Doug: Hey, what’s going on? Welcome to the Doug show. Today is another episode where I’ve invited a friend in to ask me a bunch of questions. So Katie Schiffer is starting to build her online presence overall. And she has, I think about a. thousand questions here. We’re only going to get into, um, a couple of them today.
So big topics, but I’m very excited to talk about number one, building an audience and time management and prioritization. Now, Katie and I have known each other maybe for a year and a half. But it has been through the Phi community, the financial independence retire early community. So we’ll talk about that a little bit, but we’re mostly going to be focusing on working online and kind of dissecting what I’ve done in the past to hopefully help you, Katie.
So welcome. Thanks for coming to the studio today.
Katie: Yeah, thanks so much for having me. I’m excited to be here
Doug: What’s your story, Katie, where, where are you from? How did you end up here in my basement? So take us from the very beginning and then how you got here, but quick intro. What do you do? What did you do?
And we’ll, we’ll kind of get into how we met. A year and a half ago
Katie: Yeah. Great. So I’m originally from New York. Uh, I went to college for film and animation. I studied 3D computer graphics. I graduated, worked in the city for three years and just felt like the grind was wearing me down. And if I kept doing this for the rest of my life, I wouldn’t know who I was anymore.
So, I decided to. Kind of jump ship from there, and I moved across to Los Angeles, and I decided to become a freelance artist there just provided like the work life balance that I wanted. I knew I wanted to travel in my 20s and make a lot more money than I was in New York, so all of that was going a lot better,
but yeah, so then I kind of got into personal finance when I moved. I knew I had to keep my finances tight and that kind of led me to the Phi community. So I lived in L. A. for seven years. I just moved here to Colorado a couple months ago, um, more for lifestyle balance. And yeah, I think through the Phi community and through kind of my goals and lifestyle stuff, I kind of figured out that I wanted to.
Keep doing business stuff. I really like freelancing, but I wanted to do a little bit more like online business. I loved doing the art stuff, but I felt like I. It just wasn’t my purpose, and I kind of found my passion in, like, helping women with personal finance. And I think the best way I can do that and the best way I can help the most people is with online courses and an online business.
Doug: Perfect. Got it. And you mentioned it in passing, but you’re an avid traveler, right? Like, you’ve, Can you talk a little bit about the things the places that you’ve been and just highlight a couple of quick things.
Katie: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, so I have been to every continent. That was a huge goal of mine that I quiet goal of mine through my twenties that I kind of kept in the back of my mind, but I wasn’t really sure if I would have the guts or the funds to do it.
But I have been to every continent, including Antarctica, which I went to last year. Um, I’ve been to 25 us national parks driven across, across the U S. Um, and then I just love doing, you know, weekend trips in Southern California, there was so much. And then here in Colorado, I’m excited to check everything out.
Doug: yeah. And you could talk, I mean, we could talk for hours probably about all the travel stuff. So we’ll have to, we’ll have to move on, but that’s pretty cool. And I think, you know, we’re working on visiting all the national parks here, I think five or six. Parks ahead of us, but I like your approach to of it’s just when you get a chance to go to them But you’re not like trying to knock them out like 10 per year or anything like that or all of them in one year Or anything, right?
Katie: Yeah, exactly I felt like the continents were kind of my my reach goal to do by the time I turned 30 and then the National Parks I’m hoping to just do over my lifetime when we have kids. I’d love to bring my kids. Yeah. You know, it’s kind of a good thing that we could just do and view the US over our lifetime.
Doug: And we met at a place called Camp Phi. There are retreats held all over the country. I think there’s six or six locations. That sounds right. And You know, the one close to here is in Colorado Springs. It’s the Rocky mountain. It happens in July. So we met there.
Uh, we were just talking before we hit record that you had not been to any FI events prior to that talk about like what made you decide to check out that specific one and your impressions after going. Cool.
Katie: Yeah. So yeah, so like you said, I had kind of felt like I was sitting on the sidelines a little bit with the, all the fire stuff. I was listening to all the podcasts, reading tons of blogs, but I had never met anybody in person. And then.
In 2022, I took Rachel Richards, um, real estate investing course, which was great. And she was going to be a guest speaker at Camp Fi. So that was how I was introduced to Camp Fi. And I was like, Oh my gosh, outdoorsy ness camping, personal finance, sign me up. I’m made for this. So yeah, it was my first time going to any event like that.
I was just over the moon that whole weekend. I think I just had the biggest smile on my face meeting everybody and being able to talk about all this stuff that’s always going on in my head, but you can’t really talk about much with other people.
Doug: So, right. That’s cool. Yeah. Rachel has been on the show and she, she lives in the area also, but she’s out of town currently.
Like, I think she gets out of town for the winter time, but she’ll be back hiking soon. Um, so I bet you’ll be able to go out and hike with her some and you got to hang out with her a bunch before. Uh. Yeah, super cool girl woman, sorry, super cool woman and very accomplished. I will link up to the show where I interviewed her.
All right. So Camp Fi is really cool. We’ll get into some of the details now. So we have a lot of different sections and if people are interested, there will be not necessarily a cheat sheet, but kind of a summary because we’re going to hit some stuff and I’ll go ahead and tell you some of the other areas.
So we’re going to talk about building an audience. We’ll also. Potentially in the future, if you want. So let us know in the comments or shoot me an email feedback at Doug dot show about selecting a niche, kind of what you want to convey through marketing funnel design, which is awesome. There’s probably a page worth of that stuff, which I love.
We’re talking time management today for sure. And prioritization, but we have a couple other notes about online community, nurturing the audience and. Just generally what we can be aiming for when you’re building an audience. And I mean, it can be overwhelming. All right. So, Katie, before we get started on the specifics of building an audience, what are you trying to do?
Katie: Good, broad question. I would like to create online courses to help women with their personal finances. I would like to help in a lot of ways to start. What I’m finding is the best people to start with are women in their 20s and 30s. So, you know, an audience that I understand and in a place where I’ve been before who make a high income, but they have trouble saving every month.
So they feel like they make good money, but they just don’t really know where it goes. And then from there, I hope to evolve that into maybe helping the next step in, um, where to allocate your money, your investments. And also, um, I really like to put a focus on how your finances affect your lifestyle and designing a lifestyle.
The main focus is the lifestyle that you love and then getting the funds to match that is sort of secondary, but you can’t have that lifestyle a lot of times unless you have the funds. So I like to start there and also keep the big lifestyle goal in mind.
Doug: Perfect. I like that for a couple of reasons.
One, it’s similar to what I’ve done and what most people should do is like aim for the audience. That you’re a part of because people will relate to you. So for this audience, it’s a broad spectrum, right? Some people will cross outside their demographic or whatever, but like, there’s a lot of it people that are middle aged.
That are male that listen to this show like that’s where I came from. So it’s easy like we speak the same Like vernacular and it’s just it makes sense Yeah, and when you look at audiences when you’re doing the competition analysis or something, you probably see that very easily in the comments Of course, there’s outliers but generally like those are the people where you’re gonna be able to attract them and you understand the The journey that you went on so you can go and tell your stories, which are very relatable.
So that’s perfect. I like it. And then the other part is like, you know, you have the initial thought. And you’re thinking a little further ahead, a couple steps ahead, but you don’t really know how it’s going to work out. So I like it that you’re not like, I’m going to do this and that, and I’m definitely going to do this because you’re going to have to pivot and figure out like what works for you.
So you have some questions here. So let’s just if you’re cool with this, you can just go ahead and get started and run down the list here. And then, um, if anything new comes up. You could surprise me because, honestly, I didn’t prepare any answers to this, so it’ll just be, uh, very loose here. Great.
Katie: Okay, cool. So, my first question is, what is the most effective way to grow an audience from scratch
Doug: Yeah, I don’t know the answer to that one, so we’ll Like all good questions and hopefully good answers, it depends. So, what I will say is it will vary from person to person. So, I think the most important thing is to find a medium that you’re comfortable doing, that you enjoy, that you can do for a long period of time.
And I think we talked before, you, you actually went through, uh, Ramit Sethi’s course. So what’s it called? Earnable. Earnable. Yeah. And I’ve been through a few of his courses. They’re very good great support. Uh, they’re well put together. There’s a lot of, uh, feedback loops. So I think they’ve gone through multiple iterations.
And in courses like that, I don’t know if Ramit specifically said it. And I’ve probably done it in my courses, you make things sound easier or more simple than they are. And I think people don’t realize everything’s going to take longer than they think it’ll be harder and a little more complicated each little step.
It is actually very simple, but when you put together like 200 little steps over the course of 18 months or whatever, it’s really hard to not fuck it up a little bit and not get something out of order. But it’s totally okay. The consequences are very low. Usually the consequences are really low. But everything will take a little bit longer and it’ll be a little bit harder.
That’s why it’s so important to pick a medium that works for you. Even though like the blogging world is changing and. You know, some of the people in the five community, for example, they still have like really vibrant blogs where there’s a lot of comments like our friend, uh, Pete, Mr. Money mustache who lives in town here.
He has like hundreds of comments on anything he posts, but. A lot of people on their blog, they will have no comments. Very few people are checking it out. And those discussions are happening elsewhere, like a Facebook group or Twitter or something like that. So all that to say, if you pick the bright medium for you, even if it was writing and blogging, even though that landscape has changed, it’ll be potentially the best option for you because.
You’ll be able to do it for a long time and you can translate those to other mediums maybe where it’s not your native medium We’ll get we’ll get to some of these examples in a second I know but for example, if you have a great blog post that has connected and maybe you saw some people share it I’m out there, maybe someone sent you a DM on Instagram or something, you potentially can go to a podcaster and say, Hey, I have this great concept.
There’s actually been a good discussion on it. Here’s the bullet points. You don’t have to like send them the whole thing and make them read, you know, whatever, a few thousand words. But you could talk through that and that would be a great podcast episode. So. Like I said, it’s not necessarily your native medium, but you could translate that to other formats.
You could do it for YouTube too and say, Hey, I see you’re making YouTube videos. Here’s a concept. It has really good traction. I wrote it, but why don’t you Take the ideas and you could put your own spin on it. Make a video and then and then it’s out of your hands But it’s a completely different audience and then you’ve made it easy for that person to come up with a video idea that is Unique, you know, it has traction They could see the things that they disagree with and then at fill in the gaps or whatever So whatever is the most sustainable what follow ups do you have based on that?
Katie: Yeah I love that idea of starting with what works for you and then using that to kind of trickle down into the things that aren’t quite your forte or speed. Do you recommend trying a few different things and seeing what sticks or kind of going all in on one thing and seeing how that goes? And if it doesn’t work, then pivot over time.
Doug: We’re going to get to some time management stuff in a second. So yeah, try some things out, especially if you’re not sure. what you’re going to connect with. So you do have to test it. That can lead to some overwhelm, especially in the social media realm, where the more you produce, the better feedback you get.
And then you end up on a treadmill of content, which I’ve steered away from like generally, because I’m not, I’m not that good at it. I don’t like it. Maybe I could get better at it, but I don’t care. I just want to do something sustainable for like the very long term. So if you do experiment, which I think can be a good idea as you’re trying to figure out the right place potentially focus for short periods of time and do like a sprint of work in one area.
Give it a good shot. I don’t know how long that is, four weeks, 12 weeks, something like that. Give it a good shot, focus your efforts on that. Keep in mind, repurposing content or the ideas is really valuable because, well, you don’t have to recreate the wheel. You should, you should focus on the, the native format.
So if you are doing like Instagram reels and then you’re moving it over to a slightly different format, say YouTube videos, okay, you’re going to have to make it a little bit longer. You’re going to have to think about maybe giving some longer examples or B roll or something like that for maybe like a six or eight minute video instead of like one minute or 45 seconds or whatever.
Um, you were doing on those short form videos for social media. So, so yeah, I would say experiments, but don’t feel like. You have to do certain things. So one reason that, uh, I really liked my answer, very humble. One reason I like my answer is I was like, do the thing that you’re good at and like, fuck the other stuff.
A lot of people will come in. And I’ve seen this at conferences, uh, people will give a talk and they’re like, you have to do tech talk and you have to do Instagram reels. It’s just because that’s what worked for them. And there’s some value to have someone that is very certain tell you. Do this. It really worked, but typically it’s an N of one, them, and there’s probably thousands of other people that did exactly the same thing and the algorithm didn’t pick it up, the audience mismatch, whatever.
There’s like a ton of reasons why it might not work out, but there’s a lot of survivorship bias if you just listen to people that are like, you have to do blah, and if you hate doing that thing that they’re recommending, then that’s a recipe for you to. Like put a lot of effort in and then quit because it sucks.
Yeah, so you can you could figure out what works for you
Katie: Okay, so recently I’m like pretty new to a lot of this so recently I’ve Sort of an introduce the idea of like certain certain ways you can grow your audience versus nurturing your audience. And I think for a lot of people, including myself, at first you start doing the nurturing thing and don’t see much growth.
Is there anything you can speak to on like maybe different tactics or techniques that I could try for each and how much to focus on each one?
Doug: Oh, wow. Yeah, that one hits close to home because I haven’t been growing my audience as much in the last couple of years and I could, I could like clearly see it in the analytics, but there’s a specific reason for me doing it.
So I would say in the beginning, I would potentially focus like 75 percent of your time. On building your audience because you have very few people currently. I think you have noted here 200 Instagram followers, right? So we’ll link up to you. So maybe you’ll get some more. I don’t know if this is the right audience, but Maybe they’ll share it with a friend.
You know, whenever I have, uh, you know, Dusti, right? Whenever I have Dusti on, she’s like, Oh yeah, I’m on the show. And there’s like 15 or 20 new followers every time. And I’m like, no one’s following me. She’s a lot more likable.
Katie: I think you get followers who are just looking to see if you’re going to crash and burn, you know, so maybe I’ll get a few of those.
Doug: No, I think it’s the personality. Overall. So yeah, Dusti, are you good on coffee over there? I kept promising more coffee here. Yeah. I’ll pass this over here. I’ll just pass it. All right. So because you have a small audience currently and it’ll be great to grow it. Focus. Yeah. 80%, 70, 80 percent to get more growth for the type of content.
You’ll potentially want to hit some of the, like, early ideas, so if you imagine the journey of someone that you want to work with in the future. Where are they at kind of in the beginning so it’ll potentially and basically for most niches. It’ll be the early beginner questions Maybe things that you’ve covered a bunch already But you may need to keep doing it over and over again.
So this is something I struggle with And I have a specific example for like my content and then some content that I’ve been interested in I’ve been Watching a lot of like fitness videos and I’m, I’m trying to, uh, some body recomposition. I’m trying to like get rid of fat and put on muscle, right? I started, uh, getting recommendations on YouTube for this one creator.
And I think like three times a week, he’s basically putting out the same fucking video. And I watched a handful and I probably watched like 20 videos, but essentially he’s like Walk more, uh, cut calories a little bit. Uh, make sure you don’t lose muscle by hitting your protein targets, but it’s basically the same video over and over again.
He shoots it in the same place. He covers maybe a minor little different thing, but generally. It’s the same thing. And as I was watching him, I was like, all right, I got the value from this. There was some value in it. And then I’m like, I don’t want to see these videos anymore. It’s really the same thing.
I’ve seen his channel grow a lot. And the thing is he’s meeting people where they are. I’m not at that spot anymore. And he does have some more advanced videos. And for his funnel, he wants people to, you know, get started and then sign up for like a coaching package. Like that’s his thing. coaching, he has coaches work for him.
So he’s, he’s the face of the channel and then he gets people into his funnel. And then if people need more accountability, that’s what the coaches are for. So he gets people on the email list, which I’m sure we’ll get into it, but it’s, it’s all the same. It’s just a different it’s a different niche. So he has like.
A one page cheat sheet on things to do to cut fat. And once you get into the funnel, he’ll just keep feeding you, uh, whatever he needs, whatever, whatever he’s done in the funnel. So for me, I did, I started doing more YouTube videos and say like 2016, 2017, a lot of like early, uh, keyword research and like affiliate marketing and SEO ideas.
And I did several videos on like. Kind of the same topics sometimes I would just redo them Huh, but I felt I was like, this is just the same video that’s already out there But the thing is there’s there’s a value and there’s a recency bias. So people will see a video that’s maybe five years old at this point That’s like Yeah, so like a five year old video like I should redo it and then if I follow along with like the fitness dude is doing I potentially should do like A video every week where it’s just like over and over again It’s not very nurturing to the existing audience, but it will build the channel And it’s really hard to do especially like I have a bigger channel at this point a lot of people that followed me for a while And if I don’t do anything like in depth then or more advanced They’re like, I’m not interested.
I don’t need to know this basic concept that I figured out like five years ago. So that said, it’s a balance and you can go back and forth. Now, what happened for me? is probably two years ago, maybe a little bit more, I realized that I didn’t want to play along with the YouTube algorithm specifically and do those videos that I’m talking about.
So I was like, you know what, I’m just going to publish my long form interviews like this and the people that want to come along, they can come along. And I went 600 new subscribers per month. That was steady for. Five, six years, like, I mean, it was completely steady. It dropped to a hundred to 200 or so, but I knew it was going to happen.
The thing is I didn’t burn out because I was like, I’m going to, I’m going to do the content that I want and have good conversations and it doesn’t work for everyone. But that works for me and I don’t care if the growth is slower, like I’ll be able to do this longer and I don’t, do you watch much YouTube or a little bit?
You may have seen your favorite creators just say, You know what? I’m taking a break. I’m getting burned out. Like, it’s bad for my mental health. Blah, blah, blah. And they just like check out for months. I never wanted to get to that spot. So I was like very gradually doing less and less to the point where I was like, You know what?
What if I just stopped? Playing along and I just publish what I want. So I’m getting back into it, but I’m trying to figure out like the thing that works for me, something that I’m interested in, like currently right now, that also fits in with like helping to grow the audience. Very long winded, but I wanted to give you examples and the consequence.
If you, if you’re only nurturing the audience. Like it will impact the growth. No doubt. So there’s some balance. I think once you get to a certain point where it’s sustainable Maybe you cut it down to 50 percent even 25 percent as far as like growth focus content for the I’ll pause here Jeff follow up questions before I talk about the type of content for the nurturing.
Katie: Not immediately. I think that made a lot of sense and okay, I think I would then go research nurturing versus growth You know strategies.
Doug: Yeah, and I think I think the nurturing in a lot of ways or at least the way I’ve Decided I’m gonna do it. It’s what I’m interested in and or personal stories because at some point people are like ah I don’t care about, you know, whatever the, the five topics that I talk about sometimes or the personal finance or like, I don’t care, but usually there’s some story attached to it where I’m like, I went and did fun stuff.
I met some cool people, blah, blah, blah. So it’s not like five facts about a thing, which is pretty dry and boring. I try to. try to drag people along on some story even if they don’t care about the underlying like facts that I’m trying to provide. So you could, like you said, you could do research and try and figure it out, but typically it’s like either advanced topics or it’s just like personal stuff, which is good because it’s, it makes people like connect to.
You personally, even though it’s kind of scaled because you’re able to like share the information via a podcast or YouTube whatever.
Katie: Yeah, I heard on one of your other episodes about people either want information or entertainment, and I feel like this kind of goes in that camp.
Doug: Yep, exactly. So either you could help people out or at least be somewhat entertaining.
And the level, the bar for entertainment is low.
Katie: Thank God for my case. Alright, what’s next here? Alright, what kind of timelines should I expect for audience and revenue growth? And this could be pretty broad, I just
Doug: Right. For audience growth, I’m not really sure. I think like the more social media, yeah, for both of them, I don’t know the answer, but for the social media side, I think.
There’s high potential to grow very quickly on like the shortest form of, uh, you know, formats. Those are probably going to be the least profitable followers. They’re going to connect less. People that listen to a podcast, they walk up, they feel like they know you. I listen to podcasts and I’ve gone to people and I’m like, I’ve listened to you for hundreds of hours.
Like, I feel like I know stories about your family and blah, blah, blah. If someone, you know, follows you on TikTok. They have like virtually no connection. It’s very low friction for them to follow you. And yeah, so you can grow very quickly. The harder it is to like get a subscriber or someone to be part of your audience, the stickier they are and the more connected they’ll feel.
So there’s a trade off and that’s why I don’t spend time on social media. Got it. As a consumer, I consume it, but I don’t produce it. Side note, I did try YouTube shorts. I tried to reformat and take clips from like shows like this. And it kind of worked a little bit. Also, I think it was a very low value, uh, subscriber or audience member.
And eventually. The YouTube algorithm, I think, shifted while I was testing this and I went from, you know, maybe every 10 videos I would get a spike of views, maybe a couple thousand to almost all of them were getting like a hundred views. So at some point I was like, forget that. I don’t even care. I’m not doing it anymore.
Um, it doesn’t matter to me. So it was just like a decision and I just keep going. I know it could cost in some way. The other portion, as far as revenue growth, very hard to predict. One thing is like, because you will be selling you know, either coaching or online courses, you’ll have, I believe, a faster trajectory and.
You’ll be able to have those high margins that you get from those type of services and products versus if you were going to be an affiliate marketer or work based on ad revenue or something like that. So that’s very good. I think there could be a place for, you know, all of that, but the fact that you’re focusing on your own digital products, I think that’s very good.
That’s what I would recommend for a lot of people, especially in your position.
Katie: Okay, and that’s because the courses I can sell immediately even if my audience is very small versus ad revenue You need a large audience. For that even to go anywhere
Doug: Yep. Okay, exactly yep, and the thing is, you know the audience size like you have 200 followers, but Maybe a hundred of them are like really interested in working with you.
So that’s like more valuable than Whatever just a lower percentage of people that care, right? So That’s helpful and actually great example is Rachel like she has a like a hundred and some odd Thousand followers on Instagram and I mean she has a full You know sort of funnel However, she spends like no time, uh, writing as far as writing on her blog.
She is a, an author and like sells books and stuff like that. But I think a lot of it is driven via Instagram, which she is very good at. And like, that’s a medium that she can work with and she stays on top of it. She’ll like reply back to messages and DMs pretty often. Really engaged audience. A very per, I mean, I think it takes a lot of time.
Yeah. So, the other part with the revenue question, I’ve heard this in a couple of ways, but I’ll plug. The Tropical MBA podcast, there’s a concept they came up with called the thousand day rule. And basically the idea is it takes about three years to replace your old full time income. Okay, that’s good.
And It’s not linear by any means. I mean, you may struggle for 18 months and then all of a sudden, like something worked and everything lined up with, uh, your audience growth, the product that you have, and maybe your launches of your online course or whatever. So about two to three years, probably. If.
You have specific experience in a portion of it. You can really shorten it. So for example, finger fingers crossed, right? Like if I was starting something new because I can leverage my existing audience because I’ve done things before I maybe could shorten that to one year instead of three, but I also have like a decade of.
So I kind of understand some problem areas to avoid and certain things to focus on. So about three years is kind of a good general idea. Also, obviously depends on how much you were making before. Right? So if someone is, uh, has a lower paying job, they probably can replace that a little bit faster. And if you’re very high paid, then it’s going to take you a little bit longer.
Chances are, if you made a lot of money, then you probably don’t need to replace that old income. You just need to cover like, you know, some fraction of it. Right. Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. So about two to three years. Cool. That’s great. Thanks. Right. Anything else on the audience building portion?
Katie: I want to ask.
Quickly about the niche, if we have time for that, do you think I should? So, um, I’ve been doing one on one coaching just a little bit. I’ve had, uh, four clients so far just to help me a make sure I want to do this and I enjoy it be understand what they’re looking for. And then it’s really helped me figure out who my audience is, who’s willing to pay and eager to get started.
Do you think. I need to niche down further than women in their 20s to 30s who make a high income, but have trouble saving every month.
Doug: I think that should be okay. That’s pretty specific, if you ask me. It would be interesting to go deeper. So go through the exercise of brainstorming how you could make it more specific. And here’s my idea. So do like SEO and keyword research, right? So that’s like the other, like, you know, me from the five community, but I know this other portion of like keyword research.
So one concept that you might be able to take advantage of is like, long tail keywords. You don’t have to think of it that way, but basically figure out how you can niche down even farther and you can create content to attract. And grow your audience based on those very specific keyword ideas. Really?
They’re just topic areas. So maybe how would you niche it down? Right. So maybe you could put like, uh, single women with kids that follow it, following that. Maybe it could be like married, but some other thing maybe they’re, I don’t know how to niche it down, but you know, the audience better, but basically you could talk to them specifically and you would attract them because you’re talking so detailed, like it’s just to them and then they should still fit in the higher level category.
Oh, right. So you could like niche down. It’s very specific. And then you would have like this long tail of, uh, different topic areas that will roll up and they’ll like you. So you could actually like go through the exercise with like Rachel’s audience, right? Like you could probably look through and figure out like, Oh yeah, she’s made content in this very specific area where people are interested in real estate, but then they’re also.
In their 20s and they’re trying to figure out how to like increase their income, right? So there’s a lot of different ways to slice it, right? Cool.
Katie: Awesome.
Doug: Do you have any ideas right off off the top of your head?
Katie: One the one that you mentioned is moms. About half of the people I’ve worked with one on one have also asked if I could do a couple’s thing or if their spouse could also do the coaching.
So, um, and something that I really, like, feel strongly about is that both partners need to be involved in the finances. So, um, I just feel like most women aren’t because they’re busy. They already have so many roles. And, oh, I want to add another one. I’ll learn all about the finances of the family. So, they’re an idea of how to make like really short, quick ones that they could just do on their phone, like lessons and that sort of thing.
My website is kind of geared, it’s a lot about lifestyle. It’s a lot about travel and that kind of thing. And I don’t really know if that’s going too far down that path or, um, maybe if it’s just a good thing that’ll just attract clients that I enjoy working with.
Doug: Yeah, I think that that I think that is good because it is like that’s what’s valuable to you, right?
And you have a lot of stories about it and like we know there’s a bunch of other People that would follow in your footsteps or that want to do what you did so it makes sense to do that and you could also like gen generalize and like I said, like even though even though your Experience is really specific like it will roll up to the more general idea, which is kind of cool and I hadn’t thought about it in that way, but like really like niche down, be really specific and then they will, you know, roll up to the higher level category.
Yeah. So I’m thinking about like my content as well. And that makes sense. Okay. Cool. Awesome. Yeah. And there’s no, I mean, and the thing is there’s no, there’s no issue with doing that. There’s no. There’s no downside to like niching down and speaking really specifically to like a very small Side note with the travel stuff.
This is one thing I have done a poor job at but you know FinCon the financial conference for creators in that personal finance and finance space I think this the same company they are Doing a new conference called travel con, huh, right? So One thing that I have done a poor job on so far is like going outside of my area, right?
So I started with affiliate marketing and SEO and like mostly talked to the people that were following me and my peers and competitors or however people in the industry, right? What I should have been doing but it didn’t like a moron Is going to, and I think people even told me this. So thanks to the audience, people even said, Oh, you should take this idea of, uh, like whatever keyword research idea.
You should go to, um, a mom blog conference and talk to them. Uhhuh . You should go to a travel conference and talk to them. Right. So I have been, I’m like, I should go to that travel conference. I could do the, a similar talk framed Mm-Hmm. to people that do travel. And it turns out there’s a lot of travel bloggers like in my audience.
Mm. So I’m like, I know. Things that I talk about can be like transferred over and people can apply it to whatever niche they’re in. It could be like food blog. So anyway, as I take a step back and I’m like, okay, if I can take a concept and bring it to a bunch of different people, which I think like Folks are doing that and I saw at FinCon like people outside the industry were popping in and they’re like, here’s how I did X But it was a different industry and I’m like, it makes sense to just keep telling that story and then have a broader audience base Cool.
Yeah, brilliant All right. Yeah, what’s next?
Katie: All right Yeah, let’s move to time management. Is that cool? Yeah. Cool. Alright, so if you, I guess I can preface this with, I feel overwhelmed with growing an audience, nurturing an audience, creating free giveaways, like a lead magnet Maintaining my one on one coaching, which I’m trying to keep minimum, uh, as well as building this online course sellable product.
Uh, I also have to go back to my full time job. Unfortunately, I took a few months off to do this and it’s been amazing, but I do have to make money again. So yeah, January is going to be busy. Do you have any advice on what to focus on?
Doug: Yeah. So what would you say? What is your main focus of building an audience? What medium do you think you’re going to do? Or mediums, like we said, you can test this out.
Katie: Yeah. I love the idea of doing something like this is guest podcasting to sort of reach out to bigger audience. I think I would probably end up doing Instagram as the nurturing or.
What I would really love to do is more email writing, but of course I have to get people into my emails first, so probably Instagram, and I may as well tag team that with TikTok and kind of post the same videos on both and see what happens. Does that make sense?
Doug: Yeah. Okay. It does. Okay, so Instagram, you would like to write more emails.
Yeah. And that, that would, that’s more. Pulling somebody through the funnel and nurturing more or less.
Katie: Yeah, okay. I guess one other thing on in addition to guest podcasting I kind of reached out to some watering holes and I was in a sorority in college and the alumni group Gained some traction where they wanted me to come and talk to their chapter meetings and then I could kind of reach out to People hopefully graduate in college soon and maybe a few years down the line.
They’ll be ready to Get more into their finances. But um, yeah, I think just going out and trying to maybe do free in person You know meetings or webinars or okay something
Doug: like that. Gotcha. All right, so a couple couple things one I am I think I told you this before, and I’m, I’m slowly mentioning it in these Q and A’s that I’m doing with folks.
So, and unfortunately I’ve said it enough where I think I’m going to have to do it because I’m like, Oh, 90 percent sure. Now I’ve said it like 10 times. I’m like, Oh shit, I have to do this thing. So I’m going to start a new podcast and a YouTube channel and like start it all fresh. I’m going to cheat, just like I have in the past where I do have an audience, so I’ll be able to just keep advertising, like on this show and like potentially call in some favors from people that do have email lists that already have a YouTube channel that I’ve helped out in the past, um, and just partner, they’re, they’re my friends basically, and just say like, Hey, I’m launching a new thing.
Will you mention it? We can cross promote, so I’m going to, I’m going to cheat in that way. However, I’m facing exactly what you’re talking about. Free giveaways, which, um, like a lead magnet, that’s what we’re talking about. Like a lead magnet to get people on the email list, nurturing the audience, and then building a course and then getting in front of audiences and all that stuff.
And it’s going to be a little complicated. because I’m going to be doing all the same stuff and I will be doing YouTube videos as well. So it makes it a little bit more, but because I have this experience and I have a studio down here, it makes it much easier. If I do a podcast interview, no problem. I could just record it, put it on YouTube.
So if I was in the early stages like you, I would focus on, A small number of things and I think you have narrowed it down quite well where it’s like instagram That’s where your audience currently is And then the podcast interviews That is Perfect, especially if you enjoy the podcast medium and it sounds like you’re a podcast listener, right?
Mm hmm. So that’s fantastic I do annoyed is the wrong word, but I think Especially with authors, right? So everyone can write a fucking book these days, right? They’re like, hey, I just wrote a book I want to come on the show and talk about it and I’m like You don’t even listen to the show number one, so you don’t know the audience.
It’s a complete mismatch and And A lot of times people don’t listen to, they’re just not podcast listeners, but they’re trying to like be on that medium because you listen, like you understand what can work well and, and you’re good before we even started. You said, Hey, do you have any tips for a podcast guest?
So that’s great. Cool. So I think that can work and there’s a lot of podcasts out there in general, I think potentially, and because you’re, we’re recording now, you’re probably okay with YouTube. So I think you can. Talk to youtubers as well and go from there. It’s true, too so the main thing as far as a time management standpoint is Don’t try to do too many things at once.
So you said you’re going to be, uh, going back to freelancing full time, uh, starting in the new year. Right? So you don’t want to get overwhelmed where you get like burnt out and you’re like, okay, I have to stop doing this whole thing. It’s a very stressful situation. So keep it small. And I think those two are probably pretty good from an Instagram perspective.
I have little experience, but I think a lot of the marketing is very similar. Would you be able to do like some collaborations or There’s live streams on Instagram, right? Can you can you hop on and say hey, I got this great talk again This is it’s all the same ideas. It’s just a different format So do you have any content where you’re like this worked pretty well?
And then can you take it to someone who potentially would want to do a live stream with you or something? That’s a little special where you can like get some followers from them.
Katie: Yeah. Yeah I mean, maybe I can even go like you said to travel bloggers or travel Instagrammers, and say, Oh, if people need help financing all these great adventures that they already know they want to go on, maybe we can collaborate.
But what does that do for them? I guess is my question. I have to, or does it help them grow their audience or what can I offer? This is my question.
Doug: So the thing that you have is you have fucking awesome stories. Oh, cool. Yeah. Yeah. So they need content. And if they, like, if you just have like a couple highlights or maybe, you know, That maybe it’s a big travel influencer and they are, they’re taking, they’re booking a trip, right?
They’re going to be a guide in India or whatever, and they need people that have, that have stories about India. So that content fits and you could be like, it was really great. I did some. Things like this wouldn’t do these things like you’ll have to play with the idea But that would totally work and have you ever heard of um, it’s the broke backpacker You ever I interviewed him like a couple weeks ago.
Oh, yeah, right. So Actually, I think he’s starting a podcast. So I’ll I’ll get back with you. You may be a good guest on his show. Yes. Awesome. Yeah. Yeah. . So I, I think you come with stories and then Okay. They’ll get something out of it in that way. Cool. Yeah, that’s a great idea. Yeah. Um, the, the tougher part.
So I, I would potentially value like the blogs more than the Instagram followers. That said, the reason why is, um, I think it’s harder to get someone off of that platform to sign up for your email list, which that should be your goal. Get the people on your email list.
The platforms can’t take that away. Even though it’s harder to get someone over. So do you have a good set of ideas for the lead magnets? You may have to, okay. So what you’ll have to do, for example, on the, um, on the travel side, right? So if you’re going to make that your focus to just be like, all right, I’m going to try to do this, this travel outreach, I’m going to try to connect with those folks, have a lead magnet specific for travel.
Okay. Right. So build it for, it could be somewhat generic, but if you all of a sudden started, um, trying to collaborate with like mom blogs, for example, you’d have to come up with a different lead magnet. But if you have the right one for travel, like you said, here’s a, the 10 ways I helped finance visiting seven continents in X number of years, right?
Make it simple, make it one page, and then you could use that over and over again.
Katie: Okay, that’s awesome. That was going to be one of my questions about the size of the lead magnet. I was kind of advised by a friend who’s another online business owner. One person had suggested making, like, an online course to get people to join my online community for free.
And then another friend had been like, that’s sort of a couple steps ahead of where you’re at. Like, just make a free thing. Don’t worry about that yet. Curious what your thoughts are.
Doug: Yeah, one pager. One pager. Um, couple things. One. You can do that in the future. And I’ve played around with that, depending on the type of content and the type of, you know, tests that I wanted to do.
But basically let’s say you, um, write a short ebook, it’s 50 pages. You’re like, ah, it’s cool. You work really hard on it. You get a format and all that stuff. How many people do you think are going to read it? Like no one, they’re going to download it. And they’re like, ah, 50 pages. No way. So your goal is to.
Provide as much value as possible in the shortest amount of time. So one pager with some pictures, right? Like make it super easy. If you need to, you can make it a little bit longer, but the goal should be. value as soon as possible for the average person, which is pretty lazy, especially if they’re coming from Instagram, they’re like scrolling, scrolling, scrolling.
They’re not going to read a 50 page ebook. Yeah. Very rare. That said, I did have more, more or less what you described, or it’s like kind of a free course. But really it was pretty easy for me to put together. It was not a, a fully outlined course. It was more like some over the shoulder screen flow type thing.
So it was just like pretty easy for me to like do a demo, put it up there. And it wasn’t like a comprehensive course. So I just built it as I went and it did a good job, like for that specific content that I was creating. And then I. I just like stopped working on it, but the one pager converted better and it provided value faster.
Katie: Okay. Yeah, I think that’s going to be one of my biggest challenges that I have to work on personally is like, I love to get into the details and be really thorough and like, I’m like, nobody wants this.
Doug: I mean, they do, but. It just has to be, like, at the right time. So, for me, like, people do want the details, like, where, I don’t know how long this show’s gonna be.
It’ll be, like, over an hour. But some people are gonna listen to it multiple times and be like, okay. I want to hear about it and then they’ll follow along with you and they’ll see like how you implemented it like six months from now and like what it did, right? Right. So some people want the details, but it has to be like, so podcasts are great for long form.
YouTube, kind of bad. Sometimes people will watch, but. You have to meet them where they’re at and give the right kind of content. So, okay.
Katie: But yeah, yeah, really need to pick the focus on the goal and remember the purpose and the audience who I’m talking to.
Doug: Okay. And then I don’t even know if I, how much time would you spend getting in front of an audience versus creating giveaways and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Okay. So I, and I would potentially focus on the podcast interview stuff potentially. guest posting on people’s blogs too. So I think like, um, you know, the pioneers, Jess and, um, Corey. So I think they, in a couple of blogs do this, they’ll have like sort of a little, uh, Q and A series. I think it’s just done via email, but those can be pretty valuable too.
And you mentioned writing. So maybe you don’t have, uh, many people to write emails for, but you can write stuff for other people’s blogs. Very good to have a warm introduction. So in any of the cases, so like if you land a podcast interview. You could ask them. I’m pretty sure this is what Rachel did. Like, Hey, do you know any podcasting friends or YouTubers or anyone that might be a good fit?
I would love to be on their show, blah, blah, blah. And I think Rachel has been on like hundreds of shows just by doing that. Okay. So great. Um, ask around. Warm intros will work, uh, cold intros, much tougher. So the fact that you have been to a couple of camp fives, like you have some connections where you actually can get some good intros.
Yeah. Got me here. Yeah. And then once you’re on, right. So one thing that I can show you, I need to. Put together a template, which folks could download. So by the time this comes out, but basically it’ll be it’s kind of like a pitch sheet, right? Have you seen these for essentially it’s like a little resume.
The big thing you want to highlight is like, here’s the shows I’ve been on before, or here’s where I’ve been featured. Or here’s why I’m an expert in that way. There’s social proof for them to have you on the show. Okay. So it’s tough when you’re first starting, cause maybe you only have like one or two to reference, but then after you’ve been on a few, like I need to put one together for Carl and I for mile high five, like he’s been on good morning, America, New York times, like all these things where.
It’s like, of course, like if he pitches, like he should be able to get on a show. Yeah. And between the two of us, we’ve been featured all over the place, mostly him, but all over the place and tons of places where he spoke or I have, and it should be a no brainer for us to say, Hey, We have this idea, we want to talk about it as long as it kind of fits with the audience.
They know they’re going to get good stories and we have our own email list and audiences as well. It doesn’t always work, but I think the way that you’re. going to approach it, it should be totally fine. And once you build up like the resume of like, here’s where I’ve been featured. Here’s all the shows.
It’s like a no brainer.
Katie: Yeah. Did he and you, did you guys reach out to them? Most of those like USA Today and the ones that you mentioned, or did they reach out to you as a mix?
Doug: I think those people reached out to Carl. So he, he had like the big hitter interviews and they reached out to him. They had to sort of hunt them down, but I think it was.
His connection and his longevity in the Phi community. He started 1, 500 days. I think in 2012 or 2013. Yeah, so When the press was really covering those stories like he was in the forefront like he was on Yahoo News Okay. Yeah And I’ve recently gotten a couple Uh, mentions in bigger, I think one was like Yahoo finance and one was in nasdaq.com
However, it was through essentially a PR company that, so because I’m in the SEO world, it was a PR company. Have you heard of Haro help a reporter out? Uh, I don’t think so. So reporters will Say, Hey, I need a reference. I need a source for this topic area. It sounds great on paper. Uh, there’s a lot of marketers and SEO types, like in the, the listeners here that like have flooded that site and that service.
So it has gotten a little murky and there’s a lot of marketers on there. However. If you are an actual pro, like you can get mentions. And if someone’s, you know, someone, a reporter might need a source for, uh, Hey, what’s it like for women in their twenties, uh, dealing with inflation. And then you can reply back and say, Oh, it’s really tough.
Cause rent and some other stuff. Right. And then they would cite you. and you would potentially get a link and a mention and blah, blah, blah. So anyway, a company got me those. I didn’t do it myself. Cool. Okay.
Katie: Good to know.
Doug: All right. What, what else do we have?
Katie: Maybe in terms of like day to day time management, when I was working on this kind of chipping away at it earlier this year, while I was working, I just do like a couple hours on weeknights and maybe put in a full day on the weekend, something like that to, Try to prevent the burnout.
But I think I had a lot less goals. It was sort of early on and just taking on a little bit. And now I just want to do so much in such a short amount of time. Do you have advice on just day to day tackling each piece of this?
Doug: Oh, yeah. So how important is it for you to start earning money from this in a short timeframe versus longer?
Katie: It’s pretty important. Uh, we’re hoping to start a family soon, so I expect that to really take A lot more of my time. So I’m trying to race against that.
Doug: Okay. Yeah. I don’t have kids, but I think it’ll take up a lot of your time. So for me, when I got started with this stuff, I was obsessed. So I, I woke up at like four in the morning and I would like drink a bunch of coffee and like not get enough sleep and get out like a lot of good work in about two or three hours in the morning.
Before I didn’t like my job so I was like, I could be less effective and tired on the day job stuff and kind of coast through. It was totally fine. Yeah. But then I would like work at night and the weekends. And like I said, I got obsessed. So it did. It did cost me a lot of sleep. And I probably was over caffeinated and more stressed out than I needed to be.
So I could probably could have cut back on the caffeine a little bit. . So I would say potentially wake up early and just like do it then, because at least, or are you a morning person? Yeah, total morning person. So it’s like carve it out then you know, still work out, still have your fitness in place.
Cause I think that’s really important to avoid burnout. And then you don’t want to work a ton and then be unhealthy and, you know, eat bad food and like just. It’ll cost you in other ways, right? The other thing which you’re, you know, you drill down to like, you know, what should I prioritize? What’s really effective?
Because there’s a lot of stuff where it may not pay off It maybe you’ll realize this there’s a there’s a decent chance That you’ll find the podcast interviews and the guest posting and the deeper connection. Are you going to economy in, uh, March
Katie: potentially
Doug: Okay. Yeah, so the connections that you make at in person events will go way farther than You know, Instagram reels, and you’re like trying to put together something catchy and short, and you work really hard at it.
And then I know you’re like, well, I already created it. Let’s just put it on Tik TOK and YouTube shorts. All that will still cost you time and mental bandwidth. And even though you already created it, it’s like, it’s still something else. So there’s a decent chance you’re going to be like. These podcast interviews are way better.
They’re more fun. It doesn’t take as much time. I could scale it out and I could take the same interviews and potentially use those on social media. Right. Yeah. And then social media is like just not converting to the email list. And I think probably that’s where you’re going to do most of your marketing and selling right.
Is in the email list. Yeah. So solid chance, you know, give it a shot, but like you may pivot and just be like, all All right. I’m focusing on like this channel because it’s working really well. I don’t know what the channel is, but I think, you know, generally, generally the social media is going to be a little bit less because like we said, it’s really hard to get people off the platform.
The other one that we didn’t mention, I’m skipping around. People do have email lists. Some of them allow advertising, but you may also have like a cool story. This isn’t done very much, but it’s the equivalent of like guest posting on someone’s email list where you’re like, Oh yeah, like I have this really good idea.
I actually have a lead magnet. Give it to your audience. And like. Just like, Hey, here’s a good, valuable tool. And if you want to share it, you can, and then there’s no pressure to get it free. And then there’s just a link in there. Like, Hey, if you want to sign up for Katie’s email list or connect with her further, here’s her stuff.
Cool. I think it might, I don’t know what they call it, but it’s the equivalent of guest posting across, uh, someone to someone’s email list. Yeah, so that’s something to look at to test out, you know, some people have a pretty active email list. Cool. Yeah. And, yeah, so I think the important thing is don’t get burned out.
Maybe wake up early, potentially figure out after you test some things out, figure out like what’s working best. No surprise here, like do less of the things that aren’t working and do more of the things that are working. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So anything else on time management?
Katie: Maybe one question I had asked you prior to the podcast, but I was wondering how much I should focus on like SEO on my website.
And I don’t know anything about that. And your answer was really helpful. So I thought maybe we would chat about that. What did I say? You said, don’t worry about the things that you don’t know, like focus on the things that you’re good at and you can do now versus. Learning from scratch SEO and putting time into that.
Doug: Okay, perfect. I can’t disagree with myself. Sounds really good. What I, what I can say. So SEO will come into play for, are you going to do any YouTube stuff?
Katie: Um, I’m open to it, but like you said, it takes extra time. So that would probably be down the line. Okay. Or if I was a guest like this on someone else’s.
Doug: So in either case, the, the biggest thing to pay attention to is mostly the title. of whatever it is that you’re publishing, whether it’s a video or a blog post. And there are, there’s a bunch of things that you can like go down the rabbit hole and go really deep into sort of keyword research. But I think probably what you can do just to keep it simple, because there are a lot of tools out there that you can use, but I think.
You go down a rabbit hole that ends up not being super effective for exactly what you’re trying to do. You can just go to Google. You have like some broad topic that you might write about, like, um, I don’t know, like budgeting for people in their twenties, bad, bad example, but we’ll just go with that.
So you could just Google that. See what pops up, see the Google auto suggest, right? So when you start typing that in, you’ll end up with auto suggest and see what other people are actually searching for at the bottom or somewhere around there. You should be able to see like people also, um, search for these terms that are kind of similar.
So this should give you a pretty good idea. When you look at what’s ranking in Google, you can see how other people have titled it. And typically there is. Pretty straightforward. It’s like what someone would Google correct grammar, maybe a little clickbaity, uh, title where it’s like, you won’t believe number seven, that kind of thing, but you don’t have to go and make it too complicated.
There’s a lot of advanced SEO folks in the audience, and it can be extremely complicated, uh, to the point where someone puts together, uh, essentially like a mind map of like every topic they want to cover. It’s called a topical map. Some people call it keyword clustering, but essentially You could approach it like that, but it doesn’t have to be that rigid.
And to actually get a lot of traffic via SEO these days, you most likely would have to put in like more time and be, do you, do you want to blog? Like, do you want to have a lot of content on your site? Will you do it regularly?
Katie: Ultimately, I think I would enjoy that. But yeah, I think that’s further down the line.
But I do, like I said earlier, I like to get into the details and write a little longer. So I feel like emails and blogs cater to that.
Doug: Okay. So that said, when you are spending more time on that, we can talk about it more. Because if it is something that you want to do, then It can be worthwhile to make sure that you’re writing content that people are searching for because that’s the main thing, right?
If you write about something that no one’s searching for no one’s going to search for it. You’re not going to get search traffic Whereas if you write something like really? That something that’s highly searched a topic that people really care about. Like, so Mr. Money Mustache, like a lot of people find his blog because they Googled how to retire early and he has a post that pops up and a lot of people like find that they read a bunch of stuff.
They join his forum, they’re like, sign up for the email list and all that stuff. And on the other side, Carl, right? So he has 1500days. com. He has a lot of titles that are kind of, kind of smart, catchy, kind of funny, but it’s not anything people are searching for. So if he were to go through and figure out like, what’s the topic and what are, what’s What can bring people here if they were searching for something, he would be much better off to like title it that way, maybe have a little bit more hierarchy of that topic area where there’s some subheadings that cover that topic.
And Carl does get search traffic, but it’s not as much as it could be based on the way he titles things. Of course, the content in there makes a big difference. But anyway, we could talk more about it. Like I said, there’s tools that you can see, like, how much people are searching for a given topic. But since it is an interest, then it would be worthwhile to put a little time into it.
We covered a couple main areas. We can definitely, uh, when the time’s right, we can go more into the, the funnel design, which I love. Cool. I love talking about all that kind of stuff. So what, what else do we have as we’re wrapping up? Any follow up questions or things that you thought of?
Katie: Is there anything that’s standing out to you that I’m maybe overlooking or should be asking myself at this stage?
Doug: I think you are covering all the things that you need to at this point.
You took the Earnable course, which is really good, and I took a look at your website, and I was like, Who are you following? It looks like you’ve covered most of the stuff that I would recommend. So I think that’s really, it’s pretty solid. It’s a good start. I think you’re also aware of your time limitations and the fact that you can’t do everything that you want to do all at once, like you could layer it on over time.
And that’s what I’ve done. I have a ton of stuff going on. A lot of times people are like, Oh, you must be super busy. I’m not super busy at all. I have a handful of things and I have systems around it and it doesn’t take very much time because I spent a lot of time on each one of the areas. So I could just like publish a podcast episode, like pretty easily, uh, very minimal editing on my part.
It does cost in terms of quality but going back to the sustainability, it works for me and I can do it for a very long period of time without burning out. Um, so no, I think you’re covering most things. You have a clear idea about coaching and the way you want to layer on the different monetization.
And it sounds like you’re also willing to pivot. If you need to, to, to either match the audience or the kind of content that you want to create or the kind of product that you want to create to make sure it fits. So everything seems pretty good and it’s just a matter of keep. Pushing forward and then, you know, rolling things, rolling things out where you’re like, I don’t know if this is going to work.
So I mentioned the podcast that I’m going to start. There’s multiple different pieces. I didn’t go into everything, but at a high level, I’m going to launch the show. And like I said, luckily I have contacts where I can interview people. Um, I know how to. Do this and I can produce a show That is more edited where I do more pre production where it’s higher quality like right off the bat And a couple other, you know little things that I know should help out in addition I want people to come along for the ride and I was like, oh I could have like a boot camp And have people like Keep me accountable, but also if they’re launching their show They could come along for 10 or 12 weeks and we can meet and I’ll essentially produce a course Alongside it and answer all the questions and help them out and do things like this, right?
Where people it’s really hard to get someone to answer all your questions like this, right? Yeah So that’s a portion of it and then I’m gonna sell the show afterwards which introduces more complications I have to think about that in the beginning. So I’m gonna get A podcast hosting service that has dynamic ad insertion.
So whoever buys it can take out all the ads that I have from the beginning and then just put in their own stuff or do whatever they want, right? Maybe a company, uh, buys it and they want to just sell their products, but maybe an individual. Gets the podcast and then they want to have their own advertisers or maybe they have Relationships with other companies already so they could just take all my stuff out and put theirs in super easy, right?
Yeah, and then I have to make sure it’s easy to transfer over all their stuff all that to say there’s moving pieces where I’m like okay, this is a little more complicated and The other part is if I’m trying to have people come along right and go I’m going to be selling and I’m like, Oh, timing has to be right.
It’s not just like, are they interested in starting a podcast? It’s like, are they interested in starting a podcast in the next month or two? And then, so I’m like, Oh. I could try to launch this and then one person buys or no one buys because the timing is just off or the price is off or whatever. So I’m nervous about that.
So that never goes away. It never goes away. If you thought you wouldn’t be nervous in a few years.
Katie: That’s probably the best advice all day.
Doug: It doesn’t go away. Yeah. So I think, I think you are covering most things and you won’t know. The point is you don’t know until you’re like, will you pay me money for this thing?
And then you find out after that. Yeah. Because your friends will be like, Oh, that’s a great idea. It should work. Oh yeah. Great. But until people start paying you and put in their credit card number, it doesn’t really matter. Yeah. Okay, cool. Any final thoughts here before we, uh, like sign out? We’ll let people know where they could find you and all that, but any other questions before that?
Katie: no, no, this was amazing. A lot to think on and a lot to act on. So yeah, I really appreciate your time and for you to have me on. This is all right
Doug: So when are you going to? Start launching things. Let’s do some coaching here. So let’s, uh, let’s get some specific items and lock in some timelines.
Katie: love that.
Also kind of hate that. Okay. My goal is to get an online course launched. Probably by the end of the summer of 24. I’m going to continue one-on-one coaching. So right now, I have, I’m full on that, but if anybody drops off, then maybe I’d pick up another client or two, depending on my time. I’ve got my website up.
I’m working on creating an email funnel, really simple one. What else? And then, starting this month, I can start reaching out to podcasts and try to get some dates lined up to get on those, hopefully. And Instagram lead magnet. This can be simple. Just keep it simple, Katie. Yeah, I could probably get that made in a week if I try, so maybe by the end of the month I’ll have that finished.
And, what else did I need?
Doug: Lead magnet, uh, maybe the, uh, the sheet for Being a guest on shows. That’s a good one. Yeah, so that’ll be good lead magnets and maybe like identifying the Like the niche to go after whether it’s travel and then have a couple stories Which I’m sure you have probably ten stories about different trips that you’ve been on that could align with Whoever you’re pitching.
And then the other, the other thing is like, if you can get warm intros to those people, so you may have to do a little sleuthing and see like, who’s following who, or who you have a connection with to get in. The thing is, it’s kind of like a ladder. So, and once you hit a certain level, then you can get connected with other people.
So like, I don’t know, uh, what’s the broke backpackers name. I can’t remember his name. It’s not will, is it?
Katie: I don’t remember. Shoot. I just listened to that episode too that you had with him. Oh, really?
Doug: Yeah, I think it might be. Shit, I can’t remember. Sorry. Um, I don’t know if he listens to the show, but if you made it this deep into this one, I’m, I apologize.
So, if you’re able to get on at a certain level, then people know that person and then you can kind of hit everyone, uh, adjacent and who has a smaller audience. Okay. Not always, but like typically if you have that social proof, it’s like, Oh, then we can, we can work with you. Cool. Okay. So I think that’s about it.
You had some timelines. Lock you in any further than that, but you mentioned there’s a lot of stuff to work on. The other thing, so here’s the thing that we didn’t talk about. Really important, really buried deep in the episode. So it’s really good to look and see at. To look at your competitors, right.
Or your peers to see what they’re selling, the price point. And it kind of validates that there’s a customer base that is paying money for the thing. Even though they’re competitors, it’s really good to see that out there and I never view it that way. I always see it more as like just other people that are peers because in the future you could work with them and partner on some thing you have no idea.
So I think it’s not that you’re an aggressive competitor or anything like that, but some people are like, oh, I’m really like aggressive about it Yeah, but really it could just it’s just future partners Different types of people really and you can help each other out and people that buy courses by other people’s courses So anyway, it’s great to see what they have Just to make sure that you’re creating something that people actually want Again, you don’t know until you try to sell it But if you see other people buying it, you know, like It’s a valid product idea overall.
So, okay. I think that’s about it. Where can people find you, Katie?
Katie: Uh, they can find me on Instagram at miss fund your freedom. M I S S fund your freedom. Um, they can also go on my website, www. misfundyourfreedom. com.
Doug: All right, cool. We’ll link up to that stuff and probably by the time this episode comes out, there’ll be a cool lead magnet so they can sign up for your email list and get some kind of valuable thing from you.
Katie: They can go to missfundyourfreedom. com slash giveaway and I will have that for them.
Doug: All right. Yeah. We’ll link it up. That’s the deadline. Right. I’m going to publish this and then you got to have it out by then. Love it. All right. Thanks Katie.
Katie: Thanks so much.