What are some of your biggest lessons you learned?

James welcomes Rachel Miller, Co-Founder of PageWheel.ai. She shares her personal journey from teaching to learning the world of online marketing and then leveraging her knowledge to build her own technology company.

Rachel gets candid about her experiences with a large team walking out, and the lessons she learned from that painful moment. She shares what led her to her AI software company, detailing its evolution from concept to market. Rachel also touches on her investment strategies, including an interest in purchasing a mushroom farm, highlighting her approach to diversifying her portfolio to ensure financial stability.

James and Rachel also talk about the practical use of AI in business, particularly in content creation. James questions the ethical implications of AI content for individuals trying to create perceived expertise, while Rachel offers transparency on her management strategies and her evolving customer service model.

For more information on PageWheel.ai, visit: https://pagewheel.com/expert

Key Topics:

• Rachel's journey from teacher to business leader
• The aftermath of a team walkout
• Page Wheel software development and rebranding
• Investment strategies and diversification
• AI technology in content creation
• List building for insurance agents
• Ethical concerns about AI-generated content
• Profit and loss management
• Membership model for customer service
• Impact of influencer culture on entrepreneurship

I crossed over into the family line when I wasn't welcome in the family line, and I should not have been there because I was a boss. Does that make sense? Like, I should not have been in that spot.

You were the leader.

I should have been the leader. Yeah. So that's the first one is I wasn't leading my company. Now if you are not leading your company, someone in your company is. And they may not be leading it the way you want them to be leading it.

Welcome to the Business Blinds Boss podcast where we talk to industry leaders, experts, and professionals of various fields to learn about them and their journey, learn about some mistakes they've made on the way and how they adjusted moving forward. My name is James Peterson. You can find us on all major podcast platforms, Spotify, Apple, YouTube. Like and subscribe. Leave us a review. We'd appreciate it. Today's guest is missus Rachel Miller.

Thank you. So glad to be here.

She runs Page Wheel, which is a marketing company, AI company. Yes. She's also very well known for her viral marketing efforts and successes, but I'll let her tell us more about that. How are you doing?

I'm good. Thank you so much for having me.

Absolutely. You are a ball of energy.

I'm told that a lot. Yeah. I started my journey, like, 13 years ago. I don't know if any of your audience is moms and or or teachers and You

don't let moms listen. It's it's their band.

So I I was a school teacher, and I got pregnant, which is awesome and amazing. I'm so excited. And then while I was on maternity leave, I got pregnant again. That wasn't as exciting. Yes. Yes. I was like, wait. Wait.

So you go in for your, like anyways. So I I was like, no. You're you're you're I'm not I'm not actually pregnant. They're like, yes.

She has to tell your husband to get it

together. I know. Let's go. Like, what in the world? I was not so anyways, I couldn't go back to work, because that wasn't fair to them, and I was sick. Like, you know, and I was trying to juggle a baby and a a baby on the way. And so, anyway, so in the process of that, I started hanging out online because I didn't have any other options as I couldn't you can't take day like, I didn't have the money for 2 kids, 2 infants in daycare. Like, that was not in the card. So I had to be able to have a job where I was home with my kids.

And little did I know that was gonna be the biggest blessing in my life because I, when you have nothing, when you're at 0, now everything is possibilities. And suddenly, there was a whole world of possibility. Whereas before that, I had a track that I was going on in the education teaching world, and I was gonna be this, and then I was gonna become an assistant principal, and then I was gonna become this. And like, I had this track I thought I was on, but that was a limited track, and I didn't even realize it. So, yeah, then I went on to grow a couple companies.

That's a lot.

Yeah. That's And have a couple more kids.

Let's just let's just start with what so are you from Dallas, Fort Worth area?

I'm in Fort Worth.

Okay. In Fort Worth.

Worth. Yeah. Like, outside of town. Yeah. It's little it's that area in in Fort Worth where all of the houses look exactly the same, and you can, like, look for miles and miles. Yeah. That's

that's My my younger brother lives there, and I just sometimes I just drive right past his house because they all look the same. It's just Yeah.

Ours is slightly bigger and on a but, yeah, that's we we need the space, but, yeah, it's a good place to raise kids.

That's in interesting. I've had some guests that knew exactly what they wanted to do from high school. They went to college. They got their MBA. They were already in their They had their track planned out, but I've also had a couple of guests that did reach some some sort of rock bottom. And it Yeah. You know, people think that's a bad thing when you hear rock bottom. We think, like, drugs or alcohol or something like that, but well, the He

was a blessing, guys. I really do love my kids.

Doesn't sound like that.

In that moment, though, it felt like a rock bottom. Does that make sense? Like, it felt like all the things I had planned weren't going to be a possibility, and I did not even realize what a gift that was.

What's your husband do for a living?

He's the IT director for a local city.

Okay. K. So he's not knocking he wasn't knocking back 5,000,000 a year at the time. Oh. You know?

No. I think he was actually making, like, $35,000 a year.

Okay. So it was

We, my car actually was broken in our driveway, and I'd have to, like, get out, like, to go places, and I'd have to walk, like, to take my kids to the park. Right? I'd walk my kids to the park in the stroller. We had, like, a wagon we put all the kids in. And I'd walk to the park, but I'd walk by my car because we didn't have the money to repair its transmission, so it was just sitting there. Yeah. That was my I have to come up with something.

Yeah. That is somewhat of rock bottom, actually, now that you now that you explained it that way.

Yeah. It was it was a it was a period.

So what was the process like? How how did you sit down? Did you write a list of what are my options? I mean, what

It gets better. My I, started working. I don't remember how I found my first job, but it was writing manuals for those, like like, random appliances you have in your house. Like so if you have, like, a mixer or a I think one of them was, like, a remote for blinds. They have a manual that goes in the box. Have you ever read that manual?

I would rather go back to Iraq than read that manual.

Well, there's somebody that wrote them. Oh my goodness. And that was my first at home job was writing the manuals for a Japanese company who would write it in bad English, and then I would write it

Yeah.

In readable English, and nobody was reading them. Like, I could say there's ice cream for sale. The people that I was making them for, they weren't reading what I was writing. So and I knew the people who were buying the appliances and the blind thing, they probably weren't reading it either. So that was

why salaried, or did you get paid per

Per per manual that I wrote.

On, like, $50?

Oh, no. I think it was, like, 35.

Oh, wow.

It was bad. But here's the thing. I got to stay home with my kids, and remember, I'm at 0, so now everything's a possibility.

Right.

So everything was possible then. I just needed to have, like, the blinds taken off my eyes to see there's a next step forward. And the next step forward at that moment was writing these manuals, and so that was my first step. And then

I told breathing room.

A little Right? Oh, no. It wasn't breathing room. It wasn't even anything then. But I remember telling my husband that I was, like, depressed. I'm not postpartum. I'm just depressed because my dream or my plans for myself, they're gone. Like, who am I now? Mhmm. My dreams, like, what I had thought I was.

My identity, I am a high school economics teacher. That identity is gone. What do I do?

So you're a high school economics teacher? Uh-huh. Okay. Did you so did you have any business experience prior?

No. But I was the child of entrepreneurs.

And Oh, that's interesting.

So I told myself when I was growing up, I am not gonna be an entrepreneur. Not like my parents. Oh, no. No.

It's a 100 hour a week job sometimes.

I saw them feast. I saw them famine. I was like, I don't want that for my life. Mhmm. A little bit I know. The feast and famine's kind of part of the fun. Yeah. So, yeah, so I watched them grow companies, lose companies, grow more companies.

And so I I always knew I could do something on my own. That was always in my in my blood, I guess, you could say.

Okay.

So I didn't have, like, a business class that I took, but I did have a lifetime of education that my parents

A real world experience. Yeah. So what was next after writing manuals?

So I get my husband came home one time when I said I was depressed, and he's like, well, I hear I hear that women have these things called blogs. I guess somebody had told him about blogs and how mom bloggers were a thing. And I was like, like, looking back,

I would've,

like, this Rachel would've probably slapped him and said, excuse me. Like, what but at the time, he's like, why don't you make a blog? And I was like, okay. Your mom blogs are a thing. I was like, yeah. Sure. I'm a mom. I could do that. So I started a mom blog, and, we even misspelled it when we wrote it.

Like, we called it quirky mama because it's like, what do you want your mom blog to be called? And I said, well, somebody in college told me I'm quirky, and now I'm a mom. So I'm a quirky mama. So, I mean, like, whoever that guy is in college, thank you. I know you probably meant it not as the best thing in the world, but I took it as a badge of honor, dude. Little did I know that'd become my identity for a while. But yeah. So quirky mom, and then I misspelled mama because that's how little thought we put into it. Yeah.

I misspelled it.

How do you misspell mama?

It's m o m m a is how I spelled it. Doesn't everyone spell it that way? Well, no. Actually, they don't. But

k.

Yeah. So quirky mama was my first website, and we grew that to 10,000,000 page views a month. Awesome. We were getting more traffic than Disney was, on their children's site. And then I went on, sold that to my business partner who came on with me and sold it to her. And then I went on to build, 2, 3, 4 other sites that all gained not all gained over a 1,000,000. Most of them gave over a 1000000 of page views. All of them gained over multiple 100 of thousands of Patreuse.

And then people little by little found out that, hey. There's this girl who works from her home with her 6 kids. Yes. We kept having kids. 6 kids, and she, has these websites. You guys should find out how she's doing it because I didn't have my face on them. People I was an influencer, and I didn't even know I was an influencer. I just kinda created these websites and, What year is this? This was 2013 to 2019 was when I was building those websites.

This is before everyone in the world thought they were an influencer.

Yeah. I guess we were some of the OGs. Yes. I guess you could say we were the OGs. We were the first people on Facebook live. Facebook invited us. We were the first people, to do, like, I think Snapchat hired us to do Snapchats live, when Snapchat first opened. Nice.

So we were we did campaigns for pretty much every big brand that you can think of. We probably did a campaign for them. Maybe not every. There were some maybe we didn't do, but

That's awesome.

Yeah. So, yeah, we were the one of the original influencers. So after the built the websites, people kept hearing about me. So they messaged me and say, how did you do this? And I collected those people on the list. And then eventually, I was like, I'll start a a program on how I grew my websites. And that's when, we I announced I was gonna do it actually October 31st, which is, like, always the best time to launch a program to other moms. Do that the day, the time when they're, you know, trick or treating with their kids.

Great. Yeah. A lot better. It's, I mean, it's either that or Christmas day. I mean, well could be

Christmas day. Yeah. We we sold out, that night. So I sent it to 96 people. 45 of them said yes within 2 hours and gave me money because I was like, you're not actually saying yes. They actually paid me for this course I hadn't made yet. Halloween, I shut it down, like, at, like, 8 30 on Halloween. I'm, like, shutting it down.

Shut it down. Like, I don't want more customers. Like, what am I gonna do with these 47 people that just paid me for this course I don't have? What do I do? I was in panic mode, and, yeah, I now had over 27,000 students. So

Nice. Yeah. Congratulations. That's amazing.

It's been kinda crazy.

So we're supposed to talk about mistakes in this podcast.

Okay. Well, I'll tell them do you want me to tell them about my $1,000,000 launch that I didn't make any profit on, or do you want me to tell them about how my whole team ended up hating me and quitting at one time?

Or What? You had a mass walkout?

Well, not exactly mass walkout, but, yeah, pretty much. That was What what happened? I can talk about it now, but I didn't talk about it for, like, 2 years. This is probably one of the first podcasts I'll tell the story to.

I would love to

hear it. Every time you see someone's success, that usually means they've fallen down at least 10 times for their success.

Mhmm.

And you just don't know that they kept falling down. Now remember, when I started, I had, like, no money. I had 2 babies. I had time, but not really, like, any large chunks of time because I had 2 infants that I'm literally feeding. So, like, everything's a step in the right direction. So if this post failed, well, I guess I'll write another one. It's not like I'm doing anything else. So I'd write another one.

If that one failed, well, what about what if I change this? What if I change that? And because of my economics teacher background, I loved looking at stats and telling stories through the numbers. So I was like, okay. Well, what happens if I change the headlines to be x y z? Or I add apostrophes, or I misspell a word. I accidentally did that in one of my images. I misspelled a word and suddenly that post ran up in the the algorithms. And I was like, oh, but that's because everyone's correcting my spelling for me. Wait. But now they're listening.

Now Facebook's giving me more traffic. Now Pinterest is saying, wow. We're gonna rank you higher. Who would have thought me misspelling a word makes me better? So it's like I just looked at the algorithm and the stats and let the stats tell me what to do next. But in the course of that, I had a lot of failures to figure out which one worked.

Did you listen to the data, though?

I listened to the data. So, so I would I would create content. I would look at the data. I create more content, look at the data. I then I just became a content machine. And part of that probably was because I was getting paid, like, $25 to make these manuals. Well, I learned how to write really quickly because I had to write in the 10 minute gap I had before the babies woke up from naps or whatever it was. I'd write really quickly to get the manuals done and I had to write a lot of these manuals for me to be able to make, I don't know, I don't know, $300 a week

or something. Yeah. That's pretty

heavy, but I had to write a lot of them. So, that taught me to write quickly, combining that with then how do I get people to watch me, and how do I then make money off of that traffic that then, it's the data. So I had a ton of failures. I mean, I'm, like, literally the most colossal failure you could find when it comes to business. Yeah.

Just skirting you're skirting over my question. Where's the question again? You had,

My old team

walkout. Mass team walkout. Dude. Even if there was only 2 people or 30 people, that's still that could crush any business.

It did. It did. Yeah.

Let alone your ego, self worth as a boss and employer. Yeah. That's a lot to think about.

Yeah. So what happened was I had just I had built my team a little bit like a family, which I I know they say don't make your team a family.

What does that mean?

That means that, like, you give you have a lot of loyalty with your team members.

Mhmm.

And, like, you take care of them as if they're a family. And, guys, I'm still I'm getting emotional. Like I said, though, because I think this is the second time I ever told this. You're a lot of emotional. I considered them to be really tight and close to me

Right.

Instead of realizing that I'm a means to an end. I'm a means to an end of their paychecks. I and that's the way it's supposed to be.

Mhmm.

So I had assumed we were closer than we were, and I probably maybe vented to them as, like, a friend instead of as I didn't have a boss right now. Boss I didn't have the boss persona. I was the mom that was their friend. I was the the mom who I the one guy said I acted like I was his mother. Maybe I did. I'm trying to think. I think I did actually send him chicken suit when he was sick once. So, like but, anyways, my point is, like, I I crossed over into the family line when I wasn't welcome in the family line, and I should not have been there because I was a boss.

Does that make sense? Like, I should not have been in that spot.

You were the leader.

I should've been the leader. Yeah. So that's the first one is I wasn't leading my company. Now if you are not leading your company, someone in your company is. And they may not be leading it the way you want them to be leading it.

If you if you are starting a business right now and you are hiring people, that might be the most profound thing that you can learn. If you're not leading someone else's, I don't care if if you're the CEO, if you're not given the orders.

If you're not giving your company somebody else is. And in my circumstance, it was a person who was going through some traumas. Like, she was going through a divorce, she was having some some major drama in her life, which then meant that that drama came into the workplace, and I was oblivious to it. Mhmm. That makes sense? I thought I was just helping like, she was I didn't realize that her leadership was causing some issues. Mhmm. And so in my previous launch, so I we did a launch model, which meant we would open the doors, and we would sell. And then when Friday night came around at 8 o'clock, we'd or whatever the time was, we'd shut the doors and and you could only buy during that week, and then the class would start the next Monday.

And then we'd take the class together for 10 weeks, and then when that was over, we would have a 2 week break where we launched a promotion for the next one, then we'd sell for 2 weeks, close doors, and we just did that cycle every couple months. And, in that cycle, though, we had sometimes where I would give them bonuses. But you can't do that all the time because that's not like, bonuses are bonuses. So as we grew so I was like, okay. So we had 4 team members. Well, I gave really good bonuses when there were 4 team members because they had to work a lot harder.

Mhmm.

When there were 5 team members, I gave up the same bonuses I gave when there were 4 because I figured, it's close enough. Well, then we went to 8 or 10 or 12 people. I can't remember how we doubled. I didn't have the money then for bonuses because now I was paying a lot more salaries.

Mhmm.

And they all expected those same bonuses. Whoops. Yeah. And I never said we're gonna get the bonuses again. Like, that was never in writing. But I was a family member, so they thought, like, we always get x amount. And then that that launch, we had brought in a $1,000,000 in sales. Now the way there's something called marketing math.

Marketing math means you count before chargebacks, you count before, like, the people who refund, you count, your recurring revenue even if the recurring revenue is coming in, like, 6 months or something. Right? So, technically, I made $1,000,000 or by marketing math. I think I only pocketed 90 k that time. And that was because I had affiliate costs, I had team costs, I had extra software burden. I didn't realize that when you bring in 2,000 people, what that does to your servers. And so now my storage cost, like, I went from, like, the free account on Vimeo to the $3,000 a month account. I'm like, wait. Wait.

What?

Like, oh, just had growing overhead that's associated with growth.

Like, ballooned on me. And so all of a sudden, my I'd while I made $1,000,000, I didn't actually pocket $1,000,000. So I can have a $1,000,000 net worth biz a business that's grossing a million. That doesn't mean I'm a millionaire. So I'm like Yeah. And in that moment and I made a million in a week, but that, again, that doesn't mean I actually made that much. So my team didn't understand the money dynamics of a business owner because they're not business owners and the burdens that come with that. Employees.

They're employees. So, anyways, so they all wanted bonuses. I said, fine. I'll give you the bonuses, but that's your last bonus because you get to walk out the door. And or if you wanna stay, you don't get a bonus. And they all left. They all took the bonus and left. And that was for me a time of, okay.

Ho. I thought, like Shit. Oh, shit. Oh, shit. Yeah. What's my password to this? Yeah.

How do I get into that?

Yeah. What what is our software that we use for that, and how do I turn it on? It was I had one EA. Bless her heart. She stayed for, like, maybe 3 extra weeks for me, maybe 4. And I was probably the saddest, most yeah. That was probably a really hard time. I am very, very grateful for her. Jika, if you're listening, thank you for staying for those extra 3 weeks.

But yeah.

How'd you power through that?

Well, I think, like, in everything when you go to 0, everything's a step in the right direction.

Mhmm.

So now I have, like That

is as 0 as it gets as a business owner. As a

business owner, that's 0 because I didn't have the profit. I still had to fulfill for all these people who just purchased, and I had to make their day and, like, show up with a happy smile on my face Mhmm. While I wanted to, like, cry and just eat Ben and Jerry's on the couch with a big blanket around me.

Sounds awesome.

It does, doesn't it? Yeah. I didn't get to do that, by the way. That was a but yes. So I I don't remember that next 3 months, actually. I mean, my students got results, so we were able to sell again. I knew I never wanted a $1,000,000 week again. So I think our next launch after that, I think we did 500,000, and I was really happy with it. I hired 2 or 3 people, but I never had a big team ever again.

And I don't think I want one because when you have a lot of people and if you're not constantly the leader and someone else is the leader, if you don't truly trust that person implicitly, which means I have to know them for a while, I have to know what they're like, I have to you're gonna screw it up because someone else is gonna be leading it, and I don't wanna lead people on that level and again. I want to run my business. So for me, that means I'm gonna have a smaller team, and maybe in time, we'll grow it back up again. I still have I'm still grossing revenues that are

Substantial.

Substantial. Yeah. However, I'm doing it with a smaller team, which, oh, by the way, usually means more profit if it were for the fact that I also have an expensive hobby. So

Well, so, you know, if you you have a carton of oranges. Right? And, like, one orange in that carton is rotten. Mhmm. Like, the other oranges aren't gonna cure that one order. It's gonna it's gonna trickle route, and, eventually, you have to get rid of the whole crate.

It was entitlement.

The exact same way.

Yeah. It was entitlement that one per I think it I really truly believe it was one person who who, like, we deserve this. We we need these bonuses. Well, those bonuses basically meant you bank not bankrupt me, but took all the profit away. Every single person on my team except for 2 made more money than me that that that launch. Yeah.

Also, whenever you're a leader in a business, you can never complain down the chain ever. Mhmm. You can never overshare down the chain. It it disrupts the flow of leadership and the command. Mhmm. You know, in the Marine Corps, they teach you complaints go up the chain, not down the chain. Right? And so sometimes when you're the owner of the company, you just have to eat it. You can't You can't.

There's no one

to deal with it. There's no one to share it with.

There's no one to share it with. And so that was very it was a lonely time, and I I felt like I'd hurt my team members because I thought they were family and I thought they were friends, if that makes sense. And then I felt abandoned by my friends. And then I realized, what are you doing? They're not friends. You're a means to their end, and they're a means to your end. They provided a service for you. You like them as humans, which is awesome. Yeah.

But, yeah. So I have

bought into the we're a family line within a company. There's a business in, based out of Dallas that does it really well. This guy, Chad Goano, Regal Plastics is the CEO. Yeah. And he doesn't talk about business as family. He just says we value our employees so much. Right? And I think that's a dangerous boundary that you you can't cross, especially a entrepreneur.

Especially with a large team. So, like, right now, I would consider my 2 employees to kind of be family, the ones I've had for the last since that breakup. However, there's only 2 of them. Mhmm. And, like, it's like a it's a different dynamic when there's 2 and not 15.

How's that?

Like, you can be more loosey goosey because there's 2 people, because you can say, oh, I'm not gonna be here today because I'm gonna work on Saturday. I'll work late on Saturday. I'm not gonna be here on Tuesday. There's there doesn't have to be accountability on that because nobody else is waiting for you to do it on Tuesday because it's just you. So it's more like 3 solopreneurs working towards a goal together.

That's why I found that when someone is discontent and they start, counting your money, right, there's they get a little bit of greedy attitude about them and, like, why are they making this, and why am I making that? Look at all this work I do.

Without realizing the risk that an employee employer. We take the risk of feeding their families, and we're the ones that will go without. We're the ones that pay the chargeback fees when the credit card company says, you know, we're the ones that have all the the responsibility. Yeah. And, frankly, we work more hours if you actually add up the hours too.

What's your, what's your expensive hobby? Let's hear about it.

So okay. So I have this course company and I a trading company. I help people buy all on Facebook. That's what people know me for. But what I've been doing for the last, like, year and a half, the most expensive hobby in the whole wide world is building a software company. I've been doing it without any capital funds being raised. I've bootlegged the whole thing, with my business partner, which we've the girl with the media company. I don't know if I told you guys we had those websites, the viral websites.

I had a business partner in those, and we're also business partners on the software. So between the 2 of us, we've scrounged every penny. Yeah. It's been so much fun. Yes. My expensive hobby, which is a company.

Well, let's hear about it. Yeah. It's a it's a AI?

Uh-huh. It's AI Builds. Yep. So what I did is I went and looked at all of our viral traffic. What post went viral? I took the top viral post and then went to AI, and I didn't use ChatChipt in the sense, ChatChipt, tell me what's the best. I said, ChatChippet, here's our or it's not ChatChippet because we can't use that. We we go directly in. Here's our list of 20 best blog posts.

Please look at this blog post and make one for a golf course.

Mhmm.

Make one for a yoga studio. Make one for an insurance company. So it looks at our best stuff that I know our guest traffic. I know how it works. I know the data on it. Then I did the same thing for our emails, for our lead magnets, for our websites, because I'd had, like, I don't know, maybe a 140 different websites that I've like, sales pages that I built over the years, and I knew which ones converted the best and which ones were junk. So the ones that were junk, we didn't include those, and we tuck the top 40 and said make it just like these. And then AI spits it out based on our, like, proprietary content.

And so we it's a lead magnet. It'll build your lead generation system, your offer page, your emails, your ads, your social media post to promote it, give you a content plan, even tell you who the best person is to buy that product if you don't know who that person is. And it's all based on data, from previous content that has done well.

Do you think you could create a training course on hosting on LinkedIn via AI? Because I I can tell if someone's using AI just instantaneously. I mean And the kind of annoying. Yeah. It's

so annoying. It's so annoying. You can tell. And they all have, like, the same length of paragraphs. Does that make sense?

Yeah. And the same weird emojis.

Yeah.

It's Like, at least edit it up a little bit before you press it on LinkedIn, my guy. You know?

I don't believe we have that issue, but that's because our posts are based on our exact ones that have been written by a human in the past that we had did done well for us, they're not based on what ChatGPT says a post should be.

Mhmm.

So there's a difference if you're using OpenAI and or ChatGPT or Claude or whatever, and you just ask it to write a post for you, it's gonna get a random one. Whereas, if you ask it to create content based off of what you already know works, well, now it looks more like a human wrote it because it's Yeah. A human wrote the original.

May I ask you a question? Yeah. You're not. Are you ready?

You're stretching. Nope. This is a good one.

I found that, you know, when I took a break from what I do now, risk management and, commercial property and casualty and started a company, grew it and exit, I found that managing my own p and l, it made me a way better salesperson, way better consultant. Have you experienced that same growth within your space?

I haven't managed my own p and l for who knows how long. My bookkeeper just does it too.

You did, though, right, when you started?

No. I don't think I did. Okay.

You never manage your own books?

No. So what I did is probably the worst make

your husband do that? No.

I didn't make my husband do it. My husband doesn't really do anything with money. So what I did is I put everything into, like, the same, like, credit card statements. So, like, it's only one credit card that I use for business, and everything goes on that credit card. And then I look at the bank at the end of the month and say, is there money to spend or is there not money to spend? And that's not that's not how you should run a business. It's not how you should run a business. But for each month, I at the beginning, I just did month to month until, like because, like, I didn't have money. So, like Okay.

Do we have There's nothing to manage.

There, nothing to manage. We had expenses to manage, but, but then as I grew, then it became, okay. Can I keep 1 month of cash in my account for reserves? And then can I keep 3 months of cash from reserves? Can I keep 6 months of cash from reserves? And then once I got to 12 months, then I put the rest of it into an investment. And I I don't mean investment like I'm going to invest, which I eventually did end up buying, like, car washes and apartment complexes and stuff like that and try to buy a mushroom farm. If anybody knows, I've got, like, this bucket bingo card of different businesses that I wanna buy. But, anyways, long story short, so I have this investment fund, but that investment fund then, I put that into building the software company until, well, we blew through our investment fund, and now we take on clients to to make whatever ends. So now it's back to a little bit of month to month. So the way my budgeting works, I know it's different, but you take the bucket from month 1, and then anything that's my cost of living for that month or I do my personal the same way as do my business, whatever it cost me to live on in my business that month goes into my monthly expenses.

Anything that is earned into that that's beyond 1 month bumps automatically into the next account down. That account has 3 months. If that account gets full, then it bumps to the 6th.

Trickle. Trickle.

Yeah. It's a trickle effect. Yeah. I'm not allowed to touch the money until it gets into my investment fund. So that's when I can use it to invest in something else.

There's a little bit of self discipline involved there.

Yeah. Yeah. It's it's I just don't have access. And, actually, we actually make it where I can't actually even access the money. So, like, it's not not that I can't access it. It's in a bank where I have to

show

up in person. Gotcha. I don't have an online password. It's very inconvenient for me. Guess what? I don't spend it very often. I'm sure they'd give me a card. So if you're listening, bank, I don't want you to mail me a card. I'm fine.

Thanks.

Awesome. So tell me tell me more about the growth of your AI company.

Okay.

Where do you see it going? What are your goals in the future?

Well, I think I told you that I have had 27,000 students, and my 27,000 students purchased programs from me that range from, like, a $100 to, like, $2,000.

Mhmm.

And I don't think I changed that many people's lives. The way a course works is whenever you're a course creator or a content creator for programs, they sign up. Probably 1 fourth of them ever really open it. Because how many of us really remember passwords and remember they wanna half of them take the course and get so so results. And maybe 10%, maybe 5% leave, so they they didn't like it. You weren't their cup of tea. I'm not a lot of people's cup of tea because, like, that's the way it works. So so 10% leave, 10%, 15% don't even open it, then half of them open it.

And of those people, half of them do good, but that means 75% of my audience paid me and didn't get results.

Mhmm.

75% of the people who purchased my product didn't get results. Like, when I sit at night with that, I'm just like, I don't think that feels good.

Yeah.

That doesn't feel good at all. And that's just that's normal course numbers. That's normal course numbers with every course creator out there. So knowing that I had 27,000 people pay me, some of them 1,000 of dollars, I wanna have 27,000 people pay me $27 a month. And I wanna change their life in 4 minutes. Okay. Instead of give them a program that they then have to follow these 10 steps, which y'all know they're gonna stop at step 5 and call the course a success. I had great I had amazing reviews.

People said my courses were amazing. They they said they love me, but I'm looking at it thinking, but you're not having the 6 the what is the thing that's stopping you from getting the success? So I looked at people who were in front of me, people who were taking my courses, what's stopping them from getting success? One girl, she grew an audience to 1,400,000 people.

Mhmm.

She never sold a product because she didn't know how to set up the payment processor. Another girl, she had grew her audience to 50,000 people. Then she changed her mind because she didn't know how to sell to them. She's like, I I get stuck when it comes to making my offer. So I'll just go I think it's because I'm not in a good audience. I think my people aren't buyers. I need to move to a different different place. And I opened up our sales page.

I'm like, well, your sales page is 7 different colors. You can't tell which one's the button. When I click on the button, nothing happened. So, like, the problem wasn't that you couldn't sell, the problem is, like, your offers, like, it kinda looks like it's a scam, but it's not a scam because I know you, But, like, you need some help, honey.

I'm doing.

So what was stopping them was I need an easy button when it comes to tech. And my business partner and I, at the same time, we need an easy button on tech because I had been spending so much time building my Facebook training program, and she had been spending so much time building her SEO program that our media company, like, we had a bunch of websites, remember? They kinda were like, we're making money. We're making money. And then, oh, Google made a change. Oh, Pinterest made a change. Oh, and so we were going down and down, and we looked at it. We're like, you know what? We just need to sell some products on it. Well, we both know how to sell products.

We both know how to create products. We just worked.

Yeah.

So it's like, okay. We gotta eat our own medicine. We'll go make some and I'm like, wait a minute. We gotta make, like, 47 products. Who's got time to do that? At the time, it was taking me time because I'd have to research the topic. I'd have to compile it into, like, a Canva or Adobe Illustrator to make a little white page. I'd have to make the lead magnet thing that says, hey, sign up for this and give me your emails. And then we're gonna follow-up on that email with a follow-up sequence that says, hey, we have a program for you.

It'll teach you x y z. And then follow-up again because people don't answer the first time. You have to follow-up, like, 7 times. So I had to create that for every single of those 47 products. And I was like, oh, this is like so much work. And then I understood what my 27,000 students were facing because they got stuck the same places that I was getting stuck creating these products. And so I was like, with AI, at the time, guys, when I started, there was Transformer. It was before OpenAI.

It was, like, public. There was transformer. And with transformer, I saw transformer coming in. Like, I could be able to do this with a button push. So let's get all of our templates ready. So when when we get access to transformer, we can turn on the button and this will work. And then I got on to the wait list and, like, don't know, 3, 4 months later, we got accepted to, get to code with OpenAI, and it's their first wave of developers, and, the rest has been history. So we have now I want 27,000 people that we can change with an easy button push at $27 instead of 2,000, And, we're gonna be doing it, $27 a person at a time, and we got about 850 right now.

It took a lot longer to build than I ever thought it would.

So you're you're up and running now. You're Yeah.

Well, I mean, we're we actually started, we started coding it 2 years ago. And then last May, we started selling, but when we sold it, they couldn't access it because it wasn't working all the way because it's software. And it didn't have a back button. Because I didn't think about making a back button, so the back button went to a white screen, so then you couldn't do anything. It's like, I just I didn't code a back button. I didn't tell the coders we needed a back button. So it's like all of those things that you don't think you need because I'd never coded software before.

Yeah.

We just okay. So everybody that purchased in May, 60% of them left by July. And then, from July to August, we grew to about 850 users, which was such a blessing. And then in October, we were told we weren't allowed to sell under the name we were selling.

Why?

Because it we lost our trademark, and then we trade trademark office, it doesn't make any sense whatsoever. You have to file for your trademark while you're in business, and then you wait 9 months to find out if the trademark office says you can use that brand name.

I hate red tape.

I know. And then I waited my 9 months, and they said no. I was like, oh, but we can appeal. Like, there's so many other businesses just like this one that my lawyer said it would be possible. It's fine. Okay. Anyways, we appealed. We lost it.

So, the end of October, we had to stop using that brand name, rebrand. And so now we're about 3 weeks into selling again.

What do you what, name what name are you operating under now?

Page Wheel.

Page Wheel.

Yeah. It used to be called Busy, and I loved my bee. I thought it was the coolest brand. But, anyways, now we're Page Wheel. I will learn to love Page Wheel.

Awesome. So

Failures. Remember I talked about founders? Like

That sounds like bureaucracy rather than a failure, but the back button, that's That's ridiculous. That. That's ridiculous. It needs

a back button.

You all need a keyboard. Everybody.

Okay. It took, like, we had, like, 3 things. That and hitting enter in text. Like, we coded it without being able we coded it, and you can't hit enter in your tags. Like

It's ridiculous.

Who does that? Anyways, guys, I was new to software.

Yeah. So, you're buying a mushroom farm?

I collect companies.

Okay.

So okay. So I told you about my Why in the world

are you buying the mushroom, Parker?

Okay. Because I heard or, one, I love mushrooms, and I like, like, all the weird mushrooms out there. So not the psychedelic ones. Like, I like cooking with mushrooms and eating mushrooms.

Like a porcini?

Yes.

Okay.

I love, like, lion's zane and the different colors of oyster ones. I love Uh-huh. I love mushrooms. And then I found out how easy they were to grow. And so Okay. So then and I learned that you can't ship them all the way across the country because the way that mushrooms are, they're really fussy with temperature changes and stuff, so you can't ship them. Like, somebody in, Oregon can't ship me their mushrooms conveniently. It's it's a difficult one.

So it's typically mushrooms are grown within a certain radius of where the person is because they don't transport well. So I was like, well, I live near a massive metropolitan area, and you know what? Mushrooms are in demand here, and they're actually high per ounce. So this would be a really good farm to have, and I'm trying to convince my neighbor who has a a big empty barn to put in mushrooms, but we'll see. And if we if they do, I'll fund it, and I'll be a

part owner. Name it.

Oh, it's whatever they want to name it. I don't care what's named.

Interesting.

Yeah. No. I no. Okay. So the way my bingo card works is I have, like, different types of so I I work online, and I make my money online.

But

I don't think online life is stable. So I don't think software is stable.

Fickle.

It's fickle. So I'll make money. I'll lose money, but I wanna keep my money. Like, I wanna take my money from my companies and put them into stable businesses. So apartment complexes. I make very, very little from being an part owner in a syndicate of apartment complexes. So, like, I'm a 100th owner. I'm, like, a 400 person residence, 1 27th owner, and okay.

It's not big numbers. But I'm a stable money. If the market crashes, I can still sell that property. I can still sell like, that's

appreciating too.

It's appreciating. It's stable. The car washes make more money than the apartment complex, but, again but it's stable. Every month, they make the same amount. Like, it's it's dependable revenue. So I take my money from the the high risk stuff and put it into what I consider to be more low risk. And so in my bingo card, I wanna have different types of businesses that are low risk businesses just to kinda collect them and diversify. So think of it as my holding company, for for purchases.

And one of the holding companies I would like to be a holding company or own a stake in is a mushroom form. It's on my bingo card of businesses.

Okay. So you're coming back on whenever you get that, that goal accomplished. So so who who needs to get on Page Wheel AI? Who needs to use this to grow their business? What kind of business? What kind of person? What's the value here?

Anybody who needs a lead or a list. So you used to work in insurance. Right?

Still do.

Still do. Well, your insurance agents, they need to have people that are on a list that they that know them, trust them, and are warm. So when they're in that spot, when they're in a buying mindset, they think of you first. Mhmm. Because people aren't gonna change from their car insurance unless something happens. But you need to be in their face and in their presence and in their world. Thanks. He does that.

But you need to be there so that when they are in that buying mindset where, like, oh, life is gonna change now, they're ready to to choose you. Front of mind. You've gotta be You're front of mind.

For that prospect.

So how do you stay front of mind when you don't have tech skills and you don't Yeah. Wanna make a white page and you don't wanna make this website. So, insurance example, one of our people in our audience, she helps manage her husband's insurance brokerage, and they had a wildfire in their area. So she's like, this is the best time.

Are they up north?

They're in, they're outside Oregon, California. I think they're in Southern Oregon, and it was wildfires from California. I don't know exactly where they are. So she's there's a wildfire, and it's coming towards her area. She knows that she could capture everyone in her town's email right now if she takes action and puts the right offer in front of them.

Mhmm.

Then she can follow-up with them for insurance because they've just had a life event

Mhmm.

That's a triggering for potential. Like, I should probably see if we have if we're properly insured in our house in case our house burns down. So she went and said made an e email, like, list lead magnet. What do you need in your bug out bag? How do you plan for a fire? What should you have to be ready to go? How should you prepare your house before a fire so you're you're protect your house, protect your assets, and you can leave? So she made 2 different lead magnets. Which one, everything you need to leave with, and one how to prepare your house in event of a fire. She put those out in Facebook groups she didn't even own. But in her neighborhood Facebook groups and like, hey, guys. We've got these 2 things for you if you want them right now.

She didn't have a whole lot of notice that, hey, next week there's gonna be a fire in your town and potentially everyone's gonna be really worried about it. So you should make this ahead of time. She had an idea. She had 20 minutes notice. She knew she need to capitalize on it now. So she put it up. She captured all the emails of everybody in her town while they're going through an event. And because she gave them a great lead magnet, now they trust her whenever it's time.

Like, hey, did you want us to talk to you about your insurance? Like, to make sure you're insured and fully covered. She had these people on a list. She had their phone numbers, their emails, their names. She knew whether they were more concerned about leaving quickly or whether they were more concerned about their assets. She she was able instantly to tell which ones she can talk to with what which one. Mhmm. She was able to do that because she had a lead magnet. She had a follow-up sequence, and she made it instant.

Well, she didn't make it instantly because we weren't fully done yet. But, yeah, that's the type of scenario where page wheel, you just say, I need a grab and go bag for a fire situation. It will go in and say, okay. Here's the things that you most likely need. You go in there and tweak it a little bit, and then hit publish. And it puts it on a sales page for you. It writes your email follow-up. It takes the leads, and it'll drop them into your CRM

for you. That was my next question. So is there implementation from PageView in the follow-up sequence, and does it integrate with CRMs?

Yeah. It, it does the follow-up sequence for you, so you don't have to write the follow-up sequence. Because if the follow-up sequence is based on that product, it'll write it for you. You can go in and tweak it and change it and put your own wording or your own flavor in, But it will actually, like, write it for you so you're not having to start from scratch.

How does it compile the emails? Is it the Excel? Does it put them in, like, Epic or Salesforce?

It sends it. It sends it for you. It sends your follow-up. So when they perch so, like, when someone signs up to the form, it's on a website. They sign up for the form. I wanna get this handout for what x y z, it then takes them to an offer page that says, here's the handout for the offer page. You click yes, and you type in your email, you type in your phone number if you wanna have your phone number. You click complete.

I want that's that handout sent to me. The delivery page says, here's the handout you just asked for. Here's, further you can come join our group or upsell offer spot. And then it also sends at the same exact time an email that has that same, here's your product. It takes that lead, and you can connect with Zapier into anything. So you can connect it to Infusionsoft, HubSpot, Hootsuite, ManyChat, whatever those things are, and it will follow-up Mailchimp. It'll follow-up with that person because it puts them into your CRM. Does that make sense?

Mhmm.

So it does the all that integration it'll do for you because AI is smart enough to do all the tech. We don't have to do the tech.

Does it do LinkedIn campaigns?

It doesn't interact into LinkedIn unless Step Here has LinkedIn setup. I don't think it does. But it might connect into it'll give you the wording, and you probably have to copy it into LinkedIn. It'll give you the wording for a LinkedIn post.

So this is a interesting topic, and I've always been I've been concerned about this for, like, the last 18 months. Okay. Right? So not a jab at you. I'm just interested in your perspective. So you saw it a lot in real estate, and you see it in a lot in insurance now where people will get a license. Mhmm. And because of AI generated content for them, they don't have to generate their own content. So that you have people with limited experience and knowledge in the field able to represent themselves as an expert.

And so there's kinda for me, it's a gray area to where you're representing yourself to someone like you who've you have sacrificed to build your empire here locally. Right?

Yeah.

And so you want someone who really knows their stuff, managing your insurance or your finances or whatever. What are your thoughts on that gray area and and someone who may or may not be an expert in the industry purporting to be an expert in the industry through the use of AI?

I think AI just amplifies who you are. So you can use amp AI to amplify you not being an expert. You can use AI to amplify your expertise and help you reach more people with less time. The person who's, like, the Rachel or, like, the me who has a lot of different companies and properties and stuff, I'm going to hopefully be savvy enough to tell whether it's a new agent and not a new agent. Hopefully, I'll be able to savvy when I have interviews and stuff to to approach them. I'm probably not the person that's going to be attracted with mass marketing because I'm I'm at a different different socioeconomic level. The introductory insurance agent, they're looking for introductory people. They're going to the masses because they're starting they're starting out.

And the person who's starting out buying their first home policy, they're probably the best person for them. Yeah. So everybody everyone is at different levels, and we should kind of appreciate the person who's at the stage of, oh, I'm becoming an expert. I think of myself actually when I was first teaching. Okay? I was an expert teacher. You know, I've been teaching for, I don't know, 18 months. I definitely knew all the stuff, everything that there was to do about teaching.

You you were the SME right there.

But here's the thing. Those kids, they needed a hungry, excited 24 year old who thought she was on top of the world and knew all the things. Like, they needed that. And they also needed the wisdom of the 70 65 year old teacher who was on her last year, who'd been there, done that, and seen all their bullshit and whatever their stories. So it's I feel like it's the same thing. An AI helps both the person who's been there as an expert for forever and the beginner get a leg up. So they both get a leg up to reach their perfect people, but they're both reaching different people. So it's not like the introductory person is hurting the bigger, more established person.

It's Yeah.

They've already had a lot of work.

I asked that question in a way for a very distinct reason. So you probably remember I don't know how old you are. I'm 42. I'm 41. So oh, actually.

I'm almost 42. Sorry. I forget my birthday. Yeah. Sorry. What's your name, Michael?

So remember when YouTube came out? Uh-huh. Right? And all of these SMEs and people would have decades of experience, plumbers, electricians, business people Yeah. Were putting out all these videos on how to do things and how to attract whatever and how to fix whatever. I remember people in industry saying that it was bad for the industry, that there was an aggregation of experience and knowledge, and look what it did. Look what YouTube enabled. I look it up. I look up every all all kinds of questions that need to have. I had to fix this.

How may I do that? I think AI is the next iteration of the aggregation of knowledge. Yeah. Right? Where where people just integrate it into, our day to day life. It's great. I really liked your answer. Well, actually, think of that gonna try to bullshit me. So good job.

Think of that was actually kind of fun because my 17 year old son, quote, unquote, is not going to be an entrepreneur.

Mhmm.

He doesn't wanna run a business like me. He watched a 21 year old on the Internet. Guys, if you're the 21 year old or if you're my 17 year old son, please know I'm not trying to intentionally roll my eyes at you. But I was kind of, like, are you for real? You're taking financial advice from this guy who's standing in front of this Lamborghini, which you know it's not his or it's his daddy's money. And, like, it's just but my son needs to learn entrepreneurship from him and not me, like, because he's not going to listen to me as much as I want him to.

That that is that makes me so annoyed when I see that.

Has anything.

I'm like, they rented the car, man. That's not their

do not see this. Like, he's he's a scam. Do not see this.

Such a scam. Oh god. I can't and kids buy into it.

But he has the an entrepreneur bug in a different way because

He's not gonna listen to you because you're mom.

I know. Wow. So it's it's yeah. It's it is the myth that

Look. This has been a great podcast. You're very entertaining. You gotta come back.

Okay.

So if someone's listening to this and they might wanna start their own business or they're maybe feel like they're at the rock bottom Mhmm. In in whatever way in life, what do you think their biggest takeaway should be from your mistakes and missteps you've made and and the pivots that you've made?

Mostly just take that next step. If the next step doesn't work, take the next step because you might need 10,000 steps to find the step.

Mine. Yeah.

Yeah. So but there is a step out. You just have to keep taking a step and taking another step and taking another step. And one of those steps is gonna slide you right back to where you began, and you're gonna have to take another and another step. And little by little, you'll find the path out quickly. But it will take just take that next step. Take that next action. A lot of times we'll stop and we'll pause, and we're like, what I need to take stock of where I am, and then I can take a next step.

No. Today, do something to make your life better for tomorrow.

Awesome. So if you're interested in Rachel and what she has, go to Page Wheel. Can they find you on LinkedIn?

Yep. I'm on LinkedIn. I'm not super active on LinkedIn. They can also find me on Facebook, Rachel.

Can just go to your home address, which is just kidding. I'm sure she'll come back and tell us all about our next mushroom farm venture, but, look, you were great. Thank you so much.

Thank you, James.

For more information on Rachel and the show, visit us on Spotify, Itunes, all the things. We're on YouTube. Leave us a like. Leave us a review. We appreciate it. Thank you.

James, this was fun. Thank you. Awesome.