Why Solo Marketers Are Ditching Social Media

I'm not a content creator. I'm a business owner who has to write a lot of content. Why did nobody ever tell me when I started a business, how much writing I was gonna have to do? Thank you for reflecting the anger in my spirit, right? Yes. Thank you. I mean, my goodness.

Welcome to the marketing team of one podcast where we have conversations about the issues one person marketing teams face when trying to meet their goals with limited time and budgets. Now, here's your host, Eric and Mike. Ladies and gentlemen, we are very blessed to have with us on the couch today, miss Jennifer, born from born creative, but she has like three jobs.

You also run a coaching business that helps freelancers and other independent designers with their business. Correct. And you're the chief marketing officer, right? CMO mm-hmm. Of motivation code. Yes. Check it out, motivation code.com. Welcome to the show, Jen. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to talk to you today because you've got some interesting insights on a few things.

We're gonna touch on AI later as we'd like to do now, pretty much on every episode because it's everywhere. It's everywhere, right? You can't escape it. Uh, but the other things that I wanna talk to you about, we're helping our small marketers, solo marketers, small marketing teams that we, our audience is made up of.

You pretty much are a marketing team of one. I am so right here, folks, an expert in all the businesses, so that's perfect. That's why we wanted to have you on the show. 'cause I think you had some really interesting insights. You've spoken at Sacramento Design Week, a couple of years in a row. Mm-hmm. Is it two or three or five or how many?

Two. Two years. Two, yeah. Very inspiring talks and, and the first time you talked. Kind of more into that coaching where you were talking to independent designers on pricing. On pricing. Yeah. So that was interesting. Uh, last year you talked about positioning. Positioning, but let's talk a little bit about your sense of things maybe right now.

Let's talk a little bit about what you're seeing as far as trends. What, what kind of things are you seeing out there that, that, that's a big concern for people maybe outside of AI right now? Well, I think it's interesting. Several years ago there was this huge push when everybody realized you could market yourself online and you didn't have to pay as much money as marketing yourself offline.

Oh, print, right? All direct mail, all postage What? Social media. It's free. I can reach the whole world. What? And there was this mass transition to I can use social media and magically get customers. And marketers ruin everything, right? So we all flocked to all the social platforms and started marketing everything everywhere.

And then I think there was just fatigue of, A lot of people aren't on social media for marketing and business. They're on it to escape that. Right? They're on it for entertainment and they're doom scrolling to not think about work. Interesting. Yes. And marketing on social marketing online has gotten harder.

Algorithms change to almost thwart marketers. Ads that we're working are now not working. Everything's becoming more pay to play. And what I am seeing more and more with businesses is we're exhausted. Hmm. We're exhausted of posting every day. People are tired when you run a business, when you're the marketing department of one and everything is on your plate.

Yeah. You've gotta use your time smartly. And is that the best use of time? I don't know. What I'm hearing from a lot of people is they're pulling back online. Oh. And they're going back to offline tactics that have worked for decades that have worked before there was an internet. But more and more people that I'm talking to are going back to networking and going to conferences and going to events and building their network face to face.

I think people want. That human connection more than ever. Interesting. What you do for motivation code and for yourself is, is, or was that mostly online, digital, social stuff, or what, what did, what does that spectrum look like from your day-to-day? I guess Today I currently do the least amount on social media I have ever done.

Interesting. Okay. Mm-hmm. Before, let's say three years ago, where, where was your social media workload at? Hundred percent, 80%, 20%. 60? 70 probably. Okay. That's still a lot. I mean, the majority of the clients that I work with aren't local. They're spread out across the country. Most are in different states or other countries.

So that is how I was connecting and building relationships. Uh. I pay money to be in the room where people are my ideal clients. And then after you're in that room, you have to follow up. You have to stay in contact, you have to stay top of mind. So social media was a great avenue to do that, to stay in touch with people.

I would meet in person at conferences or events or things like that, but now I do less and less and less because it's working less. Yeah, it's working less than it was before. The, the impact isn't as great as it was before. Is it specifically B2B, B2C? What, who are, who is your audience that you're doing this work for?

Uh, for born creative and Motivation code, it's B2B. Okay. Right. Uh, other businesses are hiring us, uh, for my coaching and courses. I mean, technically it's B2B, I guess. Yeah. I'm marketing to business owners, but really they're the consumer. Yep. As a, as a freelancer, as a company of one, it is more similar to B2C than B2B.

When you're working for yourself and for your coaching company, how much of your efforts do you spend on marketing in a week? Let's just say percentage wise, 50%. 50%? Yeah. Just keeping your name out there. Nobody can hire you, buy from you, learn from you, get on your email list. Yeah. Nobody can pay you money if they don't know you exist.

I mean, the best time to market is when you're busy. Yeah, because the, what you do today is what's gonna generate business in 60 days and 90 days. In 120 days. So what channels are you using for your promotion on that side of things? Uh, some of it is social, mostly LinkedIn. I'm starting to get heavy into YouTube.

Oh. Uh, I've pretty much abandoned Twitter and Facebook in terms of marketing. Um, email. And partnerships borrow other people's audiences. How do you foster those partnerships? Some of it is asking for introductions, right? Being bold. You know, somebody that I think would be a great partner, I ask for the introduction, right?

And some people are really happy to do that and some people say they will and never do. So you just have to be bold and ask everybody like you have to put on your big girl undies or your big boy undies and you gotta be brave and make the ask. Um, or reaching out cold and saying, Hey, you do this, I do this.

I think there's a lot of of complimentary stuff here. I think we could do something great together. Like let's talk about it and see. Yeah, let's see what comes of it. Others are is finding other people that are already. Partnering with other people, people that are doing joint webinars, they're doing joint masterclasses, they're doing joint trainings.

They are out actively marketing themselves and building their networks. Those are people that have networks of people that want to partner. If you can find that person that is the perfect fit, they have a whole audience that they've been building, they have an email list that they've been building, they have trust with that whole audience.

And if they can say, let me introduce you to Jen. Here's what she does, and I think you should buy it. That's amazing. And that goes way further because we're in a review. Economy, right? Like you don't buy anything on Amazon until you scroll to the bottom and read the reviews, right? You don't buy anything if until you look at the reviews.

And if you can't find any reviews, what do you do? You go to social or you go to friends and you're like, tell me what, what do you use? What do you buy? What do you believe in? So people vouching for you and saying, Hey, I believe in this person. I trust this person. You should too, goes a really long way in this world where there's no trust anymore.

Seems like that's been the, the major change I think is not that there was tons of trust before, but what little trust existed maybe five years ago is just completely gone. People understand how marketers or bad actors can manipulate these platforms, algorithms, whatever they are. Absolutely. And they're so.

Anti whatever. So this world of reviews, getting other people to vouch for you, I think is a really great cost effective, right? I mean, when you talk about spending money on things, this is something that doesn't cost any money really. I think the interesting thing, when I was growing born creative in the early years and I was actively growing, uh, blogging was.

My jam. Like that was where it was at. I wrote so much content, it wasn't even funny. I was publishing articles three times a week. Wow. Um, for years. That's a grind for years. And it did its job. It brought me an amazing amount of organic search traffic. That is how the majority of all new clients found me was through my blog.

I would get on a discovery call or a, a sales call with somebody and they say, I've read all of your blog posts. I've been following you for years. Wow. I read all of your blog. I like, I read everything and, and it worked amazing. But with AI slop, with copy pasta, with all of the grossness that is being pumped out in terms of quantity over quality.

Mm-hmm. That's degraded. And with Google and other search engines now servicing their own results and stealing your traffic and. Social media platforms like LinkedIn, actively saying, we're gonna penalize your posts if you put a link in. Yeah. 'cause we want you to stay here. It's all about that zero click content.

Those things aren't working as well, and people aren't trusting content as much written content as much as they used to, because who knows where it came from and who knows if it's true. Well, and even video stuff now with all the AI tools that you can create your own video stuff, that's true stuff, but I think video is where we're going, okay.

Where people can look into your eyes, right? Yeah. They can see your facial expressions, they can see your tone of voice. They can connect with you as a human. Like video, podcasts, things where it's live or it was recorded live. That accelerates that feeling of knowing you and that builds trust. Right? Trust is.

The best currency right now. I do see a trend, a lot of the people that I'm following on LinkedIn, it's interesting to see not just video content, but a lot of them going live. A lot of them doing a live stuff. 'cause live is, you can't have an AI clone go live for you right now. Well, let's just confirm you are not a robot.

I am not a robot. I'm not a robot either. Okay. So just so we've got that confirmed. Yeah. Just in case. I mean, um, but yeah, that's an interesting trend that I think just takes that idea and even pushes it further. I don't know. I tend to, it's funny, I'll watch less like webinars, but I will have the LinkedIn live stuff going on right over on the second screen.

A lot of times when I'm doing work and stuff like that, it is still something that's. As a human being, it's like, oh, I'm, I'm part of the show kind of a thing. Well, and a lot of people can fake expertise in a lot of different ways, but when you're live, wait, are you talking to me like, oh, but when you're live and you are sharing your expertise and you're talking about your craft and your experiences and your stories and your history, and you're sharing all of these things that can't be faked.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Whenever I talk to you about, you know, traffic and S-E-O-A-E-O, whatever we're calling it now, you seem to have a pretty good lock in understanding, and part of your daily, daily responsibilities are to work within like a SEMrush type tool. Uh, what are your preferred platforms for understanding and talk a little bit about, just gimme a general overview of the things that you're in charge of, your watching, your changing, your optimizing.

That's such a world that is critical. As you move up the ladder in marketing, you almost need kind of a doctoral thesis on some of this stuff. When I hear you talk, I'm like, yeah's, it requires you to be an expert in everything. It's so hard. Good thing you're smart, Jen. Oh, I try. I don't always feel like it, but I try.

It helps when you work with smart people, so that's also good. Yeah. Um, but I mean, gosh, if it's copy, if it's design, if it's right, social marketing, cold outreach or campaigns, whatever, like it's all me. So that's all. It's it's your resume is what? So email, email, email. That's the death of me. Email marketing, but some of that is Right.

How do you take everything you bring to the table as the expert. Okay. And how do you. Scale yourself, right? Without removing the magic that you bring to the table. Right? Part of what makes us great at our jobs is the humanity of understanding our jobs and AI strips a lot of that humanity out. It's why so many people believe like, Ooh, I can recognize that anywhere.

Yeah, right? I can open up Facebook and I can see that you just wrote that post with social because you use these tropes that are just so, so, so overused. Right? But, but. You have to figure out how do we keep the humanity in our craft, but leverage tools to scale all of the things that doesn't require the magic that makes you great.

Okay. So digging into analytics data and figuring out what is ranking, what isn't ranking, what's wasting space, like what's good, but it's sitting in the middle, what's already doing good that we could improve and make even better and capture even more traffic. Digging into that data and understanding what it's telling you.

Or for sites that have been around a long time, when I was working on, uh, the, our, my born creative site at one time, it had like almost 2,500 blog posts. Geez. Wow. And I had to go through and audit that and figure out what am I gonna keep? What is too similar and should be combined into one post? Because we don't wanna compete against ourselves for the same traffic.

Yeah. Right. That's ridiculous. But it happens. But now we can use tools to do that part. Like the, the repetitive administrative gathering of data, of auditing data can be done with tools. Yeah. Right. Now, once you have the data figuring out, okay, what do we do with this? How do we turn the data that we have into a strategy that we're gonna execute to drive the results we want?

That is the magic you bring to the table as the expert. So you know, Claude Chat, GBT SEMrush, right? AI engine. And your ai, your ll your, your choice of LLM will come back and be like, oh, here this, let me tell you. And then some people have their LLM write the content that they need for that. I'm not there.

I don't think it does a good enough job. I wouldn't put my name on that and I would not ship client work with that. I still think a human needs to do that. Right. The magic of copy that gets somebody to move into action. Mm-hmm. Is that human connection and LLMs, I don't think are there yet really in incredible outline of your world and what you're dealing with and how you are trying to, is this a task you're trying to do this optimization, going back reviewing, is this something that you put on like a quarterly schedule, a weekly schedule, every hour, every minute.

It seems like you gotta be doing it a lot, right? That's a good question. Um, I think we do it as often as. We finished the work that was identified. Oh, right, okay. So if you go in and like one of our last efforts we asked SEM rush. Okay. We want to, uh, capture, uh, audience that doesn't know about us yet, but they know about other assessments.

So dig into the data and figure out what keywords around competitive competitive assessments are people searching for. Good. Yeah. Right. And then give us a content plan of topics, keywords, right. Focus that, that we should cover to tackle this. Right. And give us back as much is needed to cover this and get that traffic.

Right. So you're looking at competition. Where are the holes or gaps in their content that you can kind of plug into Yeah. To, to fill out that portrait and, and that, that. Process. We asked Claude. Claude connected to, to SEM. Rush grabbed the data, came back and said, okay, based on what we saw, these are your greatest opportunities based on search volume and keyword competitiveness.

These are the gaps. This is what people are searching for. This is the gap that you could fill, and these are the articles that we think you should write. Here are the headlines and here's the synopsis of kind of what we think you should cover. Nice. And we write those. And when we're done with that, we do it again.

Start all over again. Yeah. Do do you ever try to capture like a phrase or a term or a concept in there? Is that part of your strategy? Mm-hmm. Or is it a little bit more nuanced than just like, ah, we're going after the word motivation. Well, that we would fail. That we would fail. If you're looking at keywords, right.

Keywords, key phrases. Um. Technically no two pages on a website should be optimized for the same keyword or key phrase. Okay? If it is, whether on purpose or not, search engines, LLMs all get confused. Which page is the right page to surface for that interesting keyword? And if it can't decide, oftentimes you lose and it surfaces neither page.

Both pages suffer, just cancels out in a sense. I mean, yeah. So yeah, for motivation code, obviously we want to start showing up in concepts around motivation at work, but optimizing for something like that isn't gonna work for us. That's too general. It's too general, okay. Yeah. But when you are focused with the content that you're creating, and right, if you are a design company, if you're copywriting, if you're a dog groomer, all of the content on your site needs to be about the thing you're selling and the thing you want to be found for.

Different aspects of it, but all focused on that one topic because that's what builds your domain authority and that's what gets you recognized for that. Those broader terms of motivation, right. We're not gonna actively try to rank for something as general as that, but when the whole entire site is all focused around different aspects of motivation at work, when people are searching for motivation as it pertains to their work, we wanna show up more often.

Gotcha. Let's just break now for a moment and just let you talk about motivation code so that people have context as to what we've said motivation code a million times, but we not explained exactly what the product is and what that is. It's a very intriguing assessment. I took it, I learned a lot about myself, but why don't you kind of fill in what, what is it We say we're a motivational intelligence platform, but really our core product is an assessment.

Okay. I'm sure, I'm sure you listening, have taken a billion assessments. Myers-Briggs disc, Clifton Strengths, 16 Personalities, you name it, Colby, whatever. We've all taken them. People have strong feelings about them. Um, but what we've come to realize is personality tests tell you who you are, right? How you'll act, how you act, right?

Strengths, tests tell you what you're capable of. All of these things tell you what you do or when you do certain things. Hmm. Nobody tells you why. And that's why maybe you've had this experience in the past. You take Myers-Briggs, you find out, oh, I'm an ENTP, and you're like, that's great. And then two days later you're like, I don't remember anything in my report.

Because it was sort of accurate. And it was kind of like you. And then you weren't really sure how do I apply this in my life or work. So you do nothing and you're like, that was nice. And you move on. Motivation code doesn't ask you things like, what would you rather do on a Friday night? Get drunk with friends or read a book.

And you're like, well, what Friday night? And what friends and what book, what bar, how was my workday that day? Do I need to go drinking? Right? Like you would answer it differently. So that's why your results aren't always accurate. And at Motivation Code, we ask you to share four stories of times in your life you were doing work that you loved, where you were engaged, and you felt deeply satisfied by what you were doing.

And your results explain why you do the things you do and why you're good at the things you're good at, why you make the decisions you make. So the feedback we hear the most is, oh, now I know why that thing worked out the way it did. Or, now I know why that job didn't work, or, now I understand why I hated that boss.

Right? Or, oh, this makes so much more sense. And when you understand why, you can actually act on that and make changes, right? I thought the first time I took the motivation code assessment, I was having some challenges with two clients in my business. They, I sold them the exact same thing. And I loved the work with one client and I hated the work with the other client.

And it was the same work, and I could not figure, that's crazy out why. Wow. And my friend, who's the CEO of Motivation coach said, Jen, take this assessment. And I'm like, oh, I don't wanna take, like, I hate these, but fine, you're my friend. I'll do it for you. And it explained exactly why I would never be happy working with that one client, even though it was work that was right in my sweet spot.

Yeah. Yeah. And so we parted ways the next day. Wow. Like I will, I will hate having to work on your stuff every single day. I will never like it. Yeah. I found that it was a fascinating process to go through and just to identify those stories in my life. And then to get the assessment back. But the biggest challenge for me was I wanted to put tens on everything, and it just, oh, we don't let you do that.

Yeah, I know. I'm like, come on, everything's a 10. Yeah. You know, when you tell people, like if you make everything bold, nothing is bold. If you make everything a 10, well then nothing's really a 10. I learned that in taking the assessment. It was really insightful, very fascinating. But yeah, there's a world of those assessments out there.

But I love all, I actually like taking a lot of different ones. Oh, yeah. 'cause it does give you insights into who I am in those different contexts. Well, that's the biggest value, right? Is the more you understand who you are, the more you're able to communicate that to somebody else. Yeah. Whether it's your boss or a coworker, a teammate, you're going in for an interview and you're having to explain right.

How you would function in their team. When you can clearly communicate what you bring to the table and what value you add and why. Like what drives your best work? Yeah. Not like my strengths and weaknesses. That changes the conversation. Well, it seems like Myers Briggs is, is old. Right? We don't ever tell people not to use other assessments.

Right. They all have their own value. Yeah. What we tell people is the best thing is to bring M code alongside your, your assessment that you already use. For example, the, the US Federal Authority, their cybersecurity team did disc. Mm-hmm. They were, they're a dis organization. They did the disc assessments.

Um, everybody did it. They, they all talked about it. They had meetings and then they were like, what do we do with this? Uh, I don't know what we do with this. I don't know how we go from here. And they had found like, we have a, a comparison page, DISC versus M code. And we talk about the differences, but also how they work together and some of the most powerful, uh.

Things is when you, when you combine them. So they brought us in and we came in and we talked about their DISC results and their M code results and their M code results explained why they got the disc results they got. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Right. Why they got those results, what it means, and how that's playing out in their team and how they can prevent some of the challenges that they were having.

So it's not enough to just know, oh, I, I am a, I'm a D, or I'm a di, or I'm an ENTJ, or you know, I'm whatever. You have to know why you got those results. Yeah. And that's, that's what we do. Do you bring this into your coaching at all? Do you? I do, yeah. Yeah. So when you're talking to other designers and creatives, is it, explain a little bit about the who you are coaching and what that looks like.

So, uh, in 2017 I started online courses. Okay. Uh, profitable project plan was my flagship course. It is how to run a design business of one. Okay. Right. How all the business side of. Having a design business could be helpful for those marketing teams of one. Just saying, we get all kinds of people, not just designers in there because we are talking about everything.

Client management, client services, onboarding, you name it, we're talking about it. Um, but that's how I got started. And people in my courses were like, can I meet with you one-on-one? Can we talk about my business beyond the, the q and a and all of that? And so I started offering coaching and initially it was just for designers, but now I've got copywriters, virtual assistants, right?

All, all different kinds of, all solo businesses call companies of one. And, uh, and I work with them on getting clients, serving clients, managing clients, getting paid, getting paid on time, getting paid well, getting paid for the value and impact of your work. And when you are coaching, mentoring, leading anyone.

When you understand what innately drives them, what drives them to get outta bed in the morning or what barely mm-hmm. Moves the needle. Like if I know that there's no part of you that is interested at all or motivated by doing it Right. And me as a coach or a mentor, I'm like, you've gotta do it. Right.

Yeah. Yeah. My coaching or my mentorship will never stick any of the advice that I give you. Any of the, the ways that I am coaching you and mentoring you. I need to shape the homework. I give you the suggestions that I make around the things that you are gonna be excited to do, not the things that you're gonna say.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then procrastinate on a hundred times and I'm gonna not be like, why haven't you sent that email yet? Yeah. That doesn't seem to be, uh, it's interesting 'cause I think your process around that really. Is customized in a way for that person and what they're gonna respond to most. And I, I would recommend people talk to you who are struggling, especially marketing teams of one.

You might be working in an organization where you're stuck or you're frustrated, or you have problems because you have so many different things on your plate. And most of the people that we're talking to have a million different responsibilities all over the place. Absolutely. And they may love three or four of them, but there's two or three of them that they really drives 'em nuts.

And that's something that maybe you could help them kind of help uncover a little bit and learn how to deal with or delegate or figure out a process where every day you go into work, you're not dreading. 20% of your workday because it has to do with those tasks. Well, that's the thing. Most people never take the time to audit what they do on a daily basis.

Yeah. Or audit all the different aspects of their job. When I was looking at building systems into my business, because that's the only way I can survive, um, when I looked at what, what systems do I need, I took like three to six months and I just had a log on my desk and I wrote down every single thing I did every single day.

Wow. Then I went back and was like, okay, what keeps showing up over and over and over and over? What are the most repetitive things that I am doing? Those are the first things I need to systemize and automate. Okay. Right. Those are the first things I need to pass off to software or things like that. Now that I have motivation code as intelligence.

Right. I know any work that aligns with my lowest motivations, which are all the things I procrastinate on and hate doing. Mm-hmm. I know those are the first things that I need to either figure out how to automate through software. Right. Use AI for whatever, or delegate to somebody else. Yeah. Like I hate email marketing.

Okay. I hate it. Dang, it's, it converts like crazy. Pretty effective. Like every time I send an email, I make a sale. Yeah. Like that. It just, so you can't not do it. And with motivation code, there is so much on my plate. Yeah. That I'm like, I don't have time to worry about this every single week. So one of the first things we did is said, okay, educating people about their motivations and helping them apply the findings in their results is evergreen.

Yeah. It's not timely. So I was like, okay guys, I'm carving out a few days. I'm going heads down, nobody talked to me. I'm putting my unavailable and like inactive in Slack. And I wrote 52 Evergreen emails on the topics of taking different aspects of your report and applying it at work and pre-scheduled them all out once a week.

So when you take that motivation code assessment, when you're done, you will get. An initial batch of emails that explain your report to you, and then you will get an email every Tuesday for an entire year that I'd never have to do a thing to do. So you in a way, strategically getting stuff off of your plate, which I think would help most marketing teams have won.

There's obviously you don't love everything about your daily task list. Mm-hmm. But it's not like you went in and are like, all right, we're just not doing it. You know, marketing, I'm not gonna do that 'cause it doesn't fit my, you just, all you did strategically was say, okay, I know I hate doing this. I'm gonna carve out a time that nobody can talk to me.

That I know is my focus time. And I know the reward for it is at the end of this 2, 3, 4 days, whatever it took you to do this. I don't have to ever think about that again for another whole year. Well, I know that once somebody joins our list, they are touched every Tuesday for an entire year, and I never have to do anything if I send no other email.

They're taken care of once a week for a whole year. And if they haven't bought anything else after a year, they probably don't care anymore. So a year was enough. But if we have sales, if we have a special offer, if we have something coming up, I know not to send it on Tuesday, it'll come out on Thursday, Friday or Saturday.

Yeah. But strategically for your own sanity, it's, you know, when to delegate to yourself, I guess. Yeah. Uh, if you don't have the option of delegating to another team member, I mean, how many times have you put off a task you have to do in your marketing and then you finally do it and you're like, that took me 10 minutes.

Yeah. I, I should have just done it. And it's such a weight off your shoulder of after you're done with it, you're like, oh my God. Yeah. That's what it took like to get that done. Luckily, I love every part of my job, so I don't really, I can't really relate, you know? I dunno. I think for the business owners that I work with, the number one thing that gets in their way of their marketing is figuring out what the heck do I say?

That's why I have this podcast. What do I say? I need to be brilliant today. I have to post something on LinkedIn this week. What am I gonna say that I'm gonna be brilliant, right? How can I be a thought leader? Oh my gosh, the pressure's on, what do I say? And they can't figure it out. They don't know the, there's too much pressure.

They put it off, they delay, and then another week goes by. So a big part of what I do is helping them figure out what to say. Ah, so we talked about the weekly thought leadership thing, which yes, I struggle with sometimes. It's hard, it's tough. You have an interesting, uh, another. Fun aspect to your coaching is you have something called Comms Club, which is a weekly meeting where you kind of work out some of these things.

It's comms club communication, but it's also, is it about writing content? Is it about building thought leadership? What? Talk a little bit more about that. So Comms Club was born from my courses in coaching, um, and business owners realizing I'm not a content creator, I'm a business owner who has to write a lot of content.

Why did nobody ever tell me when I started a business, how much writing I was gonna have to do thank for reflecting the anger in my spirit? Right? Yes. Thank you. I mean, my goodness. And sometimes it's, I've delayed shipping this proposal because. I haven't got the language just right. I am not sure how to talk about this or explain this one part.

I haven't followed up because I'm not sure what to put in that email. I haven't sent that email about a late payment because I'm nervous about what to say and I'm not sure how to tackle this. I haven't posted on LinkedIn in forever and I know I need to, but what the heck do I even say? Uh, I know I need to do email marketing.

What do I put in my emails? Like there's so much that you have to write, say, create, whether it's audio, video, text, and. Whether you are a business owner, a marketer, whatever, like if it falls on you, you have to figure out what to say. And that is hard. And the comms Club was born out of that need. Uh, and we meet, we meet live every Thursday for 90 minutes, and members bring me whatever copy they're working on in their ugly, messy draft formats.

Sometimes outlines, sometimes it's the finished product that they're like. I need somebody else. I need, I need a new set of eyeballs on this. Yeah. Before I ship it. That's good, right? I want a fresh perspective. Let's make sure it's ready for prime time. Uh, what am I missing? What am I not seeing? Because we're all really close to our own work.

Uh, so I get outlines of I need to write this article. Here's the outline. What do you think? Like, what's missing? What do I need to add? Is the order, right? Like, let's flesh this out. I get emails, right? I, I have to write this email to a client. Here's my draft. Can you edit it? What should I say? What am I missing?

Like, am I opening myself up to some problems? Right? Uh, do I sound angry? Um, I get articles. I get social media posts. I get video scripts. You name it. And sometimes we talk through strategy. I sometimes I'm like, all right, let me share my screen. I'm gonna get in your doc and I'm gonna live copy edit this.

And I talk through. Why I'm making the changes I'm making. So they're becoming better writers and better communicators every week. 'cause they learn why we're making the edits that we're making. Um, so several members have been with me for years now, and the, they, their writing has just gotten amazing and it's amazing to see.

Um, but with social media and not knowing what to say or not knowing, how do I bring the personal stuff into it so people can get to know me? But how do I tie this back to business without being gross? Like, we all don't wanna be the, like my dad was in the hospital last week, here's what it taught me about business, right?

Like, nobody wants to be that person. And so what I started doing early last year, and now it's become a weekly thing. On Tuesdays, they get a fully fleshed out prompt and not like, share what you did yesterday or talk about your behind the scenes process. But it's, this is what I want you to share. This is why, this is how I want you to talk about it.

Yeah. This is the structure and the framework that I want you to use, and here's an example from a real business. Oh, and model this and write it for yourself. So they get that every Tuesday and then we meet on Thursdays. So lately, because that's been a part of the membership, is they get that prompt on Tuesday and so on Thursday I am reviewing their social media posts so they can post it.

Nice. Yeah. I didn't wanna turn this into a commercial for all these services it seems. I, this is really helpful. And, and not to say that they shouldn't hire you, of course, but I'm just saying like, these are just really great things to internalize and think about for your own process potentially. If you've struggling with some of these things, obviously call Jen.

But if you, if you want to try this on your own, these, these are kind of interesting. I like, I like the way that you're working through some of these problems because a lot of times, especially with content and writing, and I'm a c you know, English guy, I like, I, I did not like writing. I was terrible. That was my worst class in school.

But it seems to be, I really could resonate with this when you were talking to me about this earlier because it, that's what I appreciate is that collaborative Yeah. Back and forth process. I think that's what I love the most about it. Right. I. Work in a business by myself. Yeah. And sharing the, the courses is just sharing everything I've learned and coaching is just sharing what I've learned and like comms club and the social prompts and the, the networking events and the storytelling stuff that we do.

It's all stuff I have to do in my own business anyway. I am like, let me just share it with you and maybe I can help it make it easier for you too. Mm-hmm. So when you work freelance or solo or you work remote from home, even if you're part of a team, when you work remote from home, it can be a little isolating and lonely.

Yeah. And this is a way for me to collaborate and work with a lot of different business owners. Yeah. Um, while marketing my own services and my business. And the more you talk about and teach your craft, the better you get at your craft. Yeah, absolutely. They always say, if you want to get better at doing something, go teach it, because it, it kind of gets you outside the jar.

Like, wait a minute, why do I do it that way? And why did it work for me and could it work for them? Or do I need to reinterpret it for another audience or Yeah. Different students and things like that. Um, so that's what that that's awesome stuff. I could see where people could take your idea. Has anybody taken this comms club idea?

And produced like larger scale, like written a book or anything out of this, like their own story, like it blown it out. Like, you know, this could be, 'cause they always say like the king of all content marketing is writing your own book. Right. Have, have you ever Oh yes. Considered doing that or helped somebody do that or had any stories around something like, I know a lot of people who've written books, right.

Who. With publishing houses and self-published, right? A lot of people that have self-published, um, it definitely opens doors. So I would be lying if I said, I haven't thought about it. Oh, I'll be lying if I said I didn't have outlines and things already started. Aha. Um, but if you want to, if you want to speak right, if you want to speak to groups, you wanna be invited in for in-person trainings.

You wanna work with teams, um, a book is one of the fastest ways to open that door. You want to speak to rooms your ideal clients are in, and if you wanna get invited to stand on that stage and a ballroom of people that are your ideal clients, the fastest way to get that invitation is with a book. Yeah, that's a good tip.

The second fastest is YouTube. YouTube prove that you can talk. Okay. Still working on that. Is there, um, well, you used to see it on speaker websites, right? Where they would have their like sizzle reel Yeah. Of all the different clips of them on stage. And some people still have that. But YouTube these days acts like a sizzle reel for anyone.

Yep. If you are live, if you upload videos of yourself talking and you're sharing what, you know, people get your mannerisms, they see your tone of voice and how you speak. If you're monotone, if you're right, really animated, like I can't talk and not move my hands around, like they get those things. And more and more speaking is virtual.

Right? We'll do a virtual session, come and talk to my group. Everybody's spread out all over. We'll do it through Zoom, we'll do webinars, we'll do whatever. They wanna know you're not gonna come and bore the heck outta people. Yep. And so showing up and having examples of your expertise opens those doors.

Whether it's a book, right? It's videos, courses, people have taken my courses and book me for speaking. It's, I think it's all just figuring out how do I get in front of as many people as possible? Who are my people? The right people. Yep. And then how do I stay top of mind? So when they're ready to buy, I'm part of that conversation.

It's a small world, right? Yeah. So, and you, you find out how small it is when you're like, oh, I have an online community. I have courses. I need guest expert for guest experts for my courses. I have guest experts come in and speak to my profitable project plan folks about running design businesses and things like that.

Um. Do you have a community? Do you need guest speakers? Why don't you come talk to my community and I'll come talk to your community? And they're like, oh, I know, like 10 more people that all have communities. 'cause once you have communities or once you do courses, you meet all these other people that have courses and memberships and anybody that has courses and memberships needs guest speakers.

Yeah. So find those people and then it'll just keep on going. Well, I think with the, with the popularity of video and that trust thing that we talked about earlier, it's just kind of exploding. Podcasts are a perfect example of that, right? Yeah. That's just one of those platforms that I think is, you know, perfectly built for exactly what you're talking about.

And it's, mm-hmm. The friction is completely gone at this point, I think. Well, and I think people connect with podcast because they're hearing. They're hearing a voice that's human. They're connecting with someone. They can hear emotion, tone, inflection, they, when you get really loud 'cause you're excited about something and then when you're really trying to drive that point home and you get a little bit softer, right?

Or when we video, when you're recording it and you're like, I'm leaning in and I'm driving this home, and you're like, wait, wait, wait. No, I'm backing up. Like they can hear those things and in video you can see those things. But I think that's why people like podcasts, right? Yes. It's the content and and what they're listening to or learning or being entertained by.

But it's also the fact that like they're having experience with another human. Yeah. It is fascinating to see the popularity in video podcast. Yeah. Because it really is just one or two people just sitting there staring at a camera or talking to each other. And it's not like compelling like Star Wars level, like special effects or anything.

But I find myself just like. Locked in, like, wow. Well, I mean, we all love people watching. That's probably what it is. Finding people who are talking about what you're into, right? Or they're sharing something that you're interested in and you find something in common there. There is a magic in that. Like I remember when Twitter was like first getting huge and like I built my business on the back of Twitter when I first started publishing content on Twitter.

I'm like, no one cares about anything. I'm publishing. Nobody's caring, nobody's liking anything. I'm publishing. Nobody's sharing it. How well, what was that? Nothing is getting traction. What was the format then? So you would publish a blog and then you would post parts of it on Twitter or how, what was the mechanics of that?

So sometimes it's just straight to Twitter. Like, Hey, here's what, oh my gosh, here's what I'm doing with this client. Or you would never believe that somebody said, okay. Um, and sometimes it's, Hey, we published a blog post. I'm sharing the blog post on Twitter. Right. But when I first jumped on, I'm like, nobody cares about anything in writing about my business.

And then one morning I, there was a span of like two years where I woke up at 5:00 AM every morning, made my some chocolate chip pancakes. And then we watched cartoons while he played video games and got ready for school. And I took a picture of the chocolate chip pancakes and I posted it on Twitter one day and I'm like, another having 5:00 AM chocolate chip pancakes with my son and not work related.

Yeah. That freaking post blew up like nobody's business. I'm like, so y'all care about pancakes? And they're like, you put chocolate chips in it. I put chocolate chips in it. Do you know what I put in it? I put blueberries in my and it just went bonkers. Wow. And I'm like, okay. So nobody cares about my work.

They just care about food. This is great. I was a little dejected. Yeah. But you know what I noticed after that? People that connected with me over something personal and felt something common, and we had that little connection and we had that little bit of camaraderie all of a sudden started liking my business posts.

Not all of 'em, but they were showing up. They started, right. Liking those or retweeting a blog post I would share and I'm like, shut the front door. This is the basis of marketing. Nobody is gonna care about what you're selling or what you're pitching or what you're talking about until they care about who you are.

As a person, and that's proof, right? Or who you are as a brand. So build out that person. Because I think that's what's interesting is when we've talked to people about LinkedIn strategy, they say, yeah, have a business po, you know, have a business representation on LinkedIn, but all of the content really needs to come from you as a person, as a leader, because they want to connect with you.

Yeah. And so it's fascinating to see the LinkedIn posts that get traction around, yes, they're business related, but sometimes it's just going to get a cup of coffee or it's just something that's human, right? Yeah. It's just something we all can relate to. I mean, think about it, if you, if you went to a party and someone said, oh, what do you do?

All you talked about for that entire party was your business. He'll be like, I'm never inviting you to this party ever again. Like, that was horrible. But Jen, I have, I lead a very exciting professional life. I'm just saying if you show up and like LinkedIn is one of the, like, it is a cesspool that I think nobody likes, but everybody knows they need to be in, right?

Nobody, you, you talk to people. Nobody likes LinkedIn, but everybody knows they have to be there and they're all there. Yeah, they do. Right? But if all you do is show up and it's business, business, business, business, it's like jockeying for position and trying to be a thought leader. Like, look at me. I'm so smart.

People are just gonna start scrolling by that stuff. It's another post of Jen trying to look smart. It's another post of Jen trying to be a thought leader like that gets, it feels gross and it gets old. Yes, people are there for business, but people also wanna connect. And so what we've found is that you have to have a mix.

You have to be a person connecting with other people and letting them into your life. Like letting them behind into the behind the scenes of who you are as a professional. Who you are as a person. Who you are as, right? Somebody juggling work and life and all the things. And when you mix it up and you start sharing some of the personal stuff, yes, all of a sudden you'll see this post that has nothing to do with what I do.

Got way more engagement than anything about my work. But what people forget or never realize is that on platforms like LinkedIn, engagement is a signal. Yeah. Engagement on your post says, Ooh, lots of people like what you have to say. Maybe we'll show your next post to more people. I think the thing. I think the thing with like LinkedIn with social, with, with the personal stuff, with the education stuff, educational content is good.

Yeah. It proves, you know your stuff. It's helpful for other people, but educational stuff doesn't drive sales. That's true. Educational content doesn't drive people to act. They're like, oh, that's nice. Thanks for sharing that. That was helpful. I learned something doesn't move. Somebody to pay you. Yeah. To buy you.

To hire you to reach out and say, how can we work together? Authority building content does that, and personal content does that adjacently, right? Yeah, because people hire people they know, they hire people they're familiar with. They people they trust, people they're comfortable with. Like, nobody's gonna just call up a stranger and be like, hi, I've never met you before.

Here's my credit card. Like, bill me. Right. But. Part of marketing is being top of mind is having your customers or your clients or your audience feel like they know you, they're connected to you, they're comfortable with you, they're confident that you could deliver on your promises, that you can walk your talk, that you back up what you can say if you want people to refer business to you, to point people in your direction.

If you want people to call you when they need your services, they need to feel confident, comfortable, connected. Right? They, they need to feel those things. Well, and, and at times. It's like you show the hard things, show the things you're struggling with, and show you how you dealt with that, because that's also one of those tests too.

It's like everybody's. Living the dream when everything's going great, it's like, but not every time is a project or a certain engagement going Well. Yeah. You know, there can be things that throw things off the train tracks pretty easily sometimes, and how you handle that and then how you project or tell that story online too, is something that probably even builds more authority because it's like, wow, okay.

They know how to deal with some adversity. That's pretty cool. Yeah. Well, that's the thing. A lot of people try to hide everything that doesn't go perfectly. Or they try to hide challenges they've had with clients or things that go wrong or mistakes that they're made. And now, don't get me wrong, don't talk about it when you're still in the middle of it, right?

But once you've gotten through it, you've solved it, you're past it, you've come out the other side. Reflecting back and sharing those things can be hugely powerful, right? Some of my very best, longest term clients are clients that I super dropped the ball on things for like, like, I screwed up big time.

Made a mistake. They did something wrong, like there was a problem, but. I dealt with it head on. I brought it to their attention immediately. Told them what was happening, told them what my plan was, gave them a timeline, told them I'd stay in contact and appraised, like appraised of what was happening. Kept them in the loop the whole time.

We resolved it, it felt good. And they're like, wow, I trust you even more now. Yeah. Because I saw how you handled it when sh things didn't go according to plan. Right. Whoa. And we came out, we came out the other side. You know, putting light on things that don't go well is a really great genuine, but also I think, you know, putting your perspective on things mm-hmm.

Your honest perspective sometimes is not, you know, it can be pretty controversial, you know, our perspectives on things, you know, maybe we've got more experience around certain areas that we've seen. Things like somebody like a post and you're like, yeah, okay. They're, they're, uh, I'm learning that. Just agreeing or thumbs up or fire emojis.

Is not really doing anything for anything, right? There's no voice there. There's no perspective. No. I think people are naturally attracted to opinions. They are naturally attracted to confidence and opinions. Clients want to hire someone with a perspective, with an opinion, like they don't hire you to say, well, I don't know.

We could kind of do it this way, or we could do it that way, or we could do it this way. They're like, no, I have this problem. I want this result. What do you recommend? They are gonna hire the person that says, this is what I recommend to get you this result. And they're like, yes, I believe in you. Let's do it.

They want opinions. The worst thing that we can do as brands, as businesses, as individuals, as business owners, right, is hide. Hide our opinions, hide our perspectives, hold back and play it safe. People get nervous. Oh, I can't say that. I don't wanna be too loud or too mad or too aggressive. I don't wanna be, you know, too bitchy.

Like, I don't wanna be too out there. Like I'll play it safe. And so we get a lot of people talking about the same things. I mean, how many more articles can you read that says, right, you should put your voice in your content. Well, yeah. Duh. You should not u you should use contrasting colors in your design.

Yeah. Like there, the thing I hear the most from people who are kind of resistant with content marketing is so many people have already said that. Right? People they know have already said that. I opened LinkedIn and I saw somebody write a post about exactly what I wanted to say today. What do I bring to the table that's different?

Well, you, you are different. Everything that you bring to the table is different than somebody else. You can talk about the exact same topic, and I guarantee you, you won't talk about it the same way somebody else talks about it, even if it's like I'm agreeing with them. That's a great point. But you go, then go into like, but from my exp like give us a coaching lesson on like, that's something I totally agree with.

Ooh. In the comments. Yeah, like the comments on LinkedIn. I have found that most people that publish on LinkedIn are doing so to look really smart. And when you go in the comments and you argue with them or contradict them, they get super pissy. Yeah. Because now all of a sudden they aren't the smartest person, the thought leader on that post.

And they're like, shut up. I'm trying to look smart here. Get outta my comments. So if you are, if commenting is part of your strategy, which commenting for some people they have found produces even better results than publishing their own content. I've heard there's a game to try to get even more and commenting will produce better results than liking or, or anything else.

Affirm, right? Affirm and validate kudos. Congratulate gas them up, make them feel great, and then add something. Have you also seen this nice. Have you considered this? I've also seen this. I'd love your take Affirm. Add something. Give them the opportunity to share their expertise. Ah, I like this, right? They want that in the comments.

They want that engagement. They want that conversation. They do not want contrarian perspectives in the comments of the Post where they're trying to look very smart. See, this is the game I'm gonna try.

It's okay to be contrarian if you honestly feel that genuine. Don't be contrarian just to be a jury. No, we all see the bait, the bait hooks. Yeah. Like they state this some bold thing and then their hook is totally mediocre. Like the rest of it's like mediocre, just basic boilerplate garbage. And you're like, you sucked me in with a good contrarian hook.

And this is not contrarian. Or, I really love when we're like bold take or spicy, take unpopular opinion. And you're like, that is not a spicy take. That's not, and it's not an unpopular opinion, so shut up. Um, but the thing that makes you you is your voice. Yeah. It is your perspective. It's your opinion. Like, just because somebody else said it, just because somebody else wrote about it.

Just because somebody else posted about it, who cares? Number one, you're gonna say it differently. And number two, the people that you are connected to, the people that know you don't know them. Huh? Like, we've all heard the thing. People have to hear a message like seven or eight times before it clicks.

And now I think it's like 20 or something insane. It's like some stupid number, but they could hear the same thing 10 times and maybe it doesn't click until it's the way you said it. So by holding back, you're robbing people of that opportunity. Right. Interesting take there. Yeah. So play it safe and no one cares.

They're gonna scroll by and skip it. Hold back. And you're, you're preventing people from benefiting from what you have to share or having that aha moment. And people want opinions. That's what they crave. When you bring your story and who you are as a person to how you show up for business. People are more interested, like they lean in, they pay attention more, and they engage more.

And that's what's gonna lead to leads, clients business, money in your pocket. We need people, my friend Chris says, uh, we need people to learn to act on this muscle. The wallet, the wallet grabbing muscle, right? That's what we're training people for. Well, Jen, this is sounds like a great spot to end the podcast today.

I, I'm inspired and you've said things that I've heard before, but honestly. In, in an interesting, connected way. I feel like I'm a little bit more inspired than the way I've heard it presented in the past, so I appreciate that. Awesome perspective. Thank you so much. Give us a, a plug as to where all of the, and this might take 10 minutes, but tell us where we can find you websites, URLs, speaking engagements, Vegas, maybe you've got a show you're putting on.

Uh, I make it super easy. Jennifer born.com. Born without the e on the end. Uh, this is not the Born movies. Thank you. B-O-U-R-N jennifer bourne.com. And on the socials, I'm just like LinkedIn slash Jennifer Bour. Facebook. Jennifer Born. Okay. Instagram, Jen. Born late adopter, Jen. Okay, well, we'll follow YouTube.

Jennifer Bourne. It's all Jennifer Bourne. Queen of the castle. We're gonna put all those links in the show notes, but, uh, sounds great. Really appreciate you being on the show. This has, thanks for having me. Great conversation. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Alright, thanks everybody. Thanks for tuning in.

For more information and other episodes, subscribe to the marketing team of one podcast on YouTube, apple, or Spotify podcast networks. You can also chat with us on the r slash marketing team of one subreddit or visit marketing team of one.com to learn more.