Make More Money Without Social Media, Fancy Opt-Ins or Ads

If you're an entrepreneur, you're a coach or a consultant, this fantasy world is a place where you can grow your business without fancy ads or fancy opt-ins or even without social media. Is it possible? The answer is yes, it is possible because Emily is here today. Emily Williams from Boss Project is here to talk about that with us on Cash and On Camera. So welcome to the show, Emily. So excited to dive into this. I know that your partner is not able to make it with us today, but maybe in a future episode we'll have both of you on.

Yes, that would sound great. I'm so happy to be here. Abigail's under the weather. You wouldn't even want to hear her froggy voice right now. So you get me and just me. But I promise I'm ready to deliver.

I love it. So, you know, I think a lot of people are very— they're frustrated, right? They're frustrated with social media. They've tried the expensive ads. And in fact, I was talking to someone this morning. Who went through that exact thing. And it's because they did the ads sooner than they should have. They weren't ready for the ads. They weren't at that stage. And then fancy opt-ins. I think that we're in a place now where sometimes these opt-ins or these lead magnets that we've been— we were doing like 5 or 7 or 8 years ago, they just don't work anymore. So talk to us about Boss Project and some of the experiences that you have experienced with entrepreneurs who are really trying these tactics and why they don't work.

Yeah. Well, and I, it's perfect timing that we're having this conversation because I can use ourself as our own case study from something new that we tried 30 days ago and we got some incredible results from. And so I could break some of that down for you, but ultimately at the end of the day, what we've convinced ourselves is traditional marketing isn't. It's new, it's trendy, it's modern, which is fine if it's working and if it's effective. But what we've convinced ourselves is if we're not actively using social media or we haven't figured it out, we haven't cracked the code, we haven't gone viral, then we're doing it wrong or we're missing out on clients or leads or prospects or sales or whatever it might be. And from day one of our business, we have very much been into traditional or old school business models, which rely on a lot of relationships, networking connections, talking about the thing that you do, reading the room, having real life conversations with people and building and bridging connections over the years because you never know where you're actually gonna rely on them. We have been talking about this for years. We are actually celebrating our 7th Biz anniversary birthday this month right now. And so we're having a little bit of a party over here at Boss Project. But so we've been looking back on how are we shifting in this market that's a little bit weird and a little bit unpredictable and a little bit overwhelming with the cost of ads skyrocketing and their effectiveness drop like in the floor when the CEO or the owner and the marketing team of Facebook themselves have to email their users to basically admit We know our pricing is ridiculous and through the roof, and we know the results of what you're getting are not great, and here's what we're gonna try to do to change it, but it's not actually helpful for small businesses. And so we took our ad dollars off of Facebook, off of advertising earlier this year, and really started to reallocate the time that our marketing team and our sales team was spending building relationships and actually tapping back into connections. And so we did what we teach our own clients to do, just 30 days ago. And in 30 days, we're able to bring in contracted revenue of $118,000.

Hey, oh, good for you. I mean, congratulations on both fronts, right? On the celebratory 7 years, but also on the results of the 30 days. That's amazing. And what's interesting to me about that is that it's really a return to, again, you termed it as old-fashioned or like old school, but it's back to basics. Yes.

Right.

It's like we have to keep in mind what has always worked well. What has always worked is building connections, meeting people, building your network like that, in my opinion. And that's something that we preach here at Profitable Podcasting, right? It's like it's about the relationships you build. It's about the people you're meeting and the people you have access to.

Yes.

And business development opportunities. Speaking opportunities, referrals come from that. Yes. Is that what I'm hearing you say? And why are people hesitant then to maybe dive so much into that? Because they get— they're sort of still caught up in the shiny object syndrome of the Facebook ads because it's so easy, or seemingly easy.

It's seemingly easy. It's not easy and it's expensive. So let's just burst that bubble right there. I think it's the classic case. I was just having this conversation on another interview we did today. It's a classic case of wanting what you don't have or what you can't have or what doesn't make sense even for your business. And we were talking with someone who has her full-time job. She works with massive corporations, helping them build creative briefs. She teaches their teams how to create these creative briefs for other marketing teams. And so she's talking to people who have like $5 million budgets, like lots and lots of money to spend on projects. And the thing of what she's seeing is that she's hearing from these really large corporations with these big old budgets talk about how do we get more personable? How do we get to know our customer better? What's their name? What do they like? What do they want? And then we have these small businesses who are, you know, maybe a couple million, but you don't have a $5 million budget. You maybe make $5 million or even less. And they're having conversations about how can I talk to more people? How can I widen my reach? How can I widen my, my viralness on social media or my audience or my traffic or my ad spend or whatever. And they're both talking about the things that they don't have or they wish that they had. And I really want to remind and encourage people, small business owners specifically, the luxury that we have in able to— being able to build connections and rely on those that big corporations wish that they had, wish that they had teams in order to do, who spend a buttload of money making those relationships and connections happen. You know, when you, when you all follow like a big brand on Twitter and they try to have this like really funny personality and you feel like, you know, the social media manager of like Arby's or something ridiculous, you think that you have this connection with this corporation because they want you to feel that way because they know how valuable a connection actually is. So as a small business owner, you are the owner and the marketer sometimes and the salesperson and the doer. You do have so many roles and you have this opportunity to show up in a really unique way for your connections, your network, and your clients.

It's a classic case of we want what we don't have. The grass is greener on the other side. And so the big corporations want to have that ability to be nimble and to be able to have one-to-one relationships. And the people who have it right on their doorstep want the big marketing pow, you know, and it doesn't, it doesn't really work. You have to really understand the marketing strategy that's going to suit you best for the stage of business that you're in, the kind of business that you have.

Yep.

And I do believe— I'd love to get your opinion on this, actually— but I believe that as we move from Web 2 to Web 3, that this idea of personal one-to-one and customizing those types of relationships is going to be ever more important. The idea of community is going to be ever more important, and we're moving away from vanity metrics of social media. It won't matter if you have a million faceless people who are following you on Twitter or Instagram or whatever. I would prefer to have 1,000 true fans. I don't know if you know that article from way back, but 1,000 true fans is way more valuable to you than a million faceless people that you'll never ever have connection with. What are your thoughts on that?

I 100% agree. And it also creates a space of where the job that you get to do is a lot more fun. It's a lot more impactful. You can actually see the results that your clients and your connections are getting. If you've ever felt disconnected from the person that you're working with, you feel like you don't know them that well, it's time for you to invest in spending time with them and actually making a human connection, getting to know them. When in our 30-day experiment, um, we had two, uh, really funny situations happen. Uh, clients who— one connection who hasn't turned into paid contract money yet, revenue yet, but will, and one paying client. Both from— one was a connection from 10 years ago, someone that Abigail used to work with. Literally just, she used to work there a decade ago and she made enough of an impression a decade ago that they remembered her when we— they needed to have a project complete and they reached out to us and they've been one of our biggest clients this year. We have a really fun presentation with them later this week that's going to wrap up our 30-day kind of test and strategy. And I'm really excited to see what that, what that does. But then another connection we made probably 6 years ago. So a year into business, a student who bought something from us back in 2016, 2017, and she became a client in another program that we offered last year. And then when we offered new done-for-you services and we did our reach out in a way that was custom to that person, because we knew them. So we knew, hey, should we email this person? Should we voice message this person? Should we take this person to coffee? We knew enough about them to do the right type of connection to have a conversation that would be best for them. We had this conversation with her, and she was one of our, uh, she raised her hand to be interested. We had our discovery call, and she signed and paid within like 3 days of that entire process happening from 7, 6, 7 years ago.

Yeah, I have cases too where I have people that reach out to me, you know, and, and they'll say, oh, I've been following you for 3 years I knew you when you were on TV years ago, and they become clients. Or if they themselves don't become clients, they will refer me to other people or send me opportunities and say, how can I do for you? You know, can I get you, introduce you, an email introduction to somebody who has a summit coming up or a speaking opportunity, or they have a podcast, or whatever the case may be. But I have had people reached out to me and they said, okay, now, now I'm ready to talk to you. I've been following you for 3 years, and then it turns into a client, and then 24 hours later they're in program and we're working together.

I could keep sharing these stories. We just had a high five-figure deal come through where we didn't know who they were, but they've been in our corner for years, been listening to our own podcast. They're on our mailing list. When we sent out one email that had maybe two paragraphs in it about how we're opening up done for you services again, and hey, fill out this waitlist form if you're interested, they filled it out, and within a week or so we're booked and getting started.

Because you don't know what message at what time it's going to resonate with that person. And so we talk, you know, a lot about nurturing and what is your strategy to nurture people on your list or your network or whatever. And that's exactly what happened there. So this idea of making more money without social media, right? It's like, yeah, social media is a distribution channel and you can reach people through it. I think that we've covered the fact that ads has changed a lot. So this pay-to-play atmosphere, you have to be very careful and really know what you're doing, or you could lose your shirt on it. Um, but there's an organic aspect to it as well. What are your opinions about social media and making more money with it, uh, from an organic perspective?

We like to use and think of social media as our bulletin and portfolio. So it's where you are going to get the quickest, latest up-to-dates on what's going on over here, what are our promotions, what newest episodes came out, what's the content that we're pushing out? What questions are we asking? What conversations are we having? It is literally the bulletin board. So imagine you're passing by a lobby and there's the bulletin board and there's all the announcements and flyers and up-to-dates and take this information if it's for you. That's what Instagram is for us, specifically stories. We also use the feed specifically for portfolio. So we are doing done-for-you client work. We have designers on our team, copywriters, tech strategists, Upstart experts. We want to show off the work that we're doing for our clients. Instagram is still a visual platform. It's really handy way to be like, oh yeah, just go check out our feed to see the latest projects that we're working on. And it's a really easy way for someone to get to know us there and to get to be a part of the— we are two people running this account. There is a little bit of that personable connection there. We're not landing clients there. We're having conversations there. We're trying to have people slide into our DMs to open up the conversation, but in the sense of, I truly want to know how I can help you and I could send you a blog post or a podcast or introduce you to someone or pitch you a service. It, it could be anything., but I really want to get to know you. So that's mostly how we're using Instagram. We have Facebook still. We have our page because you have to have a page in order to run ads. We don't really care about that right now though. We do have a group of, I think it's like 38,000 creative small business owners, but they use it mostly as their own resource library. So they'll ask each other questions or they'll ask for referrals or links or whatever. We have our paid communities for our program, the Incubator. So once you're a client there, there's also a, very niche, more intimate community within our clients who are inside that program. But we use it just as the, I have something to say and this is the quickest way for me to get it out there and to like hear back from you quickly, but not as the conversion tool, if that makes sense.

And we see a lot of people who are still struggling. They're trying to make social media, organic social media work for them because they are using it as a the sales tool. And, and this is especially true of people who are, let's say, offering high-ticket things, or maybe they are doing one-to-one service-based type things where you really need to get on a phone call to be able to determine, to your point, is it a fit for both sides? Yep. And, and then to try to use social media to then sell that thing directly to them, people don't— people are too savvy. They see through an ad. And I think that's one of the problems. It's just been overdone and oversaturated, and people are like, they can smell an ad from a mile away. So you're much better off building a relationship, and it could be in the DMs. It's going down in the DMs. I, I totally agree with that. And then the opt-in piece. So people who want— we hear the term funnel, right? It's like, you need a funnel, you need a high-converting funnel. Um, but building a funnel is complex. In most cases, and getting the funnel to kick off properly is dependent on the efficacy of your opt-in and your lead magnet. And a lot of people just, you know, they struggle with that. What has been your experience with the lead magnets and where we are now in terms of how well they work or don't work?

Yeah, well, one, I love funnels, I love workflows. I think if we look at them in a little bit different way of how can I nurture a prospect into a potential client, into a client. I would rather you look at the journey of once someone's interested in actually working with you, how are you communicating with them? How are we reminding them how to hop on a call with us? What resources do we need to give them to prime them to be ready for that conversation? How are we sending them that recording or questionnaire after discovery call? What's the timeline or expiration date of that contract that you sent them out? Like all of those can be funnels and workflows as well. But I think in the traditional sense, when, the one-on-one service-based business really meshed and kind of like ingrained itself with the one-to-many digital education space that it has over the last couple of years. It, I think some service providers are having a hard time separating the two and understanding what strategies are meant for specific industries. And oftentimes there are so many service providers who like are kind of banging their head on the table thinking, well, what could be my one-page opt-in? What could be my high-converting opt-in that people want? And I'm sitting here trying to brainstorm with them, but really getting them to see if you are doing done-for-you services, your clients don't want to learn how to do the thing that they're paying you to do. And so you do like the, the checklist or the here's how to do, or 10 steps to whatever, they might not just be interested in because they're hiring you to be the expert in that. And so there could be an entire industry of people who are like, I literally don't want that opt-in or freebie, but I would like to talk to you. And is that just as easy to do on your website as it is to download a checklist that's going to an audience who you don't even want to serve?

Yeah. Yeah. I think in some industries and in some markets and with some offers, you know, you're better off just going and saying, listen, let's just talk. Yeah. Like, would we be better off just getting on a call? I mean, that's certainly what I do. You know, I would rather provide resources, provide content, provide value and teaching and education and insights and all the good stuff up front and say, here, take it, learn, you know, I'm happy to do that. But when you're ready, the next step is that we need to talk. So giving you another downloadable PDF might not really be the thing that is going to help you actually get results. No, we're better off to talk.

So people are craving, A, being told what to do. Like, we all want that right now, especially when we have a problem that we want solved and we're put in front of an expert who can solve that problem. The atmosphere is shifting where even just a couple years ago, yeah, we had clients who were like, I like the little DIY and done-for-you mix. They wanted to learn how to do the thing, you do it for them so that they could be equipped in the future to do it themselves. That's just not the environment that a lot of us are in right now, and a lot of our clients specifically that we're working with are like, I absolutely don't want to take this in-house. I don't want to learn how to do it. I need you to actually show me the process or create the process and then do it. And then potentially I'm going to hire you to continue to maintain that and keep it up. And I think we're just in a different season right now where our clients are craving more of the expertise to show up and come in and be done for them. And I just don't believe that you can do that in an opt-in.

Yeah, I agree. I agree. Well, this is fantastic. I just want to ask you one last question. What is a tip, a tool, tactic, or technique that's helping you at Boss Project to market yourselves, both you, Abigail, and yourself to market yourselves even personally that you could share? It might be related to this topic or unrelated, but what's something that's really working for you?

Yeah, well, one of the things that we're doing and it's working because it's continuing to progress, but I feel like I'll have a part 2 update on all of it. But in regards to our connections, you know, we teach this strategy, we call it the Mean Girls Method, because every single service provider that we work with, like 99% of them call themselves introverts. And everyone is like, I don't actually know that many people. I don't have a network. I don't like to network. And so we definitely create structures around like, even if you think it's icky and not fun, it's not for you. Trust me, you're doing it already. And here's how you can actually make it work for you. So after going through our Mean Girls Method, you identify the people who maybe not our ideal clients, but what we call them are connectors. So they are the people who know other people and can introduce you, refer you, recommend, brainstorm with you, get you connected to the right people. And they might be one degree away from putting you in front of an ideal client. Well, what we're doing is taking that kind of one step further and we are actually going into the offices of someone who's a connector who could eventually send some work our way, but knows a ton of people in our local city and in the industry that we would love to be doing more work for. So we're doing an actual presentation for their marketing team in their office, just of what we've been doing lately. Here are the type of work that we've been doing. Here are the clients' results that we've been getting. Here's some ideas just off the cuff that we thought we could do for you. It's not a proposal and it's not a pitch. It's a, it's a what we're up to kind of thing. Like it's a, here's how we could actually help you. Or if this sparks an idea of someone you could introduce us to, now's the time to do that. And we're taking our time to like get dressed, look nice, bring coffee, do the presentation, go downtown to the offices and like do the whole thing. And I think that's, that could, that's going to be a new way for us. I think it's kind of bridging the gap between just taking one person to coffee versus going to do speak at like an event. It's like this middle ground of you could just do it in an afternoon. You don't have to leave town. You don't have to book lodging and all of that stuff. So I'm interested to see how quickly it evolves. Because we went from lunch to them asking to come in to do the presentation within a week. And so, I'm interested to see what, what's next.

I think that ties back into what we talked about earlier, which is this idea of building connections and community. You're doing that on a personal level. And I think now that things are getting back to quote unquote, some type of normal where we're seeing people in person again, there is a desire to want to do more of that since we were away from it for so long. So, So, you might really be onto something really smart there in terms of taking that demonstrative approach and going in and just talking about results. And here's what we're doing. This might apply to you. It might, you know, who knows. And it makes a lot of sense. And I think that what you've shared with us today is really valuable. I'd love to be able to direct people to your website. Where can they go?

Yeah, so you can find more at bossproject.com. You can head to bossproject.com/apply to check more about our program, the Incubator. There. If you like listening to podcasts like this one where you get tangible steps, then definitely go to the Strategy Hour podcast. You can listen anywhere you listen to podcasts. Um, there are like almost 700 episodes over on our show, so start with the newest because we, we got better at what we were doing the more we did it. Um, hang out with us on Instagram @bossproject, slide into our DMs, start the conversation, get to know us so we can get to know you. Um, there's a mess of blog content over there at bossproject.com as well. We've been blogging 2015. So there's lots of stuff over there too.

It's fantastic. You've worked with some big names. You've been featured in Forbes, you've been featured in Marie Claire, um, HuffPost. And, um, and really, you know, this idea of like helping people reignite their offers, some of the work you do with Trello for business and things of that nature are really intriguing. And I think it, it really, um, encapsulates this idea of like getting your stuff together, really. Um, that's what you, you primarily focus on you and your partner. So, uh, great to have you on the show. Really appreciate your time today and sharing your insights. And I'm excited about your 30-day experiment, which, as the time of, of this interview, you're in the middle of it. But I would love to know the results of that at the end. And who knows, we'll have to have you back on the show sometime to talk more about, uh, the specifics of that.

Yes, thank you so much for having me.