the bossbabe podcast - 391. How She Landed Kim Kardashian as a Customer + The Marketing Strategies Behind Product Based Businesses with Jacqueline Snyder, The Product Boss

Episode Date: June 20, 2024

If you have a product based business, this episode is for you! Natalie sat down with The Product Boss herself, Jacqueline Snyder, to get the scoop on how to market + sell your products – from the difference between service and product based marketing, growing your visibility and sales + pricing strategy to selling wholesale, influencer marketing, and motherhood… this episode is packed with the specific strategies and insights you need to take your product business to the next level. Press play to dive in! TIMESTAMPS 1:45 - Introduction + How Jacqueline Got Started 7:40 - Getting Your First Customers + Selling Your Products 9:30 - Building Your Audience + Your Waterfall of Sales 10:45 - The Process of Selling Wholesale 12:40 - Story of Kim Kardashian + Carrie Underwood Validating Her Product 14:30 - Influencer Product Marketing 16:10 - The Core 4 Foundations + Biggest Mistakes People Are Making  18:45 - Pricing Strategy + “Charging Your Worth” 22:45 - Hero Products + Active/Passive Sales 26:30 - TikTok + Working With Agencies 29:20 - Your Job As A Founder  33:15 - Motherhood + Starting A Business During That Season 42:00 - Free Training Invitation + Closing Thoughts RESOURCES + LINKS Get free Bossbabe bonuses when you join Business By Design at https://bossbabe.com/bbd    Join Jacqueline’s Free Training To Get Clear On Your Brand, Attract More Customers + Grow Your Business Join The Société: The Place to Build A Freedom-Based Business Get Our Weekly Newsletter & Get Insights From Natalie Every Single Week On All Things Strategy, Motherhood, Business Growth + More.  Drop Us A Review On The Podcast + Send Us A Screenshot & We’ll Send You Natalie’s 7-Figure Operating System Completely FREE (value $1,997)  FOLLOW bossbabe: @bossbabe.inc Natalie Ellis: @iamnatalie Jacqueline Snyder: @theproductboss

Just a quick note to let you guys know that we will now be releasing episodes on Thursdays and Saturdays instead of Tuesdays and Thursdays. We've noticed that so many of you listen more on those days and so we're going to release the episodes accordingly. We'll do it as a test and see how it goes. I'm always open to feedback if you want to drop me a DM at IamNatalie. But yeah, the episodes will now be Thursdays and Saturdays. Welcome back to the Boss Babe podcast. I am so excited for this episode because we generally talk on here a lot about service-based businesses and if you listened to my episode a couple of weeks ago where I announced that I just co-founded a brand new company then you'll know why I was doing a lot of digging in this episode because I interviewed

Jacqueline Snyder. She is the force behind the Product Boss. She hosts the Product Boss podcast and she helps product-based businesses grow their systems, visibility and sales to create the life and business that they want. They have coached over 50,000 students in their courses, workshop, and masterminds, anywhere from startups to multi-million dollar businesses. And so I was selfishly really, really excited to interview her to talk about the difference between service-based business marketing and product-based business marketing. For me, getting into a new product-based business, I feel like I'm really starting from the beginning. Yes, I had a supplement company back in the day,

but it's been a long time. And I never got that to the level that I have Boss Babe. So I'm really excited to be learning and starting from the beginning and getting to learn from people like Jacqueline. So it was a real honor to have her on here. We also talk about motherhood. We talk about motherhood.

We talk about what it's like running a company of her size. And we just kind of go in many different directions. I think you're really going to love this one. I know I did. And I took a lot away from it. Even if you are not a product-based entrepreneur, there's so much in here that I think you'll find valuable. So with that, let's dive into the episode. Welcome to the Boss Babe podcast.

I'm so excited for this. I was just saying, I'm excited for you to teach me product marketing because I have no idea where to start. So hi, welcome. Hi, I'm so glad to be here. It's so funny you say that because you're like a master marketer and you actually were a product boss at some point. I know, but I feel like back then

I was kind of throwing everything at the wall and figuring out what worked. Like if someone was like, give me a roadmap, I'm like, how much time you got? Cause I was throwing everything at the wall. So speaking of that, take me back. Tell me how you got started in the product world. So I am a fashion designer by trade, which is funny.

Cause now that I'm like, am I, you know, am I still a fashion designer? But I am. funny because now that I'm like, am I, you know, am I still a fashion designer? But I am. So I went to school for it, became a designer and worked for some big brands like Cosa Bella, which is an Italian lingerie company. I designed for a celebrity brand. And in that, I think I was really lucky because these brands were still run like mom and pop. So while they had millions of dollars and it was a bigger company, I was given amazing

opportunities right out of school versus my friends who worked for Gap or Nike. Like they had very, very, very small roles in corporations. And I really transitioned out when I was interviewing for bigger companies like BCBG and all these things. A friend of mine who was an entrepreneur and in maternity, she's like, you know what? While you're looking for a job, I need some extra help. So I kind of came over and helped her. And in the meantime, she's like, you know what? I kind of looking for a job, I need some extra help. So I kind of came over and helped her. And in the meantime, she's like, you know what?

I kind of want to start teaching other people how to do this. So I was 26 years old. I knew nothing. I mean, I knew more than other people, right? I mean, they always say you just have to be one step ahead. But I guess I was courageous and took the leap. And so together, we started consulting people in the fashion industry. So if they had an idea for a product, I would design, develop, and produce.

But she left within like a month. We got three clients. She got pregnant. She's like, I'm out. I don't want to do this. And so she's like, if you want to keep the clients, keep it going. So that really changed the trajectory of like everything I thought I was going to do. I didn't go get another job as a designer for people. Instead, I started designing for people who were like, you're like, let's say Natalie, you're like, I want to come out with a kid's line. You come to me, I design it, develop, produce it, and help you grow it. So I did over 2000 of those brands. And while I was doing that over the last almost 20 years, I started one of my own, which is called Cuff's Couture. And it was a wearable wrist wallet. And that's where I really

was able to test out, you know, selling direct to consumer, how to market myself, having my own brand. I had a ton of celebrities like Kim Kardashian and Carrie Underwood were my products. And that was really the foundational part of me learning, you know, 2000 times how to start a brand and really like establish myself as like a product business expert because I've made so many different kinds of products. And what had you then transition into teaching it? Because it's so interesting. You probably learned so much about marketing a product, get into teaching it. And you're like, oh my God, I now have to learn a completely different way of marketing and messaging to people. Yeah.

I mean, it really was, I was an agency, right? So it's like, you'd hire me and pay a lot of money and we would, we would work for you and design develop. It's kind of like an architecture firm, right? Like when you want to do your house. So I didn't, I was a decade into business before I ever found out about podcasts or online education, right? Like you want to do your house. So I didn't, I was a decade into business before I ever found out about podcasts or online education, right? We knew about, you know, the DVDs you could order. That's how I'm dating myself. And so I actually had a client, she's a bodybuilder that

I was helping her build swimwear for bodybuilders. So again, random products. And she's like, do you listen to podcasts? And she introduced me to a few that she thought I'd really like. And I started listening and I thought, wow, there's such a gap. Nobody's speaking to product people. And so first, the very first thing before I decided to create an education company around product or scale it in any sort of way versus just one-on-one consulting and coaching, I was first like, huh, maybe we need to speak to more people. And so I actually started with a co-founder and we had met in an online Facebook group through another podcast. She had a product, I had a product, and we both were like, nobody's speaking. Should we start a podcast together? So that was really the origination of how we ended up

creating the product boss as it is. And then as the years went by and we started learning more about the online education system, like everything that we could do, I think it was two years in a business after we had a podcast, we had masterminds, and then we launched our first online course. And I was just like, this is crazy how many people I can impact in such a huge way globally that I could have never done when it was just hour for hour. I love this so much. And I still do feel like very few people speak to product people. Do you find that like, am I in a bubble or is that the truth? It's the truth. And, you know, I believe there's room at the top for all of us, right. And collaboration of a competition. But I think the difference is, is that

people tend to go very niche. So it's like there are Etsy podcasts and there are Amazon podcasts or Shopify podcasts. And it's very specific to the sales channel or very specific to the product they're selling. So you sell stationery or you sell jewelry. The differentiator, I think why we did well is that we still niche down to speaking to product people. And we're still, you know, we don't really talk to MLMs or direct sellers. It's not what we do. I have a friend that's really great at that. We're not a boutique only business where we're teaching to people who are retailers and have boutiques but it's just this general idea of how you can make something and sell it or when you have a physical product and how you can sell and that we believe

that there's many paths to profit so there's lots of different places that we can sell lots of sales channels it's not one right way for everybody. So I welcome more people educating product people. And I think it's starting to happen. But we still, you know, we're like a top marketing podcast. And there's not many other product people in that with us. So when it comes to product, let's say someone has an idea for something they want to make and sell. But the idea of selling is terrifying for them because they're like, wait, okay, I can see the steps to getting something made. You know, I could even make it at home to start with,

but I don't have an Instagram following. I don't have an email list. How am I ever going to get a stranger to buy my product? Is there a roadmap or like a way that you recommend people start thinking about even getting their first hundred customers in that situation? Yeah, I love that you asked that because, you know, one of the things I tell people is that like they can do this without an audience.

They can do it without ever paying a cent for ads. And I think that's probably why we have been so successful because you need a lot of money to start with ads, especially its product. So product means we have investments in the physical goods and we have shipping. So our expenses in general are so much higher than if I was just going to say like, buy this course. And I have like a great markup and margin on it. So if the selling part, you know, if you don't want to sell it, then it's a hobby. And I think you have to first make that decision between if you want a hobby and you want to knit on Fridays and some people want to buy it and you're like, sure, take it.

But if you're looking to make this either a side hustle, a full-time job, you want to leave, you want to leave working for other people and you want the freedom of having your own business, which is what I love. Then first you have to make this decision that it's a business and I need to sell it. But you can choose different ways that you want to be visible. And I like to talk about it from like active and passive. A lot of product people say they're introverts, right? We like we're behind our products, even though I'm an extrovert.

But introvert and extrovert is very much an energy source versus it being a plan or like a it's more of an excuse as to why you're not doing something, because really, you're probably just not confident in knowing that you're doing it well. So what I love to tell people is even if you have no audience, you get to choose. Do you like the active way of building an audience? I know you teach this so well. So on social media, do you want to learn a platform like Instagram and create content and really do that? Do you want to work and do collaborations and partnerships and work with affiliates and really kind of build that? Do you want to build your email list, which I think everybody needs an email list, or if you want a more passive way of doing this, you can also start

to grow and get more customers, but really you get an audience by selling on other people's sales channels, other people's platforms. And so I like to teach people at the very beginning that one of the hardest ways to do it is even though you should have your own website, is to launch your own website. That's what I did. And how do people know to find me or search me? So instead, the way that I really turned on that waterfall of sales was that I started selling wholesale and I went to in-person markets. Because wholesale meant I was sold to stores and that they had customers that were already walking in the store. They already were doing their own marketing to bring people. And then in-person markets,

the market was getting customers in front of me. So I think when you're really thinking about this, it's great to get in front of other people's audiences to start. It starts at like snowball of sales and then they'll start to find you on these other platforms like your own e-commerce site or on social media. That makes so much sense to me so thinking of wholesalers like you could focus on finding that one customer and they're finding a thousand customers that makes so much sense so when I talk about it I'm like okay you can build an audience borrow an audience or buy an audience which now that I'm thinking about it it does apply to both it's different. So this is a way of borrowing someone else's audience. They've got the eyeballs. So if someone was to sell wholesale, what's the process of that? Do

you just walk into stores and say, who's the buyer? Or do you go to trade shows? What's the process? All of it. It's changed a lot. And I know that you used to do trade shows and things like that. And that's kind of my background. I had trade shows that I paid a lot of money to be at that, and I would have showrooms and sales reps. And then there were the inventions of like, there's a platform called fair.com or bulletin.co. And what was cool about that is it connected the manufacturer, the maker to the retailers, and it kind of cut out the middleman of having a sales rep. So it's been a really great

tool to be discovered. If you think about Etsy and how that replaced people coming to in-person art shows and they were able to find other makers, but it's not the only way I'm realizing that so many people in this industry now are like, that's the only way to sell wholesale. So, you know, inside of my programs, I teach this, but really it's, it's identifying, um, other brands that are out there and can you find who they sell to? And you either choose whether you want to be your own sales rep and you contact them and you, and you email them or you, um, call them. I did the phone thing for email, but you let them know like, Hey, I've got this product. You send a land sheet and you try and get an order. You can also do it passively through a site like fair. You can do a trade show, but those tend to be a little bit

more expensive. And so you really want to make sure that you make sales at that. But I love that kind of just like taking it on my own and like calling a store and asking for the buyer and saying, hey, I'm Jacqueline. I make X, Y, Z. I'd love to send you some land sheets. I think your customers would love it. And then the idea is people will see that in stores or they might buy it in stores, but they want to continue buying it from you. They'll go and look up your website. So yes, you've got the site, but it's the way you get traffic is actually have them discover it somewhere else and then come to your website. Absolutely. I mean, that's how Kim Kardashian found my stuff. So I was selling to a store in

LA and it was kind of one of those, you know, trendy stores. And I remember the, the store owner sent me a photo and they're like, Oh my God. And I've got Kim holding my cuffs. She's got four of them. It was for her sisters and her. And she, when she used to probably do her own shopping, right. She walked into the store and she bought my stuff and I got the photo. And so what that does is like people, exactly what you said, they discover products on the shelves of somebody else's store, which they have a no like trust factor, right? Kim went to that store because she likes that store. And now if they're selling my product, she's like, Oh, like, what is this? And then they can, you know, then they'd be like, they want to follow you on social. Great. And you have those, you have your social handle on your product, or they, they're like, I want to see what else this person has. And they go search you on the web and that's how you start to make more sales. What was that like the Kim Kardashian moment? Was that a moment where you were like, Oh my God, maybe this is something like, how did that feel? Yeah. I think, you know,

Kim wasn't when this happened, Kim wasn't who Kim is today. Really? We like freaked out and Carrie Underwood wore it. So she wore it on the country music awards and wow. Yeah. And my assistant at the time was like cried. She was so excited. She couldn't even contain herself. And so we let Carrie Underwood stylist know that, you know, oh my God, like Caitlin, like lost her mind and she was so excited and they loved it so much that she actually pulled my product again. I had band in a nether cuff and she wore it on one of her music videos. So that was cool, right? Like the more that they started, it validated it. And this was pre-influencer and creator.

I mean, this was not that long ago. My kids were still born. So it was like within the last decade, but things were just different, right? We had different ways of consuming. So I do think like the celebrities validated that I had a product that could stand on its own and it was a fashion product, which is what I really wanted to sell. And speaking of celebrities, influencers, how much do you rate the influencer strategy now? Because I know it has changed so much over the last, especially the last seven to eight years.

Is it something you still recommend to people? I do in the way that if you get in front of a new audience for discoverability and, you know, you and I have both, we've been quote unquote influencers for other people's products. And again, it's that no like trust. What I do tell people to do though, is to make sure I don't care if they have a very small following, like a very mini audience, but we want to look at what their impact is. Like if people are actually responding. So I would sort of cyber stock, any influencer that you want to work with. And I'd pay attention. Are people responding in con like, are you watching comments happen?

Like, Oh my God, I love that. Where'd you get that? Because while actually the same thing, like I had one of my clients, Paris Hilton or her stuff. Nothing happened. Right. Because Paris wasn't like the right person to be the person who sold it. So I think it goes with, if you want to get in front of another audience and you understand how to play that game with working with influencers and monitoring and making sure, and you support them, right. We want to support them as like affiliates for our company. Then it's, it's kind of like a game where you go for a bunch of them and you hope a few of them work. Right. And I think that's though, if you're going for the social media strategy. So if you want to be present on social, I think influencers matter.

If you're using Amazon or wholesale, you don't necessarily need that. That makes sense to me. Okay. So then going back to someone that has an idea, maybe the person listening, they had an idea, they started making something and they started selling it and they got some traction, but it's not enough to replace their full-time income. And they're sitting there thinking, I don't see a way that I could get this product covering what I would make in a month from my job. What are the biggest things you see holding entrepreneurs like that in that position back from actually making a real living with what they make? I think what happens is,

and I've seen this as this gap of people go from, they have the ideas, they ideate it and they make it and then they jump straight to selling it. And they miss the core foundations that are really the things that you want to build on. So I know a lot of times we're like, I have this idea. I'm going to figure out how to make it. And then they're like, now I'm going to sell it. And they've jumped over like what we call as the core four foundation. So they've, they've jumped over nailing their audience and their niche. They go too broad. I'm going to make everything for everybody because they said so. And then they don't necessarily create a brand. They're kind of coming out with a product. It feels a certain way,

but it's not a brand that they're establishing. They're not necessarily, they don't have the right offer. So again, they try and make all the things, right? Candles, home scents, incense, bath bombs, they make everything versus being known for something and niching down. So they don't have like a clear offer and they're not priced correctly or like according to like psychological pricing. And then finally they don't really have a marketing plan. So I do believe, and I've seen this, like we have a student, um, she created this hairspray for static in your hair, static block. And she was making all the things and she was trying to sell it on Etsy and she was trying to sell it direct to consumer on social media and she was struggling. And then once you kind of niche down and figured out what product she should offer, who her ideal

customer was, how she could really market it and brand it. And then what sales channel to get on. She took the one product, which is funny because you teach like the one, you know, one offer and go all in. She took that, she got it on Amazon. And within the first 90 days, she made $31,500. And in the first year she made $200,000, replaced her full-time income and left her full-time job. So it's all possible, but I think people just get distracted and they try and be everything to everybody and product costs money. So the more we make, the more money is draining out of our bank account. So we really want to get honed in and focused. The more I'm listening, the more I realize how similar actually a lot of this marketing is,

like it's actually not as different as I thought. It's just different channels because I see that all the time too. And I think it's this excitement that entrepreneurs have, like visionaries, so many ideas, want to make everything for everyone immediately and then wonder why nothing's selling. So, okay, this is very validating. Something else you mentioned there as well, want to make everything for everyone immediately and then wonder why nothing's selling so okay this is very validating something else you mentioned there as well which I want to touch on is pricing because I do feel and it's it's a big thing in the service industry like I hear charge your worth and it's like well you can't put your your worth is not relevant to your pricing it's how much value you're delivering and I see a lot of entrepreneurs

with these prices and I say what led you to charge that and say oh you know I just just felt like that's the number I want to make and to me pricing strategy is a real thing and you have to be aware of you know what else exists how you position yourself what the value is so how do you approach that when it comes to the product land is it like do you see the same thing I priced that way because I felt like it versus have you looked at your margins? Do you understand why you're pricing it like this? So one of the craziest, hardest things is that product people never charge for their own labor. So if they're making it themselves, they're, you know, maybe they're adding in the cost of the cost of goods, but they're like, well, how do I charge for myself?

So one of the first things I have to teach them is that they want to think if I were to hire someone for this position to pour my wax, to put the labels on the jar, to do whatever, what would that price point be? And then what would the efficiency be? So like per hour, how many candles could they pour, for example, to give you a unit price for labor? So I will say that, you know, a lot of times in service, we don't necessarily account for our labor. It's kind of built into these like larger margins, but we do to manufacture products or as labor charges involved. So first off, it's like cost of goods, labor, and there's the markup. I want you to have really truthfully, if I could say 50%, like margins, I'd love that.

But like 40 to 60% margins from your cost of goods to your wholesale price and your wholesale price to your retail price. It's like a two times two markup. That is like a bare minimum. Why? Because you have cost of goods. We've got marketing fees. You've got all the other things. And we need to make enough money because once we sell the product, the product still costs

us some things. We have to make that money back plus money to function off of. Then when we get into these like margins or thinking about, um, like if you think about, I always bring up Chanel bags, right? You have a Chanel bag. They've gone up like 30% since the pandemic, which sucks. But so like a $7,000 leather bag from Chanel, what justifies this bag to be $7,000? You know, cause it's made out of leather and it's stitched together and it has hardware. It just happens to have a Chanel logo on it versus you could buy the same kind of knockoffish bag for 350 bucks or, you know, and it's still leather and it's still black and all that, but it's that

perceived value. So you don't have to do the markup correctly. I want you to have the markup correct in the way that you're profitable. You have the margins, your business can build and build off of it. But then we have to think about perceived value and think if you're going to be a luxury brand and you can help people feel like that's what they want to, you want to position that way. You can charge anything the same with like La Mer skin cream, right? Expensive for a tiny jar. Is it really that different? Like are baby tears in it? Like what, like unicorns, like what's happening in it? They've just positioned it in a certain way. And sure the ingredients might be better, but really it's, it's brand positioning. So I think it's both. And then to add on, it is an understanding

your audience, your ideal customer avatar, which is what we want to nail. And then it's understanding your market position. Where would you be on the shelves of a store, right? What your ideal customer, what else would they be buying? Because people don't realize they always think if they race to the bottom and they charge less, they're going to sell more. It's not true. Right. If you're right, some people, when you raise your prices, you sell more because they have this trust factor like, Oh, that skin cream is not going to give me a rash. It's actually going to make my wrinkles disappear. So that's just, there's, again, it goes back to perceived value. And a lot of times people are undervaluing and undercutting their price point versus knowing

what that customer would buy, what else they buy and really to position it in the right way. I love that so much. So going back to at the beginning when we start talking about marketing then because all of this is playing so well together. Let's say okay someone has an idea they've started doing that research on how they want to position their brand. They start doing the pricing research. They're in a pretty good position when it comes to all the different ways that they can market. Do you see more success if someone just picks a lane and goes all in with it or kind of throwing everything at the wall and testing? I would say like product people throw spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks and it's terrible. So I think it's honing in on whether you

have a core, like a hero product. So Rothy's Shoes is an example of a shoe company that came out that was like the pointed toed shoe that was made out of recycled water bottles, but there were variations to it. So it's not just one black shoe. They were just like, we're going to come out with this one product. Or you come out with a core collection. So a core collection is like a regimen. Here are the five skin products, like a toner. Actually, Glossier did this.

They had a tint, a face spray, a chapstick, and like, I think a skin moisturizer. There are four products that they built off of and that they just nailed. So I think first you hone in on what that product is. Then, like I said, if it's active or passive, do you feel called to building an audience on social media? I have a client right now, she's hit a million dollars in 10 months selling adult coloring books on TikTok. What? Yeah, it's crazy. And they're like $5 each. So that's a lot of units. That is a world that I do not understand. The product-based TikTok viral. I mean, it is wild. It's wild. And they've just introduced live selling because that's what I think TikTok

did really well. It's almost like this. You can make your own QVC HSN version on there, which was truthfully inspired by, and I used to work with the top 10, one of the top 10 sellers for LuLaRoe. They had hired me as a, as a, like a one-on-one person for them. They were the ones like the LuLaRoe people were the first ones doing Facebook groups and live selling. So it's really interesting watching, but I agree with you. I think that it is going in and learning one way

of marketing. And so you're either going to do something passive or active. And if you choose to use a social media channel, if you're trying to be on all of them and learn all of them, it just, it gets distracting. You don't, that's why I haven't gone all in on TikTok. I was like, I can't wrap my head around this. I'm just going to get really good at Instagram. And that's where I know my customer is. So I think you also want to think who's my customer. If you have a young customer and you're selling product that makes sense, like these people

buying the coloring books, TikTok might be the sales channel you want or the marketing platform you want to be on. If you're in the thirties, forties, even fifties, maybe Instagram, maybe it's Facebook, maybe it's none of it. Right. Maybe it's through collaboration. So I love the idea of one, but because I teach multiple streams of revenue, it's kind of like, how are we going to drive the traffic? And, and then, but some sites will already have the traffic built in. So you get to decide, do I need to drive my own traffic to my own site to convert? Or am I just going to sell on Amazon, get really good at pay-per-click ads on there? And then that's where I grow my brand. So I think you have a couple options.

I think that's probably where the biggest differentiator is then between product and service. I feel like with service, you kind of do need to just pick one and stay in that lane because it takes a while to master it and get traction but i mean i found this when i had a product based one too is there's a lot of testing like what resonates with who where is the audience and even with like tiktok things like this are popping up so quickly there are so many different places you can sell i think because with the product you know you can decide within a couple of minutes whether you want to desire buy a product but for a two thousand dollar course you're going to need warmed up you're going to need a bit more of that funnel so that makes total sense to me um yeah speaking of tiktok that is really really interesting

i've kind of stayed away from it myself too because i don't understand it what do you think about product-based businesses who they want to go down that route but they don't necessarily they know they don't have the brain to like learn tikt be able to do it. Do you think it's worthwhile working with agencies or do you feel like in the beginning with product-based businesses that doesn't always result in success? I don't love agencies in general. Okay. Tell me about this. Why? Okay. Because I've never really heard anyone say I've worked with this agency and they crushed it. It's always been like, I worked with this agency and they really didn't get the results that they had promised. And I've done this. And it might be because the people that I'm working with don't

have the humongous budgets, um, to hire like a full, you know, maybe a company that's $10,000 a month and they're getting affiliates and influencers and all the things. Um, I do think it takes an investment in some way, but some of the most successful product people that I know that have used platforms like this are still the ones doing it themselves. They know what their customers want to see. They know what they have to say. So even with me, like Jennifer helps me on mine, but she follows my direction. And some of the stuff that I post goes way more viral and has way more of an effect because I just know what they need.

So I think you could mix it between the kind of content that you post that is sales content, but then that stuff that really... Let's take a quick pause to talk about my new favorite all-in-one platform, Kajabi. You know I've been singing their praises lately because they have helped our business run so much smoother

and with way less complexity, which I love. Not to mention our team couldn't be happier because now everything is in one place. So it makes collecting data, creating pages, collecting payment, all the things so much simpler. One of our mottos at Boss Babe is simplify to amplify and Kajabi has really helped us do that this year. So of course I needed to share it here with you. It's the perfect time of year to do a bit of spring cleaning in your business, you know, get rid of the complexity and instead really focus on getting organized and making things as smooth as possible. I definitely recommend Kajabi to all of my clients and students.

So if you're listening and haven't checked out kajabi yet now is the perfect time to do so because they are offering boss babe listeners a 30-day free trial go to kajabi.com slash boss babe to claim your 30-day free trial that's kajabi.com slash boss babe like connects with your ideal customer and why they're going to keep coming back to your page or pay attention might it's a harder thing to teach and i I, sometimes agencies, I feel like are really out of it, or they're going to go straight up to like, like really a marketing agency where Nike or something, right? Like it'll be very cold and not like a community building. And it's a harder lift as a small company, unless again, you're spending money on ads and you have like these huge marketing budgets

and it doesn't really matter what's on there because you're just driving tons of traffic and people are following and you're doing other marketing strategies I feel the same way even in the service space like I want to see agencies crush it I never hear of people that have the best experience and always hear of entrepreneurs saying I normally get better results because I know what my customers want which is so interesting i think about it from like a delegation standpoint but i do agree there are certain things that a founder is just so much better at agent yeah i don't know maybe if there's agencies listening they're like i get the result reach out to us but yeah i i kind of feel the same way which is really interesting

so yeah maybe in the beginning, it's just like not the agency path. You can't, one thing I often say to people is you can't delegate out initial sales and initial traction to anybody. Like if you haven't figured that out, you know, if you haven't figured out how to grow your Instagram, don't bring on someone on board

and expect them to figure it out for you. That's kind of our job as founders. How do you feel about that? Yeah, I was gonna say the exact same thing. I think until you get into like the nitty gritty and you're like, you get your hands dirty and you really understand it because that's in general for anything we're, we're launching, right? Whether it's a course, a program, a product, if you're not interacting with people and you want to have this like super hands-off perspective, how do you know what's happening? And I think, you know how the Stanley,

the Stanley cup has like the, is it called? It's not the Stanley cup. Cause that's a sports thing. Stanley, you know, that we're drinking all our drinks out of. Yeah. There's a name for the one, the chug, or I don't know what it is, but they just had this, they went from making their a hundred year old company. They're making about, what were they making? Like $90 million a year in revenue as a hundred year old company. And then the last couple of years, they jumped to like $700,000. And the way that that happened was they actually hired on the CEO of Crocs and he did walk and talks and he went around and talked to all the people working. And he, because remember, if like we're thinking corporation wise and you're really disconnected

from the customer, you're going to kind of keep doing the same thing over and over. But he came in and he did these walk and talks and he talked to people. And one of the people in the company said, you know what? There's this one influencer that loves our Stanleys is always talking about them. She has her own site. And what if we did a collaboration with her? And then she started selling them to her people. And that kind of started this viral trend of like the Utah mom,

they say like with like the crossbody Lulu and the Stanley, and then it turned into this whole thing and $700 million later. And you wouldn't have known that this person was so in another subculture and they saw this like mom that was selling product online and they really understood what she wanted and needed. And, and, but this big corporation, they were so disconnected from it. They would have never had this result. So I do think that it takes that initial part where we want to just get our hands dirty. We want to get into the muck. We want to learn from people. And when we do, if you can, and you're so good at this building playbooks and systems and processes, if there is a way to share a repeatable process with them and pillars of types of content, you start to see this kind of thing does really well. Like my following people really love the like

multitasking business posts that I post and they're funny. So great. I don't have to be the only one who sources that kind of material. My team can look for it as well. But it took years of us figuring that out before now it's like a repeatable process. God, wouldn't you love to be that employee at Stanley who came up with that whole idea? I hope they got a whole, I hope they got a percentage. Is that what it was? 700 million? Yeah, something crazy.

And I went and I found that initial influencer. And it's not like she's like huge. Like you say, like pretty niche. But the ripple impact, it's like when we talk about overnight success, like that company, you know, had been around a long time and they were very much prepared for this, but was really able to ride that wave. But reverse engineering, all of that was so

fascinating. That's like a business owner's dream, I feel. Yeah. And not only that, they came out with it in 2017. So it didn't hit right away. And they had to like redesign and recalibrate. And then it's only hit what in the last couple of years. And then now all these collabs and stuff. So no, it's all there's no overnight success, right? a over 100 year success but it's just being tapped in and that person was tapped in and they understood this new way of being online and like who could connect with their customers or how they created a whole new segment right they created this whole new market so it's very cool I know it blows my mind I went down such a rabbit hole. I was like, who was this influencer? And then like finding the post and like reverse engineering, it was just like porn to my marketing brain. That's cool. No, that's really cool.

Right there with you. So obsessed. Okay. So changing gears a little bit, I want to talk about motherhood a little bit. How old were your kids when you decided to start your business? I mean, I guess you've always been entrepreneurial from like your mid twenties. You know, it's funny is, and I wish because you're younger than me, but like, I love how you put them all together. And I don't know if it's a generational thing now that I'm getting older, I'm in my forties, like early forties, but I'm in my forties. So I feel like, and I remember my friends that were slightly older than me were like, their husbands seemed, it was a kind of like even older school sort of way of doing things. So I really had my business as I was 26 and I didn't have my son until I was 31.

And I cried actually when I found out I was pregnant because I, at that point really compartmentalized. I was like, what are my clients going to think? Like I'm pregnant, I'm going to be out of commission. How am I going to keep doing what I do? Like I was very much in that, you know, masculine. And when I worked at corporate women, weren't taking care of women. If you were out, I remember one of the women, what she was out on, on maternity leave and someone else swooped in trying to take her job. Right. It was just not cool. So that was like my PTSD of coming out of corporate and then having a baby and being like, I don't know how I'm going to do this. I really want to have this career. Safety and security comes out of me making my own money. I came from drama growing up and like, this is all I ever wanted. I was like, a kid's going to get in the way of

me doing this. Cause I didn't feel far enough in my career. It turns out though, it was the best thing. And it really helped like having babies, I think really like steps you up into another level and you start to prioritize in a different way. Um, so then I had my daughter and I didn't start the product boss until she was about two, two and a half. So really I was running this other company and my husband's an actor. So we were bi-coastal. I flew 25 times with my son by myself on a plane from LA to New York because we were living in two different places. I've moved across the country six times in the last several years, like packing up those houses with little kids and running my own business. So there's been a lot. Oh my God. So if anyone needs advice on how to pack with a baby and travel,

I got you. Oh my God. So you were really in it then. So if you started it when your daughter was two and a half, really, you were very much still in it and in that phase when starting your business. How did you do that? Because I feel like for me, I have some weeks where I'm like, oh, my goodness, I'm crushing it. And then I have some weeks where I'm like, how are people doing this? And like juggling it all. It feels some weeks it feels so easy.

Some weeks it feels impossible. Yeah. And, you know, my kids are two and a half years apart. So I had a two and a half year old and a impossible. Yeah. And you know, my kids are two and a half years apart. So I had a two and a half year old and a baby. And then, you know, we just keep going from there. And then we were living on the East coast. I was by myself. So that was terrible because I've come from a really big family and now we're back close to my mom and my sister and my siblings, but it was really hard. So the advice I was given by one of my first coaches was hire for the help you can afford,

because we all have all the reasons and excuses as to why we're doing it on our own. And I think there was this time where it was like, it takes a village. And then all of a sudden it was like, no, you need to do it all. You need to be, you know, run the business or work for other people and be super mom and volunteer and be a wife and all the things. So that was the first way that I started outsourcing when I was by myself was that I put my daughter, which my son, I had a nanny and he was home a lot longer, but I put my daughter into daycare-ish preschool earlier. I think she was 18 months. And I cried the night before because I was like, oh, like Oliver got to stay home forever. And like, I'm sending her so early and I feel

like a bad mom. But then I remember when she walked off with the teacher, she like basically peaced me out. She's like, peace out, mom. Like she turned around. She's like, I'm sending her so early and I feel like a bad mom. But then I remember when she walked off with the teacher, she like basically peaced me out. She's like, peace out, mom. Like she turned around. She's like, I'm good. She's so good. And so it was like, I had my kids and I put my kids in school until about five o'clock. Then I would pick them up.

And then I was like, okay, I'm really good at compartmentalizing. So it's like, then I turned it off and five o'clock on, I was with them. I did bedtime. And if I had to work after I did it. Um, so it was getting the help of like childcare first because my husband was working, he couldn't do that. And then I started slowly moving into, especially in New York back then, um, you could get your laundry, like they could pick up, take your laundry, fluff and fold and bring it back. Again, my husband

would be like, I'll do the laundry. I'm like, I will kill you if you keep doing the laundry because you do it once every two weeks. Right. So we started paying for people to come pick up the laundry. So it was these little things of like, and now I think it's so much more prevalent. Like we can get our, someone can shop our groceries, someone, you know, we get our food delivered so much easier. But at that point it was like outsourcing parts that I could afford. And then working in the time that I had and allowing myself not to

have that guilt, even though I still did, but okay, the kids are in school till this point, I'm going to work. And then when they come home, I'm going to do dinner, bath time and all the things. And I still was able to be a class mom and do those things because I'm an entrepreneur. Like I have my own schedule. So then I just said like, this is it. I'm going to be a class mom. We're doing a field trip. This is what we're doing. So it's hard. I think it's always hard at every level. Now my kids are older, so they understand. But there's still like, there's this pull right now. Whenever we get to like May and June, it's the end of the school year.

And they have all these things and sports games and all this stuff. And I'm like, but I have to build slides. So my husband's doing bedtime every night, right? Because I was just like, I need to work into the evening. Can you help me? And I've been really lucky because I've got my husband's doing bedtime every night right because I was just like I need to work into the evening can you help me and I've been really lucky because I've got my husband as well do you feel like the guilt eases up or do you feel like it's always there and you just learn how to deal with it differently that's a good question I've done a lot of work like a lot of mindset work a lot of I work with a life coach and I remember I used to tell myself I was a bad mom

because I compared myself to my mom who was a stay-at-home mom of five kids. But what's funny is she also inspired me to like not be stuck in the things that she was doing. So it's funny, right? Like the, our perceptions, but I was like, I don't make them dinners. I'll order, go pick up. Like I just, I don't cook. I don't have time to cook. My daughter goes, mom, when you're a grandma, you'll be a good cook. When you've got time. I was like, why do you say that? She's like, because all grandmas are good cooks. I'm like, yeah, and I'll have more time. Exactly. It's like, thanks. So I used to say I'm a bad mom. And then with my life coach, she's like, you can't just say, oh no, I'm a good mom. People will be like, oh no, no, you're a good mom. Like,

wow, you're doing so much, blah, blah, blah. Your brain is going to call BS on that, right? They're just like, no, I have all the reasons and all the proof as to why I'm not. So instead, I really just try to get to a neutral thought. And this really comes out of like life coaching. So my brain could not argue with I am a mom. And that's why I started telling myself I'm a mom. I'm a mom. Not I'm a mom doing the best I can.

Not I'm a mom that works and da, da, da. Just I am a mom. Because what's the definition of good mom, bad mom, whatever. Right? So that was my first step into releasing the guilt of I am a mom. And then, then as soon as my brain would believe that, there would be points where my brain would be like, oh, you did a good job. Like you rocked it today. Like not only did you take the kids to like baseball and got all the slides done, which was last night. Right. And it's okay that we picked up food on the way home and I didn't have a whole home cooked meal. So I think it's a, it's a process of getting there. Um, guilt will always come up when you're feeling pulled, I think. And so if you have these, these boundaries, you're like some days, and you know, you said balance before I call it the blend.

So I call BS on balance. I call BS on juggling. I think there's no way. So I drink smoothies in the morning. So I think every day is a blend. One day might have more of an ingredient than another. And so it's the same, like sometimes your kid needs you more and the things you wanted to do for work are just not going to happen. And sometimes work really needs you and you might not do bedtime. And so if we just allow for a different mix every day, it kind of releases that pressure. I think I love that perspective. And I just, and I think this is a really important conversation, especially for our generation, because I don't think we grew up seeing a lot of women that had these super high-powered careers or had their own businesses like it wasn't that long ago women couldn't even have their own bank account

like we think that women have had all of these opportunities for a really long time and they actually haven't so I feel like with our generation for me especially what I notice is a lot of the questioning and guilt is coming from just the unknown. I don't have the proof of me working is going to be fine in 20 years. I don't have the proof of this. So it's like making it up as you go along. But I think also then opening up to conversation with other women and finding like those little nuggets of neutrality and different things that work. I think we need it. And I think it really helps for women to be really candid about it because i don't know about you but it never helps me when i just see everyone's crushing it all the time i'm like well how are we doing all of this whereas when you actually have the

conversations you feel less alone and i think it is starting to set a bit of a blueprint of how all of this does work together and hopefully you know for our daughters they'll have that blueprint and they'll be able to decide you know know, maybe they'll be like, fuck it. You all worked way too hard. Who knows? Yeah, they might. I'm like so curious. We go back to the 50s.

20, 30 years from now, what our daughters will say about the way that we did it all. So curious. And there's no way to future cast. And, you know, every generation is going to say something about the ones that came before them but I love that honesty I love this conversation okay so speaking of slides um I've seen the training you've got it's freaking amazing um I want to offer it to my audience so if they go to what's the website boss.com slash sos yes okay tell me a little bit about the training and who you think it would be most ideal for. Yeah.

Love this. And just, you've been so instrumental. So like, I'm a student of everything Boss Babe. So it's like, should I do it? I will say yes. But if you are product-based and you, you know, you've been trying to figure this out and you're like, I just feel like I need help. The training is, it's the standout method.

So the idea here is that we all want to figure out how we can stand out in a crowded market and get more customers. And a lot of times it's like, why would they buy my candle and not someone else's candle? Why would they buy my bar of soap and not someone else's bar of soap? So this is the training is a standout method, which is going to be your four-step playbook to stand out in a crowded market and get more customers so that you can grow your business. And I will go over the core four foundations with you of the things that, like I said, people just skip and they miss. So whether you've got an idea and you're just starting out,

you've been doing this and you feel like, why is this so hard? Or maybe you have a successful product business, but you're kind of trying to take that next leap because the industry changes, customers' behaviors change. It's really for anybody across the board. Do you go into the active and passive stuff? That's so interesting hearing you talk about that. Not in this training particularly, but inside of the program, what we have is called the Standout Society. And in there, eventually what we do is we talk about a launch and marketing plan. And so the idea is how do we then take this offer? Very similar, right? But for product, how we take this offer and get it out in front of an audience. And then that's kind of where we're going to discuss

whether you do it passive or actively, and then how do we do a launch with product? Okay. Amazing. I'm going to dive into this. I have this secret desire that I'm like going to disappear off the face of the internet and run this business where no one sees my face. So I'm going to dive. I'm very curious how that works works I feel like it's the opposite of anything I've ever done so as soon as you were saying that I'm like huh that is a whole different path that feels very appealing it's so funny you say that do you ever fantasize like that when your face on everything you're like for me I'm like you know maybe I'm just gonna take a year off social and just like see what it's like sometimes it's like yeah I wish I could just kind of go into a cave but that's like

right that's the point of like getting these um like speaking to your stuff like that's the point of getting funnels that are like really dialed in that can do it right and it's like do it can be said and forget it sure let's try the summer go with the summer first see how it all goes I love this I love this conversation okay so everyone go to bossy.com forward slash sos I love this I've seen the slides multiple times so so so helpful and like you say very few people are actually teaching the product based stuff so I'm very glad you are because I've learned so much from it and it's it's really interesting seeing a lot of the overlaps but but also how different it is. It's just a completely different ball game. So I love, love, love the way you teach

it. I'm grateful that you were here. Thank you for doing this. Thank you. Thanks for letting me share this because I know there's product people in so many people's audiences and they're there. I'm glad that I could share it with your audience as well. I know they're going to love it. Wait, wait, wait, before you go, I would love to send you my seven-figure CEO operating system completely free as a gift. All you've gotta do is leave us a review on this podcast because it really supports the growth of this show. This is my digital masterclass where I'll show you

what my freedom-based daily, weekly, and monthly schedule looks like as an eight-figure CEO, mama, and high performer, and I'll walk you through step-by-step how to create this for yourself. It includes a full video training from me and a plug-and-play spreadsheet to literally create your own operating system. It's one of our best trainings and it's worth $1,997, but I will unlock access for you for free when you leave us a review. I know, wild right? All you have to do is leave your review on the podcast, take a screenshot of it and then head over to bossbabe.com slash review to upload it and then you'll get instant access to the seven

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