Ep 023: Marketing for Midlife Women Without the Cringe – with Krista
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I sat down with Krista Smith from Activate Her Awesome and we went straight into the real stuff. The stuff nobody wants to admit out loud. The “I feel behind online and I hate this” stuff.
Krista works with women in their 40s, 50s, 60s (and beyond) who want to market their business without feeling like they have to turn into a dancing content robot. And YES, that was a direct shot at the pressure to perform on social media.
In this episode, we talk about why clarity beats more followers, why selling is not a personality flaw, and what actually helps women build confidence online (without living in Canva for 6 hours a day).
Key Points from This Episode
- A lot of women feel “behind” online because they didn’t grow up with tech, not because they’re incapable.
- The more specific you get about your audience and the problem you solve, the easier marketing and sales get.
- Confidence comes from clarity, especially being able to say, “This offer will genuinely help someone.”
- Selling is not the same thing as being salesy, but you do have to get comfortable with selling if you want revenue.
- If you don’t have an offer yet, start by asking your audience what they’re struggling with and what they’d actually pay for.
- Engagement matters, and you often have to make the first move.
- A “viral reel” is not the goal if you can’t convert the followers you already have.
- A lot of women hide behind what Krista calls the “five Fs” instead of showing their face and voice.
- If you want to show up more confidently, start with pro brand photos, stories (they disappear), and practice on a private account.
- You will get better faster if you speak to one real person when you create content, instead of trying to perform for “everyone.”
- Krista warns against wasting hours in Canva when the task is not moving the needle.
- Growing a business often has a messy middle, especially when you’re shifting from one-to-one work to one-to-many offers.
- Sometimes the best “business support” hire is personal life support, because peace at home changes everything.
- Krista now has two memberships: a higher-support option and a lower-cost DIY option with the same courses.
Quotable Moments
“You don’t have to lip sync to a 2014 Beyonce song.” — Krista Smith
“Knowing who you’re serving is like a huge, like, it’s the thing. Like, really, it’s the thing.” — Shannon
“I’m here to tell you unequivocally, if you can’t convert the followers that you already have, no amount of new followers is gonna fix your business.” — Krista Smith
“Social media is where you build relationships.” — Krista Smith
“Engagement is more than half the game.” — Krista Smith
“You have to make friends first before you say, ‘Hey, do you want to come over to my house after school?’” — Krista Smith
“You’re wasting so much time in Canva. Choose and be done.” — Krista Smith
“The sooner that you start doing it, the sooner you’ll get better at it.” — Krista Smith
About Krista
Krista has been in the digital marketing space helping women grow their businesses online for over fifteen years and she’s watched businesses come and go. She can tell you for sure: words matter.
Websites, social media accounts, sales funnels, and effective digital marketing aren’t always about bells & whistles or jumping on the latest trend. They’re about clearly positioning your offer as the solution to a problem.
Krista simplifies marketing and sales for women over 50.
Links Mentioned in This Episode
Activate Her Awesome website: activateherawesome.com
Krista on Instagram: @activateherawesome
Shannon’s free quiz: shannonacheson.com
00:00
Welcome to The SHANNON ACHESON Show, real business talk for real life. I’m Shannon, creative business coach, digital product lover, and your strategy sidekick. I’ve built a business that fits my life, and now I help other women do the same. No hustle, no fluff, just smart, honest conversations about building a business that works for you. Let’s dive in.
00:30
Hello and welcome back to the show. I am so excited to have Krista here and we are going to talk about, you know, online business and social media and things like that. Krista, thank you so much for coming on the show. Welcome. Thank you, Shannon. I’m so excited to be here today. I love coming on and talking about all of these things. Yeah, it’s like one of my favorite things to do too. I don’t know if you know, like my other business is like home decor and organizing and stuff like that. And so this side of things is where I just get to talk about
00:59
business stuff and I love it. It’s like one of my favorite topics. Because you’re creative, right? Like when we’re creative, can find all the ways to make, this be fun instead of uh a thing that we have to do. Yeah. And I have loved, like this is new. I think you’ll end up being episode 20-ish, give or take. And, but I have loved like all the conversations. There’s just been so many little tidbits of things that I’m like, oh my gosh, so good. Like I just love the different perspectives and.
01:28
We’ve all taken different journeys and learned so many different things, right? So it’s so fun. So before we get too far into things, can you introduce yourself to my audience and sort of just give, you know, who you are and what you do? Yeah, sure. Absolutely. So my name is Krista Smith and I’m the CEO and founder of a company called Activate Her Awesome, where I work with mostly women in their 40s, 50s, 60s, and actually beyond, em helping them understand how to do this thing called marketing and sales because
01:57
The truth of the matter is, is that the internet was created many, years after we left school. And most of us learned how to type on a typewriter, not a touchscreen. So a lot of the content that’s out there and all of the things that are kind of pushed to people seem to be, that comes with an inherent knowledge that you understand intuitively how software works.
02:23
And when you didn’t grow up with it, you really need someone to be able to break it down for you in simple steps. And that’s kind of my zone of genius. And that’s what I love doing. really, I mean, I say it all the time. I sell confidence. That’s what I really sell. But I sell up through the lens of helping people find their footing online to be able to make an impact and an income. Yeah, I love that. And that’s, that’s how I found you. mean, this is the first time we’ve actually had like a conversation, right? But I
02:51
seen you on Instagram and I just love, you know, being, um, about 49, almost 50 myself. I, you know, I learned to type on a typewriter. I learned that on a typewriter. I don’t want to be dancing on my Instagram stories. Like that’s not something. So I love that. And there’s, and there are so many business women online that are in that forties, fifties, sixties, and beyond age range who want to know how to do it for them, not for.
03:19
Not that there’s anything wrong with it, but for a 20, 30 something, I feel like it’s a totally different way of showing up. is absolutely. mean, you’re people, I mean, well, depending. I mean, I don’t know if you’re trying to target, if you’re someone who targets, let’s say, young moms, well, I think you’re going to have to probably get on that train if you actually want to connect with them. But at the same time, there’s still a way to find your voice. You don’t have to lip sync to a 2014 Beyonce song.
03:45
think that you have to point at text bubbles. It’s not like that anymore. is a different way, a better way. But I think what you have to do is back it up and go, okay, who am I trying to talk to? And what is it that I want to say? And then how do I get my message out there? Yeah, yeah, like knowing who you’re serving is like a huge like, it’s the thing. Like, really, it’s the thing. If you you don’t know, if you don’t know your audience, and you’re just like, Oh, I think I want to work with
04:14
No, that’s that’s if you’re struggling to find footing and maybe see any results from your social media, it’s probably because you haven’t reached really, really, like really gone in far enough. That’s it. Because you have to know who you’re talking to in order to know what the problems are so that you can solve them. Exactly. Yes, you need to know who it is and what problem you’re solving. And then that’s how you can serve them. And that’s how that’s everything. Right there. could bottle that up.
04:43
Okay, everybody go figure out your audience. then yeah, yeah, figure out your audience and what problem are you going to have? Because I think, you know, I started online. I don’t know when you started online. I know we’ll get into your backstory a tiny bit, but I started like in 2010 as a blogger where I was just sharing projects and whatever. And there was no focus on who my person was. What I mean, I vaguely kind of sort of maybe could tell you.
05:09
But like now I think, especially with all things AI and all those things, you really need to know who you’re serving and what problem you’re helping them solve. Otherwise you’re just going to get lost in the noise of all the things online. Yeah. think also what compounds that is, you know, in 2010 when you and I were starting this and doing this, there wasn’t as much competition either. So I feel like what’s happened, especially in the last five years is there are so many women at midlife realizing that, well, either they’re leaving
05:39
crappy marriages and they’re starting out on their own and they don’t want to go back to her traditional nine to five or they’re getting to retirement and realizing they don’t quite have enough. So there’s all these women who are pivoting in midlife to saying, wait now I can actually monetize my own genius and already all the things I already know. This is really cool. So I think there’s more competition too. knowing that there’s more competition also makes you want to really define your audience so that you can attract specifically them. If other people come great, but
06:08
The narrow that you can go, the better it’s gonna be for you in the long run. It’s true. think, um you know, that competition is, it could be seen as a negative, but I think it’s such a good thing because then you really do focus so much better, right? Like on who you’re serving, on who you are and what you want to share with the world. And it’s true. I mean, I’ve done this for a while. Good marriage, great marriage, three grown kids now who are in their twenties though. And I actually homeschooled them.
06:36
My days look very different now and I have, dare I say, all this time, which sounds so awful to say to a younger audience who’s like in the craziness of it. But it’s like, yeah, like it’s something else now. So there are so many opportunities, which is so amazing for, like you said, midlife women. Like there was, this is the best. Like there was never anything like this before. Like let’s not even just say midlife women. anybody at any point can now monetize pretty much anything
07:06
from their phone. mean, any business that you want to do, you can figure that out. We live in an incredible, I feel like we live in this really incredible time where you get to do what you want to do and try it and figure it out. It’s possible. Yeah. And you can try it. And if that doesn’t, you know, that doesn’t work for you, you can try something else. pivot. pivot. pivot. You pivot. You pivot. You pivot.
07:35
in small town Nova Scotia, which we were just talking before this, you and I are both in Canada. I would imagine most of our audiences are in the US, because that’s kind of how things work. But like, you were a grade two teacher and you were playing with the Apple computers, like behind the scenes. so yeah. It was a fun story. So yeah, my first year teaching, so I got like a term position.
08:00
And it was a day in the winter where we were having, like elementary schools do, a lot of guest speakers in, and the room where we ate lunch was really, really full. So I thought, okay, well, I’m just gonna, like every elementary school in a rural community always has a stage, and on the stage are these beautiful velvet curtains, and behind the velvet curtains are always, you know, under these turps.
08:23
You know it’s the gym equipment that the phys ed teachers don’t want the kids climbing on, right? So anyways, this one day that it’s really busy in the lunchroom and I need a place to eat my soup, I kind of like snuggle in and see what looks like a table. And I thought, okay, well I can just like lift up the tarp and, you know, kind of saddle up to the table. I lifted up the tarp and it was a whole classroom of Apple computers. And my eyes went like, but, and not a teacher in the school knew how to turn them on. That’s why they were all sitting there. They were literally-
08:52
Like it was they were unboxed, but just all there. I went to the principal and said, um, am I allowed to there? She’s like, yes, please. Will you? So I immediately went to the library, my town library and took out a like went to the card catalog. That’s how ancient this was. Took out a book on how to code, read it.
09:16
went back, taught my grade twos, ended up helping all of the teachers in the school learn how to, I mean, at that time we really were programming because there was no software computers in the beginning. And that was the start of just a lifetime of loving technology. mean, and then that quickly pivoted to, and actually even before that, even if we go back a little bit before that, I can remember being in high school and going around to all of my friends houses before school started.
09:44
to program their VCRs to tape the scopes so we could all watch them together after school. I mean, that’s, we’re talking probably two decades before DVRs even became a thing. I’m pretty sure their parents never even knew what was happening. Their mother would be vacuuming in the middle of the day and all of a sudden the VCR would come on, it would freak them out. That’s just always been me, that’s who I am. And I have this real knack for being able to take
10:14
what’s complicated. I think that’s because I spent so long, I 13 years as a teacher. And I think because I know how to connect to children, I break all of this stuff down that we need to understand and learn that we fear in technology or software or whatever it is that we’re trying to tackle and just distill it down into really instructional step-by-step practical solutions that’s going to get you further faster. Yeah, no, I love that. That’s one of the things that
10:43
I find too is breaking like that I’m decent at is breaking things down into step by steps because yeah, because it can look overwhelming when you look at the whole big picture, right? And if you, if you don’t help people see like, no, it’s there, it’s, there’s a process. You can break it down. That’s awesome. So, so you loved that you taught for 13 years. said, when did you sort of realize you wanted to do your own thing? Well, I, um, so when my daughter was born, um, just before my daughter was born, actually, I was going to job share.
11:13
So I was going to go down to part-time and then was going to, was married at the time. I was going to start working with my husband, kind of like doing the books. He was a contractor, a home builder. Okay. And when I became pregnant, I went, okay, well, not two and all three. Like that’s not going to happen. So we’re going to have to pick. So I took a leave of absence for two years from my teaching position because I just needed to figure out, do I really like this? And it, did I like it? No. Was I competent at it? Yeah. Okay. Uh,
11:42
Was it the thing that was that lit me up? No, I really enjoyed being a mom and I really enjoyed being able to be home with my daughter. But I also knew that I wasn’t fulfilled. Like it was, we quickly figured it out. Like within probably five years, we realized. You’re talking about the doing the bookkeeping part? Yeah, me working for him and like, it wasn’t my dream. That was his dream. And I was like, hopping onto his dream. Yet.
12:10
I saw enough about entrepreneurship to know that maybe there’s something there for me. So I can remember I hired a life coach about that time to go, because I didn’t know, am I going to go back to teaching? Do I want to go back to the classroom? uh I knew that this technology thing was like whispering in my ear. mean, everybody, I my gosh, I was every teacher’s best friend because not only did I know how to keep my mouth shut in the classroom and
12:37
keep confidentiality, I could literally help them with anything because I was a teacher. I knew what they needed. could be their second pair of hands. And I think I allowed myself, no, I know, I allowed myself to really almost self-sabotage myself in a way because I felt needed, right? And my ego loved that. Oh my gosh, I have to do it and I have to help, I have to volunteer. And what I was really doing was I really, when I look back now, what I see now.
13:06
I was feeding my creativity because that was inspiring me and writing checks and managing invoices was not at all. So when I hired my life coach and we started kind of started talking, I can remember sitting across from her like in the first session. And I remember like halfway through going, hmm, you get paid 150 hours, $150 an hour to do this. That’s interesting. I just kind of filed that away.
13:30
By the end of the three months, I realized I really felt like I need, I felt like a calling like to be certified as a coach. So I went, I did the whole training. It was amazing. When I first started my business back in 2010, like you said, I thought I’m to be a coach, like a life coach. Cause I wanted to help women like me that were at that place in midlife that they’ve, you know, my daughter was I think 10 around that time. I really wanted to help them find their thing because I felt like I found my thing.
13:59
And then I started listening to the amount of tears and, you know, crying that showed up and I was like, okay, can’t do this. So at the time, a lot of my coaching colleagues were coming to me saying, um, you’ve already got a website. How’d you do that? I’m like, built it like that. And they were like, well, can you help me? I’m like, well, I guess I could. And then I kind of realized, okay, if I’m going to do this, I need to, I mean, the professional development, you know,
14:27
I think integrity thing that comes from women of our generation kind of reared its head. And I went, okay, I need to get graphic, I need to get trained in graphic design. need to really understand web design, rub design and development better so that I can do this. And then I within six months pivoted to that. So that’s when I started my, I would say that was in. So if I did my coaching for like two years in 2012 was the year that I.
14:50
kind of started really doing design and development for websites and marketing because that’s really what it was. Although at the time I didn’t really know that’s what it was. I was just like, how can I build you a website? And that’s kind of how it happened. Yeah, that’s wild. Oh my goodness. So yeah, so I love that you mentioned the whole, yes, we feel like we need to be like educated and certified in the things that we’re going to go to. And also, yeah, like I find even now a lot of not
15:19
life coaches but other people, don’t understand the whole, yes, you need to have a website, you need to have an online presence, you need to have marketing that goes with that, right? Like, yeah, I feel like that’s sort of missed sometimes. And I look at someone’s website and I go, Because part of my training was graphic design, like that’s partly what I went to college for. So, which was super helpful when I started my own website, I have to say. Anyway.
15:46
You have described yourself as far as I can tell, techie with a tender heart. like that’s not something that, you know, techie people are usually techie people. And then there’s kindhearted people. Like, how did you figure out how to sort of blend both? And what does that mean to you? Oh, that’s a great question. Um, I think it was just, it’s just a natural, it was a natural extension of what I was doing. So what I was noticing is the women that were coming to me for websites for tech help. the techie part.
16:14
They were coming to me because they needed a solution and they felt overwhelmed or didn’t really know which way to go and thought it was a way bigger deal than it needed to be. that’s A. But B, what would always, every time happen is the moment that you’ve decided, hey, I’m going to build a website for my business, it is a very vulnerable, almost
16:40
like a vulnerability hangover you have because you’re basically putting your passion on the line and saying here I am world look at me come and I can help I can serve you and What I found was I was actually drawing on a lot. Thank goodness. I got my coaching credential Yeah, because I was drawing on that year of you know going through that training to be able to have conversations with women to help them understand the mental roadblocks that they were putting up
17:09
as they were on this journey to getting a website. when I say it’s combining techie with tender, it’s honoring and knowing that you have this journey and that it’s gonna feel really scary. But I can be with you in that moment to help you reconnect to why you’re doing this so that you can get past that and move on and get your brilliance out into the world because there are people who need exactly what you have to sell, even if there are 15 million other people.
17:36
doing the exact same thing. That is not a reason for you to not do the thing. That’s actually reason for you to do the thing because there are people out there with the wrong people. And if you don’t use your voice to say, I’m here and I work with these kinds of people and I love this. You know what I mean? Like you’re missing, you’re really, there are people wanting you.
17:56
And if you can’t describe it and connect with them. And again, this goes back to audience, right? Knowing your audience. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Waiting and they’re probably here’s what’s probably happening. They’re overspending or they’re they’re working with someone who’s let’s say if they are in a they’re a gen X or a boomer woman and they’re working with someone who’s 30 years old, they’re probably handing them a PDF and saying good luck.
18:21
where they really need someone who’s gonna partner with them and hold their hand and say, here, I can help you, let me show you the way. Yeah, there is so much in that. You will identify with certain people more than others. Even if two people are teaching the same thing, you are gonna be drawn more to one person than the other, and you’ll do so much better with that one person than the other. And then the other thing that you said is like,
18:49
It takes a lot of you into a website. Like when you’re creating a website for your business, there’s, you know, you’re like, well, it’s just a website. It just says what I do. And it says, you know, who am I about? But like, there’s so much of your personality that needs to go into that in order to show through on the screen. Right. And so I love that because, I mean, I’ve always done sort of my own graphic design, but there are other parts of things that I’ve done where like, I was working with like a 30 year old guy to do something like as my web host or something.
19:16
You just didn’t get it. Like it’s not the same thing. And so I love, I love that hand holding bit, like not in a condescending way, like, a hand holding hand here. Let me you with that. Yeah. your people need it and yeah, yeah, they deserve you. Yeah. And so that’s, that’s another thing too. Now I feel like I’ve had this conversation with a few people now is that like people, you know, I’ve been, I’m a big fan of like courses like
19:45
create it and be done and give it to someone. But I feel like now there’s so much information out there that people really need the, I’m going to say hand-holding, but like to help them implement and to help them. the support and the accountability and the implementation part. So yes, of course you can take a digital course and learn how to do something, but really you need community and em you need someone to help you understand how to implement. And if they don’t offer any support around that.
20:13
you’re really going to have to make a good decision that you’re buying uh a really good course if you’re going to think that you’re just going to get it on your own. always would anytime even before the kind of like huge wave of digital courses that have come out. um I can remember always being very discerning about, do they offer like an option option to upgrade to a private one to one for an hour, because I would always pay the extra to be able to do that so that I can get like
20:41
really inside the brain of the person who created it because sometimes it might not be delivered in the way that I need to be able to consume it. But if I could ask a question on a live call or directly, way better. Yeah. for sure. So, okay. So was there sort of a moment in all of this where you sort of realized that you’re not just selling websites and you’re not, you know, that sort of thing? you’re selling
21:06
the confidence, the momentum, the permission? Was there a moment where you realized that’s what you were doing or was this sort of always in the back of your mind? No, I would definitely say it wasn’t always in the back of my mind. didn’t really, I wasn’t able to articulate that probably. mean, honestly, probably if I look at, so I left my marriage just before the pandemic and went out on my own and then the pandemic hit and I had no one coming in and it was really scary.
21:36
And I had to go, okay, am I gonna go back to teaching? It didn’t feel like an option. All right, so I’m all in on this. What do I have to do? So the biggest pain point that I had at the time, and I guess this would be when I kind of uncovered it. I had been building websites at that point for about eight years and I thought, okay, the biggest hurdle that I was having was getting people launched. The reason I had the hurdle getting them launched was because they couldn’t commit to the content.
22:05
to put on the website. So they would use every excuse in the book not to give me content because and then I would see I wouldn’t get paid and that was a big problem, right? So I kind of, okay, I need to solve this problem because then I’m actually because I’m very quick at what I do and I love what I do and women love what I do. But if I can’t get the content like I wasn’t a copywriter, I didn’t have any
22:28
Interestingly, again, there goes the integrity thing, right? Because at that point, I’d been building websites for eight years. When someone gave me content, I could tell you in probably two minutes of scanning it, whether they were going to survive or thrive online. Again, street experience, but the integrity, I didn’t have a certification. I didn’t help people do this, right? Yeah. I got certified as a Story Brand Certified Marketing Guide. I did that in the summer of 2020.
22:57
Best thing I ever did for sure. Spent six years, I just left the community as a guide this year, simply because I’m no longer really using it day to day. So it doesn’t make sense. the incredible certification, but that gave me the confidence because all of a sudden I had a framework that I could implement that could get people launched quickly. And that led to even more coaching, I would say, than I had been doing previously.
23:22
And then I was like, I’m really enjoying this. And then I started really looking at like, you know, just kind of like taking a, sometimes it would be at six months or a year kind of looking at, okay, who have I worked with? Like in reflection, like you always have to do, I feel like those things. And if you don’t, if you’re a business owner and you’re not looking at your accomplishments or the things that you’ve reflected on or the things you’ve done, do it because we’re so quick to go to the next goal that we don’t celebrate the ones that we’ve had. But I always felt like looking at year end.
23:50
You know, who, who did I work really well with this year? What was it that they really came to me for? And just some journaling and really reflecting on that made me realize, wait, these women need confidence to be able to execute whatever marketing and sales are doing. And they their experience to be validated. They want to hear, they want to brainstorm with someone who has some different and unique ideas. And then they want to understand how to do it. So when I really took that 10,000 foot view and looked down and went.
24:19
Oh my gosh, I really sell confidence. help them figure out the log jam that’s stopping them from having the success or business or life or whatever it is that they’re looking for. Technology or systems or software or something that’s going to make it easier for them. And then they’re off on their way. So yeah, kind of organically and naturally, but also through self reflection.
24:44
Yeah, yeah, you had to look at it and see where it’s sort of like, Oh, you sell confidence. mean, I say to me, Oh my gosh, you just make me feel more confident or competent or aware or like, actually I feel like I know what to do. I’m not overthinking. And I kept tearing those things. And that’s kind of what made me go, Hmm, what am I really doing here? Yeah, through many different sort of actual things. But that was the through line through it for for sure. Yeah.
25:14
So, do you work with a lot of women who feel like it’s maybe too late or they’re not cut out for this sort of thing? When you’re sort of coaching them through that, what is sort of the first thing to help them shift sort of that mindset that you help them get through? That’s a great question. So I feel like they outwardly don’t think, that’s not maybe the first thing that they think. They may, they may have a story.
25:43
Oh, can I really do this? Most of the women that actually land in my world actually know they want to do something and they know they almost feel called with a bigger purpose. and maybe it’s it’s well, it’s one of two, it’s either they feel called to do something and they want to do it. Maybe they want to do coaching or, or it’s that they’ve done the good girl things. They got the education, they had the career, they raised the babies, they got the marriage, like tick, tick, tick, tick, tick.
26:12
And now their babes are grown and flown and they actually have a little bit more time on their hands and it’s finally time for them. And they’re getting to do what they’ve always wanted to do instead of what they had to do. So it’s kind of a both and situation I would say for sure. um, but they do feel like, I don’t know if I’m ever going to get this. Well, actually I hear two things mostly. I feel like I’m too late and I’m too far behind. And because I never learned any of this, like I’m never going to be able to get it. I’m, I’m dumb.
26:41
No, you’re not. You’ve just never had anybody explain it to you in a way that is going to make sense for your brain. That’s number one. And the second one is more um that they just think, I’m going to embarrass my kids. what will people say about me if I look cringy? So they don’t want to be embarrassed or humiliated. Those would be the two, I would say, big things that show up for women.
27:10
before they’re ready to take that first step. Okay, and so when those are the things that come up, like how do you sort of encourage them through that? Great question. So we start with your, well, we start with your offer. What is it that you think you want to do? You have to feel so confident about that offer that you know that will literally change someone’s life. And I don’t care if it’s a pen that you created or a
27:39
candle or if it’s a service that you’re offering someone, you have to believe with every fiber of your being that it could literally change someone’s life. And if you don’t, you’re not quite there yet because anybody that I know who’s a true entrepreneur will stand fully behind whatever service product, whatever it is that they’re offering. Once you’re in that place, that feels more like superwoman, like powerful, like, oh yeah, this, then you show up and you serve.
28:08
because then it’s not about that. That’s big thing that I feel like a lot of my ladies come with is that, I don’t want to be too salesy or I can’t be too promotional. Ladies, you’re in sales. The only way you’re going to bring revenue into your business and into your ecosystem is if you sell. So you’re going to have to get comfortable with selling, but selling doesn’t mean being salesy or
28:33
like spammy, like those bro marketers are gonna drop into your dooms with, I can save you, know, blah, blah, blah, whatever, right? Like, it’s more about if you understand your offer and you understand the audience who it’s meant for, the next step becomes, you feel more confident, like that just happens. You’re like, oh, okay. And then it’s aligning your messaging. Is your messaging now, now that we know your audience and we know your offer and you feel good about both.
29:01
And you know you’re unstoppable because when you are in that place, you truly are. And then it’s about making sure that you get the right words. So that I feel like that’s where like, even though, yes, I spent six years as a storyboard certified guide, that’s still like, I can’t lose that. Like that’s just a part of my identity now. So the messaging comes next. And then once you have your messaging, then it’s just a matter of testing it out with different audiences in the world and finding where your people are, like in terms of social media, is that Instagram? Are they on LinkedIn? Are they on both?
29:31
Do you need to be on Facebook? Like where are they at? How can you connect with more of them? And then off to the races you go. um Yeah, like it’s so much, it all goes back to like who you’re serving, right? Like where are they? What are they going to resonate with? Audience is number one. Obviously. I love that other, the other part that you said um that, yeah, we’re in sales. Like, like I think that’s why I think a lot of my
30:00
A lot of my listeners, a lot of my fellow bloggers who started out blogging in those 2010, 2012, whatever, we have a hard time with sales and have a hard time pivoting to that because for a long time it was super easy to just create content and have ad revenue come in. Whereas now for a lot of us things have changed and Google changed everything, which is total, it is what it is.
30:25
But now you have to pull back and go, okay, no, I actually need to sell something. Like I need to sell something. And so there’s that pivot. And then that, like you said, it’s the selling something doesn’t mean you are that bro marketer or that spammer who’s in your inbox, right? And that’s a really, I feel like that’s a really hard, that was a really hard thing for me. I’ll be honest. I have always had digital products. I have always worked, I’ve worked with brands and things like that. To some extent I was selling
30:53
But I did rely on the ad revenue because it was easy and it didn’t take that outward effort. so I think like for someone who’s in that place, like how would you sort of help them get to the mindset of a good place of selling or selling is a good thing? Do you have any? Yeah. I mean, what I would say, I’m thinking back, I’m reflecting on, so this summer in my membership, whole month of July, we did like summer sales school.
31:21
because um everybody’s like, I don’t want to be promotional. I’m like, guys, you’re selling. we have to figure, you have to find your rhythm with being promotional. So we spent a lot of time. The first thing that we talked about was, and I want to ask this question to everybody. always, oh, like, yeah. So when you’re online and you’re kind of like looking around and you’re seeing someone, can you spot a fake? Like you can, you can, you can instantly.
31:51
feel when it’s like, oh, this is cringy that this I don’t trust this person. And the reason why that usually happens is because they are being too promotional. But also when you really look at it, it’s often because they’re not aligned with the audience that they’re trying to connect with. So again, it goes back to if you know your audience and you’re clear on your offer and that sometimes that might mean spending four weeks.
32:18
figuring out your offer so that you can stand there and say, I literally know this will change someone’s life if they have this specific problem. And if you can do that, if you can tie an idea to that, then that’s great. Now, I will also say that if you’re in the place of, my gosh, I need something to sell. I have nothing to sell. Where do I start figuring that out? That I would say you’re starting with your audience. You always start with audience. Figure, look at your audience.
32:46
See who you’re connecting with. Reach out to them and say, Hey, what are your problems? What are you struggling with? And start listening for the things that you can solve because you need to create, whether it’s a digital product or a service offer, whatever it is, you need to create something that is in demand. Too many women create a digital course for a course that they think people need. And they do not find out if they’re a, their audience actually wants it or has the problem.
33:16
or B, will pay for it. So it’s really important to just start to poll the people who are in your audience. Find out what their struggles are as it relates to your zone of genius. Once you do that, then start having more conversations saying, hey, I’m putting this together. Maybe it’s a beta program, you run it and you just want a couple of test people to come through it. Get them to come through it, see what they say about it, then you’re gonna get the social proof, you’re gonna be able to use that as testimonials.
33:42
And then not going to give you more information to be able to make that ease transition to selling it. That’s what I would say. Yeah. And I think, yes, a hundred percent. Cause I’ve created things, you know, just willy nilly over a decade. You know, some things work, some things don’t. Yeah. Like, you don’t, sometimes you don’t know and it’s throwing spaghetti against a wall. like, I feel like people forget that they can ask. They forget that they can, even if you have a tiny audience and like 20 people on a mailing list or 20 people who follow you.
34:12
ask them, you know, like, get in their DMs, say, Hey, I’m really passionate about this topic. What do you think about it? Or if they’re saying something, because, oh my gosh, if they’re in, let’s say they are a designer, or they want to do professional organizing, oh my gosh, I love that thing that you have on the shelf behind is that can you tell me like, ask a question about it, that’s going to open the door. Like, I think that’s the other thing that people make women
34:40
in particular in our generation, make the jump to assuming that social media, you’re gonna post on Instagram and make $10,000 a month. oh my gosh. Let’s just say that right off the bat. Social media is where you build relationships. And then you have to get them over to your website, to your email list, whatever, in order to get them as a client or as a customer.
35:06
However, what I will say is that it’s in those conversations and it’s in building those relationships that you have to make the first move. So many women think, oh, nobody’s sending me any messages. Nobody’s liking my stuff. Engagement is more than half the game. You need to go find your people. You identify where they’re at. You go find them. You start the conversation. It’s kind of like I always use the example in my memberships about uh like, think about when you’re in kindergarten.
35:33
and you went to the playground for the first time on the first day of school and you you had a pink skipping rope, someone else had a purple sparkly skipping rope and you’re like, oh, I love your purple sparkles skipping rope. That’s a tongue twister. Oh, love your pink one. Hey, do you want to switch? You have to make friends first before you say, hey, do want to come over to my house after school? Like it doesn’t happen easily. So you just have to kind of think about the playground of social media that it is a playground.
36:02
It’s not the conversion place. It’s not where you’re, you know, the amount of women that say to me, oh, I’ve never gotten a client from my website or I’ve never gotten a client from social media. Okay, but are you expecting that you will? Because really social media is where you build the relationships. And then it’s your job once you get them over to your website, into your email list, to develop it even further and go to the next level so that they do feel comfortable trusting you. uh
36:26
when you identify or when you explain it in a way that they understand that you can solve their problem. Right. And I think, we get inundated on those social media channels with ads, with people selling things in a not awesome way, telling us that, I had this $37 product and in a month I made $50,000. think not that, you know, wonderful. I think that’s possible.
36:54
Yeah, that’s possible. Don’t say I don’t want you to think that I don’t think it’s possible. But it’s not easy. And and I know that and I can absolutely confidently say I make great money from selling digital courses and I have right $27 $37 products. But right, most women will not do what I did in order to get to the place to make that kind of revenue. They’re believing some teeny bopper.
37:20
with uh Ring Light telling them that they’re unstoppable and they are unstoppable and I’m glad that they’re out there empowering women like that, but the reality is there are a lot more steps to passive income than just deciding you’re gonna create a product in Canva and then selling it. You need to know how to market and sell it, which goes back to all of the part of the conversation that we had earlier. Yeah, yeah, and so, yeah, I love that. Okay, so.
37:48
Obviously you do a lot of things. have different products, different coaching, all kinds of things. How do you sort of juggle all that? What do you focus, decide to focus on each day without like burning out from all of it? So I will say it’s when you’re in that place of moving between, em
38:08
Like when you’re working one-to-one with clients and then your scalable income, like whatever that scalable offer is, I definitely nearly burnt out during that time because you’re still having to keep up managing clients and doing individual projects while you are creating this scalable income with digital courses and a membership. So I will say that there was a period there where it wasn’t healthy for me at all, but very quickly I was able to get over that hurdle. So how I balance it now is more.
38:37
a means of making sure that I’m bringing on the right people and the right team members at the right time. And I think a lot of the mistakes I made early on, which was, my God, I’m so busy. I just got to hire somebody and you make the wrong hire. Like you’re just ready to throw money at anything because you don’t have the time to do it anymore. And then you get the wrong people in place, right? Like that’s what happens. So one thing that I did at the actually was at the beginning of this year,
39:02
I went and I flew to Calgary actually. There’s an amazing coach there in Calgary, Lindsay White. I’m gonna get it wrong. can’t think. High level leadership. High voltage, high voltage leadership. she’s actually, her background was in HR. She was also trained in the same coaching methodology as me, which is what was really attractive to me because I’m like, okay, she’s a co-active coach.
39:27
I do well with that kind of coaching, that’ll be great to of figure it out. So meeting with her and helping her develop, helping me, helping me develop a like three months, six months, 12 months, three year, five year, 10 year plan. Like really we walked through the whole thing and then it really helped me go, where am I spending my time? What am I spending my time doing that? I really don’t need to be doing that part anymore. And
39:53
really making decisions all the time on what am I ready to hand off? What am I ready to hand off? And once you kind of start to realize, I can cultivate the team that I need. And I’m going to give you a really great example. two years ago, one of the biggest when I was real, this is when I was kind of in that place in between where everything felt really overwhelming because I was doing all the things. I really kind of went, okay, I need help.
40:20
And I was ready to throw money at anything, but then I kind of went, but what do I need help with? And I was looking around my house. I’m like, okay, I can’t stand that when I leave my office, my office is great. But when I leave my office and I go out, it is, it’s chaos. So I kind of went, I need someone to help me come in and tame the chaos. I didn’t need a cleaner, but I needed someone, an organizer. Anyways, like things happen.
40:44
All of a sudden I’m looking on Facebook in a Facebook group in our local Facebook group and this girl’s like, yeah, I’ll come in and I just, I don’t clean, but I’ll surface wipe and I’ll organize everything and I’ll give you, I’m like, who are you and how, what? So, and she still comes once. Now she only comes, she used to come twice a week. She only comes once a week. She keeps me on track, organized, gives me enough space so when I leave here and I’m done for the day in my studio,
41:13
I can go out to the rest of my home and everything’s like, it’s just peace. Do know what I mean? So I would say that would be the other thing. There are so many women that want to give social media away. That’s the first thing. Oh my God, I can’t make enough money to give away my social media. It should be the last thing that you give away because it needs to be your voice. People are buying you, they’re buying your expertise, they’re trusting you. And if you’re giving that away, you’re giving your power away to someone else to craft a narrative that might not even work for you.
41:42
Yeah. I would say that. Yeah. Yeah. And I say this because I mean, again, we’ve all made the mistakes and that’s how I think I can competently talk about them. if you have to look at your whole life, it’s not yes, you feel like it’s about your business, but that hire that I made Kate saves me every Thursday. comes 1115 bar except in the summer she’s off with her littles and that’s okay. I think next summer she’d probably be the first summer that she’ll work.
42:12
like all year round. best thing I ever did was hire someone to help me organize personal parts of my life. Because that freed up, so like she does my laundry, she does my Costco run, she does, she gets groceries for me, she goes to the post office and mails client gifts. Like she doesn’t just do like a service wife and organize my closets and my, you know, stuff. She does stuff. She changes my sheets. She, that’s stuff that I don’t have to do. So that’s one thing that I did for sure. And I think the other thing that I, um,
42:42
do a lot. do solo retreats a lot. I will take myself away for two, three nights anywhere, sometimes with someone, sometimes by myself. And that gives me uh time away from my business to go, okay, recalibrate. What am I doing that I like doing? What am I doing that I don’t like doing? What can I give? What, do I create a process or a system to like, offload this on someone else? Or is it mission critical to my business that I continue to do it?
43:10
Again, building time for reflection. Those are the things that I would say that I do. ah no, that’s really good. Can we go back to the part where you said, you know, where you’re transitioning from the sort of one-to-one to the other part? And I think it’s probably really important to say there’s probably no getting through that without burning out at least a little bit and recognizing you’re not burning out.
43:34
recognizing that it’s a season kind of like, know, when you have a newborn and it’s insanely all in intense and you are exhausted, but it is a season that you need to be present for, but it passes through, right? Like I feel, I almost feel like, am I wrong? in the- at going with, is there anything that I could have done differently that would have made that period in my life easier? I think the only thing that I probably-
44:00
could have like looking back now, which would have been impossible to do in the moment. So I need to recognize that too. Right. Yes. First that the income when I was seeing the signs that my skit, my offers like to scale my business were, and if you’re not, if you’re listening, going, what the hell is she talking about? Moving beyond time for money. So moving to a one to many model instead of a one to one model. So when I was in that period of transition,
44:29
Um, it would have been bringing on someone, I think, looking back now, like hiring someone to do the marketing tasks that even though I enjoyed doing them, they needed to happen. Like I needed to publish a podcast episode or a YouTube video, or I needed to keep like publishing stuff on my website. So content would keep flowing so I could keep getting leads. And like, and if I dropped any of those balls, my fear was, well, it probably would have happened to you if you dropped her. Cause we know when you drop the marketing ball.
44:58
you know, all the leaves dry up, then you have no business and then you’re kind of going to panic again and you’re back at it you’re like, Oh my god. I think, you know, looking back, it would have been if I could say one thing, it’s to when you’re seeing the signs that people are showing up, em trust and jump and go then because that’s what I didn’t do. I think that I guess it was em it would have been like October, November 2024. This is when this kind of like blew up for me. And
45:26
I did a free challenge, I was doing a free Instagram challenge. There were some signs, I was selling courses at that time, but I wasn’t making consistent monthly income enough to be able to leave. But I was like, okay, well, maybe they need community. Again, maybe they need support, accountability, that’s inherent. Not only the teacher, but the coach in me knows that. So then I kind of thought, okay, well, maybe I could do a membership, maybe people would pay, I don’t know, maybe. Like again, like it was just like one of those, okay, great.
45:52
Yeah, I did a challenge and like I had done, I mean, how many webinars and free things had I done? And you get three or four pity people who show up live and then everybody else wants a replay. Well, my aha moment was I showed up to the challenge the first day and there were three pages of zoom people live.
46:14
Yeah. Okay, Christy, you’re not in Kansas anymore. I literally, didn’t come Friday, the day I’m supposed to present. Hey, I didn’t even have a community for these ladies. I had nothing. I didn’t have the sales page then because I’ve been serving them all week. had no idea 300 would go up and just, and I will say that 39 of them that day bought into my membership and I had nothing there. I literally like, well, what do you got? I’m like,
46:44
guys, I’m really sorry. Like I hoped to have something for you. had nothing. had nothing for them. And 39 of those women said yes anyway, and they’ve been there since the beginning. it’s trust, trust when you’re starting to see the signs. like if you can, I think if I could look back, here’s what I would say. Take a couple of really good projects, make sure you have a little bit of a buffer in your bank account so that if you need to take the time, if you have a slow month, you’re going to be okay. And then just
47:13
when you see the signs because once there’s a few there, like the snowball, it’s like one of those snowballs going down a hill, like one of those cartoons. Once it starts to pick up momentum, you found your thing. It’s time for you to make your mark. Yeah. Yeah. No, so true. And I think one of the important things like you were getting burnt out from doing all the things and keeping up with the marketing. One thing I look back on when I was writing
47:40
the two books that I wrote is I let a lot of things go to write the books. And I would have had things in place to keep the marketing going better because I can look back and see that damaged the rest of the business in order to have these things. And so, yeah, it’s so funny how lovely 2020 looking back, not the year, I mean, looking back, like, you know, that you can see so much clearer. Okay.
48:09
Let’s see, you’ve had a lot of pivots, right? Or a lot of additions, but I’d say pivots from the sounds of it. from all the things, what is there one that didn’t make sense at the time, but you did anyways, and you can see how it worked out or it was what you needed now. Yeah. So the first year of, was it the first year? Yeah, was that first year that we went into the pandemic was the first time I tried to launch like a group program kind of thing. And I had about
48:39
I think I had about 11 or 12 women who opted in. I was working with an amazing coach at the time. And it is absolutely what my membership is now, except I wasn’t alone. I didn’t have the marketing down. didn’t really understand my audience like I understand them now. didn’t, I thought, I think when I look back at it, I think I thought that they needed only tech support. And I really underestimated.
49:08
the community aspect and the ability to be able to ask your questions and work through the mind. It’s half of what we do is mindset when it comes to figuring out the way that you want to market your business. um yeah, think like looking back, I would say that would be the thing that I can really identify. Yeah. So so you just weren’t ready for it? Like, because you didn’t know enough?
49:37
What was it? I’m trying to, I’m uh, sorry. No, no, it’s a great question. Let me think. So it was.
49:46
No, you know what it was? I was doing what I thought people needed and not when they actually needed. So I created the program that I thought because it’s what I was interested in teaching. all that I spent a lot of time talking about, you know, how to build a beautiful brand and how to create a gorgeous aesthetic on Instagram. like we I know now that
50:11
I mean, it matters a little bit, but really it doesn’t matter. People want authenticity. They’re going to connect to you as long as you can talk on camera. And I think m at that time there were a lot of people, selfies were kind of like video was like in its infancy in the, in the form that we know it now, because Tik Tok just kind of blew up over that time, which is kind of where short form video came to play a bigger part in everybody’s business. know, women that I was working with at the time, they didn’t want to have their photo taken.
50:39
Let alone, yes, I think I was way ahead of my time in trying to encourage them to do that. And they were like, no, I don’t need to that. I don’t. That’s not important because it wasn’t important then. I look back and I think I just was not in alignment with what my market needed. And if I had have just gone to them and said, okay, give me the, tell me the exact playground that you need. Like, what are your questions? But also being brave enough to say,
51:08
but that’s not actually gonna solve your problems. I think I don’t think if I was, you know, little nuance difference because I feel like if I had have had the opportunity to say, okay, but color’s really not gonna like your brand. I have never not once hired even, and I’ve hired people I’ve paid up to $20,000 for a coach. I’m telling you, I don’t hire her because of her logo. No one’s gonna hire you because of your colors or your logo at all.
51:36
You’re wasting so much time in Canva. choose and be done. Pick something, a font. I don’t care what it is and put it on and go with it because you’re going to get further faster by actually working with people. That’s preventing you from working with people. So yeah, I could go back. I would be brave enough to say, actually, that’s not going to move the needle for you. And I’m going to encourage you to start posting selfies. Why do I need to post selfies? Selfies are stupid.
52:03
Now we’ve got everybody in their camera arming, getting, know, upgrading their devices so they get a great camera so they can, you know, create content. I love the place that we’re in. I think that I was just too early to try to get them to do it. And I wasn’t convicted enough in my beliefs to say, I actually think if you do this now, you’re going to be ahead of someone else. So don’t be afraid to be the Maverick. That’s what I would say. Like if you think you know where something’s going.
52:30
It’s okay to say it to your people and say, actually, have you considered this? Yes. Let them be with it. And if they don’t want to do it, that’s okay. Yes. You keep doing your thing. I think that talks a little bit to the actual part of you building your brand, right? Like you knowing this is what I need to tell people. I believe this is what they need, even though like they’re telling me this is the problem, but this is what’s going to fix it better than.
52:57
Yeah, what they think it is right? Yes, and a perfect example is this I would say conservatively 90 % of the women that land in my inbox or in my DMS are thinking that they have a follower problem I don’t have enough followers on Instagram and I’m here to tell you unequivocally if you can’t convert the followers that you already have No amount of new followers is gonna fix your business so
53:23
Really and I attract people into my membership into all of my trainings with Instagram specific training But once they get into my world, I let them know it’s not about Instagram like about it’s not just about social media They think it’s about social media because they’re believing what Millennials and Gen Z are saving about you know, create a canva template once and make $10,000 That’s possible, but there are so many other steps
53:53
there that for someone who’s maybe in their 40s, 50s, 60s, beyond, it’s not as easy and intuitive for us. yeah, it’s just making that shift as well. Yeah, yeah, it’s not a problem or conversion problem. I have plenty of followers. But they’re like, anyways, I won’t go into that. There’s another thing like if you do it, everybody’s like, Oh my god, I want a viral reel. No, you don’t.
54:22
because you don’t have any extra followers come with viral reels that don’t do anything for your engagement. You do not want a viral reel. Going organic and slow and grow, like that’s way better. Yeah, because yeah. Okay, so I’m curious. So this speaks to the Instagram part of things is, you’ve been doing this for a while. What’s changed the most do you think for women online and what makes you still want to kind of go, ah,
54:50
Stop hiding. Stop doing this. You talked about selfies and the video and stuff. One of my friends loves Instagram and she was like, take more pictures of yourself, take more pictures of yourself. I’m like, oh my gosh, I don’t want to. It’s not what I signed up for. It took a while to do it. How do you help women get past that part? This does speak to the Instagram part. I share what worked for me. I wish I had my… I don’t have them with me right now.
55:21
Grow your confidence. Figure out, so here’s what I did. Okay, I need to show up more. Okay, well, I don’t wanna show up on that. Okay, I’m gonna have my photos professionally taken. go, do yourself a favor, get your makeup done. But I’m gonna say it with this caveat. Get your makeup done, not by someone who’s 22 and who does brides all the time. Make sure you find someone who understands, well, they can be a bridal makeup artist, because they actually understand.
55:48
what a camera and like the light and what they’re do. that’s important. But get your makeup done professionally. You can do your own hair. I don’t care about your own hair. Get your makeup done and feel good. know it because they, if you give your makeup artist the assignment, make me look like myself but only better, they will get it. They won’t put on too much. I remember the first time I was like, oh my God, this is ridiculous. Like I feel like a celebrity, this is dumb.
56:14
I will never not have my makeup done when I have photos again. So that would be the first thing. And if you get enough brand photos done, you can turn those into reels. You don’t even need to. So that’s kind of like the first way to start showing up online. was like, Oh, this is easy. The next thing that I would say is to start doing live video, show up in stories, stories disappear after 24 hours. So even if you hate it, you, it’s only like for 24 hours, you’re also only going to get better at something. Do it.
56:44
So that would be the other thing that I would say. And if you can’t, and I have some ladies who just cannot get past that, what I say to them to do is create a private Instagram account that only they have access to. And go live, go on stories, and then watch yourself. mean, the other part that I will say for me now, I don’t even watch, unless I’m editing something, I don’t even watch what I’ve done. You’re kind of like an actor at some point, they don’t often look at the work that they’ve done.
57:12
but we can only get better if we actually do the thing. And in order to connect with your audience in 2025 and beyond, you need to be showing up on video. They’re buying you, they’re buying into who you are, the person. They’re not buying your business or your brand or your, even if they’re, even if they’re, you’re buying, I have this one client, here’s a great example. She’s 60, 61 years old, I forget.
57:38
and she makes her own and has for years has her own brand of organic skincare. she’s incredible. Like her face is insane. And I’m like, you only use like all natural products. Look at you. And she has had this block about showing up. I’m like, Kelly, you’re 61 years old and your skin has an earlier wrinkle on it. You are the face for your, you need to know what they’re saying. I’m 61 years old and look at me. I use these three products.
58:06
If you do that, you will sell more than getting any 20 year old with hands that aren’t wrinkled to show up on your video. So it’s really about just growing your confidence because it does take a lot and it feels really weird. And I think for even, the other thing I will say is this, as a Canadian woman over 50, so there’s three things, ding, ding, ding.
58:32
I don’t like looking at my feed and seeing it’s all me. It feels I still fight that patriarchy message that we got when we were younger, you know, stay humble and don’t get too big for your britches. And, you know, if we really unpack that, that’s really about, you know, not upshining your man, right. So and I think we naturally fight that we were that’s the generation that we came from. But I can tell you when I post something where I’m in it.
59:01
versus if I post like where I’m not in it, the engagement goes through the roof. And I now have a place in my life, in my business where I’m not gonna do something unless it’s actually gonna drive business for me. I’m not gonna waste time creating something that’s not gonna do anything like that’s pointless. I just don’t do that anymore. So sure, you can hide behind. I like to call them the five Fs. This is what most women hide behind. They’re fur babies. You look at their feeds, their fur babies are there. Flutters, post more pictures.
59:30
of freaking flowers. Oh my God, look at this, right? They also, if they’re away, fun. Oh my God, they’re on a plane. Oh, gotta take a picture of my wine on the plane, right? So they gotta post that. Or social moments when they’re out, they’re gonna post, they post food, there’s four, and then they post filler content, they post fluff, like inspirational quotes. No one is going to buy your thing because you post an inspirational quote. Yeah. So you can do all the things that hide.
01:00:00
But the faster you can like grow your confidence to start showing up online, learn from people who do this for a living. Like you, anybody can do it. I have, I have ladies in their seventies who are absolutely killing it. I’ve got one gal, she’s in her sixties and she’s a fashion stylist. She used to be a primary teacher. Like it’s amazing what you can do when you figure out your way, when you’re connected to what you want to say.
01:00:30
Yeah, it just happens. And the sooner that you start doing it, the sooner you’ll get better at it. know that in this day and age, but also think about this. I think this is a good one. When you invest with someone, do you like to hear about what they say? Do you want to hear from them before you invest? Because if you do, your people are going to want to hear from you. And that’s one thing. I think if you’re the other tip, this is the other big one that I would give anybody who’s listening.
01:00:59
When I create content or when I’m talking to camera, right? I’m a massive introvert. Like actually, if you looked at my Myers-Briggs, I am so far over on the five, like you can’t even go further than me. And I present very much like I’m an extrovert. I get that, but introversion and extroversion is not about being able to present and talk, it’s about how I take an energy. So my fear always was, oh my God.
01:01:24
If I show up on video and there’s like a million people, how do I even process like, first of all, was assuming a million people were gonna do my video. But secondly, I mean, it’s just you and your phone. How superverted do you need to be than just your phone, right? So uh there’s that, but it’s more the connection to that, when you’re talking or when you’re creating content, think about one person.
01:01:54
one woman that needs to hear a message, speak to that one person. And if you can do that, I guarantee you, your marketing is gonna land. Your sales are gonna start coming in because she’s feeling that. Like we talked about how you can feel the dissonance if you feel someone who’s being fake. You feel, you see the AI stuff and you’re like, yeah, no, not that, that’s no AI. But if you see someone on there saying, you know what, I know what it feels like to be struggling.
01:02:21
with Instagram, I know what it feels like to have your kids say, oh my God, mom, why did you post that? Instead, you want them saying, oh my God, hello trending, look at you go. That’s what you want to hear. And you can do that, but you have to skill up and you have to practice. And I would say, and this is one that I give all my ladies. So when I got my new glasses, I’m due to go, so probably two years ago, I kept going back and every time I had a photo shoot,
01:02:50
And I also schedule like three photo shoots a year. So I have enough photos. So I don’t ever have to do selfies if I don’t want to. That would be the other tip. But I would go back to the optometry place where I purchased them to borrow the frames so I could pop out the lens. But I don’t really have a second pair. So when you see me on camera, I’m not wearing these with an actual lens in them. I’m wearing just the frames, but I’m blind and everything fades away if I don’t have a lot of any kind of eye makeup on.
01:03:19
I just really put those glasses on, it frames my face. Off to go. Those are my tips. Do those I use these ones. That’s why I use these ones for camera instead of my clear ones that I use for everything else. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don’t like the reflection. No, I don’t. I don’t love it either, but I need them or I can’t see you. So. Okay. So, so when you said those five things, is that like, was that when you said
01:03:47
you had mentioned to me the top five ways women sabotage their social media. Was that the same thing or something? that similar? the only other thing that I would add to that is the amount of time that they’re spending in Canva pushing pixels around doing things that are not moving the needle for their business. So they’re spending time doing things that are pretty that they think matter. And they really don’t matter. would I would rather have you
01:04:11
just run with a Google Doc and put it together. It’s more respectful of the environment in terms of paper and printing and, you know, people even like the amount of size and energy that it’s taking to send a bigger file that’s got 20 million images and graphics in it. when you have to go update something, what happens is you have to go back and find that Canva document. Like the amount of women that waste time in Canva, I think is probably the biggest thing and the biggest hurdle to…
01:04:38
to really showing up and getting over it and just rip the bandaid off and start showing up. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Okay, so I, we are like over an hour. I know, it’s crazy. It’s so fun. I’m like, I have so many things we could talk about. Okay, but let’s for the sake of the listeners for now.
01:05:01
Is there anything that you are like super duper excited about? know you mentioned a couple of memberships and things like that. Like, is there anything that you want to share before we say goodbye and tell people where to find you? Yes. Okay. So you can go to activateherawesome.com or I’m activateherawesome on Instagram, YouTube, pretty much anywhere you want to find me. You can get me there. Okay. So let’s activate her awesome. And I would say I have two memberships right now.
01:05:30
The first one was created, that’s the story that I told about the 39 people showing up and just saying yes right away. So I have about 120 ladies in that one. That’s the high support. So that’s you get me, you have questions and every single digital course I’ve ever created is in there. Anything that you want from Pinterest to YouTube to launch a podcast to like Instagram, mean everything Instagram, but also LinkedIn, like all social media. That’s kind of all, like how do you do online business? That’s kind of that support membership.
01:05:59
And that one’s $67 a month. And then I was hearing from a lot of people that $67 felt a little bit too much for where they were at in life right now. So I really reflected on that because I do feel like what’s happening is that these women, the women that I work with are spending money with people younger, getting way less, like they’re not, it’s not even connecting with them. And then they feel bad and then they put on a moratorium on investing and they don’t, and I have tools that can help them.
01:06:26
So I really thought about that and thought, how can I package this in a way so that it is accessible? So I created a lower tiered membership, is currently just, I just launched it. It’s only $19 a month. It has all of the exact same courses in my higher touch membership. There’s just no support. there’s no, like, you know, in the other support, you get two weekly calls with me. There’s that you can answer your questions live. have a website specific strategy call. Like there are so many calls in a week that you could tap into and actually talk to me.
01:06:55
And in this one, it’s just completely DIY, but it’s perfect for the women who are self study or who are at the beginning of their journey thinking, okay, maybe I want to check this out. yeah, so I have the two, that one’s called her path, her pace. And then I have my Activate Her Awesome Academy. That’s the, the more support one. And there are people in, mean, yeah, it’s, it’s amazing to me how many people are saying yes to the lower price one. So there is a market for it and obviously a need for it. So
01:07:23
I’m glad that I did it and I love just being able to create content that I know that they need and then just like, here you go, surprise, new video today. Like all of it. That’s awesome. That’s awesome. And so all of that can be found via web page, activateherawesome.com. cool. I will make sure that goes in the show notes so people can find you. And thank you, Krista, so much for joining me today. This was a fun conversation. I’ll have to have you come back and talk about more stuff.
01:07:52
Yeah, I loved it. Thanks so much, Shannon.
01:07:56
oh That’s it for today on The SHANNON ACHESON Show. If you found this helpful, follow the show and share it with a friend. And hey, if you’re not sure what kind of business actually fits your life, take the free quiz at shannonacheson.com. It’ll point you in the right direction. Thanks for listening. Talk again soon.
