. You just need a really engaged group of people. So if you can, you know, you have 100 - that 100 will grow to 200. It gets easier the more you start to grow. You do need to be consistent. You do need to try things. Like you need to try with engagement. You need to try different hash tags. More so though, you need to get visibility on other platforms. So you know, we teach about this. We have a course that we teach about growing your visibility, growing platforms, which in turn grows sales, but for example, you get on a podcast. You get an influencer to talk about you. You have your friends share it with their friends. These are just the small moves you're going to make that are going to eventually grow your following, but no matter how people you have, if you have 500 people following you and you know, 20% of those people are like real buyers, that's amazing. That is enough to start your ball rolling and then you just keep growing from there.
Tracy: Oh, I love it. Well thanks for that advice because I know … and Minna, do you have anything to say?
Minna: Yeah. I love to remind everybody that we all start from zero. Right? And it's just like what Jacqueline was saying. There are some people that have 50 people, but if you go to an in-person trade show and 25 people come into your booth, they should be always be giving you 25, you know, each of their emails so you walk away with 25 more. The nice thing about getting on all these different platforms, and you shouldn't be on all of them, you know, trying to get on all of them all at once. Definitely, definitely focus, but try to leverage wherever you're at. Right? It's like when people say, I really want to get on to Amazon. Why are people not buying my stuff on Amazon now that I'm on there? Well you have to throw them some love. Like send some traffic their way too. Get the ball rolling. You always have to start that initial snowball, like with what Jacqueline was saying. So once you get onto Amazon, you could put an insert and you throw love to Instagram, let's say. It just becomes a really, like you're building your own little puzzle and you're going where the eyes are and you're kind of making it all work. This is a way of utilizing like influencers. Right? Influencers and we teach in our program how to audit the influencers because engagement is everything and it does not really matter. Also discoverability - are you doing anything for SEO. So I know I'm throwing a whole bunch of stuff at you guys, but the point is that once you become discoverable, then you engage. That's basically the best visibility that you can get to start the snow ball, and it takes both those - discoverability through organic, let's say, SEO or being on Pinterest or whatever - engaging, that's the part that we were talking about about Instagram, prompting them, engaging with them, and then you know, that in turn turns into visibility that leads to sales.
Tracy: Oh, I love it. I love it. So good. This was so fun, you guys. I'm so glad we got to hang out again on the show. So tell me a little bit about, or tell us where we can find you and listen to your podcast and all the things.
Jacqueline: Yeah. So since you're on, you're listening to us right now, just search at The Product Boss or that's Instagram - so we're The Product Boss Podcast. Head over there for, you know, more - you can hear Tracy on our podcast. We are at The Product Boss on Instagram and Facebook and then our website is TheProductBoss.com and so, we would love to, you know, also continue to support you guys - need love, product people, and that's why we love you, Tracy, and we just really like to support everyone in this, you know, in this category. Like we, everybody needs more information and more support and I'm glad that we're both helping everyone do it.
Tracy: Well, I just adore you guys and I'm so grateful and thankful to have you on the show, so thanks for being here today.
Minna: Thank you.
Jacqueline: Thanks, Tracy.
Tracy: Thank you so much for listening to the show today. What a blast I had with Jac and Minna. We had so much fun. So I just wanted to say this - like make sure that you go say hi to them. Follow them. Listen to their podcast because it's awesome. I loved being on the show. You can find my episode as well. the other thing that I wanted to say that is if you're interested in learning more about our SOS Coaching Program and you want to get on the wait list for the next time that we open up enrollment or open up seats, head on over to FlourishThriveAcademy.com/SOSNow. Get on the wait list and let's do this. I'm super excited to be here every single week. If you haven't listened to last week's episode, I think you'll be really inspired and I'm really excited for next week's episode too, so stay tuned. Tracy Matthews, signing off, until next time.
Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. It's my mission to help thousands of creative businesses inside and outside the jewelry space use their creativity to make money. Make sure that you subscribed to Thrive by Design on ITunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and wherever podcasts are played. We'd love to hear what you think. Please rate and review the show, and if you're inspired, please share this with your friends. Here's to seeing you flourish and thrive.
