Tik Tok Growth with Rachel Pedersen

You're listening to the PT Profit podcast, episode number 167. Today I'm sitting down with master marketer Rachel Peterson and we're talking all about TikTok growth. Are you ready? Let's get started.

Hi, I'm Beverly Simpson, former fitness manager turned online personal training business owner. And this podcast is where smart fitness professionals, including trainers and clinicians, discover how to increase client performance in movement, package and position their products and services services and get out of their own way so that they can increase their revenue to live a life that they love without sleazy sales. Welcome to the PT Profit Podcast. What's up coach? Thank you so much for pushing play.

On another episode of the PT Profit Podcast. I'm your host, Beverly Simpson and if this is the first time you're hanging out with me today, welcome. I'm super pumped that you're here. Thank you for pushing play and today is going to be an epic episode. If you haven't heard of Rachel Peterson before, you are in for a treat. She is a social media queen, a master marketer and just an incredible all around human being. You can find her Everywhere on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, any of the major social media platforms and she has been teaching people for years how to get to the seven and eight figure mark using their content. And what I really love about Rachel, there's so many things I've been trying to get her on my podcast for over a year. So to have her on the show was it is such an incredible pleasure and a privilege and truly I'm honored to have her here. Not only is she an incredible businesswoman, helping multiple entrepreneurs reach seven and eight figures, she is an incredible mom of three and her journey, which she shares on social all the time. While she went from welfare to making millions without sacrificing her family life, it is a core value of hers which you can see all over the Internet. She has been seen on Entrepreneur, Forbes Inc. USA Today Today, Neil Patel. I mean the list goes on and on and what I love the most about her, which you'll tell in this episode, is just her incredible ability to connect with human beings. And it doesn't matter how famous or where, if you're starting, she will meet you where you're at and shares her heart vulnerably and powerfully. In this episode she talks about how she uses her content specifically in TikTok to help grow her list and grow her business and also for her clients. So without further ado, let's go ahead and roll that interview.

Welcome to the show, Rachel. Truly, it is a pleasure and a privilege, and I am truly honored that you are here to share your genius with us today. As an avid consumer of your. Y' all are about to get your minds blown. I just cannot wait. So for those of you who have not had the pleasure of learning from you, Rachel, would you mind sharing just a little bit about who you are, who you serve, and how you got there?

Beautiful. My name is Rachel Peterson. I'm a social media strategist. I started my business seven years ago, and it's been a wild journey, especially the last three years, as everything's grown a lot. I'm just a mom from Minnesota with three kids, and so sometimes it blows my mind that today we have a combined 1.9 million followers across social media, which is like, a lot. But the way that we built our business was by getting results for our clients. And so that's super key here. And we have a lot of experience in the fitness and weight loss industry. So I'm excited to share exactly what I learned and what we figured out in that process. So before my platform took off, we helped our clients take off. I have just so much to share. I'm so stinking excited. Let's go.

Dive in, please.

So fun. We've worked with tons of clients in different industries. We used to do full done for you services. We don't offer that the same way anymore. Today we work more with seven, but mostly eight to ten figure businesses. Our clients these days have included. And this still blows my mind. Metricool, click funnels, Dean Gracio C. Money just flows. Like, it's so much fun what we get to do. But my passion is also making things super simple for people and supporting with, like, here's what you can literally do in the next 15 minutes to reach more people that are your dream customers, the people who need you now.

I love it. And honestly, one of the ways that I found you was through Kenya Kelly and your work. She's amazing. Your both of your. Kenya came and spoke to my PT profit accelerators, and I found your work through TikTok, which is why I would love for you to share because I know many of my clients have not found or discovered the power of TikTok. So I'd love for you to just please dive in and share.

Oh, my gosh. First step, I just want to. I want to shout out Kenya Kelly. One of the things in any space and especially like a specialty like TikTok is one of my specialties majorly. So it's Kenya's as well is. It's. It's. Sometimes people get into this scarcity mindset, like, oh, I can't help someone else who's a competitor. And one thing I love about my relationship with Kenya is we are always rooting for each other. And I think it's really, really cool. That's been the experience with the majority of the TikTok experts, but I just want to share a couple of foundational things that are super helpful. And I'll. I'll. I don't share this to Flex, but rather to share, like, receipts a little bit. So our first big foray into fitness and weight loss was actually with one of the top Beachbod coaches. And that was powerful because we were able to generate leads for her in a market that was coming up. She's actually in all the beachbody videos. And that was my first, like, experience with realizing that. And I'm just gonna say this. As a fitness professional, it sometimes is unfair because sometimes content doesn't reach the people you know it needs to reach. Or you've experienced, like, platforms kind of suppressing content a little bit. And that was the first time I realized, oh, we have to do something a little differently to make results happen. And that's where I learned the concept of bridges. I feel like I'm just going to pull out a notebook with each platform. It's fair or unfair. They have a lot of restrictions, specifically in the fitness and weight loss communities, as you guys have probably experienced. And so we had to take on this challenge and figure out how can we serve people on social media, but still get them to the programs that are going to change their lives. And so we've got all these social platforms. So I'll just put SMS. This could represent YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, any platform you're using. And by the way, in case anyone's like, which platform is the best, the platforms that you love, that is where you're gonna crush it every single time. Because if you're logging into Reddit and you're like, mom, I hate it here. I want to go home. Like, you're not gonna crush it there. So, like, find the platforms that you love, and then you build an amazing audience on any platform. But there is an added advantage to TikTok right now. The reason for this is because consumers are growing on this platform. I mean, in just a few years, it surpassed Google's overall watch time, which is impressive when you realize Google owns YouTube. I didn't mean to get this nerdy. This Fast, but we're just going for it.

Oh, we are a house of nerds.

We love it.

Perfect. Perfect. And I'm going to speak quickly and also I might at times just go high level and feel free to like, say like, Rachel, what does that mean if, if you need anything changed? Okay, so we've got social media and we've got our offer. And most people are trying to market like this. And as you know, every platform just like they like, they're like, absolutely not. We don't like your sales pages. We don't like befores and afters, we don't like idealized bodies. You guys have all experienced this. I'm really familiar with this. So we realized that we needed to create a bridge. And that bridge could be something like a webinar or a simple opt in or freebies or trainings or PDFs or checklists. But there needs to be something that does two things before you get them to your offer. It needs to give value so that you stand out from all the people who are just constantly like, buy my program, buy my bootcamp, buy my, you know, buy my plump booty. Da da da da. In this will make you stand out. I stock these posts because I love the marketing behind them and studying it. But secondly, this needs to be social media compliant. So a bridge is going to be what gets people from the space that you don't own to the space that you do. And this is the game changer. Plus this gives you the ability to collect emails. So this is going to be the big time game changer. So creating a safe version or social media compliant version of whatever it is that you're creating. So we then, after working with that beachbody coach, we had the opportunity to work with Christy, Code red, which a lot of people have heard of. Christy. When we started working with Christy, she had a pretty small audience, but a loyal, raving audience. But then also she was doing about $300,000 per year in revenue. And we came in, took over all her organic, social and paid ads and within 11 months we scaled her to $3 million. Trackable. 3 million. And also, I'm going to point this out, profitable. Not all 3 million were profit, obviously, but it was profitable. It was shockingly profitable. And we realized one major thing. So fitness professionals are geniuses. I just want to put that out there. You guys understand so many things, right? Like you understand the body, you understand metabolism, you've tapped into this code that for the majority of the United States, for the majority of the world, feels confusing and Mysterious. And what happens is as you guys learn so much. Okay. It always makes me laugh when something turns into a pyramid because it reminds me that it's always sunny episode where they're like, it's a. It's a funnel. Turn it upside down. Oh, it's a pyramid. Okay, so this is you guys. You guys are the 1%, the 1% in terms of education and understanding for how the body works, how to build muscle, how to transform your metabolism. And you guys, oftentimes we all think that everyone we want to reach is right here, and we just need to help them understand the verbiage or the specifics or the science. And the biggest thing that we tapped into and realized with Christy, code red, is that the majority of the audience you want to reach in terms of knowledge, comfort, ability to speak, to understand things, they're way down here. This was me too, before I started really studying fitness to understand my clients. And so what happens is we're using things. I'm going to use a Russell phrase, Russell Brunson. So we use things like technobabble and we say things like bmr. Well, that's great. Most people have no idea what BMR is even once you explain it. And so we have to. Actually, this is going to sound crazy because I'm not trying to insult anybody, but when someone doesn't know about an industry, it's confusing. So we really, really, really simplified everything that we were sharing and made it super, super, super simple. So, for example, if you were to say, have you checked your BMR recently? Do you know? And I don't know if that's something that you guys subscribe to, but have you checked your BMR recently? If so, what did it look like? And you get crickets, right? You're like, why is no one responding? And this is just an example. Instead, what you can say is something that anyone understands. Have you ever felt like your weight loss plateaued, even though you're doing the same things every day, and then suddenly people are like, yes. Or have you ever tried to lose weight, but no matter what, you get stuck at a certain weight over and over again? Oh, it's so frustrating. I know. So you want to take everything and really simplify it. Not dumb it down, simplify it. So that's the first thing.

This is so good. I love this. I often talk about how we are very solution based in our. In our content because we are unconsciously competent. And yet people, the majority of people are in a problem and they either a don't know it or B, they're trying to solve the wrong problem without realizing it.

Oh, okay. So then I actually that per. I love that you guys talk about the levels of competence because this is huge. Okay, so this is the process that we go through internally. So we create a list of people that are dream clients and we literally think of specific people. So like, we might be like, okay, this is Sarah, this is Anna, and this is Stacy. Okay. And I'm going to sit and think about like each of these actual people and the things that they have said, the problems and the pain that they're experiencing. But I think of the words that they use. Side note, one of the best ways to find this is to go into like groups that contain your ideal demographic and just start to watch the convos and start to copy and paste specific lines because people are revealing their problems without looking for the right solution there. So I might write down number one, can't lose weight. That's at least her words, right? Can't lose weight. She also always complains about her hip dips drive her crazy. Right. And then I'm going to do that process, maybe a couple problems for each person until I have a list of about 10 to 30 different problems. And then I'm going to literally start my videos with those problems in their own words. Are hip dips driving you crazy? Let's debunk this popular myth. Da da, da da. So then you go right on into it, however you want to handle that. So we start with problems and pain as the first thing and then we phrase social in the words of the person who needs that message today.

I love that. So now that you have this simple content framework, how do you transpose it and or put it into all the different platforms in your world?

Yes. So real fast, this could be like a five hour thing. But like, so we follow a process called domino content. Anyone listening to this, I guarantee you you're probably really busy, right? Everyone's super crazy busy running their business, trying to figure out marketing. Oh my gosh, it's a lot. So I like to look for where are the places where I can create one piece of content and then use it again and again without it feeling wrong for the platform or just like, I just threw it up there. And one thing that's really powerful about TikTok. So when TikTok came on the scene, they created a panic and a flurry with every other platform. That's why suddenly we got Facebook reels, IG reels, YouTube shorts, and lots of other short form video. So when I create on TikTok, when you create on TikTok, this becomes your domino piece because this is where the culture starts starts and then that content can be repurposed and I'll just share the specific of how the mechanic. So I use on desktop snap tick app and it's totally free. It slightly desyncs the audio and video but it's totally fine. People barely notice. Don't stress about it, it's fine. We do this for IG reels, Facebook reels, YouTube shorts and you can even use them for idea pins if you have someone running ideas your Pinterest for you. So one piece of content becomes five different platforms content. Now I also do the same thing with like emails. So we'll take our email and then I'll take like a just quick selfie in my actual office so it doesn't look like sales. Kiki Kiki here. As much as we all love professional photos, believe it or not, but always sharing professional photos creates a disconnect because the audience senses this is filtered, this is photoshopped, this is perfected, this is they sense that they're about to be sold to. So starting to share candid photos makes all the difference. And that was a big thing we started doing with Christy is just hey Christy, we need a video that's off the cuff from you right now. Like pull over on the side of the road and she would send us a quick like three minute clip of you rambling about this in your car, but please don't be driving. And then she'd send that to us and it was, it was perfectly unpolished and that magnetized people. So I'll take the copy I've written for an email, snap a quick real time selfie that is not perfect. And then I'll share that on maybe Instagram, maybe Facebook, LinkedIn. Twitter's a little short, but sometimes I'll find a way to chop it into a Twitter a tweet and then also you can share it on sometimes YouTube studio. Like you can use that one piece of content in multiple places if you, if people don't sense that there's a sale or that they're being pitched okay, so real fast, this is how you Crush it on TikTok. Anyone can overcomplicate TikTok. It's hard to simplify TikTok, but I'm going to simplify it just so that it's like you guys can literally plug this in and start creating today. First step number one, use your actual phone. You do not have to share professional footage. You do not have to share the gorgeous footage. You can just straight up shoot the videos on your phone as you go, exactly as you look. Okay, so on TikTok, there are three parts to a successful TikTok. There is the hook. There's the value or what you're teaching, sharing the beliefs that you're breaking. And then there's the cta. So I'm going to just give you guys the CTA and I'm going to share actually the hooks that I created. And I'll explain that in just a second. So a simple CTA could be something like Follow for more. You can make it more specific. Follow for more butt building exercises, Follow for more Follow. If you want a juicy peach like you can say those things and that makes it more fun. But the CTA can just be simple because we don't ever sell on the platform. We sell once we've gotten past the bridge. And that will help your content to continually take off versus fighting with the platform against suppression, which does happen, by the way. Okay, the hook is the single most important part of your video and I wanted to put this to test. So can I actually just share this with you and you can share it in like the show notes. I've got a really cool resource. So a few months ago, I want to say it was like six months ago, maybe it was longer. It was Funnel Hacking Live 2021. I had a conversation with Kaylin and Brandon, Brandon Poulin of Ladyboss Rest in Peace Ladyboss. But all of that to say they wanted to pick my brain about TikTok. And I said the single most important part is the hook because that determines whether or not people are going to pay attention. And this is especially true for fitness professionals. So I crafted 10 hooks for them. And those 10 hooks, literally within those 10 hooks, they created their first million video view video. So they reached a million video views within those 10 hooks just from one of them.

Oh my God.

I'll share these examples. I love these things. Like, I've personally lost 65 pounds. Here's what I've learned. I'm about to drop one of the biggest secrets for weight loss. In 3, 2, 1. There's a tiny weight loss hack that creates exponential results. So these are the words, the verbiage that people use in day to day life. You're just tweaking it for weight loss. So I can share this. And I also have the kinds of hashtags that will attract your dream audience. So I'll Share those and you guys can feel free to put it in the show notes, no opt in needed.

So thank you, that's so kind.

It's going to be really fun. Go ahead, feel free to love it.

Okay, so I have two more questions. The first one though, along the lines of what you were sharing earlier about TikTok. And thank you so much, that's really helpful. You mentioned that TikTok has that moment and the momentum right now to really expose your message without the, without the advertising people coming in and taking our spots, which, by the way, I use paid advertising too. I love it. It's. It's a mixture of both.

Yeah.

But I'm curious, in your opinion, how long do we have to really maximize the first to market experience with TikTok?

Yes. So what's interesting is, even though everyone thinks that TikTok is saturated, that's simply not true. I'm in rooms with business owners a lot, probably, as you guys are too. And business owners are so resistant to TikTok. So even if as you're listening to this, you're like, no way, I'm not getting on TikTok, guess what? So is everyone else. And so your audience is there, but very few of your competitors are. So there's still a lot of resistance. And what happens usually is there's a curve. This is like way too nerdy. I'm not going to draw it, but basically, like there's the supply and demand curve and we are at a peak or close to the peak for people being on TikTok. It's going to plateau there for a while. Like it'll keep growing a little bit and then it'll plateau because that's the natural pattern. However, we are not at saturation for business owners. I think we're still about maybe 18 months away from business owners really taking this seriously. But even though still I think it's going to take two or three years before businesses really see this is a viable platform, it's lasting, it's here to stay. However, you can literally in 18 months build an audience. You could build an audience faster than I have and literally build a raving community of hundreds of thousands or even millions in 18 months. That's more than enough time if this becomes your main channel.

This is incredible. And so now I'm curious, on the opposite vein, in this vein, what would you say to the person who says, well, my audience isn't there.

Really, really, really good point. Okay, so ready for this? There are close to a billion monthly active users on TikTok and everyone says, I'm sure, but most of them are in China. Actually, no, that does not include China. China has a separate app called Douyin, which is like their version of TikTok. So that is excluding China, which is huge. But what's wild is 31% or even higher at this point of the TikTok audience is over the age of 30, and some estimates put the total audience over 20 years old at close to 60%. So your audience is there. If you serve people over the age of 18, your audience is there. And literally the it is. So I don't want to say easy because easy is never fair, but right now it is easy for fitness professionals because they're just scooping up audience and serving people because there isn't anyone else there.

So good. Okay, I know we're short on time, so I'm. I'll leave you with this last question then, which is what is the number one thing that you wish more people asked you about, that you love to talk about?

What is the number one thing I wish more people asked me about that I love to talk about? Well, a lot of people ask me about books and I really like talking about books. Believe it or not, I am going to say how to make business fun. And it's something I've worked on a lot, believe it or not. But when I started on TikTok, I was really burnt out just in business and stuff. And so TikTok became this fun outlet for me and it still is most of the time. Sometimes, though, I'm at the point where we have so many people who see our content that we attract a wide net of amazing supporters and also a wide net of trolls, haters, etc. But that being said, like, my goal is to make things fun. Like, if I have to be polished, professional, wearing a blazer all the time, it's just not going to happen. I wear yoga pants every day. And so TikTok freed me to have more fun. I love that.

I love that. You know, I'm a mom of two all the time are two young kids and my daughter Abby says to me all the time she's named her stuff animal TikTok, her alligator TikTok. Because mommy loves the TikTok and daddy is afraid of the Peter Pan alligator.

Yes, that makes sense. That makes perfect sense.

Rachel, you are incredible. And your genius, that is only a scratch of the surface. I have learned so much from Rachel. So for those of you who want to be in your space, learn more about how they can work with you where they can learn from you. Where are the best places I can send them?

Well, first things first. I've got this incredible resource. It's totally free. There's no opt in or anything. So I'm sure you guys will be able to link to that in the show notes or feel free to send it out to everybody because I know this will serve people. But if you want to learn more about me, the easiest place is my website, rachelpeterson.com it's all E's and a D in my last name and that links to everything else.

Hey, I love it. Thank you so much.

I really appreciate it. Thanks Beverly thank you for listening to.

The PT Profit Podcast. If you like this episode, chances are.

Your friends will too.

So it would be a huge service.

To us in if you would please.

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