How to Start a Coaching Business Q&A with Terry Rice | 2/11/2021

All right, so welcome to Q and A. This is your time to ask any questions about the course, your business, anything in general regards to Biznev for knowledge based company. And we have a few questions that came in advance. I'm going to tackle those first. Then we also have a few people that joined live who would like to just come on screen and just have a regular conversation as opposed to just typing to me the whole time. So let me get you these questions that came in first, and then I'll go ahead and pull people on stage, as you would say on Clubhouse, and we'll just talk live. So the first question I had come in was, why don't you post on Twitter that often? It's just not my thing. I know it's effective for a lot of people. And in fact, I posted once back in like 2019 and I got a speaking gig from it, which is cool, but nothing else really happened since then. And also, I think you're normally better off focusing on two channels as opposed to three, three or four. And right now those two channels for me are LinkedIn and Instagram. But I have had a lot of success on Clubhouse too, so we'll see where that fits into my schedule. I think once my kids are back in daycare and school, I'll have more time for stuff like that. Right now I have a limited number of hours, like a lot of you do, to do anything for myself during the day. So that's why I'm not necessarily in clubhouse as much as I would like to be. But I've been in some really cool rooms with just like a small amount of people that give a lot of value. So I think one challenge with clubhouses, a lot of people want to be influencers, like, oh, I want to get a bunch of followers, a bunch of people in the room, so and so forth. Sure, go for it if you want, but you might exhaust yourself trying to seem like you're someone as opposed to being someone who's getting value from the platform. So on my end, that's my goal, is not to be an influencer, but just to get value from it. And where I've also seen a benefit, and I suggest this as well, is to sit in rooms that your target audience would attend and just listen with no intent whatsoever to get called up on stage, as they say, but just to listen to the conversations. And then after that, if you want the people that are asking these questions, you can go ahead and go to their Instagram profile or their Twitter profile, because that's Normally in their clubhouse profile and then message them. Hey Dennis, I saw you had a question about this. By the way, quick tip or hey Lauren, I saw you had a question about this. You know, I have this one page business plan that might help you. Here's a link to it. So you're going there and again, you're learning. It's for educational reasons, but if someone has a question you can answer, hell, go ahead and message them on whatever platform you feel comfortable with. For me, obviously would not be Twitter, as for the previous statement I made. But I think that's how a lot of us can win without exhausting ourselves trying to seem like, you know, oh, I want to get a bunch of followers, so on and so forth. So curious to know if anyone here is on the platform as well. But that's how I see myself using it going forward. And like I said, Twitter's just not my thing. I know it's valuable, just I'm okay without it. Another question is how long does it take you normally to write a blog? It depends on the length of it, but let's say you're going for a thousand word blog. That would normally take me about an hour to actually write. But I've had the ideas for it in my head probably for the past week or so. And then when I sit down to write, it's just me expressing that. But if you're. Because I think the question I'm really hearing is how do you do it? How do you do it quickly? If you're having a challenge with that, what you can do is what's called a listicle. And that's when you just do a list of things. So three ways to improve your insurance business, whatever it is. Introduction. Hey, it's really important to improve. It's competitive these days, so and so forth. I feel your pain, right? Make sure you acknowledge the challenge they're going through. And then here's my top three tips. Tip 1, 2, 3. And then conclusion. Whatever it is, that's five paragraphs. It won't be challenging for you to get a thousand words from that. But then beyond that, you won't feel like you're. You won't feel like you're writing like a novel, right? Because it's like reason 1, 2, 3. And each of those three reasons could actually stand alone by itself as a social media post in a more truncated version, should you choose to. But I would start there or a how to approach. So how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I'm using that for example. Step one, get their bread out. Step two, you know how to make sandwich. I'm not going to go into it, but you know what I mean. Because then at the same time, you're not trying to be super creative, you're just providing value. And you might not get stuck as much as you might as if you're trying to do some like something more like thought, opinion, type content, where there's this long flowing narrative. So that's what I would strongly suggest. And I saw a question come in here. Ever thought of dictating it? It cuts times by 25%. Yeah, Dennis. So I didn't even know this until one of my clients told me, I think two weeks ago, that even Google Docs has an option to dictate now. So you just go to, I think it's like format or something like that. And you can dictate your blog. And to your point, it will be a lot faster. I think you'll speak more naturally too, because sometimes when we're typing, we feel like we have to like sound smarter or whatever. But when you're talking, you're just like, okay, I'm going to talk. One of my buddies, Dennis, actually wrote a book like that. He wrote a book like that in a week. What he did was he just trans or he dictated it and did it in Google Docs. And every night there was an editor who would get the content he created and edit it so it'd be edited for him by the morning. And he would just keep on going and going and going. He wrote a book, it was like 200 pages long in a week doing that. So on your end, if you want to edit yourself, cool, that's fine. But it just removes that, that block that we have sometimes in regards to actually typing. So, yeah, I think it's a good idea. Another cool tool for that is Otter AI O T T E R AI. And some companies are even doing that for their webinars now. So as you're talking, it's going to be transcribing in real time, especially if you're hard of hearing or anything like that. It's beneficial too. Dennis, you're saying you use descript? Descript saved me today and I'll explain why. So with descript and Dennis, you already know this. I'll explain it for everyone else. You can upload an MP4 or an MP3, so a video or an audio file and it will transcribe it for you. Right? So you see all the, you know, transcribing means you can get you can you can do that? You can find all the ums and just remove those. Which for me is a, is a bonus because I had that challenge still. But Dennis, here's what I was using it for today I did a, an interview with someone and I want to slice it up into three different sections, like the three arcs. So I'm using this tool to see, okay, when do we talk about LinkedIn? All right, when do we talk about posting blogs? When did we talk about so on, so forth? So you're just doing a control F for that section in the video, and that's how I'm going to find it and then give that to my editor. It'll be so much easier to find the timestamps instead of this listening to myself go through the whole interview again. So that's why I think the script is amazing. And I, when I logged in today, I noticed that they now have a video editing tool built into it as well. I've not used it yet, but, but I'm pretty excited because it'll let you edit videos and add captions and titles. I'm not sure how robust it'll be. I'll let you know. But hell, I mean, if you want something basic, that might be a good way to just start editing your own videos with, with the script. So, yeah, pretty exciting. It's one of those tools that I'm definitely glad I have. It saved me so much time when I'm, when I'm writing articles, because sometimes my articles, I'm interviewing someone like you and you know, we're talking for 45 minutes, but it has to get condensed down to a thousand word article. So if I can use the script to say, oh, when did Dennis say this? Oh, cool, got it. And I'm good to go. So, yeah, it's a, it's a really good tool. Next question. Do you recommend using LinkedIn stories? So LinkedIn stories are relatively new. When did they come out? New in? From what I've seen, not a lot of people are really viewing them just yet because I use them because it's a free shot to get some content out. But what I've been doing is taking my Instagram stories and then posting those as LinkedIn stories. So I had an Instagram story recently about my lead magnet, one of my lead magnets, which is the one page business plan. And apparently there was a typo in the autoresponder. This woman said, hey, you know, one of my co workers went to your webinar. You did with Honeybook. It was amazing. And I signed up for your business plan. I noticed there's a typo in your autoresponder. So I was like, okay, cool, thank you. And I realized that was a good example to tell people to, you know, kind of get out of your own way and don't be afraid to make mistakes, you know, move fast and break things. So that was my post on Instagram. Like, hey, someone told me there was a mistake. But look, here's all this great stuff they said about me too, right? But you'll never get to learn from your mistakes and get this praise if you're holding back because you don't want to look foolish, perhaps. So that was my Instagram story, and it got a decent amount of engagement. So I'm like, oh, hell, I might as well put it up on LinkedIn. And that's what I did the next day. So I do recommend just trying that and seeing how it goes for you. And like, again, the views aren't super high right now, but shoot your shot because since it seems like not that many people are engaging with them, even if the views are low, you're still taking advantage and getting the first mover advantage by putting your content out there. So I would advise you all to try it out. All right? And then last question I'll grab here is how many lead magnets should you have? So again, a lead magnet is some kind of viable piece of information that you would exchange for someone's email address. It could be a PDF, it could be a guide, it can be an ebook, whatever you want to use. More than one is my response. Because you don't know what's good if you don't have something to compare it to, right? If you don't have this ebook versus this checklist or whatever, you don't know which one's working better or even if it is two guides, which guide is better? So, more than one. But just get used to turning them around a lot quicker because sometimes we. Again, perfection is the enemy of progress. We take forever to make things perfect because we don't look foolish. And then instead of taking a week to get it done, you take six weeks and you missed out on all those leads. And it's funny, I was thinking to myself, wow, I wonder if that would have converted better if I didn't have a typo in the autoresponder. But I'm like, at the same time, like, I know I would have missed out on a lot of volume in general if I took longer to get it out, right? So it's like there's a trade off between trying to make things presentable and just trying to get them out the door quickly too. So that's, that's my thought on that. But yeah, the answer is more than one. And then test. Right. Test is something that's more timely. Like, hey, three tips going into 2021. Another could be more evergreen. Like, here's everything you need to know about whatever product or service you're referring to. So that'll be my response. But what I want to do now is, Dennis, if you're cool, jumping on stage. Actually, Lauren, we'll have you go first because you, you said you want to go first, so I'm going to promote you to a panelist. Yeah. And then whenever you're ready, we can start chatting. Lauren, how are you?

Cool. Hey. I'm good. How are you?

I'm good, I'm good. Where are you calling in from?

Chicago. Where I'm pretty sure it's freezing, really freezing out there, but I'm in here.

Yeah, I used to live outside of Chicago in Hoffman Estates.

Don't ask me what direction that is. I have no directional sense. That's fun fact about me. Going the wrong direction for quite some time.

If you know Schaumburg, that area.

Okay. Yeah.

Okay, cool. Cool. Yeah, that was like years ago.

I haven't been here long. I'm originally from New York Metro.

Oh, okay. So we did the reverse.

Yeah, pretty much. I guess you couldn't take the cold, I couldn't take the heat.

Yeah. Yeah, that's a good point. So give us some background, you know, what do you do? Who do you do it for?

My background, like I said, New York Metro. So born and raised New Jersey and kind of took a really untraditional route. And I think that's kind of like a theme of like just not doing what's expected. So didn't go to college out of high school. I stayed at my part time job, grocery store because it was right before the recession and I was like, people need food. I want a job and health insurance. I stayed there for 10 years before taking my management consulting job with, you know, global firm. 200,000 national international employees.

That's quite a leap. Let's stop for a second. So you went from working at a grocery store to management consulting.

I had an internship in between.

Okay.

I guess climb the social ladder. Yes. Like really about making a lot with a little. Which is why I'm here weekly because anyone not sitting in on These Q&As is missing out. So that's kind of like my life story, which is why when I landed in this internship in between grocery store and sitting next to a Harvard mba, I made a lot with a little. Right. So lost my train of thought. Trying to be funny.

I was entertained.

Is I'm really good at solving problems and doing the behind the scenes stuff, like putting in 10 years at a grocery store, because I know in 2020 it's gonna go nice with my supply chain degree and everything else I've done. So, like, my point being is I'm like, really ready to step into my zone of genius. Really been doing a lot of work on that. I would say last week I was like, oh my God, what is my zone of genius? And I think now I kind of get it. So, like, that's the. My background and I guess like my weak background, my year background is I've been unemployed on this like, rampant volunteerism since leaving or getting laid off from my consulting job. I don't know. I don't know how to piece it together. I have a weird story. I have a weird background, and I guess I haven't really prepared to give it to Terry Rice Consulting or.

No, you're fine. I mean, I. I think now's a good time to, to think about that, right? How do you want to express yourself to the world? Like, what is your personal branding statement, which I think is in module two. So what do you want to be doing like, a year from now? Like, what kind of work do you want to be doing with what kind of clients? What does that look like to you when you think about it?

I think more. It gets. More people are. They know where their food is coming from. So, like, as we saw, like, food pantry lines this past year, how hard it was for people to just feed themselves, that is improved through all different means through like, growing food, the food supply chain restaurants. I'm not quite sure where I fit in there because I really don't have too much industry experience. I'm very industry agnostic, doing a lot of like, indirect. Indirect service sourcing. So like corporate travel programs, indirect labor category management, procurement type of stuff. But like, my passion is food. And so like, I'm trying to. I can connect them all. I doubt myself too much.

As you were talking, it's interesting that you say you doubt yourself because as you're talking, I'm like, this is a brilliant idea and I'll tell you why. Uh, there's this restaurant around the corner from me here in Brooklyn called Mayfield that my wife and I love we went there for our engagement party. We're there as often as we can, and every time we go there, we want to get a steak. And like they have these porterhouse steaks. Sometimes they have them, sometimes they don't because they only order X amount per week. So it kind of depends on the week goes. But during COVID they're like, we can't bring these in anymore because we can't buy them at the volume needed to get a discount because we don't know how many we're going to sell. So that's the problem. So when you're saying your goal is to fix supply chains for individuals, for restaurants, for whatever it is, I don't think that uncertainty is going to go away anytime soon. Right? So maybe now you're saying, okay, every steakhouse in Brooklyn, let's all band together, let's buy these in bulk. You get 10 stakes, you get five, you get 10, that's 25. But now we can have a discount on these. And I'm solving that problem as this supply chains and distribution expert. So that's kind of how I'm thinking about it. Same thing with co ops. Like, there's a co op here in Brooklyn. They've been, I mean, there's several. Obviously they've been short on like bananas because again, it's like you can't order enough volume to make it worth it. You have, you're on to something. And the thing is like, well, you're, you're onto something. And there's unfortunately a real pain that people realize now that they might not have realized a year ago. And that's where your 10 years working in the grocery industry comes in handy because you're like, hey, I know what it's like. You know when you're short on something and customers are saying, where is this? Then you're like, crap. Now they're leaving. You know, they came for the orange, but normally buy something else. It's more expensive too. You're losing out on money, right? Or they get went to this restaurant for the broccoli, but since you eat another broccoli now, they're not getting the steak either. So that's your messaging. You're so authentic in the way you're communicating this. And you can say, I want to help you solve that problem and solve their problems too, because they're trying to get this, this food. What I would do to make this easier is try to find an example of a similar service and then you can be another entrant in that market. You don't have to reinvent something right now, but you can make it your own. Maybe it's locally in the Chicago area. Right. They don't, they don't have it yet, but you know, you can do it there. And I just want to pause. How does this feel as I'm just kind of, you know, building this mini business plan?

Intense. Because it's, it's like just one tiny piece of the pie. So like. Yes, like, yes. And, but more importantly xyz. Right. Kind of triggers this like distraction of like that would. What you're describing is zone of confidence. And that's a struggle right now is like, let me get to my genius. Which is like, I think like bigger, but anyway.

Well, are you still trying to define what that is? The genius part?

I don't know, like when I think supply chain. Okay, so like restaurants, right. That, where's, where's that beef coming from? Probably not anywhere close to the restaurant in Brooklyn. Like I would be more effective like upstream, downstream. I don't know, I'm just kind of bouncing ideas here. How does it feel? The mini. It's a little overwhelming. Like I said, like it's easy to get distracted. My background being in like consulting is like six month project. Yes. And so now that, now that I really need to get serious about the long, long plan, I think it's just, it's overwhelming. So.

Yeah. Yeah. And I like the fact that you're going even bigger with the, you know, at a, at a higher level in regards to this program that you want to put together. But I'm going to bring this up and it's going to sound unpleasant at first, but hopefully it makes sense when I'm done. Either way, you're going to suffer. You're going to suffer. Either way you're going to suffer for the next six months. Figuring out what the hell you want to do and putting a lot of hard work into making it happen. Going through a lot of rejection, a lot of cold emails, a lot of trial and error before it starts to work. Or you're going to suffer even longer term by not taking this chance, by not fully committing to it and, and is settling for something else for the next X years. So the cool thing is you get to choose how you suffer. Do you suffer for the next six months or do you suffer for the next X years? But there's no avoiding this whatsoever. It's going to be challenging and for me I would choose the first option. But that's, that's the stoicism. Me talking it's going to be challenging either way.

But that's great advice because I have like this email I have to respond to that's like I'm great at the behind the scenes. Like I'm good at like tasks and projects and a small team dynamics and I think the moment. I don't know. So, yeah, I guess I'm going to choose to suffer a little less in response to this email. This email being like I mentioned last week, like my ideal audience that I passed up on. Right. A little background story. I just. There's this annual conference for my ideal audience and they had open applications to present, which is really cool. Breakout rooms and digital and get to meet people in your network. And I was just didn't have the time to do it or did I, I don't know, passed up on that. And then I just got an email today from their communications person because I signed up for their newsletter. And so like that's like a perfect lead and I need to act on that because. Yeah.

What, what goes through your head when you're about to act on it, then you don't.

Um.

What goes through my head, I'm just not prepared. I don't know. I guess too many things. Which is why like it's, it's more. I think that's why like starting to use the CRM has been really helpful. Like actually just like start using the tools like you're doing it because if you're not like you, you can get leads. You will get leads and not. And not be ready for it, not be prepared for it. So just start, start using the CRM. And I think that's, I guess that's kind of how I feel about it is like retreat, retreat to my comfort zone of systems.

Well, that's not a bad idea as long as you take action. So let's, let's get some accountability here. What are you going to do by time this time next week to take action towards what we talked about? Right. There's these opportunities you can still reply to from what I can tell.

I'm gonna, I'm gonna have a plan for what my role is at this conference, which is the last Friday, Saturday month. So this time next week would give me a month out, a week out to the conference and they could probably use some help and they're the people that I've wanted to work with. It's just like I've just been waiting.

Are you, you're speaking at this conference, correct?

No, no, no. But I probably could. I don't Know, I don't know if they need speakers. I could directly ask the communications. That's what you want me to do. Ask if they need.

Yeah, please do. Because if you do, I mean if they do, what I would say is give a presentation, right? Something brilliant, whatever it is. And then anyone in the audience say, hey, if you have any questions about this, you know, go to my website and maybe you can offer like some kind of discovery call about their, you know, how you can help them, whatever it looks like, but give them an excuse to follow up with you. That's where those lead magnets come in handy if you have them. And if you have the time and a website, just make a micro page, like a landing page just for the event. So say, hey everyone, go to Bit Ly. Lauren, you would not get that Bitly. Go there and download the deck. You can download these resources so and so forth and then from there you're doing lead generation at the same time.

Yeah, I, I got a lot of work done. Like after, I don't know, I just. A light bulb went off. So I have like my domain name. There aren't too many Lauren Tweedales. So.

And let's. I want to remove a challenge just in case you don't have your, you can't have a landing page or a website done. Use a Google form, that's fine. Say, hey, go to this Bitly. It's going to redirect to a Google form. You're going to ask for their email address and then you'll eventually send them this stuff through like ConvertKit or Mailchimp or whatever. But we're removing excuses, right? Oh, I have time to make a website. Don't make a website. Fine, I'll let you have to look for that one. Just do Google form. But either way, let's get it done.

That's a good point. I've used Google forms when like I said, I haven't had the spotlight and it's the whole branding issue. So just get over that hump.

There you go. If you need like a logo, go to, go to Taylor Brands. You get a logo for like 10 bucks. Get like an L and a T and you're done. Like that's it.

Yeah, I gotta do that. But that's, I mean that's another question I have. I don't want to take up time. I mean it was really helpful because I'm gonna do that now. But like just narrowing down my lead magnets actually is another struggle. I don't know, I'm thinking on like Starting a blog for like Pounczky Day, which is like the Polish donut Fat Tuesday next week. I don't know. Too many ideas.

How is that related to a lead magnet?

It's like my passion. Food. Like restaurants, the restaurant industry, I guess. Bakeries in Chicago. I don't know, I could talk. I could talk about food forever or like, do supply chain stuff forever. So like my zone of geniuses between there. So I don't know if, like, I don't know. My. My point was like, I've. I guess I did a brain dump of lead magnets. Like, I took your triangle. I don't know if you have a name for that.

Oh, yeah, I know. Yep.

And listed them all out and then just started putting ideas in there, like blog entries, interviews, workbooks. And I think narrowing those down is you recommended a landing page with just like one lead magnet. Do you have a suggestion for an easy one that.

If you have blog.

Is probably too ambitious. If I haven't started it.

I don't think blog is a good lead magnet either. I think you want to solve one high impact problem they have right now. Best ways to do this, best ways to do that. Five mistakes to avoid with this.

Five.

Focus on that. I don't know if content would be the lead magnet right now. Would have to be something that's more punchy and where there's like some kind of transformation at the end. So I would focus on that.

Okay, that makes sense.

All right, so you got a lot of homework for next week. We're going to bring Dennis up now and he's going to hold you accountable as well, so.

Oh, true. I'll stay out. We'll all be accountable. So.

Thank you, Dennis. I'm gonna. Yeah, yeah, sure thing. It was fun talking to you. So, Dennis, I'm gonna promote you. Lauren, I'm gonna demote you. So we don't have three cameras going on, so don't take it personal. But here we go. So here we go, right? Dennis, how's it going, man?

Thank you, man.

How are you?

It's good. What about you?

I'm good, man. My daughter's spring break starts tomorrow and she's off to the 22nd, so I don't have to go to kindergarten for like 10 days.

Kindergarten open.

It's remote. It's kindergarten. But that means I have to sit with her between 8:30 and 12:30 every day and proctor her. So I can't, like, get as much work done. Yeah, I got it. It's fine.

You'll find A way. I know.

Yeah, yeah. How are you doing?

I'm good. And so, yeah, for the background, I used to be in the food industry and I will never go back.

What I would ask for the industry. What, what aspect of the food industry were you in?

I used to be a pastry chef.

Oh, that's amazing. All right.

Oh, in France. I mean, I'm from France. I used to be a pastry chef and I did it for immigration purpose, I would say, but I used to be a carpenter before that, so kind of made the switch to whatever. Yeah, I think last time we in France. I mean, I'm from France, I used to be a pastry chef and I did it for immigration purpose, I would say, but I used to be a carpenter before that, so kind of made the switch to whatever. Yeah. I think last time we. We spoke, I was going on my VA's ID for content creator. And so I went a bit further and there is a couple things I'm working toward. There is the VA for content creator. The whole idea behind was to have, I don't know if you know the Website autogrow.autogrow.IO. no, the whole parenthesis that they have a team, you pay a monthly fee, I think anywhere from 500 to 2 grand and they do anything for you one by one. Like you want a landing page, okay, you connect, you say, hey, I want a landing page, they do it for you. You need a lead magnet, they do it for you. And kind of like that kind of background, I would say of the things. And that was kind of something I was looking into, but I don't have true background or experience in it. And so on the side, I was also trying to make something with a background in the food. So I interviewed chefs and a private chef in the industry and it's kind of all over the place. None of them want the same things or whatever. So I don't know if there is a really something I can do out of those informations. That's kind of both roots I'm following right now.

Got it. So just to, for everyone's clarification, give us a reminder of what you do and who you're doing it for. I think that'll help with the context.

That's the thing. I don't have a. I would say an offer or an audience really narrowed down yet. And that's what I'm working toward. It's product market fit.

Got it, got it. But it is going to be, it sounds like in the food service area.

Naturally I'd like to do it more in. We'll call that marketing online business. Like anything automated automation, artificial intelligence, and this type of stuff. Really the, like, search engine optimization ads. I really like the background stuff, but I feel like nowadays, everybody in their browser, they have a marketing agency in their pocket, you know, like something.

Yeah.

Have a marketing agency. Have a marketing agency. So I don't really know how to differentiate it, but that's. Yeah, that's what I'd like to do. Either for content creators, I would say, because content creators, everybody's a content creator. Somebody either It's a blog, YouTube, or social media, everybody kind of needs some background help. And I was going more towards chefs because I have a background in the food industry, so I know more precisely their needs.

Okay, let me ask you a question. Do you speak more than one language?

Yeah.

What languages do you speak?

French.

Okay. French language. Okay. I'm bringing this up because of this. Like, my background is digital marketing. And I took a digital marketing class, like, 10 years ago at New York University, and the instructor brought in this guy who had a search engine marketing agency, but he focused on helping, like, dentists and other healthcare professionals get more clients who spoke Mandarin because there's a big Mandarin population here in. Here in Brooklyn. So people that are of Chinese descent, most likely. And he didn't speak Mandarin whatsoever. But he hired a bunch of digital marketers to translate his ads into Mandarin. Therefore, he was just crushing it on Google Ads because anyone who spoke Mandarin, he was googling, meet dentists in Brooklyn. His ads are the only ones that showed up.

I see what you mean.

Do you see a world where you're doing translations into French for organizations who are doing digital marketing? Because, like, my wife, she speaks Spanish and she can tell when the translation is horrible from English to Spanish because it's not a native speaker that's doing it. Have you explored anything like that? Where it's like, okay, my passion is digital marketing. You have a blog, maybe that's in English. You want to write that in French? Okay, I can translate it. And I also know the digital marketing world enough to know how to tweak it and, you know, the context around it. Has that ever piqued your interest at all?

Yeah, actually, that has been a long battle too. Like, oh, do I have a competitive advantage with my native language? And the only thing that blocked me was thinking, oh, when I used to live in France, we don't have the same. That's a salary level, like the salary that I used to make in France. That was enough for me for A living. It's not the same as in us so we don't have the same buying path, I would say in France, but French that live in us. Yeah, that could be interesting. That's not something I thought about. So it might be worth exploring what.

Could be a US based company that is just doing business in France. And by that I mean like some company that has expensive problems, so finance or you know, something like that where it's like, it's not like they're selling socks, they're like, no, we need to successfully translate this into French. Or even little things like maybe they have a podcast that's here that's done in English, but they also want to get at least a transcript done in French or something like that. And I'm spitballing here, but I feel like you have a unique advantage to the point where you're exploring this digital marketing world and you also have French as your native language. That definitely is a superpower in this case because I've seen it work here in Brooklyn at least. Okay.

Would you say it's. It's more advantageous because there is a lot of translation service, to be honest, like red.com, that are like pretty cheap for those kind of stuff that are known. And I've even tried to join most of them when I was trying to make meet ends, but it's, it's packed. Like nobody wants French speaker anymore. So do you think that by being outside of those platforms by myself, it would be more interesting if this is.

Something you want to pursue? Absolutely. And what I would do is almost ingest show how some of those translations didn't work too well. Like, you can say like, here's what they put in this. Here's what they got back when they paid Rev 20 bucks a month. But here's how it sounds to a French speaker. It's like if you're saying like, put this hat on and they said it wrong. Like you basically said put the hat in instead of put the hat on. Like, whatever makes sense. But like just showing why you'd want to have a premium service. Or even maybe the examples they're giving would not fit in the French culture. Right. If you're saying, oh, when you're walking your dog down the street, you would say, we would. I'm just pretending you would say we would never actually do that. So the whole context of this example is wrong. Like that's, that's what I'm trying to see. And what I would do is I would research. Are there premium translators out There not someone's working for a revolution in a different language. Maybe it's German, maybe it's. It's whatever. But I was listening to this podcast, I think it was called Smart Passive Income. And there's this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's this, this one gentleman they're referring to, his superpower was he spoke English and German. So that's when you said you speak French. It's like German and French are, you know, obviously right next to each other. I was like, it's Europe. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, pretty much. That's what, that's what I would explore. Because, you know, there's people here in Brooklyn that are sending their kids to bilingual school to learn French by design because it's obviously, you know, something they're interested in. So I would try to double click on that and see how you can make that help you stand out more.

Okay. Okay, that's a good idea. I'll explore.

But even with digital marketing, you can still find success there. It helps to be more niche. So maybe you're doing just SEO or maybe you're just doing, like, if you want to get really very specific, particular. Okay, I'll give you an example. I teach at this school called General assembly, and they have all these different classes on coding, digital marketing, business. And they were doing some kind of like, mini conference almost. And they reach out to me. They're like, terry, do you know someone who's an Insta. An expert at Instagram shopping ads? And I'm like, let me look around. I couldn't find anyone. Not Instagram ads. Instagram shopping ads, which is a bit more niche. And like, yeah, we can't find anybody either. And I'm like, well, hell, if I was unemployed right now, I would go become an expert at Instagram shopping ads because it is a new ish or feature of the platform. But any company that's doing Instagram ads, let's say E Commerce, you could reach out and say, I know you're doing this, but are you also doing Instagram shopping ads? Oh, we're going to, but it seems so complicated and like, it's just a mess and we're busy enough as it is right now. We don't want to try something new with a client and run the risk of losing them because we're concerned. That's when you come and you say, okay, cool. Well, I have this option for you, right? What I'm going to do is for the first month, I'm going to set up those Instagram shopping ads for the second month, I'm going to train you on how to do them. In the third month, I'll consult you more, hands off, on how to continue doing it going forward. That's going to be $20,000 and we can start next week. Right. So I'm giving you an example of a very niche discipline within digital marketing that solves a real problem. But the problem is sometimes when you're a practitioner, you don't have time to go learn all this new stuff because you're like, I'm just. I'm busy enough trying to, like, you know, take care of this and my kids and whatever. Right.

Priorities.

Always priorities.

But, yeah, I know it's sometimes hard.

Yeah, yeah. So I mean, that's right. I think you can find like, your wedge. And it's like, look, I only do this. You want someone who's a general practitioner, go hire them. That's fine. I do this. I train companies on how to do this. And maybe you're saying, like, I don't even. I will. I'll do it short term for you, but I don't do it long term because that way you're not doing account management forever. You're saying, I will train you, I will empower you. And look how much more money you can make from your existing clients if you also offer this service. Right? Because you're saying, no, they can't do this that way. They're not. They're not spending as much money. You're not making as much money in fees. If I empower you to do that, what's that worth to you over the course of the year? Thirty thousand? Forty thousand? A hundred thousand dollars? I'm only charging 30. So you'll make that back this year and the next year and the next year and the next year and the next year.

It's interesting. I feel like the. This kill. It's not that the skill doesn't matter. Skill can always be learned and those type of stuff, but smaller. For example, you were giving the example of doing that for E Commerce, because that's probably the one that need them the most to do those type of ads. I feel like it's more complicated to get in that industry than learning the skills they need. You know what I mean? Especially E Commerce. It's like everybody wants to either work in E comm or a SaaS company.

Yeah, yeah, no, it is. It's competitive. But there's also a lot of them there that, that you can choose from, and that's how you stand out. You're like, Look, I don't do any of that extra stuff. I'm like, this is all I do. So if you want someone who's really good at this, it's this. And then maybe to get started, you. You work for free for one client. You're like, hey, do it for free. And I just ask for a testimonial when. When I'm done. And that way I can build my business. But what other aspects of digital marketing in general are you interested in? Is like any kind of like website design, app design? Does any of that seem interesting?

Design is not really. Myself.

Okay.

I. For the colors and typography and more like a data like Google Analytics and the search console and SEO keyword research, or you're doing other stuff.

Got it. Okay.

And even for that, it's hard to tie it to benefits. Like, I could say, okay, if you hire me for a year, I collect enough data to make you 1.52 times return on investment the year after. But I need to collect that data first.

Yeah. Let me just tell you another story. So back when I did digital marketing consulting, what I used to do were audits. I would audit companies for like a private equity company before they would acquire it or pay to acquire like a new company. I would audit the company from a digital marketing perspective to make sure they weren't going to buy a company that like the books reduced or like, they just, they were not sustainable because, like right now they're doing 20 million a year. But I could see like, hey, it looks like this is actually on the decline and this is messed up, or here's how much opportunity there is, so and so forth.

How did you get there? I didn't even know that existed.

Well, I kind of, I didn't make it up. But like a private equity company approached me for that. They're like, hey, we kind of like this, like, internal, like digital marketing guru who can help us with this stuff. What do you think? And I'm like, sure. So the first audit I did for them was garbage. It was just like unorganized. Like, they're like, can you make this like a format we can like compare things to? Like, you don't have like a number between 1 and 10, how they're doing. You're just like writing stuff. So I'm like, okay, let me, let me try again. And I, and I redid it to the point where it's like, okay, you got a 70 out of 100 on your Google Analytics implementation because you don't have search console set up and you're not tracking like on click statements for buttons like, you know, you know how this stuff works. So I'm not going to go into it, but I would make this rating system that would say, okay, to get to a 10, you have to fix all this stuff. Or when it came to paid channels, I would say, you know what, and you'll appreciate this. I'm like, their search engine marketing, you know, campaigns look good, but 80% of their revenue is coming from branded keywords. They still have not learned how to convert a cold audience with, with generic terms. And in fact, they're actually cannibalizing their SEO because all their other branded keywords are the ones that are driving revenue. I'm like, there's a problem here. They don't know how to find new customers. And that's what I would call out in the audit. Right, so you already know how to do this stuff. But what the thing is, like, when Lauren was talking about that funnel I have, sometimes you could take a skill you have, which is your core skill, and turn it into a profit multiplying skill if you solve more expensive problems. If you save a private equity company $40 million by pointing out that the majority of the converting keywords in their paid search campaigns are branded, that's pretty valuable. Even though for you, you're like, that's basic. But for them, they're like, no, dude, we don't know this stuff. So I would think about that too. What paid channels would you say you can do audits for outside of our paid search?

Mostly Facebook, Audience metric, cpc, ppc. Not that much, but mostly Facebook and Instagram.

Paid Facebook. Yeah. Oh, yeah, do that. You're good. Like, yeah, just do audits. Like one of my clients. Yeah, one of my clients, he, he used to do like freelance digital marketing, which still does, but he's charging like 30 bucks an hour. And I'm like, that's way too low. Like, you can't do that anymore. I told him, start selling audits for every channel charged between 1500 and $2000. And he's like, no one's gonna charge that pay that much. I'm like, do it. I'll help you write the email. And it worked. So what he's doing now is he'll do an audit as the initial sale. Hey, 1500 bucks, I'll tell you what's wrong, what to fix, so on, so forth. Then if you want to become a client, sure, I can do that too. But he can do those audits in about four or five hours. And he's charging between 1500 and $2000 for it. So that's pretty cool.

It's interesting.

Yeah, I would highly. Go ahead. Sorry.

As it's a real world I'm not from, it's nice to have another point of view from someone. That's it.

Now, the benefit of those audits is, well, I'll say it this way. The downside about doing digital marketing account management is the client's always asking you questions like, hey, how come our revenue's down? How come our clicks are down? Hey, can you change this ad? And like, over the weekend you might be enjoying your life and you get this email, hey, what's going on? You're like, I don't know, I'm watching tv. So it's like if you just do these audits, you do your work, you leave. And the thing is, like you just said, the problem is waiting to get all that data. It takes a year to get all this data. Not if you're auditing an existing campaign. Right. And when someone has a problem, when they're already feeling the pain that they're spending thousands of dollars per month on their ads and they're not getting enough in return for you to come and say, I can save you from this pain for $2,000. Hell, that's worth it. We wasted $2,000 last week. Sure. You know what I mean? So it just makes sense. So I would strongly consider that, yeah.

That'S a good idea. Would you have like an idea? Because as you say, it's always easier to sell something for someone that have the pain point that is that know they have that pain point. Would you have an idea like how to find those people that have accounts that are failing? They kind of know, kind of go into Facebook library and type of stuff.

What I would do is the same thing that we were trying to talk to Lauren about. I would make a lead magnet. 10 common mistakes that people have in their Facebook ads and how to fix them. And you would say, one is not separating match types. Sorry, I'm talking about Google Ads. Well, you know what I mean? Like another one is, you know, mistakes. Right? But just make that the lead magnet and then say at the end, like, hey, if you're unclear on how to fix any of these things, you should contact me, schedule a call with me. We can go through it and that's where you can go ahead and pitch that service. But the way you're building your audience is by giving this free information. By the way, here's some common mistakes. And then when they feel like, well, I think we're making that mistake. Cool. Reach out to you. And then that's how you're getting in front of them. So they'll self identify themselves in regards to these mistakes they're making. Or I mean, here's another thing you do too. What I used to love doing is I would go to someone's website and if they look like they were e commerce, if I noticed they didn't have the Facebook pixel on there, yeah, I'm like, what the hell? I'm like, how are you? So I would just message them and say, by the way, it looks like you, you're not really tracking conversions or you're not tracking them properly. And then I would just give them a link like, here's this information from Facebook on how to do it. Have any questions, let me know. So you could just look at like 10 or 20 brands that you think you might want to work with. Just go through their, their website with like that debugger tool and if you see any mistakes with their pixel, you would just say, hey, by the way, I added to Cart and that didn't fire off. It seems like you're not tracking the full funnel of your conversions. Maybe you're tracking conversions like an actual purchase, but you're not tracking add to Cart. That's a good, good opportunity for you to retarget. So you can just throw your headphones on, go through like 20 websites, find three that are messed up, tell them that and say, hey, if you need help fixing it, let me know. If not, you know, good luck. So I know I'm throwing a lot of ideas at you. I like the last ones better.

Yeah, yeah, that's kind of how I do it anyways. Just like call the call. But that's the best way to prove that something is working is just call people. Do you have this problem? Do you want to pay me to solve it?

Yeah. Yeah.

Awesome.

So, yeah, put some thoughts together on that and we can check in next week as well. But I feel pretty good about this just because I know it works because I've done it before. My clients have done it as recently as like last month, so it still works.

Got it. Well, I'll try that. I'll try a couple of those. Awesome.

All right. So we're actually right at the 8:30 mark, so I'm gonna take off and finally go hang out with my wife because we've been running in separate directions all day. But it's great talking to you, great talking to Lauren. And for anyone else. Looking forward to talking to you next week as well. But have a good one, and I'll see you again soon. Take care.

Thanks for everything, Terry.

Yeah, no problem. See you.