Living The Red Life - Building a Million $ Business WITHOUT Ads! w/Tori Dunlap

Episode Date: October 28, 2024

Tori Dunlap, founder of *Her First $100K* and the bestselling author of *Financial Feminist*, who shares her expertise on organic growth, audience engagement, and brand building. Tori delves into her philosophy of "serve before you sell," explaining why businesses should focus on providing value before asking anything of their audience. She emphasizes that creating trust through valuable content—not simply promoting products—is the foundation of a loyal community. Tori also highlights the importance of narrowing down a brand’s message and voice to resonate deeply with a target audience, as trying to appeal to everyone often results in a diluted brand identity.As the conversation progresses, Tori explains her strategic use of automated messaging for identifying and engaging her most loyal followers, which allows her to tailor content and even upsell products based on their engagement level. She discusses the value of moving followers from social media to platforms she owns, like email lists or her podcast, so she’s not reliant on the algorithms for business stability. Tori concludes by stressing the significance of being authentic and even polarizing in her messaging, which helps attract a committed audience aligned with her values and vision. For those looking to grow a community or launch a brand, Tori’s approach provides practical insights into cultivating an engaged audience that’s built on trust and shared values.CHAPTER TITLES3:00 - Serve Before You Sell5:20 - Using Automated Messaging for Audience Engagement7:45 - Evolution of Messaging Rules and Strategy10:12 - Building Customer Support Through Custom Conversations12:30 - Targeting Ads to Highly Engaged Followers15:03 - Importance of Audience Engagement Over Conversion16:22 - Strategies for Organic Growth on Social Media17:02 - Top Lessons for Growing Your First Followers18:04 - Creating Value First: Why Trust is Key18:48 - Developing a Strong, Clear Brand Identity20:06 - Using Social Media as Top-of-Funnel Engagement21:12 - Moving Followers to Platforms You Own21:57 - Finding the Right Niche and Audience Sweet Spot22:10 - Building Stronger Connections by Being PolarizingConnect with Tori Dunlap:Herfirst100k.comIG - Herfirst100kConnect with Rudy Mawer:LinkedInInstagramFacebookTwitter

Social media is land you don't own. You do not own Instagram. You do not own TikTok. These platforms are so incredibly powerful for reaching people, but they're hard to build a sustainable business on. We had this video go crazy viral. I think it got 6 million views in a couple of days. And what happened is off of that one organic video, over just seven days, we saw 100,000 email subscriber signups. I need you to use social media to your advantage and then get people off the platform and onto land you own. That way you can better control your audience as opposed to trying to play the algorithm game.

My name's Rudy Moore, host of Living the Red Life podcast. And I'm here to change the way you see your life in your earpiece every single week. If you're ready to start living the red life, ditch the blue pill, take the the red pill join me in wonderland And change your life. What's up guys? Welcome back to another episode of living the red life today We're here with Tory and we've got a pretty incredible session because we're gonna talk about how Tori's Group very successful business with our ads which I know

Probably shocks a lot of you because I'm kind of known as the ad guy, but Tori, welcome to the show. I'm excited to dive in. I'm excited too. Thanks for having me. So we're going to talk about a lot, a bit about organic, how to monetize social media and specifically one big action of all, which I love and I'm fascinated to dive into is how you turn one TikTok into a hundred thousand leads.

I'm a big proponent of email. I recently did an episode on why email's not dead. And, you know, I've made millions of dollars from email, grew many big lists myself, so really excited for that. But if anyone doesn't know who you are, do you mind just giving a minute overview? Yeah. So I'm Tori Dunlap. I'm the founder and CEO of Her First Hundred K, which is a

money and career platform for women. I believe I was put on this earth to fight for women's financial rights. So I've taught over 5 million women how to save money, pay off debt, start investing, start businesses, and feel financially confident. I have the number one money podcast for women in the world called Financial Feminist. I wrote a New York Times bestseller also called Financial Feminist. And yeah, this is just my favorite thing to do is talk about money to make money, a more accessible topic for women so that we can make more women rich. I love that. I love that we've done some great female on panels and courses and stuff.

And, uh, yeah, I want to dive in more to some of the bits you built, but let's start with the, uh, you know, the elephant in the room, right? I've spent, we were talking about this earlier, up to 300 grand a day on ads. You've done no ads and built a very big successful brand. So I would love to know how you kind of came more to the organic route and what you've learned over those years organic on the organic side. Yeah. My background is in social media marketing. That's what I did at my nine to five. So I was working in social media and then growing her first 100k on the side. And when you're first getting started as an entrepreneur, you kind of had two paths you can take. You can go the time

route or you can go the money routes. I didn't have money. I didn't have a rich uncle. I wasn't about to raise millions of dollars in VC. So I had to dedicate time to it and I had to allow the business to grow slowly and organically in order to progress and to hit the kind of goals I wanted to see. So it started as a side hustle. We started in 2016. In late, late 2019 is where I felt finally comfortable enough to take the business full time. So 2020 was actually my first year of entrepreneurship full time. And yeah, I didn't have the money to spend on growing an audience or growing our products via ad spend or, you know, other expensive routes. I had my own time and effort on the side of my nine-to-five

job. And so organic is really where we've been hanging out this entire time. We've grown our audience to over five million social media followers completely organically, which I'm very, very proud of. And for us, I think it really has equated to a more authentic community, to people who are really dedicated to our mission and to what we offer, and who feel like this community is a true community in the sense of the word, where they feel supported, they feel encouraged, they've become friends with each other, right? It's a very authentic, incredible thing that I think me and my team have built where women feel safe, they feel supported. And I don't know if we

could have done that, at least in the early days in the same way, if we had paid for those eyeballs. Yeah, I think the organic side, if you can pull it off, it gives you, I guess, the purest form, right? Yeah. But I think the pulling it off part's hard. I like that because I mean, they're a little easier to start and test on low budget. And yeah, I'm a big opponent.

I've never really raised money, self-funded everything,, and most of my clients aren't from like Silicon Valley or BC. And, uh, you know, I was teach the key is you got to get profitable quick and it should cashflow it. Because like he said, it's very hard and, um, yeah, but it, but it is, uh, with ads, you get a lot of, uh, transactional stuff and over time you can really build the community, but it is definitely a tougher battle. But like you say, you sometimes save on, on the time side. Um, I grew my first fitness brand in two years to 60,000 members in a

frame at Facebook group, super supportive world events worldwide. Um, I was very lucky because I think like you, you mastered organic and, you know, really showed up there and I was very fortunate to master ads. And now, you know, we went back and then in the last two or three years really focused on organic and added that in. And I'm sure at some point you'll do the reverse on the other side. Let's talk about TikTok. Pretty incredible result, right? Taking a TikTok and turn it into a, you know, 100,000 leads.

A lot of people I find with TikTok, and even I've seen this, I've had a lot of clients and celebrities where they have a massive engagement and following there, but it's really hard to get them to take an action. So I really love this because you've kind of converted them off the platform into now becoming more in your ecosystem. So can we talk a little about strategy? Yeah.

And this is applicable regardless of what platform we're talking about. We could be talking about TikTok, we could be talking about Instagram, we could be talking about LinkedIn or Pinterest, right? We can talk about any platform here. The important thing about social media that is often gets overlooked, the sexy part of social is the going viral, right? And then maybe even taking it one step further and getting followers. And that's very exciting. And that can lead to a very big business, especially around like brand partnerships and straight influencer marketing. But if you're trying to build a sustainable

business that you have more control over, that you are not dependent on, you know, the ebbs and flows of the algorithm, the ebbs and flows of marketing budgets, and how comfortable brands feel paying influencers, you have to use social media as your top of funnel and get them off the platform as soon as possible. Social media is land you don't own. You do not own Instagram. You do not own TikTok. We have been dancing around a TikTok ban in the United States for like four years now. Instagram changes their algorithm, it seems like every other week. These platforms are so incredibly powerful

for reaching people, but they're hard to build a sustainable business on. And even for us, we have 2.4 million followers on TikTok, but the algorithm has changed so dramatically in the last year that we've actually spent a lot more time on Instagram. But I'll tell you the story of 2021. So before we had even posted this video that ended up going viral on TikTok,

I was starting to realize that we were having these viral moments, we were having a lot of traction, we were even getting hundreds of thousands of followers. But we had very little to show for it beyond, you know, maybe getting them to sign up for affiliates or, you know, engaging with them, again, on a brand deal side of making money that way. And I just saw the writing on the wall of, okay, this growth can't last forever. And also, I just want to be able to better market to these people in particular. So what my team and I did is we spent a good two weeks of our time building a quiz funnel.

So it's a free quiz, you can take it, it's still up in its current form. You can go to herfirsthundredk.com slash quiz and you can literally see how this works. Is we ask for your money personality or we need to help determine your money personality by the questions and the answers we get? Things like, do you have debt? How stressed do you feel about your money? Are you starting to invest yet?

And using that information, we can offer you a free personalized money plan that shows you our free resources, but also our paid resources, our affiliate links, et cetera. So what happens of course, is that in order to get your free money personality and your personalized plan, we exchanged that for your email.

What happened was when we built this, when we built this funnel, we then had the ability to send people who discovered us on social somewhere that we owned. So we had this video go crazy viral. I think it got six million views in a couple days. It got picked up by a ton of media outlets and publications. It got reposted on other accounts. And what I did in the caption, as I said, take the quiz in our bio for a free personalized money plan. And what happened is off of that one organic video, over just seven days, we saw 100,000

email subscriber signups. That's not even people who visited the page. That's people who went all the way through the quiz and actually gave us their email. So we still have those email subscribers. We have over 750,000 email subscribers now, largely due to that quiz that is still running, even though we built it three, nearly four years ago. So social media is an incredibly powerful tool.

It's what we use to build our business. And also I need you to use social media to your advantage and then get people off the platform and onto land you own via your email, via a website, even subscribing to your podcast. That way you can better control your audience and you have better access to them as opposed to trying to play the algorithm game.

Yeah, it's funny because we haven't kind of solidified exactly what we're gonna to talk on today. And I, every Monday at 11.30, which is two hours before recording this live, I host a weekly training and my training happens to be this week, 15 ways to monetize your online presence. And it was talking about different ways, you know, everyone spends so much time trying to build their socials and go viral and grow a community.

Because that's the sexy stuff, right? Like that's the exciting stuff is being able to say I have 5 million Instagram followers and like that's fun. And that is, you know, so great. But I especially saw because, you know, we blew up when TikTok was at its heyday in 2020, 2021. And I was the person, I had so many TikTok influencers reaching out to me and going like, okay, how are you making money off of this? I have 4 million followers here, but I'm not seeing any money. So I want you to have something to show for all that hard work. If you're posting every day, if you are growing this community, and especially an organic community, give them another place to go, add more value to their life, but also make sure that you are

better guaranteeing the success of your business in the long term. Yeah, yeah. I think I've always grown, I've never kind of, I kind of became slowly an influencer. I've always grown brands. So I've come from the other side of it where we, you know, use a lot of influencers to promote and now we have a whole celebrity division where that same thing, you know, even A-list celebrities, they're getting paid 10, 20, 30, 50, a hundred grand for a pose, but they don't have a real brand of themselves.

And they're starting to realize that, you know, that it's kind of burning their audience out and now they need to start a real brand. And it's crazy, like in some of the A-lists I have that I work with have 50 million, 60 million followers, but they don't have an email list. Yeah, it's just, you know, it's wild. So I love how, you know, the, the basic concept, um, it is obviously getting them in different places. Emails are obviously a great first step and an obvious first step. You know, I've been a big proponent of low ticket offers, which is something I kind of classify as sub 50 or a hundred dollars. I always think buyers take way more action too. So a lot of what we do is not only email lists

but getting them into some sort of a challenge or some sort of a paid product and that generally makes them a better customer and a more committed customer. But I would love to ask you now, you know we talked about this viral video, put them to a quiz funnel, but there's obviously different ways to grow an email list right, like lead magnets, cheat sheets. What other tactics have you used and found that you're starting maybe to test or have used in the past to grow that community off the social platform? Yeah, one of the incredible things we've been seeing on Instagram for the past year, year and a half is, and I'm sure you

are familiar with it, but a tool called ManyChat. Being able to, you know, talk to people in the DMs so you don't even have to ask them to take another step of going to a website or going somewhere else, but literally getting their email, converting them that way, just, you know, going down in Instagram DMs. So we have DM funnels for every product that we sell, for every free webinar that leads into a paid product, for our affiliate links. So, we're not just making money by sending them a link, but we're also getting their emails so that if they don't convert or if we want to, you know, offer them value or

sell them on something else two months down the line, we have their email to be able to do that. So, I think we've gotten an additional 200,000 email subscribers from those tactics and we have about two, just over two million followers on Instagram. And I have been seeing both for myself and other entrepreneurs, just crazy amount of success being able to monetize their Instagram audience and again, have it happen in Instagram DMs automated so you don't have to even think about like converting them and getting them to go to your website or somewhere else. Yeah, we, I was actually one of many chats beta users like nine, eight, nine years ago when it

came out and we use it a ton in my fitness brand. And back in those days, you, you know, it's the Wild West back in those days, you could send anyone a Facebook message at any point to, so you can even imagine how crazy it was. Now you have to like, you can only blast them like if they replied in the last 24 hours or something, I think. Yeah. And then recently, you know, we actually, uh, the last few years, I grew a big office, um, in person and we actually had several customer support people, um, we had automated, but then we actually did a

lot of custom stuff too. Um, so trying to create custom conversations with our most engaged followers, um, has worked really well. And one other one that maybe you'll start testing when you run ads is there's a lot of great ad targeting around people that are, um, the most engaged, right? So people that are like, engaged, we've had a lot of great ad targeting around people that are the most engaged, right? So people that are like, engaged, we've had a lot of success, you know, using it to figure out who are my most loyal fans and then sending them to a, some sort of a community or a low ticket or a webinar or another paid product too.

Oh, next question then. to. Next question then. We've kind of hovered around TikTok, but one thing that's important, you've grown millions of followers across many platforms. We bring a lot of people on here that have grown amazing communities of followers. I would love to ask you some more broader principles. If you could go back to your younger self and talk about social organic

growth, a lot of people listening on today's show are brand owners and trying to grow organically. They're probably doing some paid ads because they've followed me for a while. And now they're adding in organic alongside it. What would be like free lessons you could teach anyone trying to grow their first 10, 20, 30,000 followers? Yeah, I have an entire workshop on Instagram that I'll have you link in the show notes if you wouldn't mind that goes into this even more detail and talks about our entire strategy

for social. Three things I'm always thinking about. One, I need you to serve before you sell. So many people think that they're going to create communities and they're going to get followers by creating a kick-ass product. And that usually is not the case. It's usually not the, you know, selling and then converting into a community. It's getting people who want to see what you have to say because you provided value to them, you've built trust with them, and then you have a built-in audience that way. So we're really focused on providing somebody value, making sure that we serve them before we ever try to sell them on anything.

Not just sell them a product, but, you know, hey, give us your email, even follow us, give us your follow. We're really focused on providing value to that person, building trust with them, so that then when we do make that ask, it feels way less icky and it feels more authentic. And we've also done all of the work of actually building a relationship with that person. So please, especially organically, think about how you can create content

that actually provides value to people in your niche. So for us, it's personal finance content, right? It's teaching people the strategies around paying off debt. It's teaching people what the difference between a traditional IRA and a Roth IRA is. It's showing them the power of a high-yield savings account and how it can make you more money, right? So serving before you sell is just really crucial. And that's one thing I just want a tattoo on my forehead. Second thing, trying to be everything to everybody makes you nothing to nobody. So what I mean by that is so many people, especially when they're first starting out, whether that's on their website or on their social, they want customers, they want an audience. And so they think,

whether consciously or not, I'm going to be broadly applicable to everybody. The problem with that though is that someone comes to your website or someone clicks into your Instagram and reads your bio and they have no idea if you're for them or not. They're like, I don't really know what this person does, or if this product is something that I need, and it doesn't allow them to interact with you further. You want a visceral reaction where either someone's like, oh, hell yes, this is 100 percent for me,

or this is definitely not for me. Because I would rather have followers, even if they're less, 100% for me or this is definitely not for me. Because I would rather have followers, even if they're less, I would rather have less followers that are fully committed and fully get what you're trying to do than people who are apathetic about you or who don't understand. For us, we have a very strong brand voice.

I run a podcast called Financial Feminist. If you have a problem with the word feminism, you're not going to like what I do. But if you get it, right, the girls that get it, get it, the girls that don't don't, the people who truly get it are all in. They love what we do. They are so aligned with it. And, you know, there's millions and millions and millions of people who identify with the word feminist. So it's not like, it's such a niche audience that I couldn't sell or that I couldn't make money, right? So trying to be everything to everybody makes you nothing to nobody.

And finally, my third thing with social, again, is that we need to focus on using social media at the top of the funnel. How can we use these tools to our advantage? And then how can we think strategically about getting them onto a platform we own? Don't get caught up, again, in the vanity metrics. Those are fun.

Those are exciting. You can make money off of that. But just because you have 2 million followers on Instagram does not mean you have a profitable business. I need you to not have to run your business depending on how the algorithm performs that week. I need you to be able to have more control. So get them on an email list, get them to a podcast, get them somewhere that you actually

own. Yeah, level three of those and probably in many ways, you know, other experts and myself, I think we've taught very similar concepts and it always comes back to the basics. And, you know, I often teach like when you start out, you want a niche, but not too small, but not too big. There's some like sweet spot there where you can stand out a little. And I've had a, you know, being a kind of in the marketing influence space, I have a lot of what I call edgy friends and controversial friends. And I think that's important for social media too. Like I started trying to please everyone and not be polarizing. And I came from a sports

science background and as a scientist, you always say, well, it depends. You never know. Maybe you learn as a scientist to not be definitive. And that's really the worst thing for social media is the people that have like one side, you know, so, um, a lot of great stuff in there. So last few questions, uh, rapid fire format for you, if that's okay. Um, so first one, um, and we already mentioned it a little, but what's your most controversial belief that upsets people around business success, money marketing? Um, I think my biggest one is that money is political. That pisses a lot of people off, but when it comes down to it, uh, the way you

manage money and the way you view money and the way you pursue money has everything to do with everything that you have had to deal with in your life when it comes to systemic oppression and circumstances. I say in my book and my show that the personal finance equation is about 20% your own choices. How well do you manage debt? How well do you navigate that? And about 80% all of the things like the minimum wages and the student loan crisis and racism and sexism and ableism and homophobia, right? So that pisses a lot of people off.

But if you do two seconds of research, money is 100% political and it's way more based on your systemic challenges than it is on your personal choices. Great. Second one, biggest success or most money made from a launch product or biggest success in business that you're proud of? I think that 100k email subscribers off of one TikTok was a fun moment of just realizing like what I've built is really, really working. Hitting the New York Times bestseller list is always going to be a really, really fun thing. We worked really, really hard to make

that happen and the book's continuing to sell like it came out yesterday. And there's something so incredibly cool about walking into a Barnes and Noble anywhere in the world and being able to sign your book. Yeah, I've had a, I've kind of always slid some books regrettably, but had a couple of friends do New York Times and I've heard it's no joke. Congrats on that. It's intense. Yeah, it's intense. Yep. Biggest mistake or failure you've made? I think that it was actually early in my career when I was running the business as a side hustle. I think it was taking a job for the money. I actually talk about it in the intro of my book, but I was able to negotiate 20% more in a job than they wanted to pay me. And I didn't trust my gut

that something was off, something was wrong. Intuition, I heard as the greatest definition for it, it's you know something without knowing how you know it. And I just knew that job was not right for me. And I knew that job was not right for me And I knew that situation wasn't right for me and I will say every time I've gotten myself into hot water either in my personal life or professional life as a business owner It's because I didn't trust my gut I hired the wrong person or I made the wrong deal and my gut was very very obviously telling me to not do it And I just didn't listen so trust your intuition listen to your gut. It's never wrong. I agree with that one for sure. Okay. Last one,

which is my personal favorite question. If you could go back in a time machine and give yourself one to three lessons to help you be way more successful, way quicker, what would they be? It's the advice I give past me, present me, and future me, which is honestly just to worry less. And I know that's not super precise, but I have spent so much of my life wondering if things were going to work out. I spent so much of high school wondering if I was going to get into the right college. I spent so much of college wondering how I was going to get a job.

I spent so much of my early career wondering how can I navigate this and run a business. I spent so much of the business wondering, you know, just, I just really am trying to focus, especially this year, I'm just being really, really excited where I'm at and understanding that like it's worked out before. Even if it felt like it didn't work out, it ended up working out. So just trying to enjoy the process a lot more. Love it. And final kind of question, you've already talked about it a little, but if people want to learn more about you, I know you're hard to miss. You're everywhere, which is great.

And that's why you're here today to share how you got there. But where do people find you if they do, if they're inspired by it? Stay and learn more. Yeah. Her first 100 K is where you can find me. That's herfirst100k.com or at herfirst100k. I'm probably most active on Instagram, so I would love to come see you. Come say hi. And Financial Feminist is the name of my book and podcast.

Great. Bye!