Today’s conversation dives into the importance of SEO at any level. Cowgirl Biz supports Western retail brands in nurturing community, expanding reach, and growing with heart. Listen in...

WESA Retail Roundup June 16, 2025

• Host: Glenn the Geek, Host of Horses in the Morning
• Facebook: Retail Roundup Facebook group
• Guest: Kim Ivkov of Cowgirl Biz - Facebook | Instagram | Pinterest | YouTube
• Presented By: Western English Sales Association

Time Stamps:

04:22 - The Birth of Cowgirl Biz

24:16 - Launching the Summer School of SEO

29:26 - Introduction to SEO Strategies

40:12 - The Importance of Collaboration in Business

Takeaways

• The Cowgirl Biz platform has successfully created a nationwide directory of over 1200 cowgirl-owned businesses.
• Engagement within the Cowgirl Entrepreneurs group was fostered by sharing valuable learning resources and collaborative opportunities.
• The transition from a Facebook group to a business has allowed Cowgirl Biz to effectively support retail brands in the Western industry.
• SEO remains a critical focus for businesses, and the Cowgirl Biz Academy offers essential resources for improving online visibility.
• The importance of community in the retail sector cannot be overstated, as collaboration is key to overcoming industry challenges.
• Supporting small businesses through education and resources is vital for their growth and success in a competitive market.

Foreign.

You are listening to the Horse Radio Network, part of the Equine Network family.

Well, hi everybody.

This is Glenn the Geek.

Back with you, founder of the Horse Radio Network and host of Horses in the Morning, the daily podcast for the last 15 years.

We welcome you now to the WESA Retail Roundup.

The Retail Roundup is your go to virtual hub for all things retail.

Join panel discussions, learn from webinars, share your thoughts, ask questions and connect with your community.

And you do that on the Retail Roundup Facebook group.

Search for Retail Roundup and Facebook and join there.

You can join in the conversation, you can see what's coming up next.

They do a lot of good information over at WESA for retailers and manufacturers for that matter.

So check it out over there.

Today's conversation dives into how Cowgirl Biz supports Western retail brands by nurturing community, expanding reach and growing with heart.

We'll uncover the story, strategy and spirit behind this growing movement.

From curated directories over hands on training to community connection.

I really love this story because it really went from a Facebook page into a business and I love when that kind of stuff happens organically.

First of all, Kim, I didn't even realize there were that many, to be honest.

So I'm glad you've been able to round them all up.

Kim launched the brand out of the Facebook group and we're going to find out how that happened and what the goal is for the.

But first, what is Cowgirl Biz?

What was the Facebook group?

All right.

Hi everyone, my name is Kim.

I'm so happy to be here.

It's been a lot of fun preparing for today's interview.

I keep calling it podcast interview because I am new to the western industry.

Even though we've raised our kids in the western industry, I did not grow up on the back of a horse or at the rodeo, but it is the lifestyle that my family adores.

We have two adult children.

Our son is 30, our daughter is 26.

They've both been around horses their entire life.

And anyway, that's a little bit of my background, but I, I last year about this exact same time, I was working on a personal brand with my daughter and it was called Saltsy and it was for coastal cowgirls.

But we weren't doing the traditional apparel that you find in the industry.

We were working on a home decor brand.

So so what happened, Glenn, is I said, I gotta start meeting some cowgirl entrepreneurs to collaborate with.

I love collaborating.

I love learning about, you know, who's working on what and what unique things are being created.

So we did a very, very small Christmas in Cowgirl Christmas in July event as part of the Saltsy brand and got acquainted with Lucky American, who makes horseshoe gifts in our industry, along with a couple others.

And out of that, she said, you know, is really interesting to be able to collaborate with other businesses.

And so I was sitting at home in our Colorado mountain home on the beginning weekend of September.

And if you've been out here in Colorado during that timeframe, the Aspens are just starting to turn.

It's gorgeous.

We're up above, like 9,000ft.

So we're right at the top of the mountain.

Anyway, so I'm like, ah, you know what?

I think I'll start a Facebook group.

So I'm like, okay, well, what should we call it?

Well, let's call it Cowgirl Entrepreneurs and Innovators.

I happen to be very creative.

I like to dabble in all things e commerce and business.

My vision for the Facebook group was collaboration first and foremost, and then secondarily was going to be all about how can we help each other with our businesses.

What happened is I did get a little kick from our Facebook ads that were running at the time.

But seriously, it was like $5 a day for maybe the first month.

And that group just took off.

And I think we were.

I don't have the metrics in front of me, but we went to a thousand, we went to 2,000, we went to 4,000, we went to 8,000, and we kind of tabled out right around the 10,000 because the group got.

It kind of took a little bit of a life of its own as what is.

What happens in these Facebook groups.

But here's the beginning of cowgirl biz.

So at the very, very beginning, in fact, in fact, if you go back to search for.

Our first giveaway in the Facebook group was, why do you love being a cowgirl?

Why do you love being an entrepreneur?

And funny enough, I found the book by Gay Gaddis called Cowgirl Power.

And she has some beautiful history in the book with the National Cowgirl Museum.

She's got some fantastic cowgirl stories.

She talks all about business.

Anyway, I have not yet met her, but that was the beginning giveaway that we did inside the Facebook group.

And we had people sharing their business tips, and they got to get acquainted and collaborate that way.

So then if you're familiar with, well, you guys have a Facebook group too.

So there you get to ask three questions on the entrance into the Facebook group.

And so way back at the beginning, it was questions like, what are your business challenges?

And how can we help you?

What would you like to learn?

Do you want to join our email?

Something along those lines.

We didn't even really have an email at the time.

What happened is, as they were coming into the group, I would read one answer and it said, I really wish I could find someone that does insurance in the industry.

And then the next one was, I really wish I could find an accountant in the industry.

And then the next one was, I really need to find some fencing for my ranch.

And I'm watching Kim's light bulbs for going off.

Well, as the businesses were coming in, I'm like, wait a second, 10 people ago was the one that this one needs to meet.

So I'm like, how am I ever going to get these people to meet?

So I had done a directory long time ago in the creative world, we won't even go into that, but I'm like, oh, we're going to do another directory.

So I got hooked up with a programmer and I was told, well, first of all, the directory person that I had gone, the programmer I had gone to, she said, it's going to be three months until we can get the director.

I said, no, no, we've got boom, boom.

We're going.

We got to have this done in less than a month.

I found the domain crazy enough.

Cowgirl biz was available.

All the social media handles were available.

I said, we're doing it cowgirlbiz.com and that is going to be our directory for cowgirl businesses.

Was it meant to be B2B or B2C?

Well, that is a fantastic question.

It originated as B2B and B2C.

Okay, but what's happened?

Fast forward to now, and there's a lot of history in the middle there.

But what has happened is I realized that I need to focus on what I enjoy the Most, which is B2C.

Well, I'm B2B in the cowgirl business, but I, as a business want to help those that are in the industry that are selling to consumers, if that makes sense.

So what your target was was consumers who are looking to buy something right from the western world and they can search for it easily on your site, which is, by the way, very well done.

Whoever you ended up hiring did a good job because I'm a little familiar with that stuff.

So I was impressed.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah, she did do a great job.

It does work.

It does work.

So you know, when you went from doing, was it difficult to get the businesses to come over and did you just advertise in your group and do you charge them to be on there?

That's the other question.

So the directory had a foundation of.

We always wanted to have a free offering.

So there's a free offering.

And then at the time we had what we called the Rodeo Queen offering and this was last fall.

So for $99 you could upgrade and you could get featured on our social channels and we would do those kind of features.

It is the foundation of what we're doing now, but it is not our front facing opportunity.

What we realized as we were listening to the businesses in the group, then we started doing educational sessions.

We had a, how.

We had a Black Friday session way back in last November.

Then we did what we called the Rodeo course where we started teaching SEO and looking at our businesses websites in more detail.

We offered a mini SEO audit and we were getting questions like what, what is SEO?

And then we would.

I still get the what is a podcast question.

So I mean, here we are.

There you go.

And, and then the mini SEO audits.

I would bring up my software that I love for SEO analyzation and I would show them that, hey you guys, you're not paying attention to the opportunity that SEO can, can provide for you.

And then randomly there would be the, the, and I call it a fairly young business.

Maybe they've been in business five years and they were doing their own SEO in their own way, not any traditional process.

We also did a fair amount of our own research to find the businesses in the industry and then put them in the directory and then offer, you know, as free.

They can be in our directory and they can be searched.

It has a GEO component, so you can, you can, it's beautiful for photographers.

You can actually go in our photography section.

You can say, I'm looking for a photographer in Nebraska and it'll show you which photographers are there.

There is a free component, there is a paid component.

And the other part that we learned by building this directory is I have an SEO team that I've been working with for the last four years on other brands, primarily my own brands.

And so I tasked them with.

And.

And it sounds like you've been in.

In the various web world.

Yep.

So we're using the platform called WordPress.

Yep.

And we're using the SEO tool inside WordPress, which is called Rank Math.

There's another one called Yoast.

They're both fantastic.

Anyway, so there's little grades for each individual directory listing.

So if you go in the backside and you're unlucky American, we can either make sure there's extra keywords in there and push the score up inside our own site to help her be found on our platform as well as by Google, or we don't do any SEO in the listing.

And my team just kind of went gangbusters and they started adding all kinds of SEO in all the listings possible.

So most all of the listings, even if they're free and they don't even realize they're on Cowgirl Biz, if you're searching on Google, oftentimes they'll come up.

In fact, Stacy, at Lucky Marriage Americans said, can you turn off my SEO?

Because I think I should come up when people search for me before the listing on Cowgirl Biz for my business.

So, anyway, it's kind of humorous.

It's true, though.

That does happen.

I know we've been around.

The Horse Radio Network's been around so long that you search podcasts and we come up, you know, sometimes if you're searching for a specific one, we come up ahead of them, you know, because.

Just because.

And that does have a lot to do with SEO, too, is length and, you know, all of that.

As you know, there's a ton that goes into it.

So.

So what's the advantage to somebody being on the directory?

Obviously, the advantage is you're not left off the directory.

Right.

You're there.

So when somebody does search and do you have any idea what percentage of your visitors are consumers as opposed to brands?

So this was the your question a few minutes ago about B2C versus B2B.

And it is a constant challenge.

So all along inside the Facebook group, obviously we're B2B in the directory, we focused on both B2B businesses as well as B2C businesses.

So if you were selling leather handbags, if you're selling cowgirl jewelry, if you're selling western wear, if you're selling home decor and you have a business that you founded, you know, in the industry, what we realized is we wanted to target the businesses.

So we're still B2B but we wanted to target the businesses that were B2C if that makes sense.

Yeah.

So we, during the course of January through most recently, I'd say January through May, we were really, really super focused on helping the what I call the makers or artisans, if they're an artist, if they were making leather handbags, if they were making jewelry, if they were anything that they were trying to do to build their business to sell to a consumer.

We were going, we were building what we called the Wear Cowgirl Shop show and attempting to build a consumer based audience to showcase these brands to the consumers.

And I don't know if you followed any of the boutiques in the industry that are doing Facebook lives on their own Facebook and many of them have their own Facebook groups and they're doing really well with those groups.

Anyway, so I had collected my favorite Facebook lives and I thought, well, you know, let's try something where we take, we have the business send us their products to my co host for the werecowgirl shop show.

Let me backtrack for that.

Was Ms.

Tori Boye who is Ms.

I met her inside the group just before last November when she actually went to Miss Rodeo America and competed.

What a fantastic, amazing story to follow.

Anyway, so I talked to her at the end of last year and asked her if she would come on board as a team member and help us build the Where Cowgirl Shop Show.

She does all of our social media.

She does a fantastic job.

And then she connected us with Faith who is a Western influencer with 55,000 followers on her Instagram called Ranchy Rapunzel.

So Faith was our other co host.

They're both fantastic young ladies and we did a series of six weeks, they're all on our YouTube where we showcased the brands that shipped their products to Tori in Wisconsin or to Faith.

And both of those ladies helped us showcase their products.

We had Easter basket we put together related to the young buckaroos, the families that have the young kids.

We have a lot of authors in our group as well as jewelry and western wear for kids in our group, the businesses that run those.

So we did an Easter basket.

We did a really fun Mother's Day where we showcased the handbags and things like that.

Anyway, to answer your story or to your question, sorry, building a consumer base is kind of difficult.

Yeah, that's why I questioned that because there's a difference there between the B2B and B2C and it's tough to do both.

You Know, it takes time.

B2C obviously is the harder one, right?

Because B2B, usually you have people that are interested in, you know, in getting the job done, but B2C, you have to convince them why they should go there in the first place.

So that's why I was questioning that, because it is a tougher road, it's a tougher haul.

So what, you know, you've got these people that are in there, they're motivated.

What was the one thing that you think drives engagement?

What is the thing that drives the engagement with your members?

I'm going to go with your members as opposed to consumers at this point.

You know, what motivates them and what drives their engagement to be engaged with you, to really want to participate in this.

Have they seen results?

You know what, what drives that motivation?

And you have to be right at the beginning because it's.

Nothing's going to happen unless you drive it.

At the beginning, I was having fun.

I mean, it was, it was what podcasts you.

But that's true of any Facebook group.

So if you're going to start one for your store, for your business, you got to be that.

You got to be in there creating the engagement.

You're creating the engagement.

After a while it takes over and you don't have to worry about it anymore.

That's probably where for us, it took almost a year for that to happen.

Yeah, we were very fortunate.

We saw engagement very fast.

And I spoke to some, not in the western industry, but some Facebook group gurus, so to speak, and they were like, oh man, what.

What are you doing in that group?

Because whatever you're doing is quite impressive.

So here's the engagement was primarily things I wanted to learn or things I thought I could share and teach.

So there would be a question about, you know, what business books are they reading?

Sometimes we would go down the personal side.

What are you reading for fun to get out of the business brain?

Where are you going to do a show or, you know, are you selling online?

Are you selling at a show or, you know, how are you selling?

We had members in there that came in and showcased what they were going to be showing at the nfr.

We have a lot of successful members in there.

We also have a lot of newbies that are trying to figure out, you know, what to do.

And they want to Build a business.

So the engagement was in large part what attracts me to learn about business.

And it's all over the board.

It could be branding, it could be colors, it could be mood boards, it could be SEO, it could be keywords, it could be.

I asked, I had a vision at some point because there was a lot of questions about how do we find mentors in this industry.

We really have a mentor help me in, in our businesses.

And so then we posed a question of what if we could do something kind of like, kind of like shark tank or kind of like bar rescue, like take a brand and do a makeover.

And so we're just now having some fun with starting some of that content.

So the Facebook group engagement has been fairly low, I would say, for the last two months because Cowgirl Biz has decided to rebrand to focus on helping these small and medium sized, particularly B2C businesses that are actually selling product.

They can sell services too, but primarily selling a product, helping them with their websites, helping them learn how to sell specifically with e commerce and the tools that can be used related to that in SEO.

So the group engagement is going to shift dramatically.

And I keep telling the group, I'll be back here soon, I'll be back with all kinds of new fun content.

And that will be starting soon.

And then the engagement, we'll see a completely different type of communication and things happening this summer, I suspect, as we really hone in on the things that they could be doing.

I'm glad to see you're doing the SEO academy, because SEO is something that obviously there's a lot of people out there that claim to be SEO experts from India and, you know, across the pond and everywhere in the world, and you get dozens of emails and a lot of them are scams.

A lot of them are just, you know, they're just fly by night.

Plus, you know what I've always told everybody and people outside our industry, the horse world, don't believe it when I say this, but everybody in the horse world knows horse people are different.

We're a different group.

We have to be treated as a different group.

You know, we, we think differently, we act differently, we're addicted to what we do.

Right.

It's the reason that my shows have done so well is, is they're addicted.

They want to consume all things horse and that's it.

They're not really interested in anything else.

So.

And you know, when it comes to SEO, you have to understand that when you're going in the horse world.

So I'm glad that there's somebody like you out there that's going to take them down the right path as opposed to, I'm going to, you know, as opposed to somebody that's doing SEO for everybody.

And I'm going to do the same do with my motorcycle people.

Well, we're different and I can say that to them.

They don't get it right.

People outside our industry don't get it.

So with that in mind, I know you offer courses.

How does that work for an SEO, of course, Search engine optimization.

It's helping you do better in the rankings on Google, basically.

So how do you run your academy?

If I sign up, what happens?

Before I answer that, let me give just a tiny bit more background on the subject of SEO and keywords.

And one of the things over the course of the last five years as I have dabbled in different e commerce brands and built different websites, I've built a big commerce website which is very similar to Shopify.

I've built on the WordPress platform and the WooCommerce.

And so I'm familiar with those shopping carts.

And we've also, those are questions we ask inside the group all the time.

Are you on Shopify or what are you using?

What do you like about it, et cetera.

Anyway, the huge epiphany that was kind of like, oh man, I wish I had understood this when I started that business five years ago was SEO.

And, and the challenge is, because it's almost like Greek, it's like when people hear it, they're like, I don't want to, I don't want anything to do with it.

I don't know what it is.

And so the epiphany was this, wow, think about when you were, when were you last on Google and what did you type in the search bar?

And we've been asking that question in the group.

And then I ask them, okay, think about now.

If you were one of your customers trying to find you, what would they be typing in Google?

And so the epiphany starts to go on.

And then I tell them, okay, let me look up that keyword for you and tell you, is that keyword have any search volume or does another way have search volume?

So for example, I forget, let's see, one of the words was brand recognition.

Another word was horse hair.

Jewelry.

Jewelry.

You could actually rank for that.

And then here's another crazy story.

A Couple weeks ago, we were driving through the territory of Cavenders and I.

I hate to admit this, but I have not yet been to Cavenders.

One day I will.

Anyway, I love watching them magazines on their Instagram and all that fun stuff, but I haven't been there.

So I'm like, I'm going to pull up their SEO.

So I'm looking at their SEO and they're doing a fantastic job.

Fantastic job.

But I'm like, oh, my gosh, there's a keyword in there that has 30,000 searches that you could literally rank on Google.

It's called Keyword Difficulty of easy.

Under 5.

You could rank so fast.

And I'm like, if only.

Like, I almost think we should start in the cowgirl biz world.

A incubator, so to speak.

Like, if you need a business and you don't know what you want to do yet, I can tell you the keywords that are being searched that no one's not.

That no one is, you know, providing the solution for.

But there could be businesses started simply in our industry because the keyword people are out there looking for it and they must not either be finding it or there's not very many that are providing it.

Anyway, that's a side story.

So, okay, so back to the question.

What is in the SEO Academy?

So on our site, calculator girlbiz.com we are just launching, we call it Summer School of SEO.

It started June 2nd.

Every day, or almost every day, there is an email that goes out with one SEO tip in it.

I missed a few last week because as you can tell, I'm a little bit recovering from a cold like the.

Rest of the country lately.

Anyway, so.

Yes.

So SEO Academy is on our homepage, it's on the main menu, and there's three things at the top.

We kicked off our.

I'm going to show this for those of you watching.

We kicked off summer school with what we're calling the Boot Scootin SEO Bingo Card.

She did it as a visionary board exercise.

So she had everything blank and she suggested fill it in with your goals for your year and then use it to go back and look at your what you're trying to achieve this year.

So I was like, oh, I love that idea.

I'm going to take this idea and we're going to build SEO Bingo.

So there are things on here like if you just did five I don't care if you do that one, that one, that one, or that one.

We've designed this to be the easy, quick wins, as well as to raise awareness on the things that you could be doing.

So it's simple.

Build one quality.

Well, actually, that one's harder.

Build one quality Backlink.

We're going to study that later in June.

That's a little more difficult.

Identify your top five SEO keywords Research new keywords.

Optimize one Product Description Add alt text to a product image Anyway, this is under the SEO Academy.

It's free.

You can download it.

It's a great way to get started in the process.

The other thing under SEO Academy is a free SEO audit.

We just found this tool and it's fantastic.

And as you can see, Cowgirl Biz only scored C, so we've got some work to do too.

But this is a free report that you can run from our website under SEO Academy.

You go in there, you plug in your URL and in less than two minutes you get this fantastic report that guides you through.

Just as an example, you need to add alt text all attributes to all images.

That is something that we need to fix on.

As you can imagine, we have a lot of images because by the way.

That'S the one thing I hated since I started building websites 20 years ago was the alt image, the alt tags on images.

I just hated that for some reason.

I don't know, it just drove me nuts.

It's easier to do now than it was then though too.

So do I have to pay for the academy?

Sorry, one second.

There isn't an official course, so to speak, although we do envision some courses that you'll be able to purchase.

We have one business.

I've got to tell you about this business because she's incredible and she's coming on to help us build some of those courses.

She's a jewelry business in our world, in our western industry and she had her website redone about a year ago and purposely had selected a company.

It wasn't us because we weren't doing that at the time, but we are working to do some websites now to help put in the SEO at the same time as rebuilding them.

Anyway, she had her website redone and she started putting, she had them put the initial SEO in and then she decided to teach herself just a couple things.

That, that one you just mentioned, the alt text.

As simple as that is, we all hate it.

And she has, she has a less than five minute little trick that she does once a month and she taught herself how to do this.

And she's going to be sharing with our audience and whoever wants to learn it.

She took herself from 10k months 5 months ago and just had last month in May, over $100,000 revenue month.

Wow.

Simply.

Well, she's doing a lot of things.

She has a Facebook group, she does Facebook Live sales, all that.

But she really says, she goes, Kim, I spent $50 on a Facebook ad.

I got a thousand clicks.

They still go to Google, type in my business, search for me, then come to my site.

And then the conversion when they actually make the sale is coming from Google.

So that's why she is.

So she, she's going to be fun to learn from.

And she will be one of our course experts that will be teaching this summer as well.

Gotcha.

So, so what would you recommend?

If somebody's listening now, they have a store, they have an online presence whether they sell online or not.

Right.

I mean, you still, if you have a store and you're not selling online, people have to find you still, right.

When they're coming to Ocala and search tax shops.

We happen to be lucky here.

We have a plethora of tax shops in Ocala.

You probably, there's 10 within a half an hour, maybe more within a half an hour of me.

And if I search that, you still want to be first because I'm not going to the second page.

Think about that too, everybody.

When's the last time you looked at a second page of a search?

True.

Very true.

Probably.

I don't know what the latest stat is, but it's got to be less than 5% of people go to a second page.

We just don't.

So if we don't see it on the first page, if you're not on the first page, they're not going to find you.

They're just not.

It's just the way it is.

So SEO is something that we haven't talked about a lot on this show, but it's probably the most important thing you're going to do for your web presence.

And it changes all the time.

And the criteria what Google looks at over the years.

When I started this back in their 90s, it's changed 20 times since then.

And it takes somebody.

You have to learn from people who know what they're doing because it does change all the time.

And they're the ones keeping up on it.

And you're going to spend all your time trying to figure that out.

So getting help from somebody like you.

I like the idea of actually having classes too.

And I'm on here for the summer school.

You know, I think that's a great idea.

And I think the emails is an easy way to digest that.

So first thing you would tell them to do is go sign up for summer school in the bingo, right?

Yeah, start with bingo.

Start with summer school.

That gets you on our email list.

And then as we begin to introduce the courses like I said we had hoped to.

Unfortunately, that beautiful business I just spoke about and I'm not sharing her name yet, was also under the weather last week along with myself.

So we were a little delayed in getting some of our new fun content that will be coming.

So just make.

As long as you're on our email list, you'll be hearing about it.

And.

And then as we introduce the courses and as we introduce the other things that we can help you with, we are, we're going to design our summer school or continue to design it around the DIYer who wants to learn just enough of the tips.

Just enough of the tips to make a huge.

They can make a huge difference in a short amount of time doing it themselves.

We also love keyword and keyword research.

I personally, that's one of my favorite things to do so.

Which is all part of it.

I mean, that's a big part of it.

Actually.

We just introduced today on our shop, which is also under the keyword.

Sorry.

Under the SEO Academy on our cowgirlbiz.com you can find two keyword packages that we designed that I wanted to share today.

One of them is the get started or Kickstarter keyword package for $297.

We will research your business, your competitors will identify those keywords that are worth focusing on.

And then we also have one that is priced at 497 that will get you more keywords and we can go into more depth on that as well.

So that is for those that want a little bit of help.

If we, if we can help you find your keywords and know what to focus on, and then we'll teach you where to put them and what to do with them, we think that will make a huge difference for many of these businesses.

And we do have a very special WESA coupon code of 20% off either of those two packages.

What's the code?

The code is WESA.

Okay.

I gotta tell you, my brother's in the sign business.

He has been forever.

So.

And online signs, he doesn't have a physical store, doesn't have brick and mortar, and he spent a lot more money than that, like probably over the years, tens of thousands of dollars for his keyword or for his keyword research people and his SEO people.

And that increased his business tenfold.

So, you know, spending 250 or $500 on that is nothing compared.

And you got somebody that understands our world, which is again, is different.

We're a different world.

So that's nothing.

And it'll pay off 100%.

I mean, it's just going to be.

Or more.

It's so important.

So one of the most important things you're going to do for your online business, if you haven't done it yet, you should have been doing it a while ago when you started, actually.

But it'll definitely pay off.

So I find that@cowgirlbiz.com and I just went to the SEO Academy page and that's where I found all of those things from summer school to the website audit to keyword research, both of those packages right there.

So check those out.

Don't forget to use the coupon code.

WESA at checkout.

And that drops at 20%, you said?

Yes.

Okay, good.

That's great.

I appreciate you doing that for, for our, for our people.

What, what would you leave them as far as the thoughts on SEO?

I'm gonna bug you to share two more quick things and then we'll do the leaving.

First off, I wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for Laura.

What a beautiful lady, beautiful businesswoman.

I got acquainted with her in our group.

In fact, it was actually last, I want to say December, that Caitlin Claas, who is a business owner that does hat burning out of Illinois.

Her company is called Wildflowers and Barley.

And she said, I'm going to go to the Dallas Market center and I'm going to exhibit.

Does anyone have any, can you give me any help?

And Laura responded very detailed, gave her all kinds of tidbits.

So here we come.

Fast forward to this last, I think it was April or May.

We did a get acquainted with WESA and get acquainted with how to sell wholesale.

Laura did a fantastic job explaining all of that.

And the reason I wanted to share that is both to thank her but also to say she's going to do WESA Part 2 this Wednesday on June 18th.

Oh great.

She is going to.

We, we interviewed Laura myself, interviewed another business that you'll hear more about on Wednesday.

That is one additional WESA newbie.

So you've got Wildflowers and Barley that is now going to WESA in August.

Their first WESA and then this other newbie business signed up.

They are brand spanking new and they're doing a really fun job with what they're doing.

But I'm not going to share that here.

That'll be on Wednesday.

Anyway.

So Laura is going to answer all her questions, tell you more about going to your first wesa, what you need to know.

And I just want to say, if we do have any newbies watching this or want to learn more, be sure to join in on Wednesday.

How do they find it?

If they go on our Instagram or Facebook, they'll see the zoom link for the WESA workshop number two Q&A workshop.

That's a fantastic idea.

Because, you know, I've been going, I've probably been to about 40 of these over the years, and I always, I always can tell the newbies when you're there.

Right.

And we used to do this thing where we would kind of take wagers on who was going to be there at the next one and who's going to be out of business because they didn't know what they were doing at the trade show.

You're spending all that money to go.

It's not.

It's not inexpensive to go.

Right.

Between the travel and all of that, everything adds up.

I love this idea because there are things that you can do to make yourself very successful, and one of them is not sitting there on your phone the whole time and not looking up.

I mean, that's got to be the first thing you learn, I hope, in your class, because that's the thing that drives me crazy the most.

But I love this idea.

I don't know why somebody hasn't done it sooner, to be honest.

Yeah.

So it's free and it's information and it's so fantastic.

Even though I have not yet been to West, I'm hoping to get there this August with wildflowers.

Oh, you better.

You better get there.

Come shake your hand.

Anyway, I have not exhibited there, but in my previous life, I did exhibit at a wholesale show in the textile and quilting industry.

And it is.

There's so much to learn.

And that's why I'm as excited to partner up with Laura and have her teach the WESA side of things because I think it's going to be so fun and valuable for everybody.

And then one last quick thing is the beauty of entrepreneurship and collaboration is that we.

And Glenn, I've really enjoyed.

I've gone back and listened to several of your podcasts.

I would love to hear more about your performing history and all the fun that you had doing that.

Anyway, some of the things that you've shared in your recent podcast about having fun and the importance of making sure that fun is a piece of your business.

Otherwise it's not fun.

Then it just becomes a job.

And when your own business becomes a job, you're done.

Yep.

Yep.

I was able to reconnect with a longtime website designer.

Her name is Lindsay and crazy enough she resides in Las Vegas, but she herself is not a cowgirl.

But she did go to the NFR for first ever NFR this last December and that's when we started talking and I said, lindsay, I've got these cowgirl entrepreneurs and they need some really beautiful websites.

So she's like, I gotcha.

She has created three amazing Shopify themes.

This is a website designer that knows Shopify in inside and out.

She also knows Woocommerce inside and out and she has created for the western industry a Shopify theme that is cowgirl.

There's three of them.

There's cowgirl charm, there's saddle.

Saddle something other one.

Anyway, if you go under cowgirl biz.com and you go under the Create new creative Cowgirl Biz Creative under there under brand makeovers down at the bottom you can see see the link to find those Shopify themes for $135.

These are built for cowgirl businesses, but more importantly, they're built by a extremely talented website designer that knows Shopify.

We had one business that just that bought it and 24 hours later, her site was amazing and we are starting to showcase.

She'll be on our.

You'll spend.

If you're going to build your own, you'll spend thousands of dollars, not $135.

So that's one more thing we wanted to share that we're working to bring to the industry is some Shopify themes that make it super easy to up level your brand and then the SEO component that goes with it.

Yeah, I mean, and what's the one thing that we all tend to neglect our website?

Right?

I mean, it's true.

We're all creatures of habit.

I mean, you know, we're all that way.

So I love this and they're very nice and I would tell you if I didn't think they were so.

Yes, you would.

Yeah.

You know that.

I appreciate that.

I appreciate that honesty.

That's fantastic.

No, I think they're great and it would save you a lot of money just doing it that way, you know.

Well, this is great.

I think what you're doing for the industry is good.

We all, you know, I was talking to Sophia, who, who is the one that sets all these up for wesa, and she's.

She's my friend for years and years and years, and we do the podcast together and all of that.

You know, we are in an industry that tends to want to help each other, you know, and I think that's why your Facebook group worked, because we're all in it together.

Even if you're competitors, you're not really.

Right.

You're attracting a lot of times different customers.

But we're all in the same kind of business together.

And we're fortunately in an industry that, for the most part, does want to help each other.

And that's, you know, that old saying about, you know, about us all rising together or we're all going to sink or whatever it is.

I even forget what the quote is, but it's true, you know, and right now it's tough.

Right now, more than ever, it's tough.

And you're hearing it from your people, I'm sure.

This is a weird year.

It's a weird year for retail.

It's a weird year for.

Really weird year for wholesale.

Right?

So, I mean, it's just a weird year.

And we have to all.

We're all dealing with it together.

And having.

Having friends that are dealing with what you're dealing with and learning from them and how they've overcome some of it is the way we're all going to get through.

You're not going to do a year like this by yourself, out in a little silo in the middle of nowhere, not talking to anybody.

It's just not going to happen.

It's true in the podcasting world, too.

I have a lot of podcasting friends.

Yeah, we're basically competing against each other, but we're all learning from each other, too, and we're all going to make it if we help each other.

And that's what I love about what you're doing, is because you are helping each other.

That's what it's all about.

You're not going to do this alone.

It's too tough right now.

You need help.

We just need friends that are doing it, too, that we can talk to.

It's hard enough being a business owner.

It's just hard enough.

We don't need to make it harder.

It's tough.

It always has been.

But I think right now it's tougher than it ever has been.

I think by helping each other, we'll get through It.

Well, and we're also encouraging.

I mean, I remember last summer, again, building my own brand and then also trying, you know, learning Facebook ads and Google Ads and all that fun stuff, which we, we will be working to bring that to our audience here in the industry.

Well, good, because you can waste a lot of money doing that.

Wrong.

Anyway, in the process of doing all that, I learned last summer that, you know, summer is just slow.

So I'm like, okay, ladies, we're doing SEO.

Let's, let's use our slow time.

Let's, let's do the things that we don't have time to do when things are hopping like the fall and Christmas.

And by doing, you know this, if you do spend some time on SEO and learning and doing just a few little things, it takes time.

It's not something you'll see.

You know, you're not likely to see traffic within a week or two.

It's probably going to be a month, probably going to be three months, to be honest.

So that's my suggestion.

Use your June, July, August, those slower summer months, learn some SEO, get it in your site, and let's rock and roll this fall and Christmas.

It will work by Christmas if you do it now.

You know, we always said 60 to 90 days, so that's right in there with what you're saying.

But do it now.

Don't wait till November.

It's not going to work right if you want it for Christmas.

So I agree totally.

So again, the website is cowgirlbiz.com and.

Look at the very first thing on the top menu called the SEO Academy and that'll get you started.

Thank you for joining us.

We really appreciate it.

You know, if you want to find out more, head on over there.

I think SEO is so important and we want to thank everybody for hanging out with us here at the Retail Roundup to watch these, you can go to a number of different places.

WESA trade show, YouTube channel.

You can also find the audio version at the Wisdom by WESA Podcast feed.

Their podcast has changed recently and has some new hosts that you're going to want to check out over there.

If you haven't given that a try in a long time, check that out.

Check.

Basically, and you do want to go to Retail Roundup on the Facebook page.

Definitely go over there.

If you want to hear more of the silliness that I do, head over to Horse in the Morning on your podcast feed, where they're five days a week.

We had a very silly show this morning and had a lot of fun with that.

So if you want just a little entertainment in your mornings, we're kind of like the morning drive radio show for the horse world.

We don't take ourselves too seriously, but we learn about stuff and it's just a lot of fun.

A lot of tack shops actually play it over their loudspeakers in the tack shop in the morning.

So you can, you can do that, too, if you'd like.

A lot of people play it in the barns.

So that's where you can find me.

And you can subscribe to Wisdom by Wes on any podcast player.

So check that out today.

We'll be back next Monday with another show for you.

Thanks again, Kim.

Appreciate it.

Thank you very much, Glenn.

Thanks for having me.