I have someone to introduce you to.  You're going to love him.  Yes, I know this is a podcast for moms, but I just had to make an exception for this guy. He's adorable, multi-talented, and he's about to solve your most pressing problem. Meet Edgar.  He a social media scheduling software created by brilliant business mom, Laura Roeder.

This interview is fun and laid-back, but full of practical advice from a woman who has built a software company from the ground up.  She's way too humble to tell you that it surpasses 100K in revenue every month (but I'm not!)

On the Podcast

01:18 - Quitter
03:25 - The Solution to the Social Media Timesuck
06:15 - Why Re-purpose Content?
09:03 - Meet Edgar. He Loves Bringing You More Traffic.
11:00 - How to Spread out Your Content
12:52 - Time-Saving Tips
13:52 - Building a Software Company
17:10 - Marketing Edgar
18:44 - Creating the Creature
19:42 - Facebook Ads Made Easy
21:31 - Customer Acquisition Cost
24:30 - Why Laura Turned Down Funding
26:15 - Edgar's Arms
29:10 - Wearing Pajamas doesn't Make you Qualified
34:59 - We Didn't Miss You When You Were Gone
37:03 - Laura's Shocking and Hilarious Mom Moment

Press Play on the Podcast Player Below to Hear Laura's Story and her Best Business Advice

Quitter

Laura is a proud quitter! After working for a branding company as a junior designer for a brief stint at age 22, Laura decided she wanted more interaction with clients and more control over her work. She left her first job out of college at less than a year in and has been working for herself ever since!

Laura started LKR Social Media to help entrepreneurs learn how to use social media in their businesses. Laura helps people become “famous in their field” and learn how to be the go-to expert in what they do.

 

The Solution to the Social Media Time Suck

In her work with social media students, Laura was using spreadsheets  to organize their content and sharing strategy online. She used this same method for promoting her own business. The spreadsheets were very labor intensive and, essentially, organized old content and kept track of when things were posted to various social media apps.

After using this method for some time, Laura realized that there had to be a better way. It was very odd to her that social media scheduling apps were not creating a library of old posts and doing the hard part for her. Laura began discussing this issue and her frustrations with her husband.  He said that he could build a solution for her in a week!

Laura's husband did, in fact, build this software (it took 6 months!) so business owners can re-purpose their content and updates easily to take advantage of all the hard work they put into those initial posts.  The software is called Edgar, and he's an adorable octopus (because of course!)  You can find him at MeetEdgar.com

Why Re-purpose Content?

One of the most time consuming things entrepreneurs do each day is create new content to share. This is so important because business owners need to consistently bring in new potential customers. However, when you do have a new potential lead, they only see the new things that you are posting and creating. Most of the time they never see the podcasts or blog posts that you shared six or more months ago.  What a bummer! You spent a lot of time creating that great stuff!

With Edgar, you have a library of all your great content that is still relevant but is being shared over and over again so that your new audience is seeing it. Most people spend hours creating new content and then just share it once. 90% of their audience never sees it! By re-purposing older content, business owners can make sure that their growing audience is able to see more of what they have to offer.

Most business owners see traffic spikes when they write and share a new post.  Then things begin to die down. With Edgar, a business owner sees regular traffic spikes by drawing fans and followers back onto their site time and time again.

Meet Edgar. He Loves Bringing You More Traffic.

Laura constantly hears from users that they see huge increases in their traffic after using Edgar. Logically, this phenomenon makes sense.  If you share a link on social media, it gets a certain amount of traffic. If you share that link twice, it should bring in twice the traffic, right?

The math holds up. If you develop a backlog with 3 or 6 months' worth of content, your audience is not at all fatigued by seeing the same thing over and over again.  They're only seeing it a few times a year.  Laura has also noticed that updates have similar results every time they are shared. For example if an update gets 10 retweets the first time it is shared, if it's shared again a month later it's likely to see 10 retweets the second time as well.

How to Spread out your Content

Laura recommends that you space out the reposting of your content based on how much content you have. For example, if you have a month of great content to share, then you should recycle those posts about once a month. At MeetEdgar, they share repeat content roughly every 3 months.

The best part? Edgar doesn’t just save your blog posts it also saves your entire social media post including the image that you put so much time into. You won't have to hunt for the perfect-sized image from the caverns of your computer again.  It's all ready to go and simply schedule out.

Time-Saving Tips

When you create your posts, you can batch your work to save time. Create all of your blog posts at once, then create all of your images. This will save you hours of work!

Automate your social media updates. Your audience doesn’t know how you are sending out your content, so automate it to save time.

Engagement and interaction, however, cannot be done with a scheduling app. So in your social media strategy spend time engaging yourself. You can get to know your audience and interact with them with the time you save by planning and scheduling posts ahead of time.

Building a Software Company

Laura had never built a software company before but she realized this shouldn’t stop her. "Just because you haven't done it before doesn't mean you can't do it," she says. As moms, we understand that babies don't enter the world knowing how to use Ruby on Rails.  We all have to learn.  We all start from scratch at some point.

Laura also stresses the importance of having a great partner or co-founder to help you build out your idea. If you outsource the development of your software, this is  Instead you want someone that is part of your team and invested in your success. Another important part of building an app or software platform is to have some sales and marketing knowledge (whether that is you or someone you hire). Laura has seen a lot of developers create great things but because they don’t know how to get it out into the world, it fails. The best type of partnership would be one person who knows the marketing side and one person who can do the technical side of things.

Marketing Edgar

Laura has used two key strategies to gain new customers for Edgar.

1. Facebook Ads. Facebook ads have been huge for Edgar. Laura has noticed that a lot of new businesses are nervous about jumping into paid advertising, but with Facebook ads you don’t need to spend a lot of money to get your product in front of the perfect audience. It takes some time and experimentation, but the payoff is huge.  Experiment with $10-$100, and then once you see what works, you can ramp up your ad spend as the sales roll in.
2. Branding. Laura and her team have focused a great deal on branding Edgar. He has become his own little creature with a personality! Edgar is a boy.  He's an octopus who loves to help you with your social media, and he has some weird hobbies.  Happy customers started saying, "Edgar is my boyfriend" and they thought it was so cute that they made stickers and messaging around that idea. It's much easier to picture how a piece of software fits into your life when you can imagine it as a helpful little creature.

Creating the Creature

Edgar was originally just the code name for the overall project. When the team sat down to name the program, they realized that Edgar was memorable, cute, and they couldn't think of anything better! So Edgar it was. After landing on the name Edgar, Laura and her team knew that if it was going to have a person’s name, it would need a personality as well. An octopus seemed like the perfect fit because Edgar does so much and is juggling so many different things at once. Edgar's vibrant personality has grown from there!

Facebook Ads Made Easy

While there are tons of different strategies a business owner can use with Facebook ads, it doesn't always have to be so complicated.  In creating Facebook ads for Edgar, Laura was very straightforward. She marketed to people with an interest in managing their social media professionally, and the message behind the ads was simple: “here is a new social media tool, check him out!” Laura knows her target market well, and she knows they're always looking for ways to streamline their social media efforts.

Customer Acquisition Cost

In Laura's opinion, many entrepreneurs do the math wrong when it comes to determining how much they can pay to acquire each customer.

Many business owners look at the lifetime value of a customer.  In other words, how much will the business make from that one customer over the lifetime of that business. Unfortunately this strategy is unrealistic for a small bootstrapped company.

Instead, Laura recommends setting a limit on your cost per customer acquisition based on how long you are willing to be “out” that money. For Edgar the limit was set at 3 months. Even though many customers stay with Edgar much longer than 3 months, they knew they could afford to be out the money from their ad spend for 3 months' time before they needed to start turning a profit on that customer. Edgar costs $49/month, so the Laura can spend roughly $150 to acquire each customer and still turn a profit on that customer relatively quickly.

That number may seem steep, but the math works out great for a company like Laura's, and it's allowed her to grow Edgar to over $100,000 in recurring monthly revenue.  Also, remember that the cost per customer acquisition is much different than the cost per lead.  Not all leads turn into customers.  But do the math. What percentage of your leads turn into customers? How much did you pay for all of those leads? Find the right market to target and the right cost per customer acquisition, and paid advertising doesn't have to be quite so scary.

Why Laura Turned Down Funding

Edgar was offered various funding options, but Laura turned them all down, and she's so glad she did!

Here are a few reasons why Laura turned down funding:

1. No bosses.  When you raise funding you have people on your board that you need to please.  You're accountable to more than just yourself, and these people also have voting rights to decide on the direction of the company.
2. No fundraising. Start-ups that receive funding often get into a trap of raising funds, then having pressure to grow really quickly, then they have to raise funds again.  Oftentimes they run into the trap of not working to acquire more customers, but instead working to acquire more investors. Laura didn't want to spend all her time looking for money from investors.  She wants to spend her time making her product worth it for each customer.
3. No pressure to sell.  Laura didn't want to pour her heart and soul into something and then feel pressured to sell it (so that investors all make a nice profit!) She wanted to focus her energy on creating a company that treats its employees well, is loved by its customers, and is profitable in the near future instead of just on sales day.

Edgar's Arms

Edgar actually has more than 8 arms, he has 15!  There are 15 wonderful employees on the Edgar Team, and they all work from home.

Laura's best tip for managing a remote team: Look for employees with specific skills and talents instead of hiring virtual assistants. Often, VAs are running their own business, and that is their main priority.  They're spending time acquiring new clients and hiring more staff. But an employee is part of your team, and everyone is working towards the same goal of making your business successful.

Don't underestimate the power of moms: The woman who heads up Edgar's customer service team is a mom of three kids.  This woman used to work in telemarketing, because it was the only job she could find that was flexible and allowed her to work from home.  She started part-time with Edgar, then grew to full-time, and now she manages the entire customer service department!  She has incredible talent, and it wasn't being utilized all that much in her previous job.  Laura loves seeking out brilliant moms who can contribute to the Edgar Team.

Wearing Pajamas Doesn't Make you Qualified

When hiring for a work-at-home job, it can be tricky to find just the right fit.  Here are Laura's tips for assembling a great team.

1. Mission over Lifestyle.  Really wanting to work at home does not make you qualified!  Laura looks for candidates who really believe in Edgar's mission and feel they can add to it in valuable ways.
2. Skill + Experience. Asking the right questions and looking at candidates' past experience can help you determine whether they have the right skills for the job.  Again, this isn't about finding a random mom who just wants a typing job from home.  Laura hires brilliant people who have experience in the areas she's hiring for but also enjoy the flexibility of working from home.
3. Create a Great Company Culture. Edgar prides itself on treating its employees well.  Everyone is kind.  Everyone works hard.  There is no workplace drama.  And the CEO happens to be flexible!  As Laura says, "We make social media software. We're not saving lives." They work hard and believe in what they're doing, but they also believe in putting in an honest day's work and taking time off in the evenings and on the weekends.  There's no reason a new feature launch can't be pushed back.  They do what's best for their team. This great company culture not only attracts the right employees but encourages them to stick around.  Everyone feels empowered to do a great job and enjoys working together.  Everyone pulls their weight  and is great at what they do.
4. Create Part-Time Positions.  Edgar actually finds better candidates because they're more flexible with hours.  A mom who can't use her amazing talent at a full-time job can come work for them! Edgar also needs employees to have different shifts so that they can provide excellent customer service during all the hours their customers need them.

We Didn't Miss You when You were Gone

Ok, so that's not exactly true, but we should note that Laura is so brilliant at business that she built a team and created systems so that the business did great without her!  When Laura had her son, Hector, she took 3 full months off from work.  Even now, Laura works just 4 hours per day and spends the rest of her time with her family.

When Laura came back from maternity leave, she was talking to Sarah who runs the day-to-day operations for the company and asked her, "where were the big gaps in my absence?" Sarah thought about it for a while and said, "well... we didn't have anyone to do podcasts...." We all chuckled at that one!

So essentially, Laura's main role is to get the word out about Edgar and acquire new customers, and everything else runs pretty smoothly because Laura has assembled a great team and created an amazing company culture.

Laura's Shocking and Hilarious Mom Moment

Oh my goodness.  You'll want to stay tuned to the very end of our interview with Laura because her mom moment is...insane!  Hilarious, shocking, and unlike anything we've heard before.

By the way, isn't Laura so fun?  I want to hang out with her and hear more of her hilarious stories!

Find Laura Online

MeetEdgar.com

Connect with Laura on Twitter: @lkr

On today’s podcast we welcome Robyn Rosenberger. Robyn is the woman behind Tiny Superheroes, a business based on empowering and uniting extraordinary kids as they overcome illness or disability. She creates tiny capes for children with special needs or severe illness so they know they are truly superheroes. Robyn lives in St Louis, Missouri with her husband and two boys. You may want to grab a box of tissues for this episode and prepare to be truly inspired!

On the Podcast

01:25 - The very first Tiny Superhero

03:30 - Spreading the Love

07:30 - Robyn's Mission

08:20 - Becoming a Business

10:24 - The PR Rollercoaster

12:52 - Hiring Help

15:02 - Jump! Headfirst...into the Whirlwind!

19:10 -  Making a Profit as a Missional Business

22:30 - Who is Tiny Superheroes for?

30:55 - An Incredible Video (seriously, go watch it!)

33:40 - Balancing Life as a Mompreneur

39:18 - Robyn's Yucky Mom Moment!

The very first Tiny Superhero

Before relocating back to St Louis, Robyn and her husband lived in Seattle for five years where she worked for a software company.  As her nephew’s birthday approached, she wanted to use her creative side to create a truly awesome present for him. So Robyn completed her first ever sewing project, a tiny cape! During this time she was following the story of Brenna, a little girl born with a rare severe skin condition. She just knew that she should send Brenna a cape to let her and her family know what a superhero she was. With that, the idea for Tiny Superheroes was born!

Spreading the Love

After sending Brenna’s superhero cape, Robyn was more and more inspired to send them to other children. She wanted to bring them joy and told herself that if the tiny cape made them smile for 10 minutes, it was totally worth it. It was also important to Robyn that children with special needs and severe illness know that from the outside they are seen as true superheroes.

Robyn began looking at other stories like Brenna’s and found 10 more children with similar stories and struggles. After she sent these children their own superhero capes, a friend of one of the families unexpectedly wrote a story about Tiny Superheroes and what Robyn was doing on Today.com!

Robyn's business took off from there. Because of her mission and the love behind Robyn’s business, she's been featured on some very popular sites and shows. The families of these children have told Robyn how much it means that their struggles are acknowledged and how much extra strength they get from these tiny capes. Robyn feels indebted to these children and their families for teaching her so much and showing her what it really means to be a superhero.

Robyn’s Mission

Robyn’s children do not have special needs or illnesses but she has a passion for finding the gifts in the children that do. She strives to change how we look at them and their stories. Instead of seeing their differences let’s look at what makes them so strong and so extraordinary. The biggest reward that Robyn sees from Tiny Superheroes is being able to recognize the super powers of these children.

Becoming a Business

Robyn knew that she wanted to build something that would be sustainable over the long term. This is why she made the decision to become a for-profit business. She knew that her skills and resources would be better suited for a model that follows Tom’s shoe company (when you buy a cape, she donates a cape to a tiny superhero). In order to donate capes, she created a “nomination” system where people could nominate children who needed them.

Robyn was overwhelmed by the response she got from Today.com and about six months later, she was featured on ABC World News. It was at this point that Robyn left her full time job to focus on the business.  Robyn had to take the leap before she was sure about what would happen with her business.  But she knew she'd get an influx of orders after ABC World News, so she felt like she either had to jump head-first so she could handle the new orders, or she'd have to decline the interview and shut Tiny Superheroes down.  (I think we all know what Robyn chose to do!)

The PR Rollercoaster

Tiny Superheroes has received a lot of press which Robyn really sees a blessing. She had a hard time at first balancing this press in her business. She was overwhelmed with orders all at one time, and the business became a roller coaster of work.

Robyn also had a hard time figuring out if the business was really sustainable or if she was just getting big pushes of orders because she was being featured on big platforms. Recently, Robyn has spent time looking at the big picture and how to keep her business sustainable through the highs and lows so she can provide capes for many years to come.

Hiring Help

In the beginning Robyn was sewing all of the capes from her living room with some of her friends. They would often work late at night with the kids in bed! Finally Robyn found a small sewing company out of Seattle that was able to handle all of the sewing for Robyn.  Robyn says the quality of their work is so much better than hers! It has been a balancing act, but now the orders are starting to level out and the business is becoming more consistent. Hiring help is a huge hurdle for a lot of entrepreneurs but it's allowing Tiny Superheroes to continue on their mission.  Robyn can do what she does best - market and share the mission of the business and find new superheroes to support!

Jump Headfirst...into the Whirlwind!

The first six months of Tiny Superheroes was a whirlwind for Robyn -- including many late nights and a living room covered with fabric. Over time, the business became very stressful for her and her family. She was spending more time worried about orders than focusing on her kids. It became obvious to her that this way of living was not sustainable, but she still wasn’t sure if the business would be financially viable.

At first, Robyn tried just working part time at her job, but that didn’t work out very well -- she needed to go back to full time to really perform well in her role. It was at this time that Robyn got the call from ABC World News that they wanted to feature her business.  As we mentioned above, at that moment Robyn had a critical choice to make: jump headfirst or call it quits. It was terrifying for her to leave a great job with financial security and head into the unknown, but this decision really showed Robyn how important her mission was to her.  Tiny Superheroes is still going strong!

Making a Profit as a Missional Business

Currently Robyn’s business has not yet replaced the income she was making from her full time job. Since Tiny Superheroes donates a cape for every cape that is purchased, it has been difficult to find just the right price point for each cape. So far the business has ebbed and flowed a lot. Sometimes Robyn is able to pay herself and sometimes not.

Up until now the capes have been expensive to make and not priced in a way that would keep the business sustainable. This is something that Robyn is currently working to fix. It's difficult to create quality capes, sell them at a reasonable price, and stay true to her mission of giving a cape for each one purchased.  Robyn acknowledges that her business is still growing and managing it financially is still a learning process.

Who is Tiny Superheroes for?

Tiny Superheroes is for every kid!  Robyn wants all kids to enjoy a beautifully made cape from her company, but it's important to her that people understand when they buy a cape, they're doing so much more than that.  For every cape that's purchased, Robyn gives a cape to a child with an illness or disability, and she also lets the customer know which superhero their cape helped to support.

Purchasing a cape is a great opportunity to educate children about special needs and illnesses. This reinforces Robyn’s wish that we recognize the strengths and super powers of these children instead of the differences. Most kids don’t spend a lot of time with other kids with disabilities and severe illnesses so Tiny Superheroes  helps to connect all children together while sharing their stories.

An Incredible Video

Robyn has found that every time she gets to a point in her business where she questions whether or not she can keep going, a blessing arrives. This time the blessing was in the form of a video created by American Express. They reached out to her and wanted to support her journey, so they came to her house and filmed for hours to tell the story of her business. Robyn has found that the video has been a great tool for brand messaging and getting the word out instead of just generating sales. It's easy for people to watch this video and immediately know what Tiny Superheroes is all about. Seriously, the video is so good - watch it here!

Balancing Life as a Mompreneur

Although Robyn has not completely figured out how to balance her children and her business, she is getting better every day. Some moms want to be full time moms and some women (like Robyn) need to have another outlet for themselves in addition to being a mom. With her first son, things were seamless, and he was at an age where he could go to daycare while she worked, but when her second son came along everything changed! Robyn found that she was not doing anything at 100%. Robyn tries to learn from what other moms in her situation are doing and find the best way to balance it all. For her right now, it works best to have both kids in daycare on a regular basis. They are doing great, and she is able to focus on work during that time.

Robyn's Yucky Mom Moment!

You'll have to tune in to hear this one. I don't care to explain all the details!

Find Robyn Online!

TinySuperHeroes.com

Caitlin Orman is a shop owner from Nashville, TN.  She owns Custom Decals Boutique on Etsy and just started the shop in February. It's full of lovely, personalized mugs, cups, and door decals. Caitlin has does some great things so far to market her shop and get more sales.  We discussed more strategies for getting more sales - particularly as the holiday season approaches.

Press play on the video player below to see our Blab.  Or you can press play on the podcast player at the end of this page if you just want to hear the audio version.

Topics Discussed on the Blab

• Great Product Photos. Caitlin initially focused on taking great photos of her items to draw new customers in.  Her shop looks lovely!
• Etsy SEO. Caitlin worked tirelessly on optimizing her listings to get found.
• Instagram.  Caitlin has focused on Instagram to grow her following and connect with Influencers to market her business.
• Working with Influencers. Brittany from @dossdecor on Instagram.  She's an interior decorator with a huge following.  She asked if Caitlin could design something custom for her front door, and then she showcased on her Instagram feed. Caitlin has gained at least 700 followers from this partnership.  Caitlin got 30-50 sales each from two flash sales that she did on Instagram, and her only advertising was on Brittany's Instagram feed.
• Showcasing how her products can be used.  It's been so helpful for Caitlin to design something custom for a home decor expert so that they can showcase how her products can be used and prospective customers can picture how her items will look in their homes.
• Flash sales.  Caitlin designed a "flash sale listing" in her Etsy shop to get her sale orders right through Etsy.  It's more tedious to work through both paypal and Etsy.
• Affordable Advertising.  By partnering with Influencers Caitlin can spend simply the cost of a few custom items and get tons of advertising and sales as a result.
• Market Research.  By partnering with home decor influencers, Caitlin gets lots of new ideas for products that her customers would love.  Brittany of Doss Decor suggested the mug idea: "brave women run in my family" and the door decal "hello, friends".
• Holiday Merchandising. Make your products seem like the perfect gift by pairing them with sprigs of holly, red ribbon, or other Christmas props.
• Holiday SEO.  Use keywords around gift ideas to target Christmas shoppers.
• Workflow. Turn your great photo into a smart object so that you can switch out designs on the mug or door without having to take brand new photos.  Learn more about Smart Objects here.
• Benefit to Bloggers. Give them a super easy, creative blog post to write about by pairing one of Caitlin's decals with other door decor. You could also require that in return, they give you one photo that you can use in your product listings and marketing efforts.
• How to Find the Right Bloggers to Partner with. Pinterest is a great place to find influencers in the home decor niche.  The home decor pins that come up near the top generally indicate a blog that's getting a high volume of traffic.
• New Product Idea. Add cute little graphics to the front door word decal so you could surround it with holly for Christmas, then flower buds in the spring, red white and blue stars in the summer. This allows the same product to be much more versatile.
• How to Pitch to Bloggers.  Get ideas from Cheri and Mei right here. Focus on the benefit to them and their audience.
• One Tip on Partnerships. Make sure you're clear on what the arrangement is.  Don't send a free product to any old blogger just because they say, "sure I'll take a look at it."  That's not good enough.  You want a firm agreement on what is expected from both parties. Example: You'll make a custom product just for them, and in exchange they'll write a blog post and share once on Pinterest, Instagram, etc.  It only makes sense to send a free product "cold" to someone if they're absolutely huge in their reach and it's worth the risk of the cost of that product. Otherwise, make the agreement firm and decided upon before you give things away for free.
• Add more listings by grouping them together.  Group 3 great door decals together to create a higher-priced listing that Etsy is more likely to promote, but to also give a discount to someone who can't pick just one.
• Promoted Listings Tip.  Beth Anne now low-balls most of her bids to about 3 cents per click and lets Etsy promote those at a low level so that she can bring in 20-30 extra clicks to her shop each day at a ridiculously low price. Get more promoted listings tips here.
• Beth Anne's Killer Etsy SEO Tip.  Tightly group your keyword phrases for a given listing.  For example, if you decide you want to rank for the keyword phrase "coffee cups" then you should only pick very closely related keywords to also use in that listing.  So, for example, mugs, ceramic cup, tea cups, cappuccino cups, coffee cups.  Don't get overly ambitious and try to rank for 20 different types of keywords within one listing.  Then, copy that listing and pick a completely different keyword phrase to rank for such as "customized wedding gift"  Learn more about Etsy SEO here.
• Beth Anne's 2nd Killer SEO Tip.  You have to use the Google Keyword planner.  You'll never know exactly what people search for unless you study the data.
• How to use the Keyword Planner without settting up an ad.  You do have to enter your billing information and set up a Google AdWords account, but you never have to run an ad to have access to the keyword planner tool. Beth Anne and Sarah have been using the tool for years and they've never once paid for an ad.
• How do we manage it all?  We follow the tips and strategies we wrote about in our book, Time Management Mama.  We use our Brilliant Business Planner to time-block certain parts of our day to be nothing but business time. And... we don't do it all at once.  Sarah and Beth Anne both confessed that their houses suffer.  They don't keep things perfectly clean at all times.  They have time for work and their families, but the housework gets left behind sometimes.
• Chris and Beth Anne often work as a team when it comes to the housework.  He doesn't expect Beth Anne to do everything around the house because he knows she spends all of Holden's school time working on the business.  They convene at the end of each day and on the weekends to figure out what needs to be done and they work together to make it all happen.
• You can always do more.  So you have to just time-block and figure out how many hours you can give to the business and how many you need to set aside for your personal life.
• Other business ideas.  Caitlin talked about eventually using her skills and knowledge from the corporate world and turning that into an information product.  Caitlin works with gathering survey results and analyzing them.  These skills would be awesome for many entrepreneurs to learn!  We suggested that perhaps a product with a higher profit margin would allow Caitlin to advertise her business more and grow it more quickly.

What did you think of this week's Blab?  Are you trying to build a business from scratch?  We'd love to hear from you!

~ Beth Anne & Sarah

On today’s episode we welcome Sarah Gilcher of the very successful Etsy shop, Perennial Planner.
Sarah lives in Washington State with her husband and three daughters. She creates printable organizational tools and planners and actually took our ideas and inspiration and brought them to life with her work on the Brilliant Business Planner!  Sarah has been such a wonderful part of our Brilliant Business Moms community since it first began.  She's kind, brilliant, and crazy talented!  

On the Podcast

01:28 - Sarah's Top Priorities
03:17 - Sarah's Start on Etsy
05:37 - Self-Taught Designer
07:31 - Finding her Niche
11:34 - 3,000 Sales in 1 Year's Work!
13:31 - How to Make a PDF Editable
15:41 - Building a Lifestyle Business
17:18 - How Sarah's Business Helps her Family
18:56 - Two Streams of Income
27:15 - To Blog or not to Blog?
31:44 - 3 Kids + a Successful Shop: How She Does It
36:50 - The Power of Video for Business
41:56 - Sarah's Terrifying Mom Moment!

Sarah's Top Priorities

Sarah is a stay at home mom to three little girls who are 6, 4, and 13 months old. Her husband is a pastor
and spends a lot of time learning new languages and training new pastors. Sarah's main priorities are as a wife, mom, and helper in so many ways to her  husband.  She helps with his ministry, and she also has the privilege of helping to bring in an extra income for their family.

Sarah's Start on Etsy

Sarah’s journey with Etsy began when she was searching for a specific printable grocery list. When she couldn't find exactly what she wanted, she decided to open up Adobe Illustrator and create one herself! Sarah
then realized that she could make her printable cute and share it with other moms who may be looking for the same thing.

Sarah was excited about helping women with organizational tools that were attractive
and that moms would actually want to use. Another early item in Sarah's shop was a spreadsheet she and her family had used to get themselves out of debt.  Clearly, Sarah's organizational sheets were helpful!  All she did was make them prettier, and they were ready for Etsy success.

Self-Taught Designer

Sarah has a degree in Fine Art, but she's a self-taught graphic designer. In doing projects for her church,
friends, and for herself, Sarah slowly learned programs like Adobe Illustrator and In Design over the course of several years.  Now she can create beautiful printables and planners like it's nothing!  (Seriously - Sarah works fast!)

Finding Her Niche

Business was very slow when Sarah was started out with her printables Etsy shop. Since she was pregnant
with her 3rd baby, Sarah became interested in the idea of sewing and selling baby products in a brand new shop. She knew that baby products were a wildly successful niche on Etsy and wanted a piece of that pie. Through this process of trying to build up her second Etsy shop, Sarah spent a lot of time learning how to grow her store.

She listened to podcasts like Brilliant Business Moms and took the advice of other successful Etsy sellers. Sarah then applied the lessons she learned to both Etsy shops and found that her original printable store was seeing lots of growth.

Since product creation is so much more time consuming than selling digital products, and since her digital store was seeing more growth, Sarah ditched the baby shop and focused on her original idea. She rebranded the shop and officially become Perennial Planner. After about a year of focused work, Sarah's shop has surpassed 3000 sales!

3,000 Sales in 1 Year's Work

Sarah has attributed a lot of her success to listening to the Brilliant Business Moms podcast! (aww shucks, thanks Sarah!) She found that listening to stories of other successful business owners has been a huge help for her.

Once Sarah started seeing her Etsy shop as a real business, success followed.  Sarah shared two great tips that helped her to grow:

1. Focus on keywords, titles, and tags for each listing to get found more often via Etsy search.
2. Brand product photos so that your online shop looks more cohesive. This gives the customer a similar feeling as if they were stepping inside a physical shop. Set the right tone for your customers.

How to Make a PDF Editable

A lot of Sarah’s printables are actually editable forms so customers can use them right on their computers.

To Make a PDF Editable:

1. Use Adobe Acrobat Pro (this is a part of Adobe’s Creative Cloud Subscription).
2. Find “tools” on the top menu.
3. Select “Forms”, then “Edit”, and “Add New Fields”. This will allow you to create editable fields for your customers built right into your digital products.
4. Note: you cannot copy and paste your fields throughout the document to add more than one editable filed.  Instead, select “Create Multiple Copies” to speed up the process.
5. You will also be able to give fields multiple lines and make them rich text enabled so customers can change the size and fonts of the text.

How cool is that?!

Building a Lifestyle Business

Sarah's top priority is her family and her faith.  She knew she needed a flexible schedule, and she quickly realized that she didn't want to create and ship physical products day after day.

Creating beautiful and helpful digital products has been the perfect solution for Sarah.  The best part?  She can create a product once and sell it over and over again... even while she sleeps!

How Sarah's Business Helps her Family

Perennial Planner has provided Sarah’s family with more financial freedom. Since she has little to no overhead she is able to bring home more profits, and that money has helped cover the “extras” for her family. Sarah and her family live a Dave Ramsey lifestyle with no debt. Although her husband provides the primary income, her Etsy shop has worked to cover extra expenses and provide more security.
Occasionally Sarah does struggle with the idea that she is bringing in extra money and struggles with the mentality, "oh the business will cover that!" versus remembering to be intentional with how she spends and what the family's big goals are.

Two Income Streams

Sarah loves doing whatever she can to help busy moms by providing them with the organizational tools they need. Often customers’ needs are slightly different from her product so she offers customization. This is hard to balance with the overall business because custom work in any business can be very time consuming. Sarah counters this struggle with requiring a minimum amount for custom products so that each order is worth the time she puts in.

On top of doing custom orders for her Etsy shop, Sarah enjoys taking on freelance projects. This provides another great stream of income for her business, and it keeps her income balanced and weatherproof during a slow season on Etsy.

In the past, Sarah has done work for local businesses but lately she is getting more referrals from her shop and past customers.

One of Sarah’s biggest freelance jobs so far has been designing the Brilliant Business Planner! She landed this job by seeing a need for her service and reaching out to Sarah and Beth Anne. This is a great lesson for any entrepreneur -- it never hurts to ask. The worst thing that can happen is that someone says no, but on the flip side you could land a great job and a great partnership!

Sarah really enjoys these larger projects and they work out well to balance out the times when her Etsy shop slows down during the year. (We've certainly loved working with Sarah and hope to keep her busy for years to come!)

To Blog or Not to Blog?

As with many other Etsy sellers Sarah has struggled with blogging to promote her shop.  Blogging takes time and commitment, and it's often too much to add on to an already busy shop!

Recently, Sarah did a post on how to print her products double sided. She plans to focus more on helpful, instructional type videos that will serve her current customers. She can link to these videos within the listing descriptions in her shop.

Videos are a great tool for serving current customers better as well as gaining trust and credibility with new shoppers. Sarah and Beth Anne created a video about how to build a butterfly terrarium and that video has sold more products as well as ranked well on Google for some competitive keyword phrases in their niche! (And isn't Sarah's little girl Lilly adorable?)

Your videos don’t have to be perfect or even posted on your own website, just get them posted to your YouTube channel and out in front of an audience!

3 Kids + a Successful Shop: How She Does It

Building a successful business can take a bit time commitment, but Sarah proves that you can do it with just a few hours a week. Sarah only works 10-15 hours each week and balances this time between afternoons (during naptime) and nights (if her husband is working).

A great tip Sarah shared was to encourage independence in smaller children so they can be playing alone and entertained at least for a short time while you do some work. Sarah has been able to achieve her goal of making a part-time income on her own terms with lots of flexibility. Although she tries to continually create new products, she knows that her business was built to allow for flexibility and put her family first.  So Sarah doesn't stress if she can't add new products for a while.  Her business works for her - not the other way around!

Sometimes when you're working as your own boss it's easy to set crazy deadlines or hours for yourself without realizing it. Step back, know your limits and ask yourself if you and your family are thriving. It can take a long time to learn how you work best but it is so important so you can set up your time and your business for success.

The Power of Video for Business

Many online business owners don't realize how powerful video can be for their business.  Not only does it let you connect with your audience on a deeper level and teach things that are difficult to convey with words on a screen, but video also makes it easier to rank in Google (as well as get found on YouTube of course!)

The video that Sarah and Beth Anne created on how to build a butterfly terrarium has 967 views! This video has had zero promotion and only one “dead link” included in the listing descriptions in their Etsy shop.

Another surprising video result:  Beth Anne found a tutorial video she created for her and Sarah's now-defunct Mommy blog on making cappuccinos at home with a frother.  That video has almost 5,000 views on it! Again, this video wasn't promoted in any way, it just sits on their Mommy blog which gets about 10-20 hits per day... so it's essentially dead.  The video is getting viewed because it's ranking for keyword phrases on Google and YouTube.

These statistics just show how powerful video can be. You could use video views to send people to an Etsy shop or blog. How can you use video to drive more traffic and sales your way?

If you're nervous about starting out on video, Meredith Marsh, the VidProMom has you covered with these great tips for newbies.

Sarah's Terrifying Mom Moment!

Sarah's mom moment is both funny and terrifying!! You'll have to tune in to hear the story!

Find Sarah Online!

PerennialPlanner.Etsy.com
PerennialPlanner.com
Instagram: @PerennialPlanner

Watch Sarah's adorable little girls in our planner landing page video! (They're the ones talking about Pinterest strategy!)

Don't forget to join in on our book club for Money Making Mom by Crystal Paine. You can find the schedule here.

 

Every Wednesday at 1:30 Eastern, Sarah and I hop on Blab with a Brilliant Business Mom to strategize ways she can grow her business.  Last week, we chatted with Julie Fuller of Tokyo Blossom Boutique.  

Julie recently re-branded her shop, and now it's filled with fun, vibrant, colorful knitwear and accessories.  She's truly set herself apart in the knitwear space, and we can't wait to see how she grows.

Topics Discussed on our Etsy Strategy Blab

• Branding.  This Fall, Julie re-branded her shop with a palette of 6 bold, beautiful colors.  Now her shop looks and feels cohesive and has a fun feel to it.  The best part about re-considering her products and re-branding?  Julie now feels so proud of her shop!  She's excited to tell everyone she knows about it, and even her friends and family now call it her business - not just her cute little shop.
• Tip: Make products you're truly proud of - this is half the battle when it comes to marketing yourself and making sales.
• Etsy Promoted Listings.  Promoted listings can be a great strategy for getting found as a new shop.  Some tips to remember: If you're able to get clicks, favorites, and sales on a promoted listing, that extra SEO bump absolutely transfers over into that listing even when it's not promoted.  You will see an improvement in your search engine rankings if your promoted listing does well.
• Promoted Listings Tip 2: Etsy seems to favor the more expensive listings - giving them more views and exposure overall.  The theory: Etsy stands to make a lot more off of each sale when a more expensive item is sold.  So consider choosing your most expensive listings to promote.
• Promoted Listings Tip 3: If you have an item that is performing well as a promoted listing, you can often bid a super low amount (3 cents per click) and Etsy will continue to promote that listing.  Again, if they know your listing will sell much better than someone else's, they have no problem taking your 3 cents per click because they will still make a better profit overall.
• Promoted Listings Set-up: You can choose your maximum budget per day, and choose as low as $1.00 per day.  Then, you get to decide which listings you'll promote.  My recommendation is to promote just a few listings at a time so you can monitor what's working as well as push a few listings to the top of search results versus spreading yourself too thin.  Then, you decide how much you're willing to pay per click for that listing.  You can go with Etsy's recommendation (auto-bid) or you can choose your own bid amount - and that can be either higher or lower than Etsy's recommendation.  One caveat: if you set a high bid and a low budget amount, you may run out of your budget early in the day and miss "prime-time" for buyers.
• Promoted Listings Tip 4: My benchmark for a successful promoted listing: getting at least 1 click for every 50 impressions of a promoted listings.  But if your listing only gets 1 click per every 200 impressions, then that product photo may need some work - you're not generating enough interest in that product.
• Promoted Listings Tip 5: Promoted Listings is a great way to test which search terms are most effective for reaching your ideal customer.  Etsy will show you which of your terms have high click-through rates.
• Promoted Listings Tip 6: You still have to be diligent with your titles, description, and tags
• Crochet vs. Knit: In Julie's experience, tagging your items as "crocheted" often attracts other crocheters looking for new ideas versus a customer whose ready to buy.  Julie finds that tagging her items as hand-knit is a much better choice for attracting her ideal customer.
• Main Traffic Sources: Julie is getting most of her shop traffic through Instagram and Facebook.  So she's off to a good start with social media marketing.
• Facebook Parties: Julie designates an hour where she would have a party on her Facebook fan page. Julie then told a few of her friends about the party and asked them to spread the word.  She offered everybody who participated a 10% off coupon for her store, but told them that one person would win the grand prize.
• Facebook Party Part 2: Every 5-10 minutes there was a new game on Julie's page that you could participate in.  For each question a participant answered, they received "party bucks".  The person who received the most party bucks won the grand prize at the end.  30 minutes into the party, many new people were involved because Julie's posts were getting so much interaction that they were showing up in new people's feeds.  Julie received a lot of traffic from the party and several sales as well.
• Instagram Loop Giveaways: Julie could consider a loop giveaway on Instagram where she gives away shop credit instead of a finished product.  In this way, Julie isn't out the entire cost and labor of a product, but rather, could gain a new customer for her shop along with many new followers.
• What to do about Etsy's purchase limits: Etsy doesn't let you give a straight "gift certificate" to your shop.  If you offer a coupon for $25 off in your shop, the customer has to purchase 105% of that price in order for the coupon to work.  To get around this, just let the customer know about this rule, and you can refund
• Pinterest Group Boards for Etsy Sellers:  We're part of several, and you can check out our account here.  Amy Gabriel of GabrielsGoodTidings is also part of several great group boards for Etsy Sellers.
• Etsy Traffic Lab, Etsy's Elite, Pinterest Mini-Mall Viral Board.
• How to track Pinterest sales: Use a special coupon code just for your pins to try to track sales. For example, you can state in your pin description, "use the coupon code PIN10 for 10% off your purchase"
• If ViralTag is too expensive, BoardBooster is another option to automatically schedule listings and pins to great group boards.
• Consider Seasonal Boards:  When you're really active on Pinterest and you're a great curator, other pinners start to take notice and follow you.  Some ideas for Julie: gift ideas for her, handmade gift ideas, winter fashion, and many other topical boards where Julie's products would make a great fit.
• Use vertical photos on Pinterest.  You can take your own vertical photo, upload it, and still link that photo to the listing it corresponds to in your Etsy shop.
• Consider pitching to bloggers to be included in their gift guides.  Don't forget to follow up 10 days later.  Bloggers are busy and can very easily miss your email! Beth Anne writes a conversational email, compliments the blogger or influencer, and then she always includes a positive, confident note at the end such as: "looking forward to working with you!" or "looking forward to chatting soon!"  and this subtly suggests that a partnership is going to happen.
• Guest posting: Julie could use her expertise to drive more traffic to her shop.  She could teach on why it's important to use high-quality fibers in knit-wear, or why it's important to support small business, or what her business means to her and her family.
• Landing a guest post on the Etsy blog: Beth Anne reached out to Julie Schneider, the editor in chief of the Etsy blog.  She initially messaged Julie with a pitch, but an autoresponder came back that linked to an official form to fill out.  The form asked for writing samples, specific pitches, and my experience as an Etsy seller. Beth Anne also tied her pitch into past articles to show that she truly knew the blog content well and knew how best to serve that audience.  Be specific with your pitch and don't try to cover too much in any given post.  Etsy keeps their blog posts relatively basic and short.
• Email opt-in idea: Create a style guide for customers to show them how to wear bright colors in winter.  Julie plans to pair her products with other beautiful fashion items - the same way StitchFix sends outfit inspiration with each fix.
• AllThisWood: this shop is a great resource for sellers who want branding on their items.  Their wooden tags are perfect for making it through the wash unscathed and making sure each and every happy customer knows exactly where they found you.
• Influencers: We tried to think of a celebrity who would use Julie's adorable coffee cozy and could provide free advertising for her. Julie thought she could drop off some cozies at a cool, hipster coffee shop that her husband does graphic design for.
• Influencer Idea #2: Consider reaching out to Periscope Influencers.  There are many influencers who are super positive and would love to hold a coffee with Julie's positive cozies wrapped around them.  Don't just send the cozy, but suggest how you would like them to use it "I'd love to see you using my cozy on Periscope." Set up a profile on Periscope so it's really easy for a scoper to point people back to Julie - and her profile could link right to her shop.
• Julie's genius strategy for pricing her products:  she weighs her item after she makes it!  So in this way, she knows whether it was 3/4th of a skein, etc. and calculates out the exact price of materials that way.  Then Julie times herself to know how much her production cost.  The other brilliant tip Julie shared? Thicker yarn means that each stitch covers way more space and the labor is far less.

Don't forget to check out Julie's adorable items: Tokyo Blossom on Etsy

Instagram: @tokyoblossom

If I told you that this week's episode was with a "grandma blogger" who built her business on a pile of failures, would you guess that I was talking about Crystal Paine?!  Probably not!  But it's true.  Crystal is so honest in this interview, as well as in her newest book: Money Making Mom: How Every Woman Can Earn More and Make a Difference.

Sarah and I just love the way Crystal shares from her heart and holds nothing back.  She's also incredibly passionate about helping women to get out of survival mode so they can thrive.  You won't meet many successful online business owners who care more about giving than earning, but Crystal does!  Listen on, Brilliant Business Mom, for a breath of fresh air.

On the Podcast

01:33 - Is Crystal a Grandma?!
02:56 - Can you Relate?
04:49 - 2 Parameters Crystal Sets to Take Back her Time
07:26 - Before You Quit, Ask Yourself This
08:36 - Rejections, Setbacks & Failures...What to do
10:27 - The World Needs You!
13:38 - Spoiler Alert - Crystal has Failed at Things!
15:58 - On Learning New Tricks

Press Play on the Podcast Player Below to Hear from Crystal!

Is Crystal a Grandma?!

Crystal doesn't have any real-life grandkids, but she's considered by some to be a Grandma blogger! That's because she started blogging 10 years ago...when most people had no idea what a blog was. Crystal initially started a "mommy blog", but in 2007 she started MoneySavingMom.com as a side hustle. After a year she realized that it was growing so quickly and doing so well that it made sense to give it her full attention. Crystal now has a full team of people working with her -- including her husband Jesse of 12 years.

Can you Relate?

In the course of helping families to save money and get by with less, Crystal realized something important about her audience: There was simply a point for many families where they were doing everything right and no longer had a “budget” problem but really had an income problem.

Can you relate? I know there are some Brilliant Business Moms out there who are brilliant at budgeting, but maybe you have a child with special needs and the expenses are just too great. Maybe you want to serve in missions more often, but the budget won't allow it.

Crystal has been passionate about this topic for years but decided to wait until the timing was just right.
She now has many years of experience with running a business as well as making mistakes and learning from
her failures. Crystal shares ways for women to bring money into their families by combining their passions,
gifts, and skills and making sure it is a blessing and not a burden. 

2 Parameters Crystal Sets to Take Back her Time

1. Crystal sets time parameters that allow her to give designated time to both her family and her business. One way she does this is by “co-homeschooling” with her husband. She teaches in the morning and makes sure to remain fully present and invested in what she is doing. In the afternoons her husband takes over teaching and
managing the kid’s activities and Crystal is able to fully focus on her business.

2. Crystal recently took email off of her phone, and that has made a huge difference! Since she uses her phone for her alarm in the morning (Shoutout to the Sleep Cycle App!) it stays right next to her in bed. Having e-mail on her phone was causing her to be bombarded with “to dos”, stress, and ideas that were preventing her from getting a good night’s sleep!

Before You Quit, Ask Yourself This

Growing a business is hard! If you're on the fence and thinking about quitting, ask yourself this question: "Is my business a blessing or a burden?" Does your business give you the quality of life you want
for your family or is it causing you to be stressed and continually unhappy? If your business is becoming
a burden look at how you can either scale back or change directions.

Rejections, Setbacks, & Failures...What to do

Even 10 years into online business, Crystal confesses that she still faces rejections, setbacks, or even failures! And it happens more often than the rest of us might think. There are also challenges involved in leading a large team that just make life a little more complicated. When things get really challenging, and Crystal is tempted to quit, she always goes back to her "why" Knowing her "why" keeps her going through all of the difficult things, because those hurdles are worth it when you've accomplished your mission. Crystal’s “why” is to inspire and encourage women to stop living their lives stuck in survival mode.

The World Needs You!

While there are plenty of books on the market that will help women make more money, Crystal wanted to send a different message out into the world - one that would remind us of the true purpose of money.

Making more money isn't about building your own little empire - filled with nice cars, big houses, and beautiful things. Yes, making money can be a blessing to your family, but it can also make an impact on the world around you.

Crystal knows what it's like to live life with outstretched arms. She knows what a blessing it truly is to serve and give to others, and she wants more women to experience life this way.

So, get off that couch, Brilliant Business Mom, the world needs you!

Spoiler Alert - Crystal has Failed at Things!

Crystal loves to say that MoneySavingMom.com became so successful because it was "built upon a pile of failures".  As with most successful entrepreneurs, Crystal is certainly not an overnight success. She tried a large
range of small businesses that failed. Crystal has sold on Ebay, resold books, sold handmade
cloth diapers, and tried many different blogs! Before Money Saving Mom, Crystal had a blog for
young moms, one for Christian women, a blog on politics, and a website about saving money.  All of these blogs were flops!

However, each of these failures taught her lessons that have made her the successful business woman she is today. Crystal always focuses on learning and growing in everything she does.  In every situation, Crystal asks herself, "how can I make this better?"  

“The day that you feel like you’ve arrived is the day that your business starts to die"

On Learning New Tricks

Crystal has jumped on the Periscope band wagon and is loving it! Although she is an introvert she scopes
twice a day and has loved being able to connect with her audience immediately and authentically. Not
only has Periscope given her access to a new group of fans and followers but she is also going outside
her comfort zone and learning and growing!

(That's one thing we really admire about Crystal - she's always trying new things and finding ways to grow as a person!)

Find Crystal Online

MoneySavingMom.com
@moneysavingmom on Periscope
Head to MoneyMakingMomBook.com to get more information about the book and get Crystal's 5 Day Course on Making an Income from Home.

Pssstt! We're also hosting a book club for Money Making Mom! The book club kicks off on Monday, November 9th on Periscope.  Get the full details right here.

Other Resources Mentioned on this Episode:
The 2016 Brilliant Business Planner