616. “I’ve made $150 in sales and need a plan to hit my revenue goal by the end of the year- help!” | Coaching Session

I have been struggling a little bit so I have this kind of nine sheet collection and because I don't know what will sell and I don't have a ton of order so I can actually print and cut to order. What is variable is the design or the theme of the collection.

Hi, I'm Jacqueline Snyder and this is the Product Boss podcast. I've helped launch and grow thousands of product based businesses, even one of my own. And over the last 20 years, I've seen behind the scenes of businesses just like yours. Whether they are makers, manufacturers, artists or food and beverage businesses. I have spent so many hours studying it all. I've discovered what makes them successful, what mistakes they could have avoided, how did they turn their ideas into successful business and what are the strategies that they have used to make more sales and be discovered by more customers. And this is what this show is all about. Whether you're just starting out or you're looking to become a million dollar product boss, I'm here to give you the permission to chase your dreams no matter how big or small. All you need is the right mindset, a little courage, strategy and support and you too can be the next million dollar product boss. Let's hey, hey Product boss. Okay, welcome back to another exciting coaching call. Today you're going to hear me talk to Lisa of Hobbs Sticker Company who sells planner stickers for people who love planners, right? If you know, you know. Now, Lisa started her business about 10 months ago because she wanted to create these stickers and all the things that she loves to go with journaling and that functional paper planning. And she also wanted to do this and create a legacy for her family, especially her daughter. So, so maybe you can relate as to why you started your business, right? Think about your why behind that great idea that you have and then even further that why of what it's going to do for you, your family, your legacy. Now, while Lisa has made $150 in sales in her business this year, she finds herself always making more and more stickers. But what she really needs help in is creating a plan that will help her reach her revenue goal by the end of the year. Instead of always making more, we actually just need a second sell more, don't you think? This is exactly what we're going to figure out today, so let's dive in. Okay, so to start off though, what I'd love to kind of chat with you with because I'm really excited to coach you today and see where we go. So from your words, tell me about you Know what your company is, what you sell, and where you're currently selling.

Okay. I'm a sticker company. I create planner stickers for people who enjoy paper planning. There's a. There's a really big community of people who enjoy pen, pens and paper and, and all those things. So I create planner stickers for them. I find that journaling really helps me with mental health and things like that. And sometimes getting the hard feelings out is a little easier when you have like, pretty stickers on the page to help you kind of through it. Right. And I have a Shopify store right now. That's where I'm primarily selling. I do. I have a small presence on TikTok. I'm going through the motions, or not the motions, but I'm going through the actions of doing TikTok shop to maybe see if I can get some interest there. And Instagram is pretty. I've been building that. Social media is not in my comfort zone, so I've been having to stretch a lot for that. I did meet someone locally who is big in the planner kind of community. She does a lot of PR for a lot of sticker shops. And she and I live close together, so we've met in person. She's been a huge boost to my Instagram presence. And I've gotten some direct sales, like, some sales directly from her. So that's kind of the shape of it now. Very young, just getting started. And I started my business because I wanted to give people and kind of kind of share that journaling is, you know, is. And can be important. Paper planning is. Is fun and it can be pretty as well as functional. But also, you know, I lost my mom when she was very young, and I'm only 10 years younger now than she is when she was, when she passed. And I wanted to build something for me, for my family to do maybe as to help my daughter, she's 20, and kind of help her, help her out. But also, like, you know, as I'm facing retirement and things like that, you know, I. I don't want to work forever, you know, and how do I. How do I help do something that I love all the way through?

So I always love, though. And I'm sorry you lost your mom so young. And it's a beautiful story in the way of, like, what you're going to do, what you want to do for your daughter and like, the legacy. I also think it's funny how us entrepreneurs are like, I don't want to work as much, so I'm going To start a business, you work so much.

I don't consider it work, but it's.

So much better building our own dreams than someone else's dream, right? You're like, I'll spend 60, 80 hours a week. Someone asked me how many hours. I'm like, sometimes 60. And I was like, but I'm building my dream, right? So I'll do it all day, all night. And so I think that's the beautiful thing about entrepreneurship, that when you're really aligned and you've got this vision and what you want it to happen, what you want to happen. So I love this story, and I love where you're at. So you basically said in your intake that, you know, you. You said that your ideal client is a woman between the ages of 35 and 55 who has adult money and enjoys planning and journaling with paper and pen. Typically in a bound planner with paper, that takes fountain pens as well, like the Tomo river paper, Sterling ink. So you've got specific paper. So you know a lot about paper, but could also plan an Erin Condren or Happy Planners. They might enjoy updated planners and then all the things. So what I first want us to think about is I know you have this general idea for who your ideal customer avatar is, but when you're creating the product, when we're coming up with, like, what you want to be known for what your ideal customer is gonna want from you, because you said that you've made some sales, and you've even made some sales to people you don't know, which is huge. We'll always remember those sales. So we're like, oh, my God, I don't know this person or their address. So when I look at your website, which is, you know, Hobbs Sticker Co, Which I kind of like because it's also a little bit like, hobby, like, there's this interesting play on words there. When I look at it, though, I don't know yet. I know I can kind of see your aesthetic, and they're smaller type images, and they the. So my real first question is, like, while they can buy any of this paper and they can be a part of any of these planners. We know Erin Condren has a very specific look, right? Or we know Happy Paper company has a very specific look. There's, like, this aesthetic to it. What would you say is truly like, the most aligned aesthetic for, like, your ideal customer? Is she younger? Is she older? Is she, like, she doesn't want the trendy, like. Cause it looks to me also, just before I finish that thought. You don't have a lot of words necessarily, which I feel like sometimes a lot of stickers now are like short phrases like, not that we say like live, laugh, love anymore, but that kind of thing. And you're using a lot more imagery. So I don't know if that's a specific question, but do you get what I'm putting down?

I do, yeah. So when you look at kind of sticker shops, a lot of them, you know, will make what they call a standard kit. And those are sized for Erin Condren typically. Right. They fit perfectly in the little in. In between the lines and things like that. And they can be any aesthetic. We've got Kawaii all the way to watercolor florals, which is. That's what I kind of am drawn to is watercolor florals. Very traditional style. Not cutesy for me necessarily. I do use them sometimes in my planner, but that's not what I. I normally do. So in terms of the. I haven't been thinking it in terms of necessarily an aesthetic other than like that watercolor, those traditional ones. It's more about some size and adaptability to different planners. So I have two sizes and they will work in a multitude of planners. You could use them in Erin Condren. Right. Because it's all decorative planning and decorative journaling. I just don't sell like perfectly sized boxes to fit in those. In those planners necessarily. And that is the way the planner community is trending a little bit right now. A lot of people still go all in on the kits, but a lot of people are kind of getting away from those and using more a la carte. Like they'll like these watercolor florals and they'll make. Mix them with some of this ephemera or paper or, you know, maybe they have pictures of their own that they want to do and they want to decorate around them and things like that. So for me, that's kind of who I'm going for. I'm not. I'm not going for someone who's going to want to have perfectly aligned boxes in their. In their planner. I'm going for someone who wants to be a little freer with their journaling. They can use any notebook. I don't know if you're familiar with bullet journaling, but you can use any notebook. And that's what my stickers can be used in.

Okay. So with that said, in looking at your website, I think that there needs. I think that there needs to be a clearer way of me landing on your page. And knowing that these stickers are kind of like for the freestyle, like any notebook, like if there was some sort of tagline where you could be like any notebook, any style, freestyle, you know. And then you also said traditional and watercolor, which they may be able to figure out when they visually see it. But we want to also differentiate you from other sticker companies. And you know, like we've talked about, there's a student of ours in multi stream machine that is into travel and adventure. And so all of her stickers and, and all of the paper products she comes out with are very much travel, adventure, millennial. Right? We have someone else who's faith based. And so her stickers are very. They're Catholic, but actually I'm gonna go millennial too. They're more millennial. They're like the more they're for like the modern Catholic family. So she's really able to hone in on who it's for. And so you're either if you're modern Catholic family, you're like, yes. If you're not, you're no. If you are like the backpacker that travels everywhere, you might buy everything from the adventure sticker company. If you are not, but you like planners and paper products, you might know about them and you might have a trip coming up and you're like, this is the stuff I'm going to buy for this trip specifically. So we have to think about it in the way of like, there's, there are these different categories and where is your customer going to go to shop? One customer might get all the things from you, but your community, like the people you're selling to, they don't buy from one place. They're like collectors of all things.

So that's an interesting topic. So I have been struggling a little bit. So my core kind of, I've been looking at my, my product is kind of a core collection and I have a journaling kit. It' two pages and has these types of stickers. I have kind of a decorative page and it has these types of stickers. And you know, a washi page tape is very popular. So, you know, for, for decorating and everything. And then I have, you know, boxes. If you do like to use boxes, I have some numbers. If you're using potentially an undated planner. Right. You might want to put the days and the dates in there and then some other, you know, larger decorative things. So I have this kind of nine sheet collection. So if you buy any of my stickers or if you buy a collection you know, it's going to have these nine sheets in it. What is variable is the design or the theme of the collection. Right. And a lot of companies and, and even me, right? You know, it's like we're coming up on fall, so I've got a Halloween collection, I've got a fall collection coming out, right? So it's just a, just a variation on that nine page theme.

Totally. But and in always like, yes, you can have all these stickers because when I, when I know about, you know, Hobbs sticker company, I know I got a hob sticker company for an aesthetic, right? And you told me your aesthetic is traditional watercolor. You might dig a little bit deeper into that. But it's like I might identify the stickers and say, oh, that's, that's Hobbs, right? Like that's a Hobbs sticker coat sticker. The same way that you know that you can identify an Erin condren Notebook from 10 miles away. Right? So yeah, you can have the different stickers depending on the season you're selling into. And I like the thematic, like the nine pages. I know what I get and the variation. But you kind of stick to this, right? So I think you're queued into that. A couple things I see. And you're a multi stream machine student, so I'm going to kind of direct you to ways that you can, you can use. This is inside of the program. We talk about your website and how to get your website to convert better. I would love to see, see better images. Like when I say better, your graphics are fine, but bigger. Right now I'm looking on my phone, which a lot of people shop on their phone and it's too small, I can't see it. So go to other websites of similar companies and look at them. Sticker companies, planner companies, and look at them on your phone and on a desktop and then see what the images look like and see how you can have those kinds of images as well. And then there's all the like clear matte, premium matte. Like we have all the choices, we have all the sizes, we have all the pages. It's almost too many choices. Are you making them yourself? Okay, so that's why you're able to give them too many choices. Because you're like, I can give you mat. I can give you clear mat, you know.

Yeah. And I'm printing and because I don't know what will sell. So right now, and I don't have a ton of order so I can actually print and cut to Order.

Right. But a confused customer is not going to buy. You know, you've heard me say this.

Yes, yes.

And so by giving me too many options and making it almost customizable, the customer really doesn't need that. They don't need that complication. They just want to buy it. So just because you can doesn't mean you should. And if we want to scale your business to the size business I know that you want, then it's not going to be manageable with me being able to custom order stickers from you, which feels like it's custom order. I don't need all those decisions. Customers want you to tell them what to buy. So order an Erin Condren pack and say, what is she selling and what do they look like? And do that. Right. Or another brand that you know exists and just say, okay, if they're matte or not matte, if they're shiny or not shiny, I'm going to do that. Let's say you do a bunch of matte and then you're like, you find your best sellers. I don't know. Let's say your lemon one is your bestseller. Then you're like, available now in matte. You can always try, like a limited edition, but go with the majority, not the minority, and not the. I can make anything. Because what's going to happen with your customers? They're going to. They're going to almost like they're going to get there. And they're like, well, what pages do I want? What are the pages my junior? Is it many? It's too many things for me. Okay, then what I'd love for you to do is just break out your listings. Break out your product listings. So if you have like a mini. If it listed as regular and junior. So is junior a language that your. Your customers use?

No, but I can do some digging to try and figure out like a. The better choice. A lot of my customers. So the sheet sizes are the same size as kind of a passport type planner. So really it's for. It's really for larger planners and smaller planners, basically.

Okay. So you might just use small and large or mini or, you know, whatever they call a small planner. Or even if it's 9 by 11 or 4 by 5. Right. Like, I would make that pretty. Because Junior doesn't make sense to me from a. We just have to get practical in our language. Then. If I look at Erin Condren, I'm just using her as an example. She has sticker books, obviously. She's got bundles. She's got pack. So she's using all the words that we talk about when we talk about making offers to your customers. So you might. Again, I just want you to go to language that is familiar to the customer so that they don't have to kind of guess what it is. And so what I would probably say is, you know that she has like a vinyl teacher 3 pack and it's just stickers and then there's like a life planner sticker pack and it's got the tabs and the things you can write on meal prep functional sticker book. So there's just words that she does pull it apart in variations. Or here's like acrylic wall calendar clings. And this is the one that has like rainy or sunny and months and dates and da da, da. So I think I like what you're doing. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with the bundles and the off that like the product offering. I just want it to be honed in. Into the language. And this is in. In. In multi shade machine. One of your bonuses is the product descriptions that sell. And it's. And then it's taught by Rachel Weber, who is Kendra Scott's copywriter or was or I think is. And so she talks about just like practical language that makes sense to your customers. So I'd love for you to, to, to listen to that one because for you, I think you've got great images, I think maybe just a little bit clearer. I think pulling apart your list, your product listing so it's easier to sell and then just the words you're using, the copy making sense to the customer that they don't have to guess and they don't have to make decisions, but it's just very clear and practical. So I think that will help sort of clean up the website. Did you catch that? A confused customer never buys. All right, so I know I say this all the time, but it's true. When you give your customers too many options, they become confused. And when a potential customer is confused, the chances of them actually purchasing your product are very low. And in Lisa's case, she's offering all of these various sticker options, including custom made, which is overcomplicating the process for those who are landing on her website. You know, your customers have decision fatigue. We all do. There's so much input coming to us and we need people to tell us what to buy. Right. They want you to tell them what to buy. So if your website isn't making it simple for your customers to make a decision, then maybe it's time that you need to reassess and look at your website and figure out what changes you need to make to clean it up so that you can increase your conversion rate so that it could be an easy yes for your customers so that you can make sales. Now let's take a look at Lisa's pricing and SEO to see what needs to be adjusted there. And then also from the pricing perspective, honestly, I can't get anything for 75 cents anymore, so it's not worth your time.

Yes. Yes.

Can't even get a soda out of a vending machine for 75 cents.

I know there needs to be like a minimum order, so I based it on, and this is where I need to go through the pricing module and things like that. I based it on the price of the sticker paper and the ink and the clip art and all of that. And I kind of worked it into a per unit cost. So like the junior paper sheets, I can get four sheets, four of those out of an eight and a half by 11 sheet of paper. So. And the sheet of paper actually costs less than 75 cents.

So are you charging for labor, like design art?

It's built in, but not, not as much as I, as I know I should.

Okay, so I love that you're saying that because it means you've done the pricing sheet. Like we, we talk about pricing and multi seam machine and you, you're looking at it and you're like, okay, am I making the right margins? And you are, if we're looking at costs per unit to make and then your markup. But here's the thing, and I teach this in the program too, is like, okay, so some of us are like trying to get the lower price because we have expensive materials we're using, our labor is expensive. You know, there's all this stuff that's expensive and it's like, oh, I don't think I could ever sell that at that price. There's people like you, which is very fortunate, where you have very, very low costs, but you actually can market up to the moon. So you actually can follow the margins because I want to make sure that you're profitable. But sometimes when we're priced so low, we are actually going to repel our ideal customer. They're going to think, what's wrong with this? Right? So they're like, like, you know, is it stickers? Like, you know, so what I want you to do, and this is when you're going to, you know, you're identifying your ideal customer. You know that, you know the brands out there they might buy from. If we look at, I don't know, I'm going to say Erin Condren. She has a budget book, decorative sticker, two pack, just two sheets and it's normally $5.50. When I coach the Catholic Sticker Company, $5 stickers selling like hotcakes. So I think what you need to realize is that unless we're at the 99 cent store, which by the way, is not the 99 cent store anymore, it's the $50 store and up, nothing can be under a dollar. I know. And anyone that's your future customer, just plug your ears. But we also need you to build a business where you can make money and keep providing this amazing product. You're gonna lose customers if you're actually not priced in the margins. So meaning like in what they're used to buying and you can make more money. So even if you can sell it at 75 cents, maybe your products are never less than whatever it is, you know, $5. So because not worth your time to send something for just a couple dollars. So what I want you to do is look at like this. Well, like, Erin Condren takes the same sticker page and just sells you two of them for $5.50. So instead of you thinking selling an individual's, you're going to do what every sticker pack has ever done, even if you think about the little kids ones, it's a double page of the same stickers inside the pack. So if I'm going to buy one sheet from you, it's technically two. And it's not 75 cents, it's like five bucks. And if I'm going to buy and I'm saying $5, but you're going to go and do your work outside of this call. And then when they're buying a kit or a bundle or like the whole pack, and those are all going to be individual listings as well. That's when you get to go go up in your price and they're going to find value by buying the bundles. So just look at sites that are clear to follow. Because part of your question, one of your questions was about SEO and search engine optimization. So everything we're talking about, funny enough, does go back to SEO because product descriptions matter. Wording language. Like if you write bundle, someone might be writing in, you know, lemon sticker bundle, like they might be using words. And if you're using words that aren't aligned with what People will search. It's. It's not going to connect in the SEO part. Do you want to jump into SEO?

I'd love to.

So tell me your question around that.

So, you know, just way back when, you know, it was all about put. Making sure you had the right word like 20 times on your page or whatever. Right. Like just thinking, thinking way back, I'm not entirely sure what good practices there are now for SEO and how do I make sure that my collections, I guess, making sure I find the right verbiage. Right. And there's, I'm sure going to be a lot of research involved in that, but I just, I'm not even sure where to start looking.

Okay. Have you watched the SEO module?

Not yet.

In msm?

Not yet.

Okay. You're like, we could, we actually don't have to cover that. You go do that and then talk about something else here. So inside of that program, inside of msm, we, we share with you a tool that you can use. And, and there's like a level of searchability on it that's free, but then ultimately eventually you do like a paid tool. I'm just going to give you an example that I share inside of the program. And it's not about product. Well, I'll tell, I'll tell you both. One, When I came out with Cuffs Couture, which is a wearable wrist wallet, nobody was typing into the computer wearable wrist wallet. So that wasn't going to be SEO. That was going to make sense. I used to work for bra companies and lingerie and. Same thing though, like when I had clients that were doing lingerie, if I, if it was like bra, nobody's gonna find that. Like, Victoria's Secret's gonna pop up and whatever other huge company was gonna pop up with the language meeting. Then let's cut to. So then when I. My designer consulting co op company, the company that I launched all the fashion brands under, I used to say, like, helping you build a brand from the ground up, somebody like you, who wants to start a clothing line. What do you think you're typing in? How to start a clothing line. So I was like, oh, all right, totally missed the practice. This is what I was saying earlier. The practical language of what people are searching. So I was like, well, silly me, because in the tool that I share with you inside the program, I show you, like, if I typed in how to build a brand from the ground up, brand build all that maybe, I don't know, maybe got 12 searches and then how to start a clothing line had like, you can see how many searches are happening on Google and there's other tools now that like will tell you. Like these are all kinds of questions people might ask. So what's pretty close to impossible at this point for small businesses is to be ranked number one on Google. Typically for some of these searches, if it's like stickers, candles, ceramics, that kind of thing, a lot's going to go into like associating your brand, a brand name, that kind of stuff that eventually people are going to be searching out words. So a lot of my masterminders, for example, and they're multi stream machine students, what I tell them when they're asking me, should I get on Amazon, I go on Amazon and I actually search into the Amazon thing. I start to type the name of their company and all these different search terms come up with their name. Even if they're not selling on Amazon. Because people are actually, they know the brand exists and they're going to Amazon to see if it's available. And I can actually see that in the search tool. It finishes it for me. So I'm like, I tell my clients, I'm like, hey, look like you actually are. People are looking for you on Amazon. So maybe this is a good place for you to sell on when you're not an established brand and they don't know that's going to be harder. So inside of the program. So this is what I want you to do. I teach you this method where I talk about it as like a back door. I don't think I've ever actually talked about this on the podcast like this, but I teach you the back door for SEO. So what that means is if they're typing in planner stickers, not going to find you. So in the way that we teach it, we help you find words or phrases that people are going to search for that you can create content around. And I'm not telling you to become a blogger, but the way that we do this backdoor SEO is that then you create. This is what I did and I started ranking number one with my business was I created four or five quote unquote blogs, articles that weren't. I'm not a blogger, I'm not updating things weekly. But it sits on the back end of my site that if I were to type in like how do I plan for the holidays when they're so busy, I don't know, I'm just gonna randomly throw that out there. How do I plan for the holidays when I'm so Busy. And let's say you did the research, how we show you to do it, and you're like, this is, like, this is good. This is like SEO gold. You might then create this blog that is using this terminology of something somebody would search. Then you're more likely to be found in this blog article. They pull it up. And now the way that we teach you how to, like, make the blog happen, there's links and things within it that takes them into your shop. And that's how it's the back door, because it's like how to plan for the holidays, and then it's this back door into all your holiday stickers.

I have a YouTube channel. And so one of the things that I know that as a. As a planner myself, you know, people do look, they like watching plan with me videos and seeing the stickers being used and stuff like that. So, so I do that and I talk about how I do my planning. I talk about the stickers and what's going on in my shop and everything. Kind of leaning into the personal aspect, right, of social media, making it social. So, and I. And I do have a blog. I have one entry on my site right now. But I do want to lean into, like, Pinterest, right? So using that. And people go to Pinterest for inspiration. So planner, inspiration, planner, sticker, like all of those things I know is kind of an untapped gold mine for me.

You're very smart. I don't know another word to use for you right now. But, like, you already know all this. Like, you have it. You're just. You got to kind of like, press the button and go. Because everything you just said to me, okay, Google's number one for a search tool. YouTube is number two. Pinterest is number three. When people are looking for something, that's how they're going to do it. The fact that you already have YouTube, if you can find same play with SEO, it's a little bit different for YouTube and a little bit different for Pinterest. So they all have, like, different ways of playing in the playground. They're all search terms. So if you eventually can figure this part out, now you're being found on more search engines than most of us are on. And then let's say with the blogging part, whether you're a blogger or you just ever come out with five different blogs and they just live there forever, then you can create, you know, thumbnail images, a bunch of different versions of those images, put those on Pinterest. And so then there's lots of ways into the same blog endpoint that then brings them to your site and this is what lifts the site visitors and then gets them to interact. So I think this is from an SEO perspective. You're already nailing it on the head of knowing what to do. Now if you decide that you want to become this content creator that creates weekly YouTubes or some sort of YouTube series, you can easily do that. And either you blog from the same content, you don't have to come up with multiple content. You can do the same content just repurposed in a lot of different ways. So for you as a we're going to talk content creator now, if it starts a top level, I'm going to do a video on this and the video is created again. There's people like my friend Jessica Stansberry teaches people about YouTube, for example. It's like, what's the hook? What's the SEO? What are they searching for? And then you get the people viewing it. Then you're like, okay, this SEO makes sense. I'm going to take the same thing and take that. And you don't have to do it. Like you can hire someone, AI can do it. You can hire a VA overseas. They can create a. They can watch that content and create a blog from that content. You take the same content and clip it for like a TikTok or do a live. You can create newsletters around it. There's so many ways that you could repurpose this content and all roads lead back to your website. So now we're casting this huge multichannel net of capturing of like how do we find the people or how do we get in front of the people so that we can catch them and bring them in. So just to go back, you work on your website, you work on your website conversion. To start, you're very close, Very, very close. There's just some tweaks that you're going to make to it by looking at other sites and seeing how the pages are. And that's why I did go to like an Erin Condren versus another small biz. I don't love them all bundled into one listing. Okay. And then images and product description. So that would be my first because if we, we can send all the traffic to your website, but if it doesn't convert, there's no point. So we need a highly converting website. So I would watch that module in MSM and I would. Because we walk you through how it can sell for you. Like a great salesperson, like as if it was a real retail store and there's different things you can do plus what I'm telling you here. Then from an SEO perspective, I, I think the fastest thing you could do is if you watch the SEO module is create the blog the way I just told you. It's a little bit of work, but it's a one time thing. It's not a follow up. I have to do this weekly. I have to create content because that's the overwhelm. That's like the thing that happens. You'll find a lot of clarity in creating these back doors. I did that for my company. So for Designer consulting Co op, one of my top quote unquote blogs that drove the most traffic to me was the top trade shows or top fabric trade shows or something like that for in the US And I updated like the dates of that yearly. But that's what my customer is looking for. I was like, what is my customer looking for? They need fabric because they want to start a clothing line and they'd find me giving them that information. They'd be like, wow, that's really helpful. Let me book a call with you. So to me that's the easiest, fastest way to up your SEO other than keywords and like product descriptions, to just quickly kind of move through that part. Because if you then decide you want to start to create consistent content, like a YouTube channel, which does need consistent content, or weekly blogging or monthly, whatever that is, let's come back to that. I just want you to like kind of rev your engine to start. Does that feel good to you?

It does.

Okay.

One of my sales came from my YouTube channel, by the way.

Okay, so you hear me say this on the podcast. Success leads leaves clues. So that would be a step that I would say is that whatever you, if you can get better at YouTube, maybe you don't worry about the. You set up those like blogs just for SEO perspective and then you get better at YouTube and you're constantly driving people to your website. YouTube could blow your business up because people are going to know like and trust you. In case you missed that, when it comes to SEO, two of the most important things you can do to improve your SEO ranking is improve your product descriptions and think about creating a backdoor link through something like a blog post. I mean, this is exactly what we teach inside of multi stream machine. For Lisa, the first step I want her to take after adjusting her website is to fix her product description so that when people land on her website, they actually convert. Right? Convert means they land on your website and they put something in their cart and they buy. And then once her product descriptions and website are converting, then what I want her to do is moving on to creating a blog post, start to drive more traffic to her website and business through Google searches. Now, the same can go for you, product boss. If you have a website that is not converting, then chances are maybe your product descriptions need work, maybe your photos need work. There is something missing in and on your website that is stopping your customers from converting. And you kind of need to analyze what that is and fix it. And once you can get your website to convert, then dig deeper into your SEO. We don't want to send people to a website that's not going to convert. So let's make sure that where we send them converts and then we send more and more people through SEO and you can consider creating a blog post. The way that we teach blogging and MSM is very different than just like becoming a blogger. But that backdoor way that we teach, that's a way to attract and bring in more people. Does that make sense? All right, let's dig into Lisa's final question, which is all about email marketing. Hey, friends. So how many times have you thought about waiting until the week before Black Friday to even think about your holiday promotional plans? I mean, I know, I know. I'm not calling you out here. You're not alone though, right? Because there's so many other things on our plate during the fall and holiday season that when we finally get to that week before a Black Friday Cyber Monday, I know we're like, oh, no, I got to figure this out. Well, guess what? Not this year. Now, I know that successful product bosses know that the key to making sales, growing their businesses, and making good money during the holiday season is to prepare. Right? We want to prepare. What we're going to make an offer around and to start to build their promotions now. So that's exactly what we're going to do. Together. Yes, together. During our five day challenge, which is going to kick off on September 9th. So if you're someone who's wondering if a free training, if five days spent with me is really worth it, I'm going to say the answer is yes. We know that there's so much information out there and it's hard to tell what's actually going to move the needle in your business. But here's the thing. The rock your holiday promotions challenge is 100% worth your time and energy because it actually creates results in your business. And that's not just me, humble bragging. It's what we hear from our previous students who have shown up year over year over year and taken action on what they've learned and they've seen some incredible payoffs. Okay, so like Jenny, who had been in business for 10 years and felt unorganized and all over the place. But after going through the challenge, she walked away with a roadmap and a clear plan. She said, I can actually breathe now, right? That breathing that weight off your shoulders. Or how about Ashley, who never knew what she was going to sell or offer and was always last minute in planning for the holidays. But after attending the challenge and implementing what she learned and knowing exactly what she's going to sell during the holiday season, she was able to wait for it, triple, triple her sales from the previous holiday season. I know, I know this all sounds incredible, right? I have so many other stories to share with you and you might be thinking, okay, cool, good for Jenny and Ashley. But what does this have to do with you, my friend? Well, let me tell you, okay, that is just a small preview of what you can do. What you can do after spending five days with me learning how to turn your business into a money making machine this holiday season. I know that you need more customers. I know you want more people to know your business exists. I know that you want to make more sales. And a small part of that is creating your promotions with us. But I'm going to teach you so much more over the five days together. You are going to feel so clear. You're going to walk away with a plan and your promotions are going to be built. And so don't forget, we start Monday, September 9th. It's totally free and you can join us by signing up at rock your holiday promotions.com or just click the link in the show notes and make it super easy and you can get all signed up and I'll see you inside. All right, back to the show. So your other question to me was how do I build my email list? Right?

I've got a lot of ideas now from the, from the 90 day roadmap and from the email module. So my system goal is to create a template that I can use every time I'm posting that will update my, my link tree so that I have them going right to the page to become an email subscriber. And then every time I post part of my, my caption will include want more Go to my site. You know, I have worked out the wording yet, but I, but I know that. And then Just being now and now I'm going through the automated ones which I do have some of those already. So that was good. The one the where I really needed help was how frequently, once I build up the list. Right. How frequently do I send out the emails, right. And is it, is it weekly? Is it and if I do weekly, is it or like a monthly newsletter, do I tie that in with the blog and tie that in with like a YouTube? So I am trying to think of how I can wrap it all up.

Yeah. So in inside of the program we talk to you about automated emails, like emails that just kind of set and forget and then there's going to be the promotional email. So those are kind of the two things you're talking about and we have the templates for you in there of like a lot of types of emails you can use. So automated are things like I'm abandoning cart. Hey, you left something in your cart. Right. Or the welcome series. I've opted in. I got the 15% off discount for my first order. And and now it's like, hey, like here's a little bit about you and, and so you can have a cadence to that. The welcome sequence target is actually notoriously known for. If you opt into Target they are going to blast your inbox like crazy because they actually want the people who want to stay on the list to stay and then they want people to unsubscribe because we pay. When you start to grow a list, you actually pay for that list. Like I pay so much money a month now for our email list which is great because it's thousands and thousands and thousands of people. But if they're not opening my inbox we actually purge like 8,000 people month because they haven't opened in 90 days. Like if you're not getting my emails anymore, someone's like oh yeah, I haven't gotten product boss. It's because we've, you know, purged it. But I just want people on the list that want it because ruins your deliverability and all these things. So I think the most important stuff initially is that welcome sequence. Now Annika of Hay Maven, she talks about this. She's one of the mentors inside of Multi Stream Machine and a student. She, she had created like a 50 part welcome sequence because she was a set it and forget it type person that never wanted to send an email again. So she basically, you don't need this. This is just like this is what she did. And I was like, this is an amazing thing. It's like I'm doing it once and I'm never gonna do it again. So she basically created like, you know, let's say wrote 50 emails that maybe got delivered to them over the next 18 months. Right? Not as typical. Usually a welcome sequence might be three emails or even two like hey, welcome. Make sure to use your 15% discount. Did you know about Hobbs sticker? Da da da. Maybe there's another email that's like, you know, make sure you use your 15%. Like comes back to them on that or it features something or something and then it just, it ends and then it drops them into promotional emails, which is what you're asking. So for us at the product boss, I think we send our welcome sequence a little bit longer. But you know, it might be like an every other day or third day. It might be the welcome sequences delivered out over two weeks. And you can kind of pick your cadence. Okay. There's no right or wrong. It's just we're opting them in and what we need to do is because if they just opted in today, they do need to get an email. They get their email immediately and then they should probably get another email probably by the next day. And then you could skip a day and then do another day, let's say, because they're the hottest. When they found you, discovered you went on your site and opted in, they're going to forget about you in a few days because they've opted into 75 other products. Right. So welcome sequence important. Abandoned cart's important because if they put something in the cart and they leave because something happened, life lifed. We want them to be like, hey, remember this thing in your cart which I give you the entire schedule and cadence inside of msm. So you've got all that. It's like a three to four day process. Those are like. And then after purchase, fine. But like those I think are two of the most important automated sequences from a promotional standpoint. People love a newsletter in the way of. My students love to send newsletters, but customers don't read newsletters. So I send a newsletter at the product boss because I'm sharing information and I'm teaching. If your company has a way to create a newsletter that is useful and helpful to your customers as another piece of content as an asset to them, then you could do a newsletter and you could do that once a month, once a week, whatever you want. Okay. We do once a week newsletter because we're like, hey, this is what's happening in the world. This is what's happening with marketing did it up. Otherwise, if you follow a lot of e comm brands, they don't send newsletters. They send e commerce emails which are promotional emails that are trying to sell you something. So whatever you want to sell in that moment, they're sending it to you. So it might be like the Halloween collection is here or it's August when we're recording this and Oggtober is like this massive thing that's gone viral. So you might have been like happy October or it's Summerween. And then with saying that like happy October, you might be like, the Halloween collection is here. And that's the first promotional email that lets your list know it's here. In an ideal world, I would tell you to send a promotional email once a week for a lot of you. If I can get you to send one once a month, great. Once every other week, great. I just need you to send an email. Okay. If you opt into Anthropologie, they're going to send you one every day, if not twice a day. So there's this very, this range. So typically then when you send emails, you're going to send ones that are like you're going to pick your cadence again. I send my email, my, I make my launches happen on Thursdays. I tell them like Halloween stickers are here. I send out the email and I direct them to the Halloween stickers. And then the week after you might send another email that's like the two cute Halloween calendar sticker pack or something. And you're kind of like redirecting them to other products in the suite. Like it's not the same thing. But you people buy what you tell them to buy. So you just want to do an email about the thing you want them to buy. Does that make sense?

It does make sense. I've been, I've been kind of hyper focused on, you know, the value versus the, you know, using. I don't want to just sell to them all the time. Right. They're just gonna.

This is the, this is the hardest part. So if you have a good example of other brands that sell newsletters that are helpful to planners or stickers, then I would model it after that. Otherwise your product business. Product businesses sell you. They sell. That's what they do. They don't inform. I have people that are artists and they'll send newsletters about their life and their travels and it's like the customer's not bought into you enough to care about your travels. Unless you're Erin Condren or Like Rifle Paper company or Anna Bond, who's the founder. She built it around like what's Anna doing? And then. But even if you look at Anna's summer trip to Mexico, it's still selling you product that's inspired by her summer trip to Mexico. And there's no words to it. It's images and clickability to take you to the site to buy. Does that make sense?

It does. So what some of the shops do is do a digital freebie every month that coordinates with the most recent collection that was released. So I was thinking about something like that. Right. Like they couldn't, you know, you're, you're in the family. Right. So you get. And it's not something that I would sell, it's something that it's.

They opt in.

Yep. And it's exclusive to the people who are in. Right?

Yeah. So you can build community the same way that all these other planners and sticker companies and stuff have also built some sort of like community or like raving fan. I'm friends with Amy Tangerine. Do you know who she is?

I know who she is, yes.

Yeah. She's huge in the planner planner world. She's done collaborations with Avery labels and she speaks at our event. So she's coming to like I have a our expansion retreat that's coming up at our masterminds and she comes and speaks, she's like amazing and she talks about how she's co branded and all the products she's created. But it's because she's got the fans of the Amy Tangerine brand and then she can use that brand in lots of places. So I think for you from an opt in Hatta or email list, people love a discount. You could do a 10% discount since your product is cheap and your 10% discount can be on orders over. Doesn't need to be 10% off your 75 cent sticker. 10% off. And then an asterisk orders over $30 or something. Right. Like we can set. And then they could have their welcome 10 code but then when they insert it it's like it's not applicable. You have to spend X amount of dollars so you can do whatever you want there plus join the monthly whatever club. Right. Like whatever it is that you're sending. And then once a month you have your letter or your newsletter or whatever that comes with a freebie that they've opted in for like that community that keeps them, that's you giving them stuff without asking them to buy. But it's a constant reminder they look forward to it. And then all the other emails are new sticker collection or lemons are here or summer sale or they're all the promotional emails. Because the whole point of you sending emails is to sell. Okay, I've said it before and I'll say it again. When it comes to owning a product based business, you not only need to build an email list, but you need to actually send the emails to your email list. In Lisa's case, she wasn't sure which emails to send and how often. Maybe you have a similar question and if you, if so, then you need to focus on the two types of emails that I shared with Lisa. Automated emails and promotional emails. The whole goal of email marketing is to sell, but in order to do that, you're going to need to nurture your audience and get them excited about your business. Because if you're trying to sell to them all the time, then you won't see much success. Okay, so there are other ways to market to them, to connect with your customers and to send really helpful ecom emails. Now I dive deeper into, into the specific email sequences that you can set up and promotional emails that you can send inside of multi stream machine. But I hope right now that this is helping you out. Makes sense. I keep saying makes sense on this one. I don't know why, but I just.

It just makes sense.

Okay, I'm really glad that we got to work together.

Thank you so much.

Oh, you're welcome. So how can we buy from you, shop from you, support you, like all the things.

I am on Instagram @hobsticker co. I am, I am on Facebook @hobsticker co and you can always go to hobsterco.com that is my, my website and if you have questions, hobstickerco mail.com.

Lisa is definitely on the right path with her company. And with a solid plan in place, I have no doubt that she will hit her revenue goal by the end of this year. The main theme here is that when it comes to creating a plan, you need to first determine what it is and isn't converting. And then once you know that, you can focus on improving conversion where needed. In Lisa's case, she needs to increase conversion on her website through telling her customers what to buy, raising her prices and improving her product descriptions. From there, she needs to improve her SEO to bring more people to her website. And finally, she needs to start leaning into email marketing to make more sales. So this is going to be Lisa's plan forward to hit her revenue goal. And now, my friend, it's time for you to figure out what your plan is. You can do it, my friend. I have total confidence in you. Keep listening to the podcast. Make sure you're following the show. If you're not already, just click that Follow or Subscribe button. And if you haven't left a review yet, I would be so honored if you did. And I read every single one of them, and it's just amazing. And I love to read them. And I'm just so grateful because it helps other people when they discover the show, decide whether they want to stick around or not. Okay. And my mission in my life is to support people like, like you, small business owners, product based business owners, in building the life of their dreams through their incredible businesses. All right, until next time.