In this episode, email strategist & conversion copywriter Holly C. Williams speaks on the importance of prioritizing family and time freedom over scaling and hustling. We also hear why Holly believes every business owner should have an email list. And we learn Holly's "Story Flow" method for creating engaging and converting emails.

About Holly

Holly Williams is an email strategist and conversion copywriter for purpose driven entrepreneurs and online businesses. She specializes in creating brand connections through emails. And believes that customer conversations lead to higher conversions.

Holly also loves to help simplify email marketing for business owners using her StoryFLOW Method. She teaches individuals how to take ANY story from their daily life and turn it into an high converting sales email.

Holly lives in Southern Alberta with her 3 children. An award winning novelist and former television producer, Holly brings a unique perspective of storytelling to brand selling.

Connect with Holly

Website: www.hollycwilliams.com

Instagram: @thehollycwilliams

Learn about The StoryFLOW Method - write high-impact emails by tapping into your customers emotions and solving their greatest needs www.hollycwilliams.com

Connect with The Mom CEO Suite

Website: themomceosuite.com

Instagram: @themomceosuite

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Get the access to the private stream, 10 Tips for Managing Motherhood & Entrepreneurship: https://www.themomceosuite.com/tips

You are now tuned in to the Mom CEO Suite

podcast. I'm your host, Felicia, wife, mom

and entrepreneur. In this podcast, I'll be sharing my

mompreneur journey along with strategies that will help you build your

online business operations in a sustainable way. The

goal is to help you build a business that fits into your lifestyle as a

mom who values putting family first. We will also hear the

experiences and expertise of other moms with service based

businesses. You'll get a peek into our journeys so you'll know that

you aren't alone. Motherhood gets hard,

entrepreneurship gets hard, but together we can

do hard things welcome to the

Suite.

Hey friends, welcome to another episode. We are here. We

have an interview today super excited to be talking to Holly

Williams. And Holly, she's an email strategist and

conversion copywriter for purpose driven

entrepreneurs and online businesses. She specializes in

creating brand connections through emails and believes that

customer conversations lead to higher

conversions. Holly also loves to help

simplify email marketing for business owners. Using

her story flow method, she teaches individuals how

to take any story from their daily life and turn it into a

high converting sales email. OOH, I love that.

Holly lives in southern Alberta with her three children. She's an award winning

novelist and former television producer. She

brings a unique perspective of storytelling to

brand selling. Oh my goodness, they sound so exciting. Hi,

Holly. How are you? Thank you so much for having me, Phylicia. I'm really

excited to be here and to talk to your audience today. Yes, I'm

so glad you were able to. Come on now, I know I just read your

bio, but just tell us a little more about yourself. Like, who is

Holly as a person and you can tell us a little bit more about your

business. Oh, I love that question. That's great. Yeah.

So I am a single mom of three and I

love being on this podcast because we're talking to moms and I'm so

passionate about being a mom who's there for your kids. So

I'm really excited to be here today and talk about that. I live in

Alberta, Canada, and so I'm just at the foothills of the Rocky.

So we get the chinook winds that kind of melt the

snow immediately so you can go at the start of the week you can

be at -42 degrees celsius and then three

days later you can be at plus ten celsius. So

I live in a very crazy weather town, which is a lot of fun. And

I love hiking, I love surfing, which is nowhere near

Alberta, but I do love surfing. And I am now making it my

mission to do more surf trips. Yeah. So that's a little bit

about me as a person. I love know, I

think sometimes we get so caught up when we introduce ourselves

that we don't really talk about who we are as people. We talk

about what we do, especially in our businesses. So

I really love when people are able just to talk about who they are as

a person and what they love to do outside

of their business work. Absolutely love it. It happens with moms too,

right? We just see ourselves as moms sometimes and we forget

that we're a person as well. Outside of that, I always say you don't

have to be just a mom. It's okay to want to be more than a

mom and there's no shame in that. So I want to kind of dig into

this topic. We were talking a little bit before we came on and we'll get

into the business stuff, but we were talking about

putting family first and keeping family first as we're building our

business. And so talk a little bit about

why scaling wasn't a focus

or a priority for you as you were growing your business so

far. Yeah, I'd love to talk about this. I'm pretty passionate about it

and I hope that somebody listening today. This was really encouraging

to them because I feel like this is something that would have helped me when

I was starting out. Because when I starting out,

all the online marketing was like hustle, you got to be

a six figure income earner, you got to scale, you got to do all this

stuff. And I kept feeling like I was failing in my business because that

just wasn't my goal. I didn't hear about that stuff. What I really

wanted was the time freedom for my kids, especially because I am

a single parent. And so when my marriage ended and

ended very spectacularly, failed in

a way, like it was pretty dramatic. There was a lot of hurt for

myself and my children and so it was really air mask

time. So the idea of scaling or being on

Instagram and showing my face and doing any of that kind of

marketing such a low priority. Such a low

priority. So what I focused on instead was doing really

excellent work and that gave me a

reputation that I was very easily recommended to other people. So I

didn't really have to market myself at all. I still don't. I get a lot

of recommendations just because I do excellent work. And now

that I'm in a different position, my kids and I, we've got our feet

underneath us. We've built a really great life over the last five years.

I feel like I'm in a good place to now step out and I've got

all this experience that I can share now. So

one thing I would really love to encourage people with is if

your goal is to just create an

income that gives you the time freedom. Like I was able to, if my

kids needed to stay home from school, I would just hang out on the couch

with them for half the day. Or if they were having a tough

mental health day it was like, okay, I'll pick you up. Let's go for a

walk around the park or something. That was much more important to

me than doing the whole six figure laptop lifestyle

thing that is perpetuated on the internet. I just

really wanted to be there for my kids emotionally to help them get

through. And then the second thing is this business has given me

the tremendous opportunity of showing and

modeling for my kids, being totally scared to do

something. So my kids have seen me. The first time I've needed to quote

$10,000 on a project. They've prayed with me beforehand. I go

in the room, I have the call, then I come running out, jumping up and

down. We're all screaming and jumping up together because they're seeing me

step out and do something that I'm totally terrified. They're seeing me

terrified to do something. So I think there's just so many

incredible things that your business can really allow you

to teach your children. But I also want to really encourage people that they

do not need to fall into the trap that they have to

scale this really huge thing. I love that message. The

internet is so noisy and there's so much

pressure, like you said, telling us, oh, scale your business.

What does that even mean? We know what it means. But you just hear it

so often and get to six figures and hustle. And I know

what moms can relate to is the desire for that time, freedom.

But then also feeling the pressure of having the hustle to do

that. So just seeing somebody who was able

to just have a sustainable business and still have the

time, freedom, it's encouraging because I think a lot of moms, they're

like, how can I do this? Yeah, I think a great

question to ask is capacity. That's a really great word. Like what is your

capacity? Because when people talk about scaling, and I've worked on

many, many teams, scaling is you are

managing another set of people. And as a single parent,

I'm raising my three children, right. And I am trying to get

them across the finish line into adulthood.

Right. I have a daughter who's 20 now and another daughter who's going to be

graduating this next year. And my son's 14.

So now I'm in a better position to look at scaling because I feel like,

okay, we've got our rhythms in place, we've got some things established.

I'm willing to take on managing other people as I grow

my business. But let's talk about capacity because

if you make your aim scaling, then you're also making your aim that you're going

to be training people, taking care of them. And I've been on a lot

of teams. There's a lot of hot mess teams that are like if you don't

have great systems in place, you are working long, long hours

and all weird, crazy hours. And if that's not the life you

want, it is perfectly fine to say, you know what? I'm really

happy staying in that five to ten K mark a month,

just doing really great work for other

people. Yeah, I love that. One of the things that I

talk about through the Mom CEO suite is really

identifying what freedom looks like for you and

for somebody. It could just be the five to ten K. Not even

just it could be the five to ten K. Right. It doesn't have to be,

oh, I want to get to 50K months. What

does freedom look like for you without the influence of the Internet and the

influence of what everybody else says that you should be

doing? I think that can be really powerful because then you're not really

comparing what you should be doing to what

other people are doing, and it really just brings a sense of peace

and ease and enjoyment to what you're actually doing in your

business. So we could keep this conversation going, but I want

to get into your excellent work, and I

love that phrase. So first, I like everybody to be

on the same level playing field and understanding when we're having conversations.

So can you explain to us what a copywriter does? Yeah,

so there's actually different types of copywriters. There's, like, content

copywriters, so they'll write articles. There's copywriters who might

write ads. There's conversion copywriters, which is what I

am, which is very sales focused. So I do all stages of the

funnel. Copywriting is basically your online

salesperson. So it's all the words that are written, all the

messages that are shared that comes from a copywriter.

And what the key is behind a conversion

copywriter is we dig deep, really deep

into customer research,

because the most powerful messages that you have to share are the ones

happening in your customers head. So if you can join that conversation

and bring that out onto your sales page and bring that out into your social

media, bring that out into your emails, then you can have

really incredible engagement with your customer. Where? They feel

known, they feel seen, they feel heard, and they see that

your service is the actual solution to the worries that are

happening in their head. Very clear. Thank

you. So now you do conversion copywriting.

So explain to us what are the elements of

copy that actually converts? Yeah, so I

like to always teach the concept of micro conversions.

So especially in email marketing, people may have

heard, like, oh, you need a list, you need to build one. And they're thinking,

Why? I'm doing great on social media. So we'll go over these two

concepts. First, why you need an email list, and then micro conversions.

So the first reason you need an email list is because

if social media were to disappear today, where would all those

followers connect with you? How would they know

about you? When you have an email list, you actually have all the

names of the people who are interested in what you have to say. So that

is a really important thing. You always have an audience. The second

reason is because on social media algorithms,

20% to 30% of the people who've actually liked your content are maybe

seeing it with an email. It is absolutely going into their

inbox. It might be their promotions tab, but even

with that, they're still seeing your name come up consistently.

And when you see consistency, you're drawn towards consistency

and they'll open your emails eventually. The third reason

is, on social media, you're not able to segment your list. And

so where email marketing becomes very, very profitable, where you see

huge ROI is when you segment your

list. Let's say you're a coach, a health coach, and you have a

product for a group Mastermind, and then you have a product for like

seven day detox. Well, if your Mastermind is for

hormonal women in their 40s, you don't want to send that to

a 30 year old. They're not interested. They'll jump off your list. You don't want

to lose them. You spend all this time getting them onto your list. So a

tag and a segment allows you to send targeted messages

to your audience based on what they need the most

and that makes them feel heard and cared about. So those are the

three reasons you want an email list and you don't want to rely solely on

social media. But then let's talk about micro conversions. So

email marketing is really powerful because of micro conversions.

And so when you're going to sell somebody something, you need to take them

through those five stages of awareness. The first stage is unaware. The

next one is problem aware. So they become aware that they have a problem.

The next stage is solution aware. Then it moves to product

aware. So they're aware there's a product, they're looking at yours, maybe they're comparing

it to other people. Then they become most aware and that's where they've become

fully aware of how great your product is. And then there's

buyer ready and that's where they're ready to hit the Buy Now button.

And that's a very warmed and warm lead. But you

can't just take people through that quickly. There's a lot of different

psychological levers we need to take people through. And

because our brains are wired to say no

to no to things, we're scared. We don't know what this is unless

it's a very urgent need that we need solved. If

our sewer is backing up, we are not hesitating to find somebody to

clean that up. We are getting on top of that right away. But if

we're looking at investing $1,000 into a coaching program,

our brain is going to say, is this really what we need? So

it's very important to take people through the whole stages of awareness. Now,

a really great email can take you through all five stages in one email.

But most people, if you're going to be launching any kind of big

product, you need to spend a couple of weeks moving people through the

stages of awareness. And you do that through email marketing and through

content. So once we get into

helping people take those micro conversions, what we're doing is

just helping them take a step with you. And the whole idea is to

bring them to a decision point. We're not trying to manipulate anybody. We're

not trying to shame anybody and say they need to be doing this thing or

their life is going to suck and go down the toilet if they don't join.

We want to bring them to a clear decision point. The kindest thing

you can do for your customer is to get them off of the fence and

have them say a yes or a no because then their mind

is made up. That is so good. Oh my goodness. First of

all, I love that we're talking about email marketing. Major goal for this podcast

is sharing strategies that will help mompreneurs build

their businesses sustainably. And what I found

for myself, and even just in conversations, is that social media can be

draining, especially for moms. And so all

of the things that you said about the email marketing and why you need an

email list, I'm starting to focus on my email list more because

I'm finding it's just more sustainable to build that

way versus having to show up on social media the way that the

algorithm requires you to. Right? I love that we're

talking about the email marketing piece. I know we haven't even gotten into

your method, but you're already providing

value and I'm taking notes in the emailing and you talking about

segmenting. Kind of on the back end of what we do at the Mom CEO

suite is automating business processes for

mompreneurs. And email marketing is one of those things. And so

creating the segments and all the sequences, that's very exciting. So when you're

saying segmenting and tagging and all those things, yes, we have to do

this. I know. I love

geeking out on the nerdy stuff. Right. And I think what's really important too,

some people feel really intimidated by email

marketing because especially if you've been doing social. And

here's another point too, on why I maybe want to be focusing on email marketing

over social media, especially as a mom, is sometimes you

get stuck on social media as soon as you are posting there, right? Then you

get into the scrolling and the engagement and there goes an hour of your

time and it's gone. And where are you going to get that

back? Right? And then also it can feed into your

comparison feeling like, oh, look at all these things people

are doing here's, all the awesome things. I should be doing this, I should be

doing that. No, shut all that noise off. I usually tell people who

are starting out. Find one person in your niche who's super

successful. Follow them. Try and be better than them,

just in the little ways that you can do, but just follow one

person because they've reached success. Follow them. You don't

follow a million people. There'll be so many strategies to take your eyes off of

things. Just really, really focus. So going back to email marketing,

this is a place you want to invest your time because this is actually a

conversation that you're having with your customers week in, week

out. This is a thing that they get to see you.

You should have a picture of yourself in your emails because this is

going to build a lot of that know, like and trust. You should

have a little bit of intimacy in the emails for yourself, especially if

you're a personal brand and a little bit of stories happening in your life so

that your customers kind of feel like they're going on a journey with you. And

to your point about email marketing feeling overwhelming

for your clients, how do you simplify email marketing? Or can you just give

us some nuggets on how to simplify it and you can even go into your

method? Yeah, I love my method because I've done

email marketing for so long, and I've just found

that most people would stumble over, like, I just don't know what to write

about. So the truth is, you can take any story literally.

Any story. It can be from brushing your teeth in the morning to a trip

that you went on that was magnificent. Any story, and you could

turn it into a sales email. So my story flow method

follows story. We're going to start with a story, and then we're going to move

into Flow. So that's an acronym for

Flow. F is for feelings. So what we

want to do first in our story flow method is we want to identify the

feeling we want our customer to feel at the end

of the email. So most of us have heard the quote, nobody

remembers what you say, but they remember how you made them feel. You want to

give them an experience when they're in an email, and you might be

thinking like, oh my, like, I don't have the ability to create an experience here.

Holly, what are you talking about? It's really just about the feeling you want people

to have. So do you want them to feel inspired? Do you want them to

feel like, I got to do this know, like urgent? Do you

want them to feel angry, like you're planting a flag in the ground

and like, join me. We are going to rebel against the system. Like, what is

the feeling you want to leave your customer with? Then the

next thing is, l learn, what do you want them to learn? And that's typically,

what product do you want them to learn about? Or it can even be

for content, where it's like, what blog post do you want to direct them to?

So L is for learn and then O is for

option or decision point. And so this is

something I really love to teach people who are afraid of sales

is that a lot of people feel like that sleazy

salesman that we kind of all refer to, it's very cliche

for a reason. Absolutely. But a lot of people think, well, I don't

want to be that guy. But again, the truth is that really good

persuasion is not manipulation. Persuasion is

something that brings people to a decision point. It makes them see all of

the options that are available to them. It shows them that this is

actually a really good step for you, but it will bring them to the

point where they have to make the choice. And so you leave the

ball in their court after showing them all the incredible ways that their

life can change. And then the w in story

flow is wow. So we're going to want to wow our audience with a

little bit of OOH and awe factor in our email. And that can be your

design of your email. That can be emojis, that can be a GIF in there

for some humor. There's different ways that you can add some wow factor.

So I would love to show your audience right now with you, Felicia.

We'll go through the story flow method and so you just

can pick any story from your day today. Oh, okay.

Today. So literally anything. Anything.

I had breakfast with

family. Okay, tell me about that. Well, I'm

visiting family. Okay. Then we have other family who flew in

from out of town I haven't seen in years.

And so we're all here and

we just had a little breakfast together. There's lots of cooking going

on and nice hanging out. Okay,

that's great. All right, and now what kind of product do you have available? Like

what do you offer your listeners? So we offer

SOP development and automation

implementation. Okay. And so

when that isn't in place for your prospect,

how are they feeling about their business? They are

feeling overwhelmed. They're feeling like they

had to do all of the things. Like there's no

organization getting them to the point where they don't

want to be in the business. They're doing all of these tasks.

Okay, great. So I've got a good story here. So I would drop

the email, I'd start it right in the middle of the action, which

is you at the table. And again, audience, I'm going off the

top of my head. Obviously an email would be massaged and

created much more better, but let's just go with it. So

you're at the table. We'll start the story with, hey, pass the

salt. I was so excited. This is the first time

family from all over the country was sitting around the table. My heart was

full I could just see everybody smiling. We were

together. We were finally a family unit,

even though we've been spread out to different corners of the world.

Isn't your business a little bit like that sometimes? Don't you find that sometimes

your system is often left field or you've got

a process that needs to be developed? Do you know

what it feels like when everything finally comes together?

It's just like sitting around the table with your family. There's

joy, there's laughter, everybody's getting along. And

there's almost a little bit of a harmony happening at the table while you're passing

things around. If you would like to experience that kind

of SOP feeling in your business, then book

a call with me today. That's so good. Right before

you even started, I knew you were going to paint the picture

in my head. I'm like, this is about to be so good. Yeah,

I'm going to use that too. Totally. Take that

email today, send it out. But you can see how it's like what

we wanted to do is to identify the emotion. How did we want them to

feel at the end? Well, we wanted them to feel that like, oh,

my life could feel in harmony, my life could feel joyful,

my business could feel joyful. So then we took those aspects of

sitting around the table and when you haven't seen somebody for a long time,

we would probably put in some elements of, like, I was smiling at uncle

whatever, who I haven't seen in how many years? But we took

the idea of when everything scattered and then comes together, that

great feeling that you can have, right? So then what we did

is transition that to your business. When everything feels scattered and you can bring it

together, then look at the feeling you can have. You can have that

joy. So that's how the story flow method works. You can take any

story and if you can identify the emotion in it, you can

identify what you want them to learn, like what is the product?

You're going to bring them to that decision point, which in this email was,

hey, if you want to experience that, book a call today.

And then we wowed them. We put in a couple of fun little details. I

would probably include some emojis as bullet points and things

like that. So I just want to show people that it's very easy

to take any story in your life and turn it into a sales message where

you can talk very confidently to any

prospect that. You no, that was really

simple and no, you do what you say. You

do excellent work. Thank you.

Simplified email marketing for us today that is going

to convert because I'm ready to buy something and nobody's even

selling me anything. Well, I do have my

course coming out soon, so I'll get you on the list. Please.

Yes. No, absolutely. I love that so much. So

is there anything else that you want to share related to

copy conversion email marketing that maybe we

missed or just any final tips you want to share with?

One of the things that I get asked a lot is, like, I have not

talked to my list in ages. What do I do? So I

actually have an Instagram post that I actually have like, hey, just

copy this and send it out. So the first thing is to just get over

yourself. You haven't emailed them. Don't make it a thing. Don't make it like,

oh, how do. I show back up? You just

walk in with style. You just flip your hair over your shoulder

like, I'm back. That's it. That's all you have to do. Just walk in

and claim it. And in the email, you don't have to make this huge

backstory, this apology like, hey, I'm back. Sorry, there was a back

surgery and then my car got nobody cares. What they want

to know is that you're going to show up consistently and that you're going to

provide the value that they want. So I would just make it very

clear in that first statement, say, hey, my name is Holly. I'm the

conversion copywriter who likes to teach you how to make money with

emails. I'm back. That's all I'd say. I'm

back, period. Over the next couple

of weeks, I will be dropping great tips every Tuesday,

just checking in with you to see that you're still interested in email copywriting

tips. Click yes, I'm in it, or no,

unsubscribe. Great, I'll see you next Tuesday. And then

you move on in your business, you don't make it a thing. You just get

over yourself and you just put it out there. Oh, my

goodness. I feel like we could keep this going on forever,

but we want to get people into your upcoming course and to

connect with you so they can have these conversations with you. So

tell us where can we find you and what you have coming up?

Yeah, so I have the storyful class that I'm releasing, and

it'll be basically you can get it anytime, but I'll have

all the funnel, bells and whistles on it for you guys. So that's at

Hollyseewilliams.com, and then I hang out at Instagram quite a bit.

I love hanging out there and I love having fun with it. I'm

really being creative with it. So if you want to learn about

email copywriting, come and hang out there. It's

a lot of fun. And you can find me at the Holly C.

Williams on Instagram. Love it. Thank

you so much. So before we go, what

departing words do you have for the mom in business who is

looking to build her business sustainably? It's going to

sound funny, but I'm going to say grieve. Grieve.

The ideas you thought it was going to look like. Grieve what

doesn't work for you. Because if you don't grieve.

Them, they will kind of bully you.

That sadness will bully you around with your decision making. You'll find

yourself shrinking back or you'll find yourself making different decisions. Like

just get honest with yourself and grieve what hasn't

worked, what you wanted it to look like, and it doesn't.

Once you've kind of done that, you can really, with both hands, grab onto what

you have and steer it a lot better. Words of Wisdom

holly thank you so much. This has

been a very refreshing conversation.

And connect with Holly, especially if you want to

get your email marketing right. If you want to get conversions,

connect with Holly. All of her information will be in the show

description. Make sure you click those links. Thank you

guys for tuning into this episode and we'll see you in the next

one. Thank you for listening to the Mom CEO Suite

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Leave a review on itunes and share with other moms in business

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