#271: Overcome Your Fear of Video Marketing with Molly Mahoney, Founder of The Prepared Performer

It's time for episode number 271 with my friend, Molly Mahoney. You guys get ready to laugh and to learn a ton about being on camera. Let's talk about your business strategy and the juicy details of what actually works, from mainstream fashion to fashion on Main street and the entire ecosystem behind it. How do we scale your company and do it with the balance and the happiness that we all seek? Let's hear from those insiders, experts, and strategists that actually make it happen, happen. I'm your host, Ashley Alderson from the Boutique Hub, and I can't wait to chat. Hey, guys. This week on the podcast, I'm so excited. Molly Mahoney is joining me today, and number one, she has got to be one of the most fun people we have ever had on the podcast. But number two, for those of you who have ever thought about doing Facebook Live, or maybe you do Facebook Live or Instagram Live or TikTok, any type of video content right now, but you still feel like you have moments of anxiety or you worry about putting that video out into the world or you worry about how you're showing up on camera. For those who are in your community, I really want you to listen to today's episode with Molly because as someone who has been in performance arts, she's going to walk us through all the stages of preparing ourselves to go on camera, but also tons of marketing advice in terms of building your personal brand and how you're relating to your ideal customer. And this is definitely a marketing nerd episode that I love because I am such a marketing nerd. So get a notebook, take some notes, breathe deeply into your best self, and get ready to go on camera because, you guys, Molly is going to knock your socks off. Get ready to meet Molly Mahoney. Hey, guys. Welcome back to the podcast. This week, I'm with my friend Molly Mahoney, the prepared performer. I love that name. Molly, you are such a queen of Facebook Live, of social media, of performance on camera, all the things. So I know this is such a timely topic for our industry today. So I can't wait to hear your thoughts.

Yeah, I'm so honored and thrilled to be here. We have so many boutique owners in our community, so this is something that I'm really passionate about, not only with our clients, but also just because I am full on a clothing and jewelry addict. So, well, joined the club.

We are in the same boat. And I mean, we can't even start this interview before talking. Talking about the fact that your Husband's from Wisconsin. And can we just say, go, pack.

Go for everybody that's listening to Go Pack, Go. For sure. Cheese curds are always our first stop off the plane. Oh, my God. Love Wisconsin.

We had a team retreat last fall in Minneapolis. And so our team at the boutique hub is all virtual. There's 15 from around the country. So everyone comes to the Midwest, right? And we're like, what do they have to have? What do they have to experience? And we're like, leinenkugel's beer, Spotted cow, and cheese curds.

There's a Leinenkugel summer shandy that we love. Like, only get there. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. So much goodness. And fireflies. So we don't have fireflies in California. My first firefly I saw when I was living in New York. But then driving through, like, this is going to sound so cheesy, like, I'm making this up, but this is, like, one of the most amazing moments of my life was driving through the middle of cornfields and just firefly flies everywhere. It's, like, the coolest thing ever, so.

It really is. So I'm from North Dakota originally, and we didn't have them there either. Or I guess not that I knew of anyway. But they're so beautiful. The other night, we were laying in bed, and my husband's like, what's that? It just went by the window.

Was that like, a meteor shower?

And I'm like, dude, it's a firefly. Just went by the window.

I love it.

The cheese curd thing. I left. So half of our team knew about cheese curds, and then the other half, you know, had to, like, begrudgingly try them. And two of them loved them, and the rest hated them. They're like, why would cheese squeak in my mouth?

This doesn't make any sense at all. Oh, my gosh. I don't know how anyone could hate cheese curds. Unless they're like, don't eat cheese. But especially, did they have fried cheese curds or just regular cheese curds?

We brought them, like, fresh. Like, we stopped by the factory on the way. Well, technically, like, room temperature, so they're good and squeaky.

Yeah.

But fried cheese. And then people are. I always hear this, honestly, from boutique owners, too. They're like, I have a Culver's near me. So I had cheese curds at Culver's. That doesn't count. That is not a true Wisconsin cheese curd. That is, like, the really cheap kind of, like, imitation kind. You have to have, like, a beer Battered deep fried cheese curd.

We could spend a whole podcast interview talking about this. This is actually funny enough going to tie into one of my tips for confidence. So just remember cheese curds, yes or no, and how you felt about that because obviously it's very polarizing. So we're going to dig into that in a bit. I love it.

Well, Molly, let's get started. Talk to me. I know you help all kinds of business owners, business owners of all kinds, every day with going live. So I would love to hear, like, more about your background, how you got started in this performing in the first place and how it led to the business you have today.

Yeah, so I was a musical theater performer first and foremost my whole life. I, you know, started I played Peter Pan when I was 8. And then from then on, the rest is history. I ended up moving to New York. I worked in New York in Vegas as a singer at the Rio, which was fun and crazy. I also sang and danced in New York in shows at Ellen Stardust Diner. I was a singing waiter there and then toured with Chitty Chitty Bang Bang the Musical. And while I was on tour, so I had actually met my husband in Wisconsin at the Fireside Dinner Theater, this awesome theater in the round in the middle of Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin. And he's a bass player. And while we were on tour, we decided to get engaged and we had this 400 square foot apartment in New York that we loved, but it was just not what we wanted, you know, raising kids and all that. So we packed up everything, drove across the country and moved out to California, where I grew up, and I started teaching. So at that point, I realized later that I actually had 10 jobs in 10 different locations, which is bananas. I was everything from, you know, teaching dance and musical theater. I had my own vocal studio at home. I also ran a confidence program for the city of La Habra. I was teaching knitting and crocheting at a yarn store in Costa Mesa. Like, it was crazy. So I decided to look into this online business thing. And really following the teachings of Pat Flynn and Amy Porterfield, I launched a vocal coaching business online, which was the prepared performer at the time. And even though my vocal coaching had really taken off and I had some awesome results with YouTube videos and stuff like that, I still was teaching in all these different places in order to make it work. So I launched a program online called Prepared Performer, teaching performers how to build a career using their creative talents. And basically what I had done with my vocal coaching business, I was teaching them how to do with whatever type of creativity they wanted to share with others. And in launching this program, which was the cure for the starving artist syndrome, I had a major course launch failure. We had 14 people or 15 people join the pilot, which was 1 97. And then when we raised the price to 497 and went all out with Facebook ads and everything, we had zero sales, like actually zero. So it was a big wake up call. And in that moment I decided, like, okay, I can actually commit to this and decide that I'm going to test and tweak and figure out what was working and what wasn't, or I can go back to just, you know, running my vocal studio in person and in, in tracking the numbers and looking what was working, we realized a couple of things. One was the, the like, crazy importance of strategic messaging. So my tagline was the cure for the starving artist syndrome. What is that? Doing it is calling every person that I'm speaking to, a starving artist. If you're calling someone broke, like, they're not going to pay you right? So instead I learned to switch my messaging and speak to, you know, thriving artists, for example, the type of artists who would be ready to invest because they see the importance in that. And that's actually something that can translate into boutique owners too. If everything is like, you know, all about a sale and half price and knockoff price and, you know, clothing for less, you're going to attract the person who's only looking for clothing for less. If you speak to the fact that your clothes are an investment and what they do for you in your life, people are going to be more willing to pay you. So that was one huge thing. And then the second thing was building one on one relationships. So when I launched the pilot, I really had, you know, I replied to people who commented and liked on my videos. I was doing all of this. But when I went full force, I thought I could automate everything. And that really doesn't work. So in the middle of it, I said, okay, so what was working? And Facebook Live had just come out. So at that point, I had done a six week live video series. And the seventh week I had all of these people message me, like, where's your Facebook Live? Why aren't you live? And I was like, I'm at the park with my kids. It's Easter. It's the Saturday before Easter. Like, there's an egg drop happening. And I realized, like, heck, maybe this Facebook Live thing could work. So, so what I did is I shifted everything. I switched. Instead of teaching Performers how to have a business. I started teaching business owners how to perform. And it was just that one little tweak. I had an empty Facebook group. I launched a program called Camera Confidence and I sold it at that time for $47, which if anyone who's in Camera Confidence is listening now, knows that that is like a ridiculous fraction of the investment to join our program now. But I didn't know if it was going to work. It was this empty Facebook group and turns out it worked super well. So over three months, we continued to raise the price and added more value to the group and we did $50,000 in sales within three months.

That is awesome. That's awesome. And so you did that by using. By leveraging Facebook Live.

Yeah. So it was on two pieces, which I think is something that can work so well for everyone here in this community. We used it as a marketing strategy. Right. And a sales strategy. So both delivering free value to bring in interested customers and clients, and then also a sales video like a masterclass or webinar or even like you guys will do a live sale. But then we also used it in the delivery. So inside our program we did training videos on, you know, the whole program was all delivered via Facebook Live. And we've seen this work for boutique owners. They can sell. Like if you think of an objection to buying clothes is that they don't have enough room in their closet. So we had a client, who we've had two clients actually do this now, where they've launched a mini paid program on how to clean out your closet and how to organize your closet. And then at the end of it, they're able to sell more clothes because now they fix that objection. They've helped people get rid of all the stuff in their closet so they have more room to buy.

Oh, that is so good. And you know what? So ironically we had talked about this, this strategy inside of the hub, talking about like lead gen, where you're using Facebook Live or even whatever method you want where someone opts in and then they get like a seven day closet clean out challenge and same thing, they build their list, they build their Facebook group and then at the end of it, if you give them like say a slight discount or something to use on their next purchase in your store, you've killed a couple birds with one stone. And then if you want to donate whatever's in your closet to charity, like if, if, let's say you're training someone on how to sell on Poshmark or just doing like a Facebook thread on their personal Facebook feed or their Insta stories, and then whatever's left over, they donate to charity.

You're.

You're really helping and impacting people in a number of different ways.

I love it so much. So then you get everybody, you know behind a mission, like, and we're gonna. We'll talk about that a little more with my. Some of my confidence tips. But if you could be putting your values out there and find a community or a charity that you all, as a community, want to support, everybody can rally behind that. So good.

Yes, absolutely. Okay. So lots of our boutique owners, they know the power of Facebook Live or they're using live selling, but there's still a number of them that feel like, I don't. I. I'm intimidated. I don't want to do it. I just, you know, all the butterflies in the feels that come along with going live. Talk to me about your confidence program and how people can get started if they. They're feeling intimidated by starting at this point.

Yeah. So the very first thing is to recognize that that fear is normal. It's something that, as human beings, we are programmed to have a fear of being judged. And that programming comes in the form of a hormone that is released in our brain when that we're faced with something like clicking, go live. So, yes. So know that it's normal, it's real. It's something that all of us experience, not just, you know, everyone experiences it. And so in working with professional performers, I had several clients who had crazy Broadway credits, and still, they would have those nerves or those fears come up if the stakes were high. So I developed a strategy for them that I now teach to all of our. We call our community the mall stars. We teach the mall stars. We teach to all the prepared performers out there. And it is called. Okay, I did not plan this because we were talking about Wisconsin earlier, but it's called the Quesadilla of Awesome. So the point is, is that everyone has something that makes them uniquely awesome, even if it's just that you make an amazing quesadilla. And so I'll give you. I'll walk you through the whole thing, but really it's about identifying who. Like, well, actually, let me. Let me give you this little exercise first. So I know we can't see each other, but I'm going to trust that you're going to do this with me. Take your hands like you're holding a big empty ball in between your fingers, like, fingertips together, and you're holding a big, empty Ball.

Okay, Got it.

Now, inside there, I want you to put all of the benefits that your products provide so they make people feel confident. They make them, you know, look great. They are awesome for all body types. They. They. Whatever. All the benefits that you provide there. Fun patterns, fun fabrics, blah, blah, blah, all of that. And I want you to take it and throw it up in the air. Okay. And now it's floating above us like Mikey TV and Willy Wonka. And then what are you left with?

It's raining down on me. I don't.

Oh, that's cool. Okay. I did this with Michael Stelzner from Social Media examiner, and he said salsa in the video. They edited it and they. They drew salsa, like, dripping all down the screen. So no stuff is gonna stay up there, and you're left with you. And that is. That's both the most amazing and the most terrifying piece of the whole thing. And so what we want to do is. Have you ever seen the movie Kung Fu Panda 3?

No.

Okay. I love the Kung Fu Panda movies. And then Kung Fu Panda 3. Po, who's the dragon warrior, he's the main panda. That's the Jack Black character. He's trying to teach all these other pandas how to be ninjas, and they are failing horribly. And one panda starts later in the movie. One panda starts rolling down the hill just, like, loving its life, and it accidentally takes out a bunch of other animals on the bottom of the hill. And Po has this moment where he goes and, like, slow mo. The quote unquote camera, you know, comes up to his face, and he says, you don't need to be more like me. You need to be more like you. And when we saw this, my now 8 year old, this was a few years ago. So he's sitting next to me. I'm, like, sobbing in the theater. He's like, what is happening? Because I think it's so true. And really underneath it all, that right there is the only reason that I am so passionate about what I do. Because I know that not only in your videos, but just in life in general, the more you. You can be and the more confident you can be about that, that's where you're gon.

Mm. Oh, my gosh, that's so true. And every single one of us has to remember that as we're setting our goals and dreams and aspirations. Right? We're watching all these other boutique owners succeed online. That comparison's the thief of joy. And the real reason your customers are coming to you is because of you, not your Best imitation of being someone else. I think that's awesome.

Yeah. So what we do is we have an exercise that helps you to identify 20 things that make you a uniquely awesome human being. And there's an acronym, because I know some people start to write these things out and they're like, oh, my gosh, I don't know what to do. So there's an acronym. The acronym is the word save. Now, when I explain this on video, I'm usually holding up my hand, and you can see all five of my fingers, and you can see that I'm saying there's five letters in the word save. Now, most people think that save has four letters, but I can't spell, so I spell wrong on purpose when I speak, just so everybody gets over it. That's been a really good strategy. So the acronym is saave. And here's what it is. The first thing is your skill sets. And those are the things that you're naturally gifted at. You've always been gifted at your skill sets. The next is your appearance. And if you can't find things about your appearance that you love, it isn't about what other people think of you, it's about what you think of you. Because when you do a live video, you're staring yourself back in the face. And so if you don't like what you see, your energy, your light is going to be dimmed.

Yeah.

So, you know, you've got to figure out what it is about your appearance that you can celebrate and love. And that could be, like, the fact that you wear giant earrings or crazy sunglasses or whatever it is. But there's got to be something about your appearance that you celebrate and love. The next is the activities that you love. And oftentimes what happens is when we go to do a live video, all we talk about is our product that we're selling, and we forget that underneath it, people want to connect as human beings. So if you're only talking about your products and the stuff that you sell, you're becoming what I call a salesy weirdo. Don't be a salesy weirdo. So your activities, that can be knitting, crocheting, hiking, I mean, firefly watching, cheese curd eating, whatever it is. Yes, right. And that's where you're going to be able to connect more deeply with people, and you're going to stay top of mind, because when they see fireflies, they're going to think of you. Yes, Right. So activities. Then the next one is, as we mentioned earlier, your values. And the more that you can actively celebrate your values, put your values out there. The more that you will attract the people you actually want to spend time with.

Yeah.

Your big why?

Absolutely.

Yeah. And like, you shared with your, you know, if you find a charity or a mission that you can get behind, the whole community is going to rally behind that together, which is so powerful for us. We celebrate joy as a fierce form of activism. Speaking of joy, earlier, I have the hashtag stand for joy is trademarked. It is something that all of our community knows. If you're not one who's inclined to be more positive, maybe we'll help you find more positivity. But you also may belong in a different group because it may drive you crazy. And it's just, you know, we celebrate standing for joy. We celebrate kindness, and everybody knows that. My kids know that the most important thing in our family is kindness. And we've actually. It's only happened once, but I kicked somebody out of our program because they were not being kind. And I was like, you don't belong here. Goodbye. So kindness is important. And we even have in our Facebook story, not our stories, but the little section that's like, you're about story, we have an inclusivity statement there saying that, you know, this is what we stand for and who we support and what we believe here. So that's so important. Yeah. And that's. That's your values. And then the last one. Okay, this is maybe the most powerful. The E stands for things you like to eat.

Okay, tell me more.

Okay, so this is where I was saying the cheese curd reference is going to come in. So I have this really awesome trick, and I would love you to try it and then report back to me. So the trick is you go to your personal Facebook profile. Don't do it on Instagram, other places. Just even if you don't do much on Facebook, go to Facebook and do this.

Okay?

Your personal Facebook profile, not your group or your business page. And I want you to write the words brussels sprouts, yes or no, question mark. Don't add a photo. Don't even need to do a background. Just Brussels sprouts. Yes or no? Your Facebook profile is going to blow up like crazy. Sometimes I still can't even believe it. I just said it again yesterday. I did another interview earlier this week. He did it also. People go cuckoo. And they don't just say yes or no. They either give you recipes or they explain to you exactly why Brussels sprouts are the actual source of evil.

I'm going to do this for everyone who is listening, you go back in time to when I. Because, you know, we record these ahead of time. So go back and find Brussels sprouts on my timeline, and you're gonna see this in action.

Okay. And then from there, what happens is it unlocks what we call the social triangle. Okay. So, yeah, so this. This Brussels sprouts thing has proven. I mean, I've been doing this brussels sprouts thing for maybe four years now, which is crazy. I've had five people send me in the mail. This a dish towel that says Brussels sprouts. All right. No, it's not Brussels sprouts. Yes or no? Oh, my gosh. It says every day on brusselin.

Perfect. Fitting.

Also, people go to restaurants, they see Brussels sprouts, they take pictures and send it to me. They tag me in Brussels sprouts posts. So it basically is like this secret virality around Brussels sprouts where I now have, like, cornered the Brussels sprouts market so that if people Brussels sprouts anywhere, they think of me. And if you've done this exercise in the past, like, if we know each other and you know this, try it again with something like cheese curds or, I don't know, liverwurst or, you know, there's all sorts of, like, polarizing food. Yes. That bring people out of the woodwork.

I'm on it. We are. We're so going to do this. This is gold.

I love it. Okay, so I'll explain how to actually turn those Brussels sprout posts into sales in a little bit. But right now, once we have this list of the things that make you a uniquely awesome human, what you want to do is you want to take your fingers, and you put your fingers on your chest, and you just kind of like. Like tap on your chest. Okay. With this list. And you want to just breathe with yourself and allow that bubbly sense of you to rise to the forefront. It is transformational in everything that you do, whether it's a live sale, whether it's a conversation with someone about being, you know, booked on their show, whether it's a sales conversation, even if it's like a PTA meeting. Right. Bringing in your best sense of you. And then as you're doing your video, if you start to get nervous or, you know, get funky, start talking about something that's part of your quesadilla of awesome. Like, interweave it into your videos, and you'll start to see that your community will gel around that goodness.

Oh, that is so good. And it's all kind of mashed up with Veronica Corning Stone on Anchorman. You know, when before she goes live at the anchor desk, she, like, breathes in and goes, power.

Yes, totally.

Same kind of thing. So pull your inner Veronica Corning Stone at the same time.

I love that. And it's not about trying to be like somebody else. It's really about what I call unlocking your inner awesome and then elevating it just a little bit so that more people can actually pick up on that energy.

Oh, so important. I mean, because how many times have you gone live and people feel like they have to be someone else? This makes it so beautifully simple to be yourself on camera.

And it gets better every time you go live. I think that, you know, having done this as much as I have for as long as I have, I have become a happier, more full, complete person, because I'm becoming more of who I am every time I hit that button.

Absolutely. All right, so tell me about the social triangle. How do we weave Brussels sprouts into money in the bank?

Okay, I love it. So there. When it comes to any platform, this is Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, whatever. Maybe not TikTok quite as much, but everything else, yes, for sure. So there are three keys. There's this triangle. You've got to have every point of this triangle in place in order for the algorithm to work in your favor. And these platforms have told us that they. What? They've told us what they want. Right. They've told us what they want us to do. Usually they have. Especially Facebook, like Mark Zuckerberg comes out and tells us what they want, how they want us to behave on the platform. And in general, what all of them want is for more people to be on the platform longer, having deeper conversations, so that they can send more ads into our newsfeed. So we're using this tool for free. We've got to figure out how we can work within the platform. So here are the keys. The first one is you have to actually show up. If you don't show up, you can't expect the platform to give back to you. And I find so many people who are, like, annoyed that they're not getting results, and then I go, look. And they've posted, like, once in the past month, so you've got to show up. Second thing is, you want to get your people to show up, and when they do, you have to actually engage with them. So if you do a post, like a Brussels sprouts post, and they're all commenting on it. Do you just leave that there, or are you replying to the comments? Are you then adding them to a specific friends list and going and interacting on their person, you know, on their personal profile or on their business page? Right. Because that's telling Facebook that we are now connected. Okay, then the third piece is you have to actually feed the platform. So you want to create content that's driving engagement. And when you create content that's driving engagement in the right communities and you interact with the right people, that social triangle comes together and you start showing up in the newsfeed of the people that you actually want to be seen by more frequently.

So true.

I like it. And so, like, if I did a Brussels sprouts post, right, What I do is I go through and I look and I see, because Brussels sprouts is not going to necessarily attract boutique buyers, Right? But I can go through it and I can see like, okay, this is my, you know, high school theater director who's a man and not necessarily going to purchase from my boutique. I might just, like, give a little, like, thank you to him for, hey, how you doing? For him for commenting. The next person, though, if I see that it's actually someone who has a community, a Facebook group of women who would all benefit from the things that I'm selling in my boutique, I'm gonna do three things. I'm gonna reply to her comment, I'm gonna send her a message that's like, hey, girl, I saw your, you know, your comment on my Brussels sprouse post. Oh, my gosh, that recipe looks amazing, whatever it is. And this is a little harder to explain without showing, like, a screenshot or, you know, screen sharing. But within your Facebook personal profile, you can have friends lists organized so they don't know that they're being put on a friends list. But I could add that type of a person into what I call a power partner list. So eventually, you're going to get to a point where you have so many customers, you're not going to be able to individually build these relationships one on one, and you're going to end up moving into something like a messenger bot that is going to do this for you. Right? But to start it and then to make deeper relationships with those power partners who are going to get you more visibility in front of their whole community. It's a total game changer.

Such a game changer. And not only that. I mean, I think from the value standpoint that you're bringing, we're talking about these One on one relationships that we can then later invite to our page, invite to our group, whatever it is, get them, you know, into that type of relationship. But from the standpoint that now the more engagement we have, money follows eyeballs, I guess is is where I'm going with this.

It's always what I say. Social proof also. Yeah.

And so the more eyeballs we have with just any type of engagement post.

Right.

Then the second thing we post is we're going to share our Facebook Live from earlier today or we're going to share our new arrivals or whatever it is. Now we have more eyeballs on that content because we're mixing in just like Gary V. Says, jab, jab, jab. Right hook.

Right.

If we right hooked all day, we'd get lost. But when we have that engagement, which could be as simple as Brussels sprouts, now they're going to see the rest of our content.

Yep. And like with that in mind. Right. You know, you do a brussels sprout post in the morning, you're going live in the afternoon. Before you go live, you go to the people who have commented on that post and that's when you reply to them. Because then they get a notification that you replied. And they're more likely to see the notification when you go live.

Yes, absolutely. And that's a good strategy to remember even 24 hours later because then people will get notifications that you replied or that you replied to someone else on the same thread. If you're connected.

Yeah.

So good. All right, so talk to me more about the Facebook Live process. Like what else? I know everyone kind of has their own set of tools and their own setup, but what do you think is important for a boutique owner to have in their arsenal when they go Facebook Live?

Okay, I'm going to share. Actually, the thing that I think is the most overlooked strategy when it comes to boutiques and this, I don't know why so many people are like, avoid this. And so I'm just going to tell you what I'm going to share right now is possibly the biggest opportunity for boutique owners. We don't own Facebook. Like we don't own Instagram, we don't own these platforms. And so many people rely on this group that they've built. And they're not taking people off the platform into their own list, their own community, whether it's via email, messenger, bot, whatever it is. And oftentimes when they are bringing people off of the platform into a list or community, it's only their buyers. But like you mentioned earlier having some sort of lead gen value that you're offering in order to develop those leads and relationships. It's so huge. So if in addition to your live sales that you're doing, you can add in once a week what I call a value video where you're not really selling, maybe you'll, you'll mumble a sale offer here and there, like, oh, yeah, and if you want this, you know, here's my shop. But for the most part, you're really showing up and you're teaching, you're offering value whether it's on styling or whether it's on how to drink more water. Right. We have a client who, they have a boutique where they sell clothes, but then they're also selling like I'm drinking out of a water, the water cup, you know, with a straw, whatever, a tumbler that I bought from them. And the video that she did, like showing how to mix drinks for what they're, you know, they sold. I, I was like, I have to get away from this video right now because I am buying way too many things. But it's because it was, she was teaching also. She wasn't just selling, she was adding value. And then when you add value, you want to offer some sort of additional free gift in order to get on your list. So for us, the easiest thing that we, we do every week is we offer show notes for our value videos. And it's like if you want the written guide that goes with this video, just let me know below. We have a Messenger bot reply to them, takes them into manychat, gets their email address, phone number for text message reminders, all of that. But it's like such a, it's an easy system where people know that we're going to be live, they show up, they comment to get a free gift, and we're continuing to build our communication community. So our list with that as well, so that when we do have an offer, when we do have live sales, we can send them reminders about those things.

So good. You've got to be building the list at the same time. Otherwise if Instagram or whatever, Facebook goes down, you own that property. Yeah, talk to me. Do you do a lot with messenger bots as well, kind of switching gears?

Yeah, yeah. So we have. And actually so with ManyChat, which is the tool that we use, I know we have lots of clients who use Common, Sold and different things like that as well. But with ManyChat, I have spoken at their conference, I hosted a show for them last year. There with all their speakers. And I've actually. They had me go to Austin on their behalf to speak at Digital Marketer. So I'm really super entrenched in the ManyChat world. I love ManyChat. It has been an absolute game changer for us even just to get more people to show up for our Facebook lives. So before we do a live video, we put out a post that they comment below that post in order to get access to our live video. Now, our live videos are all on Facebook, so you'd think that like three years of doing this that people would realize they don't need to comment in order to get access to the live video. They can actually just show up on Wednesday mornings at 10. But they like having that reminder and the, you know, make it easy for them. Yeah.

So tell me more about how this works. If someone else isn't. Is not used to using manychat, so they comment below. You've got to set up that list ahead of time so that bot reads the comment and then adds them to a list. Or how does that work?

Yeah, so we use. This is part of what we call our map to millions. And by doing this, I had a video hit a reach of 1 million organically, which is so crazy. Awesome. So it's really based on this a P R method. The A is for announce, the P is for pretend. So you want to show up on your video and have what we call a Mr. Rogers style conversation. It's where you speak to one singular person. You don't say, hey, everybody. Like, I'm sorry, but I'm gonna say, most boutique owners that I see, they say, hey, guys.

Oh, my gosh, I do that all the time.

Stop. Totally do. But look at Mr. Rogers. He didn't say, hey, everybody in the neighborhood. He said, hey, neighbor. Will you be my neighbor? Yeah. And he said, like, neighbor, are you having a hard time tying your shoes? I'm going to take you to a shoe factory and show you how to fix it.

Serious flashbacks right now.

Totally. So if you show up and you say, you know, hey, friend. Hey, you. We've all been, you know, we've all been staying home for the past couple of months and I've been hearing about this extra, you know, we talk about the freshman 15. What about the COVID 19? So, like, you know, well, you know, let's love our bodies exactly as they are. But you may want to mix it up a little bit so you feel more confident in the way that you're wearing your clothes as they're getting too tight. I don't know. Whatever it is. Right, right. We can offer some sort of advice like that, but if you speak specifically to what they're experiencing at the top of your video, they're more likely to actually stay on with you. So, okay, that's the P of this, that the pretend part. And then after that is the R, which is for repurposing. And so the bots, the messenger bots, allow us to more effectively announce that the video is happening ahead of time. Because when you send a message via a tool like manychat, M A N Y C H A T. When you send a message using ManyChat, the open rates are around 80%. Which if you're tracking the open rates on your emails, email open rates are around 15 on average right now, maybe even less so to. And recently, actually for us, and I just checked mine this morning and I am, like, blown away. I don't know how or why, but our open rates have been 100 for the past month or two.

You'll be laying down some pretty good jokes inside, you know. Open rates that high?

Totally. I even messaged manychat. I was like, I think there's an error in my reporting. And they were like, no, Molly, you're just getting really good open rates. I was like, okay. So they. But when you have, you know, you're meeting people where they're already hanging out, where they're chatting in email, our email inboxes are so full, we have all these spam filters and that's not happening in messenger yet. So we put this post out like two days. So what, what I do, my videos are on Wednesdays. On Mondays, I have a post that goes out that says, are you experiencing this problem? If you are, I'm going to solve it for you. In an upcoming training. If I have a guest, I tag the guest in it and I say, if you want access to this training, just let me know below and I'll send you information. We've attached that post to what's called a growth tool in ManyChat. And that growth tool, that comment growth tool, grabs the comments below that video and it replies to them or that post. It's not a video, it's usually just a post. It replies to them automatically. So it replies to it and it says, hey, it's written in the voice of our bot, whose name is Molly Bot. So it'll be like, hey, Molly told me that you were interested in joining us for our money mindset video that's happening this week. Would you like access? They click a button that then opens another message inside manychat. That's like awesome. Here's the link to the video and if you'd like to be reminded about all of our videos, click this button. So there's another little opt in there and cool. Would you like a text message reminder? So then we get their text message right there. Awesome. Would you also like an email reminder? We then get their email.

So good.

Yeah. And then message out when the video happens that it's happening.

So you go and you're just going regular Facebook Live. But now they're getting a Facebook message, an SMS message, an email because they have opted in in all these simple places.

Yeah. So we actually do one other thing which I should mention is we for the most part with those value videos, I'm not using native Facebook Live. I'm using a tool called B dot LIVE for my value videos because of like four things. One is I can pre schedule the video ahead of time. And then today I took all these screenshots of our video today because we had before my video. I did a video this morning on Money mindset. Basically it was called people love to give you money and had a guest, Shelly Campbell, who's awesome. We I prescheduled the video yesterday so we could drive traffic to it ahead of time using that comment growth tool. We had 66 shares on the video before I even went live. Wow.

Oh, well, I'm just wondering, so you pre schedule, what do you exactly mean by pre scheduling the video with BE Live.

So a lot of times people think that I mean that I'm actually recording the video ahead of time, but that's not what I'm doing. When you schedule a video on Facebook, it actually through a tool like be Live, it creates a placeholder with an image. You can upload an image, it creates a placeholder and then there's a title that you can add at the bottom that says the title of your video. And you can even put a little arrow that says click this button to get reminder. There's a button on Facebook they can click. Then when I go back into B Live and I go to create my video, there's a. Like the dashboard on B Live is connected to Facebook and all I have to do is find my scheduled video, click start and it starts the video right within that pre scheduled post.

Perfect. So you're going Facebook Live. It's still live, but it's through. What is pre scheduled exactly? It's through that little premiere or something like that.

It's kind of like a premiere. But the good thing is that it maintains the live video, you know, like the magic behind my video where your comments are coming in in real time and the likes and the hearts are flying across the screen. And the most important thing about it is that people can share that link ahead of time. So I can schedule my email, my text message, my bot broadcast, you know, days before because I already have the link where my live is actually going to happen.

Oh, so helpful. So you don't have to wait for it to go live and then grab the URL or the permalink in order to share.

Exactly, exactly. So I could even start a watch party before I actually go live because I'll have the link already set up.

Oh, that's so helpful.

So, so helpful. And then you can also add like a lower third, a frame, your logo on. On belive. They even have a live shopping option where you can pre schedule products into this little dashboard. And then it's kind of like QVC where it brings the product up with the price and everything on there. Perfect.

So a lot like comments sold in that regard.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, Totally.

Awesome. Talk to me. What SMS tool? What. What text tool are you using and what email tool are you using?

Yeah, so for text, this is actually surprising to a lot of people, but I am using manychat. So they have, as soon as Facebook started putting some limits on how many messages you can send inside messenger, they got really smart and they added the ability to use text and email straight through ManyChat, which is so beneficial because then the two can connect to each other. It's really cool. For email, I. Because I already had my email system all set up. I don't actually use the ManyChat email system. I use ConvertKit for email. Okay, gotcha.

I didn't know that ManyChat had text.

So that's super cool. So good. Yeah. What about.

So a lot of our gals are on Shopify too. Are there manychat, Shopify integrations or how do you suggest?

There's so many and actually they just keep upping it and upping it and upping it. It's like so cool. So I am in the middle of launching a Shopify store actually just for a few like shirts and stuff we're gonna sell, I think. Did we get connected?

Will they have brussels sprouts on them? Your shirts?

Oh my gosh. Hello. We have one that because we did a vote in my group, definitely every day on Brusselin is coming. So don't worry. I know, but Danielle Fewings is actually setting it up for me. I don't remember if we talked about. Is that how I met you?

I'm not sure. No, I don't remember how Beth somehow got us connected on our team.

Perfect. Okay. Well, anyway, my friend Danielle, who's amazing Danielle style daf, she has a whole new Shopify program. That's awesome. And so she's actually helping me to set my Shopify store up. But just even last week, I think manychat announced new integrations with Shopify where if people have visited the checkout page, a bot message can be sent. It's seriously awesome.

That is super awesome. Such a. Everyone needs another way to segment their list and to have those types of conversations with a segmented list.

And you can even do sponsored messages or paid ads that are connected to different actions that people take inside there. So. So it's crazy. Amazing.

So one more like tech question. I know you're big on TikTok. Talk to me about your TikTok strategy.

Okay, so I have. We have this. A client named Andrew Carlson who has, I believe I haven't checked it in about a week, but he has over a hundred thousand followers on TikTok. It is crazy awesome to see what he's done. And it's fully re inspired me. So about. Yeah, it's. It's re inspired me. And what I've realized is if you are doing a live video on Facebook every week, the. The cool thing, like a value video, not just a live sale, but something where you're providing value. The possibility for repurposing is so awesome. And what I realized, which like freed me in creating TikTok content, is I can go to my own live videos, my value videos. I have each of those value videos turned into a blog post. I can then go to my blogs. I have like five tips to whatever. I can just read my own five tips in a little TikTok video.

Oh yes.

It's like I was so, you know, I was concerned about how I was going to come up with these new ideas, but just reading off my own content. So one of the biggest shifts that I've made recently, I went through and like archived a bunch of stuff and just making sure that you're focused on a very specific niche inside TikTok, that it's not the content isn't all over the place and you're not only doing things that pick up on the viral trends. Also a tip that I think of my friend Rachel Peterson all the time who is bananas on TikTok. It's so out of control. I know. And so I went through her whole TikTok training as well. And I'll be the first to admit that I am not quite as active as I know I could be in order to make it really work well. But what it's done is it's allowed me to get a little more creative in the way that I actually put the content out there. Like, even I've been going to my Instagram and taking a quote card from Instagram and then bringing it in as a little photo on TikTok, I do this thing where I like make the photo really tiny and then I blow on it and then it makes it bigger and then the whole graphic takes over the screen and it's just, it's become a really fun way to create content that I can then use in my Instagram stories. So it's looking at this. When you're creating a live video and you're creating a TikTok video, it's not just seeing it as what you're creating for that one platform, it's how you can repurpose that and use it in other places so that you can get more eyeballs that then turn into sales.

Oh, I'm all about it. I tell you what, our. Our year of the word in 2019 was maximized for that very reason. Because everybody can get so lost just creating, creating, creating. And you think about like, what does it cost me to create an Instagram post? Well, I did the math one day and I figured it was about a hundred dollar investment per Instagram post for a boutique owner when it comes down to styling, staff time. Yeah, I mean, isn't it? And most boutique owners were using it once, maybe twice. So if you think about it, every live sale you do, every Instagram post you make, every TikTok you make can be repurposed so many different ways. So I think that. Very smart and I appreciate you sharing those tips.

Yeah, I have two. I would love to share two really quick other repurposing tips if we have time for that. Yeah, yeah, go for it. So one is the tool Smarter Queue. Do you know Smarter Queue? No. Okay. It is a life saver. And I get like, is this really going to work sometimes? And every time, like just yesterday again, I was like, oh my gosh, I love Smarter Queue. Because you can. So let's say you're doing, like you said, investing in Instagram posts that are amazing. Right. You've got these awesome Instagram posts. Most of Them are not seen by most of your followers because there's just not a time in the. Enough time in the day for them to see everything. So, like, for example, I have my sister, Mary Pendleton, does my Instagram, and I'm. I love what she does on my Instagram. I can then go into Smarter queue. I can take all the posts from Instagram and I can add them into a queue of posts divided by. By content type, and they're put into this queue and they're repurposed onto Facebook, but not at the same time. So it's not doing the posts on Instagram and Facebook at the same time, because that gives no one a reason to follow you in more than one place. Instead, it schedules it out later. But what's really cool is it reschedules it. So let's say you have 10 posts in your authority building content category. After those 10 posts have gone out, they're gonna restart again at the top, so they'll post more than once.

Oh, so good. Like, Tailwind has something called a smart loop for pins.

Yeah.

Yeah, totally.

Exactly like that on Pinterest. Yeah. And it just brings it back up, and sometimes I'll see it and I'll be like, oh, no, I shared that not too long ago. And then I'm like, oh, my gosh, there's so many comments and likes on it. I can't believe that I was worried about resharing that again. Wow. So that's the first one, then the other one is. Okay. And this is like, my secret, best fun thing to do is to repurpose your videos into searchable gifs on Facebook. Do you know about this? No.

Do tell.

Okay. You're gonna freak out. So if you go to Facebook right now, like, your personal profile again, and you just, you know, in messenger, or when you're doing a post, you can search for a gif. Yeah. So if you type in Molly Mahoney all one word, you'll find loads of GIFs of me. And that's like, that's cool and fun, and I can use them and people who know about it. That's cool. But here's what gets even cooler. If you type in go live, guess what? There's. You're gonna find, like, five photo five GIFs of me or three GIFs of me saying go live or doing something else that has to do with going live. Oh, my gosh, do you see him? Yeah.

Stop bananas crazy.

Go live. Also, if you search Facebook business, and that one I didn't even realize I had optimized for. I show up for Facebook business too. I have had people message me that they were looking for a gift for the word secret and my face showed up. So what has happened? We have had gifts that have been shared like over 7,000 times.

How do you create these? What do you like? How are you getting them in there? That's amazing.

Oh my gosh, it's so good. So we use a tool. If you have a Mac, we use a tool called giphy Capture. It's free. If you don't have a Mac, there's also a chrome extension called Chrome Capture. And basically you just pull your video up and you find moments inside the video where you can that are like, not just you, but they're search friendly terms like hi or like, I guess like secret is one of them. You know, go live different things that you may say. Like start to realize when you're searching for GIFs, like LOL, different things like that. What are the things that you're searching for? And find moments in your video where you laugh or where you make a funny face. I have one that's like mom, like mom face or something like that, like mom said. Because I'm like looking at the face and shaking my, looking at the camera, shaking my finger. And so by doing those, you drag this tool over the top of your video and you can capture just that little moment and it turns it into a gif. And then you take that gif and you upload it to places like Tenor and Giphy and it makes it searchable on Facebook, also on LinkedIn. It is crazy.

I am gonna like, waste the next couple hours of my life. I shouldn't say, wait, I'm going to.

Invest the next couple hours of my.

Life making like Mary Catherine Gallagher gifts. Gifts out of myself.

Danielle, even I didn't know this until recently, but Danielle, who I mentioned earlier, she told me that if you search Carol Baskin, she comes up. A step further. And we even have searchable gifts on Instagram now. My friend Chad helped me set it up. And so when you're doing like if you're looking for stickers, I created a whole suite of stickers on Instagram that are my face.

Oh my gosh. This you have just blown knock my socks off today. I just can't wait. This is awesome.

Woohoo. Yay.

Oh man. All right, Molly, real quick. We like to do a little lightning round at the end of the podcast. Yeah, okay. What scares you the most? Snakes, payroll or Internet trolls?

I don't think any of those Actually scare me very much, I guess. Internet trolls. Yeah. Snakes and pigs. Yeah. Internet trolls. If I had to choose one perfect best book, the Little Prince and the Big Leap.

Ooh, good one.

Favorite podcast, the Hustle and Flow Chart podcast. Next to your podcast, obviously.

Yeah. I will slip you $20 later, of course. Who do you like to follow as mentors? I won't say, like, single mentor, because I know most people have several, but who are your favorite mentors?

So Adam Urbanski, who is my personal business coach. I've been in his program for three, maybe even four years now. He and his wife, Beau Urbanski, are just my go to everything in business and life sometimes too. Yeah. Do you want more?

Yeah, sure.

Yeah. I. I had Chili Campbell, who I had on my show this morning, is a money mindset coach and she's 72 and she's so flipping inspiring. So chelli.com is her website and she's like making my life complete with her. Videos are so good. Also, I've been working with the team, Dominic and Doug at Apex Growth Mastermind. I'm in the mastermind with them, and that's been super helpful. Shamika Tankerson, she's a sales coach. That is a really good friend of mine that is my go to for, like, life, wisdom, everything. Rachel Peterson, also a good friend, but also somebody that I turn to. So much goodness. Yeah. There's so many people at the list.

So good. Oh, man. The value of surrounding yourself with the right people.

Yeah.

I usually ask this question when I'm interviewing boutique owners, so this might sound really weird, but what is your favorite trend at the moment?

Oh, no, I'm all about that. Okay. This is something I keep meaning to talk about. I am really. And my husband makes so much fun of me, but I am really into drop crotch pants.

Drop drop crotch pants.

So, like, I don't even know if it's actually popular anywhere. And I don't. I haven't really worn them out of the house. But there's a store called Metamorphosis. What?

What, like zubas in like 1998?

Well, so he let me. I've been looking it up. Drop crotch pants. It's like a Google thing. Yeah. That's all it is. I don't know. What's a Zuba? If you Google drop crotch pants, you'll see exactly what I meant. And the thing is, is, like, I know they look weird, kind of, but they are the most comfortable. Like, they make me feel like I'm wearing a dress, but then they also are pants So I can, like, move my legs any way I want. I do see this.

I'm googling. Google pulled it up before I even finished typing it.

Yeah, that's what I mean. Yes. Like hair and pants, kind of. There's a store called Metamorphosa that is, like, out of Bulgaria. I'm looking that up right now too. And I. Yeah, Metamorphosa. I am obsessed with all of their weird clothes.

It really reminds me of, like, what David Rose would wear on Schitt's Creek. Like you, like, right up his valley. I love it.

And then, like, the other thing, it's just, and I've been telling a couple of my boutique owner friends this, that all I want in addition to the drop crotch pants is V neck, really oversized off the shoulder, like shift dresses. Oh, yeah.

It's comfortable.

Yeah. And like, you can wear them with super high crazy heels if you want to, or you can then wear it to bed.

So less laundry.

Less laundry, exactly. That is the goal. Yes, Totally.

How about trend you wish would go away?

Oh, I mean, this is like being mean to each other on Facebook. Well, that's. Well said. Well said. I don't know if there's, like, I'm not really into, like, like crop tops. I, I. And maybe it's just because I'm, like, rocking my mom bod, but I just. Yeah, I don't know. Crop tops. No need.

Perfect. Perfect.

I'm all about. But crop tops.

Well, I just, I've got a lot of muffin, you know, when you have.

Yeah. And I don't, like, nobody needs that.

Nobody. No.

Yeah.

I appreciate it. All right, Molly, last question. I, you know, whether it's coaching people on social media or our boutique owners who are selling products on a daily basis, I truly believe, and I know you do too, that we're all here for such a greater purpose. Right. We're here to impact lives on such a greater level. So I would love to know, you know, number of years down the road, say 20 years down the road, you're sitting on your front porch, you're with family and friends, and you're looking back on the life that you lived and the businesses that you helped build and all the things that you went through. And I would love to know what is the thing you want those friends and family or grandkids to remember about you and say about you after this life is over.

I helped them to really deeply know exactly how flipping awesome they are. We had an event here, and one of our members said, and she sells awesome. You know, social media, messenger bot stuff. And she said in a big circle. We were all standing there and she said, you know, for the first time in my life, I. I finally know that I'm beautiful. And it was such a side thing that I wasn't expecting to hear, especially in that moment. And just knowing that we have the choice to choose joy, even in the face of, you know, utter chaos and how powerful we are in making that choice and what an impact we can make.

I love that. Molly, you have been so awesome, so inspiring. Thank you so much for spending your time with us today. And, you know, look for the Brussels sprouts.

We'll.

We'll be showing up on the. On the Facebook and on the gram.

With the brussels sprouts.

I appreciate you. Hey, I just wanted to say thank you. I know that you are here each and every week showing up to listen to the podcast because you tell me you reach out to me on Instagram @aj Alderson or @ the Boutique Hub on Instagram, and we hear your feedback. And I just want to honor you and thank you for showing up and supporting our guests on this show, but also supporting your dream, your small business, and the industry that we're all in together. So thanks for listening. And I just want to say, if you haven't already subscribed or left, review of the podcast, I would be so honored if you would. I love to hear what you enjoy about the show, what you want more, more of on the show. So don't be a stranger, leave us a review, drop us a comment in the show notes or on social media, wherever you see this, or shoot me a message on Instagram. I love to connect with everyone who's listening to the show, and that means you, my friend. So reach out and let's connect. And I've got to say this, too. If you aren't already a member of the Boutique Hub, which I know so many of you are and have been for such a long time, but if you aren't yet, if you're here and you listen to this show and you're like, gosh, I hear about the Boutique Hub, but I'm just going to get my news from the podcast. Well, let me tell you, there is a ton more inside the hub. So take a second. If you haven't yet, head to the boutiquehub.com, click on the join button, learn about joining. It's $36 to start to be a member of the Boutique Hub. And of course, you can cancel anytime, which I know you're not going to do sister. But check it out because we have tons more resources inside of the Hub that I want to make sure you're utilizing in your business. In fact, one of the benefits of being a Hub member is we have over $4,000 worth of discounts just for you. Just for members. We go into companies like Allstate Insurance or Comet Sold or Hertz Rental Car, Office Depot, all these companies that you may use on a daily basis. And because the Hub is such a strong community, they're able to give us some perks and discounts that are available just to you, our members. So the membership literally is meant to pay for itself and then you get access to our full training library, our communities, our brand new wholesale platform that we're building, plus the 600 plus wholesale brands that are already inside of the Hub and tons more. So head to the boutiquehub.com hit the join button and come be a part of our family and our community inside of the Hub. And as always, you guys, thanks for listening. Hey guys, thank you so much for listening to this episode. We hope that you loved it. Don't forget to hit subscribe and leave a rating and review down below for a chance to be one of our featured listeners each and every week. For more information on our spirit of community over competition and how to access complete show notes and bonus downloads from our guests, head on over to the boutiquehub.com and join the community. We'll see you next week.