KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

• If your business depends on you being IN your business for it to run, you may want to consider the way in which your business runs. You must be able to take time off, whether it’s for a vacation or to spend time with a loved one, your business needs to be able to run without you.
• Facebook groups can be used as a sales funnel as often you’ll be able to buy a product that has a free membership to a broad group as a part of its benefits. From there, people may end up purchasing membership to your more exclusive and knowledgeable group.
• Guidelines are important, but don’t dictate as you may end up with a bad reputation.
• Before you start a group for your business, you need to understand your why.
• Planning your content and scheduling it in advance is essential to running a successful group.
• Use your free group to encourage members into joining you paid membership. Mention the topics you’ve covered, talk about them in the free group and show people that your paid membership is worth it.
• You’ll be putting more effort into this group, so showing people it’s worth their money is essential.
• Your Facebook icons on your website should go directly to your free Facebook group, not your Facebook page.
• Don’t oversell in your group. Although monetising is important, low hanging fruit is key.
• Consider using ‘pop-up groups’ for products and courses. These can be closed after they’ve been used and can encourage people to join your membership.

THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…

When you run a group, whether it’s free or paid for, you need to focus on providing valuable information. If end up just talking to your members or trying to sell to them, they’ll go elsewhere for their information. Monetising can’t be the only thing you use your group for.

HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN'T MISS

• Introducing Bella Vasta – 04:00
• Running Your Business Without Being IN Your Business – 08:30
• Starting A Facebook Group (And The Mistakes Bella Made) - 14:30
• How Active Do You Need Be on Your Facebook Group? – 19:31
• Going from A Free Facebook Group to A Paid Membership - 23:50
• Getting People to Join Your Free Group – 28:36
• Using Memberships as a Community - 38:46
• Should A Free Facebook Group be Part of Your Strategy? – 42:50
• Monetising Your Facebook Group – 45:50

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY'S EPISODE

• Jump Consulting
• Bella’s Twitter
• Jump Consulting Facebook Group
• The E-myth Revisited
• Automatic Approval Software for Facebook Groups
• Social Media Marketing World

Transcript below

Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the Social Media Marketing Made Simple Podcast and I am your host Teresa Heath-Wareing. It's so good to be here with me today and as always, I really appreciate you listening. I feel like the podcast is going from strength to strength, and that can only be thanks to you, my listeners. So thank you very much and please keep sharing if you think that it's something your friends, or family, or neighbours, or anybody randomly that you've met might like. I would love it if you'd share the podcast. It would be a great help to me. Also, as it stands, this episode is going out on Christmas Eve, so I hope you're all ready for Christmas and ready to take a well deserved break. But also, I hope you've been thinking forward to the next year, and what you've got planned, and what might come up because I know I always like to spend quite a bit of time doing this and thinking about what goals I would like to achieve the following year. Anyway, on with today's podcast episode, which is an interview with the super lovely Bella Vasta.

Now, I really look forward to doing this interview because Bella and I talk about Facebook groups, and I don't know enough about Facebook groups. I feel a little bit ashamed saying that as what I do for a business is social media. However, there are so many elements to social media that it's natural that some I'm going to be more confident in, and others that I don't use very often, I'm going to need a bit of help. So Facebook groups is definitely one of those areas. My first off, let me tell you about Bella. Bella Vasta is the dynamic personality behind the, One-woman Coaching Company, Jump Consulting. And since 2002, Bella has been a trailblazer in the pet sitting industry consulting with multimillion dollar companies all the way to dealing with hundreds of small businesses. She is an author, a podcast host, a blogger, and has been featured on NBC, CBS, Fox, Entrepreneur Magazine, and Huffington Post. Following the birth of her daughter, Bella sold her pet sitting business and now lives out her passion to inspire, motivate, and challenge business owners through her speaking, coaching and consulting.

So Bella was a great guest to have on. She has a really interesting story that started with the birth of her very premature daughter, and how she managed to keep her business running even though she wasn't in it. Which I think is an area that we can all take something from because actually so often we are our businesses. And if something was to happen, would your business carry on if you couldn't be in it day to day? So Bella looks at that question and tells us how she managed it, how she managed to continue this very successful business. She also then takes us through Facebook groups, which like I said, I was completely fascinated by because it's an area that I need to work on, and also an area that I'm going to be introducing later on down the line. So she told us the difference in the different Facebook groups. I.e if you're going to have one for free, if you're going to have one that's closed, or one that is in conjunction with some paid product.

She also talked about how to get people from one into the other through the use of as a funnel. Now, she also talked about when you should post, how you should Post, if you're going to go live, how you grow your group, and how you monetize the group with I being too salesy. She really is an expert in this field and is super passionate about it. So I don't want to take up any more of her time and I just want to hand you over to the lovely Bella Vasta.

Introducing Bella Vasta

So I am so super excited for today's podcast interview with the lovely Bella Vasta. Thank you so much for saying you'll be a guest today.

Thanks for having me. I'm happy to be here.

No problem at all. Now, we were introduced through the lovely Chris [inaudible 00:04:25] who was on quite a few weeks ago now, and he very kindly said that he knew you, you were friends and that I must have you on the show. I love getting recommendations, and I love meeting new People and I'm really excited about today's episode. It's going to be a good one. So the other reason I'm really excited because today we're going to look at Facebook groups, and why you should do them for your business, and how they can help your business. And this is an area I was just thinking about that I don't do a whole lot on and I don't know as much as I should, or as I want to know about it.

So I'm personally, very excited about this one and I know looking at balance stuff, she's going to give us some great content, so there should be a great one. But Bella, before we get started, I have obviously been doing a bit of research, and the general social media stalking that people do, and I'd been looking around on you and I would love you to tell my audience a little bit about who you are, and how you got to what you're doing now, because you didn't necessarily start off doing this thing you're doing now. So it'd be great if you could share that with my audience.

Right. Well, I think the most obvious one is that I'm across the pond, as they say. I'm in Phoenix, Arizona, which is the southwestern portion of the United States. I actually grew up on the east coast in Boston and moved to Arizona about 20 years ago, when I was in the middle of high school. And because of that, I didn't have too many friends out here when I came. I stayed at my parents house when I went into college. And they wanted to put a curfew on me, and I didn't want that because, who wants to be in college with a curfew? So when I got the opportunity to get paid to sleep over at my neighbours house to watch their dog, which was totally bizarre to me at the time, I jumped on that chance. And you know that I grew into a six figure business with multiple employees, and nationally and locally award-winning.

Although, in my about fifth year of doing that, Teresa, I realised that what I really loved doing was pouring into people. People would start calling me and saying, how can I do what you do? I saw you got this award, what is this about? And I started pouring into people and realising that this coaching thing is actually a pretty cool gig. And I have developed it and it's morphed into a lot of different things. So fast forward to about 2012, I started my own couple of Facebook groups by myself. And it was really a means to an end. I saw what was out there in our industry and it wasn't really happy with the calibre of advice, or the tone, or the leadership. So I said, I'm going to start my own, which is a habitual theme throughout my own life.

So I started this group and have had them since 2012. They've morphed, they've gotten bigger and bigger and more nichier. And then, in 2014 I my husband found me, actually 2013, my husband found me on match.com. We got married here in Macedonia in the same week and we went to Rome for our honeymoon, came home pregnant. And six months later, [inaudible 00:07:33] world's smallest surviving female babies that only 12 ounces. So my life should be really a movie I think, because it's quite interesting. We were in [inaudible 00:07:45] with her for six months, she defied all odds. Everyone said that she would not survive. But during that, as a businessperson, I also had my coaching company and my pet sitting company at the time that I was trying to run. I hope that no one knows what NICU is like, that is listening right now, but it's ICU and so you can't be like wheeling and dealing, and on your laptop, and on your cell phone, and I was there for 10 to 12 hours a day for six weeks.

Running Your Business Without Being IN Your Business

So Facebook groups were really big part of how I was still able to stay connected to my coaching community, and still stay on the scene, if you will. In 2016, I sold that pet sitting company for six figures and went full force with my consulting. So right now I'm a consultant, I'm a podcast host, I'm an author and a professional speaker as well, going around the country talking about leadership and marketing and Facebook groups.

Awesome. [crosstalk 00:08:43]

[crosstalk 00:08:43].

That is a whirlwind story, isn't it? [crosstalk 00:08:48] there to spot that opportunity straight away, to do that thing and build that business, but not just build it but grow into something hugely successful. The interesting point of something dreadful, amazing but dreadful happens all at once to you. And the big thing is, and in our industry, and in industries where you're building yourself as a personal brand, what happens? Because you know yourself, like if I'm at a conference for three days, or refined speaking and I might have the office, or if I'm travelling, it's like trying to maintain running a business is hard.

So to go through something as huge as that and in such a position where your time is being taken up and to carry on. I've watched some of your stuff and you talked about the fact that you had systems in place and boy, what a good job? Because I would [inaudible 00:09:44] what if carried on?

If you get anything listening to this podcast right now everyone, I want you just to really consider, if I had to leave my company, or my business for any reason, whether you want just simply go on a vacation without your being connected, or God forbid, something happened to you or someone you love, will your business still be there? Will you be able to go be with that person that you love and help them through a tough time or yourself?

I know a lot of entrepreneurs that can't, and it makes me sad and it's become a personal mission of mine to really think about what things do you have established, and we will talk about the Facebook groups and how that helps it, but what do you have established? Because I'm pretty sure that you have been throwing your blood, sweat and tears into building your business, and if it is dependent upon you being in it, then I just want to encourage you to think about that. Think about it because I would hate for you to throw away all those years of investment because if you are a successful business, Teresa, in three, five, 15, 20 years, somewhere in that time span, something will happen to you, or someone you love. You're going to have to take a holiday as you might call it, or a hiatus and step away. And I just really want people to think about that because I think we forget about it, when our noses in the grind every day and we're working on all this to do list that never ends.

And we don't stop and think about, why am I creating my own thing? It was for freedom, financial, time, experiences, family, freedom.

And that rarely comes, isn't it? It's hilarious actually, because you start your own business so you can manage your own time, and then [crosstalk 00:11:32] more hours than you've ever worked in your entire life. And you-

And you rationalise it by saying, it's okay. I love it. Right?

Yeah. Totally.

[crosstalk 00:11:39] you alive.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it was funny and interesting you said this now, is that I had Tyler J. McCall on a couple of weeks ago, and he talked about by the fact that his story is that, his dad got ill and died and his last time with his dad, he sat on his laptop in the hospital because he couldn't step away, because his business relies on him being there. And it's the saddest thing in the world, isn't it? And to think that actually that's the case and that time when he should have been focused because of his business, and because it was a necessity and he had to, he ended up having to then do both and not spending that time with his dad. I think again, when people start their businesses, and especially if they're doing the thing that they've always done. So my background is marketing. I was employed as a marketier, and then I started my own marketing business.

So you aren't doing your job, you are your business. So we rarely think about, how do I extract myself from the business? And actually, it is so important for things like what you went through to still have money coming in, but also to have a holiday, and to have a break and to be able to step away without thinking the place is going to fall apart. So I think it's such a good point and one that so many people don't think about. And I'm interested, did you ever read the E-Myth Revisited?

Oh, I did. Michael Gerber's words about, are you a technician, or if you just have a job. Yeah. All of that really range true. I think it was actually one of the very first business books I did read. I don't think audible was around back then. It was probably like [inaudible 00:13:25], you know that? I'm sorry, that wasn't Michael Gerber. Michael Gerber is the no BS series. That was another one that I [crosstalk 00:13:33]. But yeah, yeah. I believe very much in always feeding your brain. I was listening to audible actually getting ready for this interview this morning because I just [crosstalk 00:13:43] airwaves. Honestly, I inhale all the [inaudible 00:13:47] podcasts. Because I've learnt so much good stuff and it's amazing. And I listened to the E-Myth revisited and it was amazing, and suddenly made me think entirely different about my business. It takes time and I'm still working on it, and it's still a constant juggle, but at least I'm starting to put those steps in so that I could start stepping back, which is great.

Great story. So how come Facebook groups, what happened there? Why did you choose that as a medium to help grow that side of the business?

Starting A Facebook Group (And The Mistakes Bella Made)

So Teresa, I think one of the things that's been constant in my life is that, everything has been pretty organic. So I would love to say that I sat down one day and saw something, and planned it out and said, this I'm going to do. But my company is called Jump Consulting, because I really believe in just jumping and figuring out how to steal the parachute on the way down. That's what I did. So it was very reactionary as I told you originally, in the very beginning. It was, I to have a group and then I made a lot of mistakes. I said things like, you can't coast on Sundays because we need a day off. I don't want to manage this group on Sundays. I'm deleting it if you post on Sunday. I actually did that. I also would delete people if I did not see that they were participating.

I'd be like, you're not allowed in this group if you're not saying anything. And I just delete people. I was a dictator. It was terrible. Well, it kept the group pretty small, it also gave me a bad rap, all this way or the highway, which I was okay and with a little bit. But on the other hand I was like, guys, listen, there's so many other groups in our industry that have thousands of people in there. And there's only like four people talking. And I didn't want that, my intentions were really good, but I found that didn't really work and it was a lot of police.

It wasn't until about two years ago that I said, wow, well, first of all, I had this group, I own a pet sitting company with staff because it's not just the pet industry is the dog walking and pet sitters. And then, it wasn't just the dog walking and pet sitters, it was the ones that had staff. So we was like-

Really specific.

Niches you could get. And a lot of people that, they were just getting into the business or a lot of apps have started recently. I don't know if you have them over there, but we have rover and wag here where you could open up an APP and have a dog walk at your door. And there's all kinds of craziness around it. But my point is, is that with technology, so many people are starting their own pets sitting in companies. So there was this huge influx in our industry and people starting businesses. And so, I opened up another group called Jumpstart, and it was for anyone who had a pet business who wanted to be in there. So what I did over time organically, was I started off very nichey, then I did one that was really big and broad, and then I started a mastermind the beginning of this year and that was a paid group.

So I've used Facebook groups as a funnel, and I've noticed that a lot of people have done that as well, knowing or not knowing it. So if I can keep going?

Yeah. Of course.

What I [inaudible 00:17:05] that is, sometimes you buy a product and one of the benefits is you get to be in a Facebook group. And it's cool as the user because now you're around a bunch...