Make Marketing Suck Less

Michelle:

Hey Claire, welcome to the Rebel Rising Podcast.

Claire:

Thank you so much for having me, Michelle. I am excited and also a little nervous, if I can be honest.

Michelle:

Ooh, well I am excited to have you here. You host one of my favorite podcasts that I love to listen to because I am so curious and so nosy.

So why don't you tell us a little bit about your podcast and your business.

Claire:

Sure. So they almost have nothing to do with each other. It's not quite true. In my work, I run Facebook and Instagram ads for people. I teach people how to run Facebook and Instagram ads, that's my day all day, every day. But the podcast is really all about... It's called 
The Get Paid Podcast and it's all about how people get paid. So not PayPal or SamCart or whatever. I'm talking, what are the offerings that people are getting paid for? What are their courses or their programs or their one-on-one services? How much do they charge for them? How do they market them? And what goes terribly wrong sometimes along the way.

Claire:

And I love that because I feel like in this online business world that we live in, we never hear about what's really going on and how people are actually making money in their business. No, I mean most people don't have prices on their sites. A lot of people who have launch models or things like that, you don't actually know what they have for sale at any given time unless you catch them at a particular time on their site, and they happen to be talking about it. You have no idea how many people are enrolling in their courses or hiring them. How many clients someone like you for example, could actually take a month. So it's all this sort of, it's this big cloud, everything is shrouded in mystery.

Claire:

And I was just like, "No, let's get rid of that mystery." It was mostly for selfish reasons, but I started the podcast so I could figure out how to take this online business thing and actually make good money with it. Like what would it take?

Michelle:

Oh, that's fascinating. And did you realize how rebellious you were being when you created this podcast?

Claire:

You know, I realized that it was a totally new concept that it was pretty rebellious that I was getting people saying no to me when I said, "Hey, will you be on the show? Here's what I talk about." What I didn't realize was just how stupid it was. 

So to start a podcast and you don't talk about your own business at all is dumb because podcasting takes a long time. That's not really a secret. Everyone knows that podcasting is sort of a time consuming type of content to create all the time, right?

Michelle:

Yes.

Claire:

So if it's going to be your particular content vehicle, a podcast, make it about whatever you're trying to then sell to people.

Michelle:

That's the conventional wisdom, right? Like I do The Rebel Rising Podcast because I want to highlight bold viewpoints that other people have, other rebels who are doing interesting things in the world, and it helps me promote my messaging work. So, it makes sense. And here you are doing something that wasn't really promoting your business.

Claire:

Not at all. I think when I originally launched it, it just happened to coincide with some promo that I was doing on my online course. Like how to run your own Facebook ads. And so for the first few episodes there was talk of that. I made that sort of the commercial, right? It was about, "Here's how you can get this, here's how you can get the course for this price, et cetera." But then if you started listening five episodes later and didn't go back, you would have no idea, because I literally never mentioned what I did. I don't know why. I thought it was rude or something or just like hard to stick that in the middle of the conversation.

Claire:

My ads were for my sponsors. I had acuity scheduling sponsoring for a long time. So I wasn't taking that time to talk about me and it was real dumb because while it grew my brand, my personal brand, it did not grow my revenue. It did not grow my list.

Michelle:

So it was like we were talking right before we started recording that it did this great job of, I feel it does a great job of establishing you as kind of the spot leader that people are looking to as like, "Oh she knows what's really going on." But it really wasn't moving the needle in your business.

Claire:

No, not at first.

Michelle:

How long did it take you to realize this?

Claire:

Well, I did about a year of episodes. What happened was right after I launched it, June, 2015 I found out I was pregnant. So I was like, "Okay, let's batch this shit, get a bunch of episodes ready so that I can take time off." And I was just doing all of that. And then I took a fairly long maternity leave, six months, and I came back very part time and I was like, "No, I'm not going to spend time on the podcast because I could look at my Google analytics. I saw that my SEO or basically my traffic had dropped instead of rising. And that's because I got a lot of traffic from SEO. I hadn't blogged in ages, show notes does not count as blogging, FYI. Especially not when your keywords are Facebook ads and you're never mentioning them.

Claire:

So, I just didn't bring back the podcast when I came back from maternity leave. I decided at the beginning of 2018 that I was going to bring it back because it was the one area where I was most myself in my business. I actually had sort of a, come to Jesus branding moment where somebody very near and dear to me said, "You don't actually have a brand, like I don't know what your brand is." And I cried and it was this whole thing. Yeah, whatever, it's the best thing that ever happened in my business. That terrible, terrible night when somebody who I respected a lot said that to me.

Claire:

So I was like, "Okay, I'm going to bring it back." But it took me a year to bring it back because I was working on a whole lot of other things. One thing about content creation, and for me it just happened to be with podcasting is that when you're all focused on creating the content, it's sort of this excuse to not focus on selling.

Michelle:

Yes, 100% I totally agree.

Claire:

So when I came back from maternity leave, I already had these things in place, a couple of online courses, services. I was like, "I'm just going to focus on selling these things instead of churning out more content." But once I had all that in place, I was like, "All right, we're going to bring back the show." And the difference this time is, well, two differences, one, I was going to ask even more of the types of questions that I wanted to come hell or high water. I found in the last season that I... this was a season that I really batched before I had my baby, who is now a three and a half year old, but it was like these conversations were very boring for me. I got the guests to try to just have bigger names, but I felt like I couldn't ask the nosiest questions, because maybe they wouldn't like me or something. I was just sort of a wuss on my own podcast and got bored.

Claire:

So I said, "Okay, I'm going to have the conversations I want to have, even if that's about this single mom who is traveling around Southeast Asia, like how is she getting laid?" Those were the questions I asked. And I decided to add advertisements to the show that basically sent people into my funnels for my own offerings, and that worked really well.

Michelle:

Oh, that's fascinating. Because I do remember you making that switch of, you had acuity as your sponsor and then I remember when the podcast came back it was like, "No, Claire's business is the sponsor of this podcast now."

Claire:

"This episode is sponsored by such and such a masterclass." It sounds really cheesy, but guess what? It worked because right when I relaunched the podcast, it was as if I had all these listeners who had no idea what I did, but suddenly knew what I did and they were like, "Oh, I can learn about this thing, Facebook ads that I want to learn about from this person who I like a lot, done!" And so they were signing up in droves. They were buying my course in droves.

And then anytime an episode has done really well, like there've been a couple episodes over the past year, it's been about a year since I brought it back. I see a surge in list growth and a surge in new customers.

Michelle:

Oh, so fascinating. No, that's really interesting and it's actually making me think of my own podcasts and how I can be more intentional about promoting my own work on the podcast because I think... I mean you've said a couple of things that I want to reiterate because people need to hear that we do feel like very, very awkward selling our own stuff at first on our podcasts and anywhere. And I think that reaction to hide during your first season and not say, "Hey, and this is how you can find out more about what I do" is totally natural.

Claire:

Yeah. I have to record some podcast episodes right now that are going to be extremely valuable. My motto is, be ridiculously useful, and they will be, but it's all to a certain end which is to promote my course. And that makes me feel like, "Oh, I would rather do anything else." Because talking to myself on my computer feels weird. I really love jumping on Zoom or Skype or whatever with people like you, Michelle, with my guests. There's no resistance to that, is sort of what I'm saying. And it makes content creation kind of easy, time consuming, but easy.

So it's certainly very difficult to talk about yourself, to promote yourself, especially when we've been indoctrinated with the, just be helpful, be useful, don't talk about yourself except, oh wait, you have to in order to sell.

Michelle:

Yes, it was so funny. I was listening to Rachel Rogers, Million Dollar Badass 
Podcast over the weekend and she's-

Claire:

Favorite show.

Michelle:

Did you hear her 
office hours episode about being seen and it's all about selling and she talks about-

Claire:

Yeah.

Michelle:

Oh my goodness, she goes through all the different ways that you can be selling and how if you think you're selling too much, you probably aren't. And it blew my mind because I'm always telling my clients, "Yes, tell your people about the solution that you have to offer. You're not helping them by hiding it away." And I realized that I'm doing that to you. And it's such a natural instinct to be like, "Oh, I want to be helpful. I want to have these great conversations and I don't want to tell you what I do."

Claire:

Yeah, I will definitely be listening to that before the day is over.

Michelle:

Yeah, but it now sounds like the Facebook ads... Like the podcast now supports your Facebook ads business.

Claire:

It does for sure. Do I think it is my best source of leads? The quality of the leads that come in are very high. The number is still low.

Michelle:

Okay.

Claire:

So, we are experimenting with other channels of marketing, organic marketing, paid marketing as well. Right now I'm working on YouTube in particular because the correlation of people who watch you, who sit and watch you, it's even supposed to be even higher than people who listen to you. And since those videos are about Facebook ads, right? Like people are Googling and then that video will pop up in the result. It's kind of like SEO on crack.

Michelle:

Yes.

Claire:

That's what I'm seeing at least initially with just a couple of weeks into this experiment and I'm seeing great results.

Michelle:

Yes! So I just wanted to tell everyone. So, Claire and I were having this conversation right before we went live, but this was my perception of Claire and this podcast. I was like, "Oh my gosh, Claire is so brilliant because she's establishing her thought leadership, not talking about Facebook ads and building her business by not talking about her thing. But talking about this bigger issue and having these interesting conversations." And then to hear that like, "Oh no, that didn't work at first." It was just very eye-opening.

Claire:

And that's what the show is all about, what works, what doesn't work. It's a really interesting thing. I did say this, that, when people come up to me at events and this is happening more and more, especially this past year, they're always coming up to me to talk about the podcast, right? They're not mentioning the Facebook ads, whatever. Facebook ads is not that sexy. A lot of people hate them, I mean, Mark Zuckerberg, Congress, all that!

Still, I think they're a phenomenal way to market your business, obviously. But this is where the connection happens, right?

Claire:

Somebody comes and listens to your podcast, Michelle, week after week. Same thing happens for me and I get messages, I feel like from the same 50 people or so, over the course of months where they're just like, "I love the show. I love this episode." They're sharing it. It's a slow build, right?

Michelle:

Yeah.

Claire:

And it's, I'll also say it's also very difficult to track ROI. Because of it's mostly time, but it definitely creates a special kind of connection and when you're doing something that nobody else is doing, which is asking these really nosy questions, it's memorable.

Michelle:

And I did want to ask, what was one of the biggest “aha moments” you've had from asking one of your super nosy questions?

Claire:

The biggest aha is that I'm still resistant to asking some of those questions.

Michelle:

Oh, why is that?

Claire:

It depends on who I'm talking to.

So I just interviewed somebody who I love, I respect a great deal, and I knew that there were some questions that she wasn't comfortable with, namely like how much do you pay yourself? Which is a question that I love to ask, and people have been going crazy over this past year because it's one that I added when the show came back.

But when you're making a shit ton of money, it can be a little dangerous to talk about how much you pay yourself, and she might've had other reasons. I guess I was sort of making that assumption. So the conversation took us down sort of a different road and I got to ask all the questions I wanted to ask, which is what I said I would be doing right with this podcast. And it was funny at the end, she sent me a message like, "Thank you so much. I actually was a little disappointed we didn't talk about more money." And I was like, "Ahhh!"

Michelle:

Ahhhh!

Claire:

I totally would've loved to talk more and I think she would have been open about revenue. And we're talking about like a multi seven figure business, but I don't know how many multis. And people talk about, I remember, I totally remember when people talk about a multi six figure business. I think I hit $200,000 in revenue in 2018 and I was like on the podcast, I said, "So I'm officially a multi six figure business, but we're talking about two," Two six figures, right? I mean, not $700,000, $200,0000. Anyway, I don't know how many multis and I sort of missed my chance because I was being a total wuss.

Michelle:

Oh. So you can still be a little bit more bold with your questioning.

Claire:

I can and I just have to stop worrying so much about whether or not people are going to like me. That's the biggest thing that holds me back in general.

Michelle:

Well, I think that's the biggest thing that holds a lot of us back from asking for the sale, I know this is true for me, asking for the sale, even on consult calls, like asking the really nosy questions are the harder questions because it's like, "Ooh, I don't want to offend them. I want them to like me," or you know, " Oh, they're connected to all these people. What will they think if I asked them this?" And then you miss your opportunity and it sucks.

Claire:

Yeah, it really does.

Michelle:

Well, I'm in love with your podcast and I think it's so amazing that you really get to keep your finger on the heartbeat of what's going on in online business through it. Because, I learn so much by learning what's actually going on in other people's businesses. And I have to say, one of the things I really admire is that you don't just feature people who have multi seven figure businesses. You feature people who are in the starting out stages that are like the messy stage that nobody wants to talk to you about because it takes longer than you think to build a business.

I mean, I would love to talk to more of those people. I just, I don't know them as well. Because when you sort of create, you start an online business and you get your biz-besties, right? Like 
Val Geisler is a perfect example. She's my biz-besties and we were both at the same place when we co-hosted season two of the podcast back in 2016, and now we're both in the messy middle as we call it, as lots of people call it.

I don't know, it just kind of happens that all the people that I interact with on a more personal level where I... And those are the types of people I'd love to interview people who I already know somewhat because I'm more comfortable asking the questions. They know what's coming.

And so yeah, I do accept pitches for the podcast and I have all that info I think on my site, but I just don't always get pitches from people who were still sort of in the beginning because they think that they're too, they're not making enough money to talk about it. I just want a good story you guys. So put it to me.

Okay, rebels, you're always telling me, "Hey, I want to get my word out." Claire’s is a good podcast to go on, if you want people to know about your business and you want to be radically transparent and let her get up in your business, go ahead and pitch her.

Claire:

Hell yes, details, details are helpful, timelines, what did you do? How many people on your list then things like that.

Michelle:

So good. So good. All right. For this final segment of the interview, I am just going to run you through and rapid succession, the 3 Word Rebellion questions. This is the first time I'm ever doing this. So this is kind of a new addition to the show.

Claire:

Ooh, okay. Should my answers also be rapid fire because you I can ramble.

Michelle:

We'll see how it goes, because I have follow up questions. So who knows?

Claire:

That's fair.

Michelle:

I'm a talker too, extroverts. Okay Claire. 

So tell me, what are you rebelling against?

Claire:

Well, I'm going to steal this from what you said to me earlier, which is shiny happy marketing, the kinds of marketing where you only paint the beautiful picture and only talk about all the great things that you've done and achieved.

Michelle:

Oh, hell yes! Where you're not talking about your struggles at all and everything is great and everything six figures, or seven figures, or a million figures. Yes, I'm there for that.

Claire:

Some people talk about their struggles but like so strategically it's not even--

Michelle:

Yeah, it's like here's my struggle that is going to relate to you somehow and so I'm doing it more for marketing, and really presenting it as this vulnerable thing that I'm going through or trying to figure out.

Claire:

Exactly. Here's my tiny violin. I'm going to play it for you. Wow! 

Michelle:

I know. So you'll relate to me and then buy my course that solves that struggle.

Claire:

Exactly!

Michelle:

Oh, I hate that. Okay.

What change do you want to create in the world?

Claire:

Less bullshit.

Michelle:

What does less bullshit look like?

Claire:

A lot more knockoffs of the Get Paid Podcast. No, I don't really know if there was less bullshit, what would the world look like? Well I think there might be less comparisonitis. There would be much less paralysis because of comparison.

Michelle:

Yes.

Claire:

Ideas or struggles or whatever.

Michelle:

Oh, my gosh. Yes. Well, and it's funny, it reminds me, I did a webinar a few weeks ago and you know how in webinars they always the host tells you a story about themselves and I literally just said, "I'm not going to tell you a story. I'm going to tell you that I am credible and here is why I'm credible." And I just listed all of my credentials and I said, "I'm probably the most credible person for messaging in the world and I'm confident in saying that. Now let's move on."

Claire:

There we go.

Michelle:

Just no bullshit about it.

So if we lived in a bullshit free world, what do you think the world would be like?

Claire:

I tried to think about this ahead of time. What would it be like? Some people might make less money. That could be true. I'm not necessarily saying that my radical transparency is necessarily the right strategy. I constantly think when I'm writing emails or going on Facebook Lives or whatever, I'm thinking, what would my former boss think of this because I learned so much from Laura Roeder when I worked for her. She's the co-founder of Edgar, 
MeetEdgar. 

Michelle:

Yeah.

Claire:

So, it often pops in my head, like would she think I'm being way too fucking transparent? Probably, but whatever!

Michelle:

Doesn't matter!

Claire:

Yeah. I mean I just don't know how to do it any other way. So I do hire copywriters to make sure that my sales pages definitely sell the thing instead of me being too transparent to get you to buy it. But otherwise, I'm not sure what it would look like. Maybe people are making less money, but just being generally happier. I'm not sure.

Michelle:

Or maybe people are making better... I'm always thinking about making better purchasing decisions because one of the things that really pisses me off is watching people buy stuff, buy courses, buy programs that they have no business buying because of the shiny happy marketing.

Claire:

Yeah, I spent a lot of time this year thinking about this, about whether or not to really prevent people who are not in a position to buy from buying, who really can't benefit from something. Because I felt really strongly about that before. I hated taking people's money if they were really not, they didn't have a chance to be successful. In fact, that's what I teach the people who run ads for other people and they kind of mentor under me. I'm like, "You shouldn't, if they don't have a chance to make back their money, then it's morally wrong to take it." To some degree I think we also need to stop babysitting other people's wallets.

Michelle:

I can see that.

Claire:

It's something I'm still working on.

Michelle:

Yeah. I think I'd have a less hard time, especially when I see courses that are like $354,000 and they're like this huge chunk of change and they don't do a good job of saying this, "This is right for you."

Claire:

Yeah, that's true.

Michelle:

It's the size of the investment, it's different if you're spending $500 on a course and you realize, "This isn't quite right for me." Right? Or, "I don't need this right now. Maybe in the future," I think that's like whatever, that's fine. It's more of a lower risk. But when you know it's all of this money and they're kind of in that startup stage and you're like, "Oh, that was not the best purchasing decision for you." they don't even know how to make that decision

Because nobody teaches you how to make a purchasing decision or how to invest in your business or what to invest. 

So there's this weird kind of fine line for me. It's like, if it's like a lower cost thing, I'm like, "Yeah, whatever! You'll probably use it eventually." I know I've done that, bought things and then like three years later I'm like, "Oh, I have a course on that and I didn't do it."

Claire:

Right. Yeah. One thing that we've decided in my business about this one program that I have, it's the one where I mentor; ad consultants is we do not have a refund policy, so that forces people to really think about it, to talk to us, and also for us to build into our like metrics. The likelihood that maybe about 10% of people who join, we will have to pull aside digitally and say, "Hey, I don't think this was really a good decision for you. We're going to refund your money."

And just honestly to keep the quality, kind of feels wrong to say if you have a total beginner in a program that's really not made for beginners, that's going to impact your group. It's going to impact, find the east end on fend on calls, things like that.

Claire:

So we're not taking applications, which is what we used to do. Somebody pointed out to me that, you know, there are people who aren't applying because they're afraid of getting rejected. And I was like, "Huh! Interesting."

Michelle:

Interesting.

Claire:

So for us to let people make the decision on their own, but then also understand that that money that comes in isn't necessarily going to be money that we're going to keep. Not all of it. And if we see that 30% of people who are coming in are the wrong fit, it's like, okay, then we have to change our messaging.

Michelle:

Yeah, yeah. There's something off and so it aligns better so that they see themselves or don't see themselves or they at least know to send an email and ask a question.

Claire:

Exactly.

Michelle:

Awesome. I could talk to you all freaking day about this stuff, but let people know where they can find you online and how they can listen to The Get Paid Podcast.

Claire:

Sure. So if you open up your podcast app, whenever you're listening to this fabulous show with you can just search, “Get Paid” and the name “Claire”. That's probably the easiest way to find The Get Paid Podcast. Then for all things, Facebook and Instagram ads, you can go over to 
my website. We did a rebrand in the past year, so the site is all shiny, happy, and new. I will say that for sure.

Michelle:

It's fabulous. I love the rebrand.

Claire:

Thank you, and it was expensive. I'll have to do an episode on that very soon.

Michelle:

Oh my gosh. I'm sure it was. Oh man, it always is when you rebrand, but I'm so glad that you were on the show. I've really enjoyed this conversation and everyone go and check out The Get Paid Podcast. If you want to understand how people are running their business online, you are not going to regret it. 

Thank you so much, Claire. I really appreciate this.

Claire:

Thank you, Michelle. This has been so much fun.