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E-commerce Beginner’s Guide: Create Your First E-commerce Strategy
Episode 149 • 19th August 2022 • Women Conquer Business • Jen McFarland
00:00:00 00:59:22

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Shelley:

The

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Women Conquer Business show is an educational how-to

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women in business podcast.

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That features stories, marketing news and real life experiences

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from fun and friendly hosts.

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Jen McFarland and Shelley Carney.

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Join us as we dive into the details.

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So you can slay marketing, overwhelm, streamline processes

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and amplify your impact.

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You'll learn strategies and tactics, leadership skills, and practical

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advice from successful women entrepreneurs to help you grow,

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nurture, and sustain your business.

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Hello, welcome to women conquer business.

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I'm Jen McFarland.

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Yes.

Shelley:

And I'm Shelley Carney.

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yeah.

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Did I thought maybe you forgot who you were for just a second.

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Oh, I dunno.

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I knew you were Jim.

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So today we're gonna talk about eCommerce.

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We're gonna do an eCommerce beginners guide to help you create

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your first eCommerce strategy.

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Every business is starting to sell online.

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We're gonna talk about why it with eCommerce.

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The eCommerce market is growing and exploding at an extremely fast pace.

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There's every reason to set up your own online shop.

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However, running an eCommerce business is not as easy as it looks.

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We're also gonna talk about that to succeed.

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You need to constantly adjust your strategy to meet the

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needs of your customer.

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Guess what hint, you have to talk to your customers.

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Oh, in this episode, we're gonna show you how to create your first e-commerce

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strategy based on your offer, whether it is physical products, digital

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products, online services, or a hybrid mix of both, which is honestly what

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most of the people listening to this show are probably going to be doing.

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We also explain how to do a SWOT analysis, that strengths, weaknesses,

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opportunities, and threats and that how that can help your business

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and your e-commerce strategy.

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Overall.

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That's a lot.

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How are you feeling about this?

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Shelley?

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That's like two

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shows in

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one people.

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So 75.

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Yeah, no, I have a lot value of value and information packed the

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value in backed into one show.

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That's right.

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What are you up.

Shelley:

What am I up to?

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Last Friday I did a podcast interview, but it was more like a coaching session.

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And not that he was trying to sell me anything because he

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will turn it into a podcast

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episode.

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Oh, this is the marketing therapy guy.

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Isn't it?

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No.

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This guy is Michael Sharky and his podcast is called your podcast coach.

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And basically he's trying to help podcasters grow their podcast

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and figure out ways to do that.

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And so through the conversation he asks questions to get at, where you're

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trying to get to what's working for you.

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What's not, and then he'll make suggestions.

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And his suggestions for me was to reach out to more podcasts

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who serve the elder audience.

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Yeah.

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People 55 and older who are interested in content creation or even just are older.

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And that's it.

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So we talked about that that.

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Strategy.

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And then I thought about it for a while.

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And came up with all the things that had been going on in my life with Toby and I

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trying to do a, we have our channel news and views where we're exploring how to

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serve that that demographic, the older generation with content that they enjoy.

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And we've come up with travel videos and stories and news where we just chat about

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the news of the day and people show up for that and they talk to each other and it's

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very very much a, we don't go to the bar, we hang out in the chat room and we talk

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about the news and we give our opinions and, it's a great place to gather.

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So from that, we have that sub subsection of those older generation

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people who are also content creators.

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So we're trying to, Bridge that gap.

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And he suggested I'll go on other podcasts that serve that

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community to grow that audience.

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And then eventually to create this this community, this community of older

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content creators, we all get together.

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We all talk, we all have the same issues.

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We can all work on solutions together.

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And so I wrote an a LinkedIn article about it.

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And if you're interested it's on LinkedIn and I called it content creator, content

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curator, or curated community leader.

Jen:

Wow.

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Yeah, that's cool.

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I think I read that.

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Yeah.

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You're in there.

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I think I'm in it.

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So I that's right.

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you are in there even though you're not quite that age

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level yet.

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You're getting there.

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Yeah.

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Not in that age group.

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Hey, I'll get there.

Shelley:

Eventually.

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We all will.

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eventually.

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So I love that you, your chat is all about work, cuz mine is absolutely positively.

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Not at all about work.

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that's okay.

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What's going on with you?

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And I don't think I've told Shelley about this at all.

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If I have just listen again.

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We didn't talk so weeks.

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No.

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At Christmas time for Christmas okay.

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Let me back up.

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Just we'll just way back up in the way back machine.

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As a kid, my favorite video games were always driver games, like sitting in

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the car and like racing games, Mario.

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Mario car pull position.

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The one where you're the, the arcade and you sit in the chair and you're

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like driving, like all of that.

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Okay.

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Yeah.

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So we had a Chevy volt and we loved that car had some nice pickup and stuff,

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but the batter's $8,000 to replace it.

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Then we had a Toyota Prius and one day, if you've listened to this

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show for a long time, I had an interview with Jennifer, Elaine.

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We can put that in the show note somewhere.

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And I parked my husband, came home in the middle of the interview and he parked

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the Prius out on the, out, in front of the house, on the street because

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Jennifer parked in inside the driveway.

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So we just left the car there because we were like, it's

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just overnight, no big deal.

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I'm sitting in my dining room working and I hear this massive crash.

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Oh.

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And it was like, yeah.

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Some dude, like prob likely on drugs.

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The police spent a lot of time with him trying to figure out if he was on drugs

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or not smashed into the Prius, totaled it.

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And we were still paying for it.

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It was a mess.

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So that is how I ended up getting a Mustang so I got my first little

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hot rod, even though it's strange, know, I've had all these eco-friendly

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cars and then I get hot rod because a Ford Mustang is honestly not that

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expensive and we needed just a car.

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I don't drive that much.

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We just needed a car to replace the Prius and it's super fun.

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And I said, look, we're old enough.

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Now we need to have some fun.

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We can't just have all these, like everything can't be responsible.

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Okay.

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so I'm like teeing.

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I am teeing all of this up to tell you what I am doing tomorrow,

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which I am very excited about.

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So I've really enjoyed driving my Ford Mustang.

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and at Christmas time my husband gave me a gift.

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Let me pop it up in the screen here.

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and it is called it is called the extreme experience.

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And so I am going to PI R tomorrow, which is the Portland international Raceway

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to drive on a track in a super fast car.

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oh, which I'm super excited about.

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So the car I am driving is a Lamborghini Hoon.

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Wow, which is a really hot car.

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yeah, I was a little late scheduling this for somebody who's had this

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thing available since Christmas.

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I only scheduled it up, I think a week or two ago.

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And the only car that was left was this Lamborghini hurricane.

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I looked it up.

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It's really expensive.

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So I bought the track insurances, but I also bought all of the video and photos.

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So hopefully next week I'll have something to share about driving a car that can

Shelley:

go.

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I can just imagine the new part of the website with all about Jen and this car.

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I know.

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I, it only goes 200 miles an hour, so we'll just see how I know.

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We'll just see how fast they get to drive so fast.

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An airplane goes and.

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I'm open to that.

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so I'm excited to drive this.

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I have a driving lesson and like track time and like all kinds of stuff.

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So it'll be taking up about half of the day to be out there doing it.

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I'm sure I'm like a hundred percent sure it's gonna be me and a bunch of dudes.

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Like I have no doubt.

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No maybe not.

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You don't know.

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I don't, I could be wrong about this, but I think it's likely

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people who are like, yeah, I'm gonna go to drive a truck for a while.

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It's probably mostly guys and me.

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That's okay.

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But it's fun.

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And I like to drive fast.

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And so that is what I have going on.

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Yay.

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And let's see, can you pop that off there?

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We, yeah.

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All right.

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So are you ready for some marketing?

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Breaking news.

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All right, so I'm gonna add this to the stream.

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Okay.

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So if you are.

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In love with Facebook and everything that it's about.

Shelley:

All three of

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you.

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You are not a teenager.

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so right.

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What we have found is now like conclusive evidence that Facebook has dropped by

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30% in terms of being used by people who are, I don't know, not 50 , teenagers.

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This is not a, this is not a shock or a surprise in any way.

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However, if you are marketing a business and you are.

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And I would say even looking at 24, 25 year olds, Facebook is not the place.

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Like we used to say, everybody's on Facebook.

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But really what we know now and the pew, this is all this

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is the pew research center.

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They have done like longitudinal studies on social media for I don't know, since

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the Dawn of the internet and social media.

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So what this chart is saying, and we'll put a link to the chart in the show notes.

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For those of you who are listening, is that in 2014 to 2015 teenagers, like

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71% of teenagers were on Facebook.

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That number in 2022 has dropped to 32%.

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Now YouTube is still up at 95%.

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And TikTok is at 67%.

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So when we think about, and this is us, us teens.

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So when we think about where teens are hanging out, there's a clump here

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of TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat.

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That's really not shocking or surprising, but it is a death

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nail for Facebook at this point.

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If your demographic is under 30, they're probably not on there.

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We have been covering for weeks now about how people under 30

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are not using Google for search.

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They're more likely to use Reddit and TikTok.

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Now we're seeing that they're not on Facebook.

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This could be trouble for Facebook.

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Facebook has been facing a ton of headwinds lately, where they are.

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Struggling because apple has changed their privacy rules.

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They're struggling because Google and Facebook have never gotten along.

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And now it's harder for Facebook to get traction with their ads.

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Now we know that Facebook is aging out.

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People are not as interested in it.

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It's interesting because I teach digital marketing all the time and

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I Al I still have this slide and it's been up there for a long time.

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And there's a little comment, is Facebook the next MySpace?

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And I've always said, no, it's just what people think, but there's been a lot of

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flight from Facebook, even among people who are over 30 at least in my circle.

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So it's an interesting thing to look at.

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It's an interesting thing that we need to watch and.

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Seeing the way these trends.

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So there are fewer people on Twitter who are teenagers.

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There are fewer people on Tumblr who are teenagers.

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We're starting to see like a real things are really starting to shake out, it is.

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And then like off the chart, everybody's on YouTube.

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YouTube, I have long been interested in YouTube.

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The ads, there are super cheap, for example, , everybody's on YouTube.

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It's just a long game to, to get traction there.

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And so that's the thing that you have to look at.

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If you're looking at your digital strategy and you are looking for

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people who are under 30, you have to start looking at these spaces where

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they're hanging out and figuring out how you can be there and what you can

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do to continue to attract those folks.

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And Facebook, isn't it.

Shelley:

That's.

Shelley:

The problem is YouTube, but YouTube is huge.

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It's oh, like being on TV, it's what part of TV where,

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what channel should I focus on?

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What, what time of day should I focus on it's?

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YouTube is the new television network, bigger than one network.

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It's, it's the thing.

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And of course, teenagers hang out there.

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Everybody hangs out on YouTube, but, finding those niches is not always easy.

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The algorithm can help with that but not always.

Shelley:

Absolutely.

Jen:

It's not the easiest and you know that, and you've successfully

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grown like multiple channels.

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And that it's a long game that it takes a while to find that niche.

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We were talking before the show about how we're tweaking some

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things and looking at how we can do things differently to continue to

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carve out the niche for this show.

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, we're doing all these AB tests where you use, I use tube, buddy.

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Is that, do you use that one or

Shelley:

do you, I just started using different.

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I pull thumbnails from Canva.

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I put 'em on, I create 'em from Canva.

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And then the second day I'll change my thumbnail to something that appeal to me.

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I'll get a whole page of canvas thumbnails and I look and I go, which one appeals

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pops out at me and I just grab it and then I'll just adjust it and make it mine and

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But yeah.

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So what we've been doing is for the women cooker business show, we've been

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running AB tests on thumbnails on YouTube.

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Using two buddies.

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So what it does, what it, what the AB test does is we have two different

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thumbnail covers, one that has our like cute little phases on it.

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And then another one that's more jazzy Hey, this is what we're talking about.

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And we're running.

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Yeah.

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Pick me.

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So we're running these AB tests to see if, and as I suspected, unfortunately

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no one wants to see our faces and , which is fine, but the more.

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Common YouTube thumbnails so far are testing very well.

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So we're gonna continue to do this.

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Two buddy is a really neat program because it will run the test for you.

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All you have to do is put like two different covers in there.

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So like you I've been using Canva and just uploading a second cover.

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And it's going through and doing its thing.

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And then at a certain point, it says we have enough data.

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Now, this is it.

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And it will set the actual thumbnail to whichever one wins.

Jen:

Oh, I see.

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So we'll see how it ultimately shakes out.

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But in terms of what all of you out there who are watching or listening can learn

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from this is you have to give marketing a.

Shelley:

Oh, we are saying, give marketing a chance.

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so you, a lot of people get really impatient and they're like

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this didn't work for two weeks.

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We have been, when did we do the, when did we start this show?

Jen:

Shelley?

Shelley:

January, February, January.

Jen:

Yeah.

Jen:

So it's been eight months of doing this every week.

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Except for maybe the one concussion week that we took off

Shelley:

yeah, I think wet off one or two weeks

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For health, for various reasons.

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Yeah.

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So we have enough information now to start saying, okay,

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here's what we think is working.

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Here's what we can maybe improve.

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And so we're starting to make some little change.

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Just to see if we can, tighten down in our niche a little bit more on

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YouTube, if we can attract more people through different channels.

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So I really encourage you to do the same, but be sure that you give things time and

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then things like an automated AB test.

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It takes the emotion out of it.

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You're like, okay, this is what's gonna happen.

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So yeah.

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And you make peace with it and you move on.

Jen:

So are you, why are you laughing at me?

Shelley:

Oh, we are saying

Jen:

It's a really, it's a really big problem.

Jen:

Like people tend to go, oh, that didn't work this week, yeah.

Jen:

And it's really unfortunate.

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So you have to really give things a chance.

Jen:

Cause that's all we're saying.

Jen:

That's right.

Jen:

Did you have any breaking news?

Jen:

No.

Shelley:

I think we should move into the training.

Jen:

All right.

Jen:

So Woohoo, eCommerce,

Shelley:

beginners guide

Jen:

eCommerce beginners guide

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strategy.

Shelley:

Ooh, strategy, a strategy session.

Jen:

The strategy is real S

Jen:

Let's see if I can do it this way.

Jen:

Nope Nope.

Jen:

Okay.

Jen:

So yeah, your e-commerce beginners guide create your first e-commerce strategy.

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So just so we're on the same page about e-commerce.

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When we're talking about e-commerce, it's the buying and selling of goods

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and services over the internet, AKA e-business online business.

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That's the first step is understanding what it is that we're talking about.

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Then we talk about eCommerce marketing.

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We are driving awareness and action sales and conversions to a business that sells

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products or services electronically.

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So part of the complexity of eCommerce is the whole thing isn't marketing.

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That's just one slice of having an online business.

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So the marketing piece is how you get people to a know that you exist.

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and B take action.

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And by action, we mean converting into an online customer.

Jen:

Do you have anything to add to you?

Shelley:

I think as you're doing this, it takes time, it could take you six

Shelley:

months to a year to figure out what it is you're gonna be offering, how you're

Shelley:

going to be presenting that to people.

Shelley:

Honing in on exactly what it is that people want naming your unique mechanism

Shelley:

in a way that attracts the target audience that you're looking for, all of this takes

Shelley:

time and and tweaking lots of tweaking.

Jen:

Absolutely.

Jen:

And for those of you who are with us live please send us your questions

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and comments as we go through this, cuz it's really important to help

Jen:

you process through some of this.

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So the first thing to really consider when we talk about

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e-commerce is how much things have changed and changed very rapidly.

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So the first question is how have your personal buying habits

Jen:

changed since the pandemic.

Shelley:

know a lot of people started buying their groceries

Shelley:

online having 'em delivered buying pretty much everything online.

Shelley:

And even if they're not able to have it delivered safe, if you wanted

Shelley:

to shop at best buy, you can buy it online and then go pick it up.

Shelley:

And, they bring it out to your car, things like that.

Shelley:

So we're looking for a lot more convenience in time saving and

Shelley:

we'll, we're willing to spend just a little bit extra, if we have to pay

Shelley:

for Amazon prime once a year, or if we have to pay for those delivery

Shelley:

charges I Kroger has recently.

Shelley:

Introduced something to try to keep up with Amazon and Walmart in ha they

Shelley:

call it boost where you can sign up and you pay a yearly fee and then all your

Shelley:

deliveries are free because people are more and more going towards deliveries.

Shelley:

And when you're shopping in the grocery store, like I do you're competing with

Shelley:

shoppers in there who work for the store, who are loading up, groceries

Shelley:

for those people who order online.

Shelley:

So you can see it all affecting the way that we shop for food and things

Shelley:

that you can get off of for Amazon,

Jen:

for instance.

Jen:

Absolutely.

Jen:

And I would say that my personal buying habits changed and went even more online.

Jen:

We did a lot online before and now it's just gotten more and more.

Jen:

More and more online.

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And so the reason for this question is that as a business owner, you have to

Jen:

look at yourself and your actions, because then it, if you can look through that

Jen:

lens as, what is it that I would want if I was buying X, Y, Z service, or if

Jen:

I was buying my own service, if you look at your products, if you look at your

Jen:

business through a personal lens, then you can really look at it and say, okay, how

Jen:

have my personal buying habits changed?

Jen:

And then it shifts you well, it more than shifts you into how have your

Jen:

business offerings changed since the.

Jen:

So many businesses, we talked about it very early on, on this podcast, right?

Jen:

As the pandemic broke, how some businesses were sitting out COVID and thinking

Jen:

that it would be short, other businesses were immediately flipping their services

Jen:

into a different form of business.

Jen:

Others were trying to, split the baby , which never really works out well when

Jen:

you're kinda like I'm gonna have one leg here and one leg there, you what we found

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because COVID ended up lasting so long.

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And in fact, there's still more variance out there is still continuing that this

Jen:

has really been a tremendous shift.

Jen:

So the next question to ask is how have your business offerings

Jen:

changed since the pandemic?

Jen:

I'll go first.

Jen:

This time for me, everything went.

Jen:

Yeah.

Jen:

I used to give a ton of presentations in person.

Jen:

Those are all online.

Jen:

Now those are continuing to be online.

Jen:

Now people can buy and book time with me straight from my website, because

Jen:

I've always been an online entrepreneur.

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And now I've leaned more into teaching into audio lessons.

Jen:

This is licensed IP that gets sold on another person's website.

Jen:

It's completely passive income.

Jen:

I just recorded once somebody else sells it.

Jen:

I have leaned into the things that seem to be more resilient to a crazy economy.

Jen:

and I have paid attention to my own buying habits and shifted into that.

Jen:

Now your business is newer than mine.

Jen:

So how have you shifted?

Jen:

Since the pandemic and you've been pretty much online.

Jen:

The whole time, right?

Jen:

Yeah.

Shelley:

Yeah.

Shelley:

We, at one point we did do a lot of going to trade shows.

Shelley:

, which we don't do anymore.

Shelley:

There aren't the trade shows that there used to be to just appear at, although

Shelley:

we are going to one at the end of the month and we're taking our gypsies kids

Shelley:

booked with us to show it off because it's a film and television Trade show.

Shelley:

And they call it film and media day and they used to do it at the

Shelley:

Santa Fe at the capital in February.

Shelley:

Now they're bringing it to Albuquerque and they're doing it

Shelley:

in August in the, in outdoors.

Shelley:

And it's gonna be so hot, but anyway, we're gonna go to that.

Shelley:

And but that is, is few and far between most of this stuff that we do is online.

Shelley:

And of course, the way to really capitalize on that is to have your

Shelley:

automations set up to where if people want to work with you, it's very frictionless.

Shelley:

All they have to do is go make a, an appointment for a free consultation.

Shelley:

And then you take them from that free consultation you make those offers, and

Shelley:

then you send them a proposal and it's.

Shelley:

All online.

Shelley:

But it's still face to face in that we do video calls and we speak

Shelley:

to them so that they can see us.

Shelley:

I think one of the things that we're seeing a desire for, with everybody

Shelley:

buying things online is assurance.

Shelley:

We want assurance, we want security that if I buy something

Shelley:

from this coach, I wanna get coaching and their coaching sucks.

Shelley:

And I didn't like it.

Shelley:

Can I get my money back?

Shelley:

What is my, what is my avenue to recoup any kind of loss?

Shelley:

I don't wanna take a loss.

Shelley:

So there's that, you have to have some guarantees in place as a business owner.

Shelley:

I believe if you're offering an online product like a course and

Shelley:

say, here's the course, go take it.

Shelley:

And then you.

Shelley:

Keep we'll keep in touch with you throughout.

Shelley:

And that at the end, we'll have a conference with you and see how you

Shelley:

liked it and what you still need.

Shelley:

And at that point, if they went through and they're like,

Shelley:

this was not what I wanted.

Shelley:

And it is, it was no use to me.

Shelley:

They should be able to get their money back at that point, so I agree.

Shelley:

There's Ts help a

Jen:

lot, guarantees, help a lot.

Jen:

And you know why?

Jen:

Because, and the research bears this out.

Jen:

I don't have a slide in here about this.

Jen:

I don't have a, any of my like proof that I usually put in here.

Jen:

Customers are way more savvy than they were before the pandemic.

Jen:

Yeah.

Jen:

So people not just you business owner are buying more stuff online and it's not just

Jen:

Shelley and I buying more stuff online.

Jen:

Everybody is.

Jen:

So now everybody knows.

Jen:

They're gonna track down.

Jen:

If you have fake reviews, they're gonna look for things like 30 day guarantees.

Jen:

They are gonna be looking for ways to make sure that you are for

Jen:

real, you're actually offering it.

Jen:

And you're gonna stand behind your word because for the last

Jen:

two plus years, people have been sitting on the couch buying stuff.

Jen:

Yeah.

Jen:

That's just what people have been doing.

Jen:

And it goes, it goes into everything.

Jen:

We also know that customers are a lot less loyal than they used to be.

Jen:

Loyalty is dead unless you have a lot of personalization.

Jen:

So all of the things that Shelley was just talking about that's concierge

Jen:

level services and as a small business, That's the type of services

Jen:

that you all need to be offering.

Jen:

You need to be hands on.

Jen:

It needs to be personable and personal, and you need to have

Jen:

things in place to have touch marks, touch bases with your people.

Jen:

And that's how you start to build loyalty.

Jen:

It's a whole new wild west ball game out there right now.

Shelley:

Yeah.

Shelley:

Which is why I think as content creators, we're being told, build

Shelley:

your audience first, get that loyalty first, and then they will buy from you.

Jen:

And I've been working on my content and getting it reinforced

Jen:

and selling it on other platforms.

Jen:

I have a lot out there that I know works and helps people.

Jen:

So there are a lot of ways to build that audience, reinforce that message.

Jen:

Find out how people respond to that, but you absolutely have to do that.

Jen:

Whoa.

Jen:

I went

Shelley:

Back, and forward.

Shelley:

There we are.

Jen:

Okay.

Jen:

All of this that we're talking about is really how marketing and eCommerce just

Jen:

created this digital disruption, right?

Jen:

It was like pandemic.

Jen:

Pandemonium is what I call it.

Jen:

it was like, everything came together.

Jen:

That's everything that we just described is really what's going on out there.

Jen:

Lot less loyalty.

Jen:

Everybody has expectations about everything being online.

Jen:

Everybody has expectations about how quickly they can buy from you.

Jen:

So it's not just enough to have products online.

Jen:

They also have to be able to buy it quickly and then move on to

Jen:

the next thing and hear from you.

Jen:

And those are the high points of the pandemic pandemonium.

Jen:

So that's why it's important to look at how you buy products and then see

Jen:

if you were providing that experience that you look for from other people

Jen:

when you are offering products.

Jen:

Oh, I didn't know.

Jen:

This was the next slide.

Jen:

Even my own deck is a surprise to me.

Shelley:

what's this is new.

Jen:

So I was really hoping that it was this one.

Jen:

Okay.

Jen:

Okay.

Jen:

So part of the complexity as we look into, and we'll go back and we'll talk

Jen:

about the eCommerce strategy in just a second, but the complexity of an eCommerce

Jen:

business is that it's not just marketing.

Jen:

We talked about that at the beginning, but I want you to see it in real life and

Jen:

you'll understand the complexity of, for most people of having a small business.

Jen:

That is, e-commerce a lot of marketing coaches.

Jen:

A lot of people make it sound like the entire business is online and you don't

Jen:

have to deal with people in real life.

Shelley:

And that's false.

Jen:

the complexity around e-commerce is that the entirety

Jen:

of your business is online.

Jen:

So products and services, you have to handle things like operations,

Jen:

sales, finance, and then marketing, which is a small slice of that.

Jen:

There's also all of the techy bits that make all of this magic happen, right?

Jen:

Plus you are still a human in the real world.

Jen:

and you are still navigating the real world.

Jen:

You're still marketing with people.

Jen:

And a lot of times the most successful e-commerce businesses start as small

Jen:

local businesses that are operating online, but making hay in their local

Jen:

community, a lot of people try to go big at the beginning and be like,

Jen:

I'm just gonna advertise everywhere.

Jen:

And the truth is you want your real true fans to be in your local community.

Jen:

And then that helps you become known.

Jen:

I've spent a lot of time training people in Portland, Oregon and

Jen:

throughout the state of Oregon.

Jen:

That's how you begin to get word of mouth.

Jen:

That's how you begin to get additional clients.

Jen:

That's how the, how SEO the ball starts rolling all of those types of things.

Jen:

So the complexity, honestly, for me around e-commerce is it is online and

Jen:

in real life to at least some extent

Shelley:

yeah.

Shelley:

Operations, it will, would include things like managing your time and

Shelley:

Slotting in time for all of these things.

Shelley:

So that you're having time to work on your products and services.

Shelley:

You're having time to work on marketing and sales.

Shelley:

You're having time to work on delivery of your products and dealing with

Shelley:

your finances, your income and your payments, monthly payments.

Shelley:

Yeah.

Shelley:

All the things that you need for your business to work, even just an online

Shelley:

business, you have to have stream yard, you have to have D script.

Shelley:

You have to have all these things just to do content

Shelley:

marketing and that's out, outgo.

Shelley:

So you gotta have some income to balance that up.

Shelley:

And your operations, I think, is your overall handling of all of those

Jen:

pieces.

Jen:

Yeah.

Jen:

It's how everything connects.

Jen:

It's like managing, managing, if you have people, operations comes

Jen:

under managing people and sometimes that is self leadership as well.

Jen:

It's not.

Jen:

If you don't have a staff, you still have to have operations.

Jen:

I would put a lot of your SOPs in the, in operations as well.

Jen:

These are your standard operating procedures.

Jen:

If you're a content creator straight up, a lot of that tends

Jen:

to get mixed up into marketing.

Jen:

But some of those SOPs are separate and those again are

Jen:

standard operating procedures.

Jen:

These are like checklists so that you can move through things quickly.

Jen:

I know Shelley, you have all these like weekly tasks that you do.

Jen:

Yeah.

Shelley:

Oh yeah.

Shelley:

Definitely.

Shelley:

Wanna have to wanna know what your bare minimums are.

Shelley:

That's I stress that a lot.

Shelley:

What are your bare minimums in order to maintain your level of

Shelley:

content creation in my case, and plug those into your calendar.

Shelley:

And those are non-negotiable you must get those done or if you're in the

Shelley:

hospital or whatever, somebody's gotta take over on those little bare minimums in

Jen:

order to keep go.

Jen:

Somebody has.

Jen:

Who's gonna cover it.

Jen:

These are all things that be written down and thought about.

Jen:

And this is why I have so many issues with the whole one funnel away stuff.

Jen:

It doesn't really cover it doesn't really cover all of this , and it also

Jen:

doesn't cover all of the in person in real life stuff, because the biggest

Jen:

challenge for an e-commerce business honestly, is if I meet you in real

Jen:

life and you tell me what you do.

Jen:

If I go online, is it gonna tell me the same thing?

Jen:

Am I gonna be confused?

Jen:

Is all of this gonna actually work?

Jen:

If you're selling something that requires taxes is your finance setup setting.

Jen:

That is, is it handling that, how much data entry are you having

Jen:

to do to, for this super easy passive income online business?

Jen:

So a lot of this, you have to be thinking about in advance.

Jen:

So now let's back up to the eCommerce strategy.

Jen:

So BA , you'll notice that some of these items have we are, I'm calling out on

Jen:

here, drop shipping eBooks courses.

Jen:

I could be wrong about other things that we have on our roadmap.

Jen:

So we are.

Jen:

An e-commerce series, I believe at this point, is that fair to say,

Jen:

Shelley yeah, this is the first

Shelley:

episode.

Shelley:

Last week we hinted at it and it was the overview and now we're

Shelley:

diving more deeply into the

Jen:

e-commerce series.

Jen:

Yeah.

Jen:

So today is the e-commerce strategy.

Jen:

I believe it's next week we talk about drop shipping and I've been writing

Jen:

all this stuff that I can't remember.

Jen:

I'll take your word for it.

Jen:

Cause I remember, so I've been doing a lot of writing and about this.

Jen:

So I know that we have a drop shipping episode.

Jen:

I know that we have a course showdown episode and I'm sure that some of these

Jen:

other aspects are going to fall into place and will be talking about some

Jen:

of the different ways that you can be selling services online, whether

Jen:

it's your entire business or not.

Jen:

So when I think about an e-commerce strategy.

Jen:

It's really important to be clear about what it is that we're selling.

Jen:

Now, you can say that's true of anything.

Jen:

But it's also especially important when you think about e-commerce.

Jen:

So the way I have broken this down for today is in four main

Jen:

categories, one physical products.

Jen:

So when we're talking about physical products, this is, are you making

Jen:

something and then shipping it out because then you have to deal with

Jen:

things like manufacturing, inventory, shipping, logistics, all of that,

Jen:

or are you creating something that someone else is gonna produce and

Jen:

ship for you, which is drop shipping and drop shipping is very popular.

Jen:

Very it's promoted a lot in the online e-commerce space shell.

Jen:

And I both have experience with this.

Jen:

I talk to a lot of business owners about this, that, especially when

Jen:

you're getting started with things like.

Jen:

Designing t-shirts I'm like, you don't want to have a garage full of t-shirts

Jen:

that you may or may not be able to sell and drop shipping is one way to do that.

Jen:

So you can be selling things online, somebody else makes it somebody

Jen:

else ships it, and it's a way to get your feet wet before you go all

Jen:

in, on creating physical products.

Jen:

There's another way of doing drop shipping through things like

Jen:

Amazon, which Shelley has a lot more experience with Amazon than I do.

Jen:

And we're gonna have a whole episode about that.

Jen:

Yeah.

Shelley:

Including writing and publishing a book on Amazon can

Shelley:

have your your digital version, your Kindle, and you can have a paperback

Shelley:

version that you can sell there.

Shelley:

And then if you are really ambitious, like Jen, you can

Shelley:

create an audio book to go with it.

Jen:

that's right.

Jen:

I do have an audio book out there.

Jen:

Yeah.

Jen:

Which I would consider that bumps into.

Jen:

Digital products.

Jen:

So digital products are so let's just back up for a second.

Jen:

So if you have physical products and you're dealing with things like inventory,

Jen:

shipping logistics, probably the backbone of that business is gonna be something

Jen:

like Shopify, unless you're doing drop shipping through Amazon and which case

Jen:

it could be a little bit different, but if you are creating products, you may or

Jen:

may not have a hybrid, meaning that you have a physical brick and mortar location

Jen:

and you are manufacturing and selling and shipping, you need something like

Jen:

a Shopify, big commerce, something that can handle that type of workload period.

Jen:

Otherwise you're go crazy trying.

Jen:

And

Shelley:

I understand Shopify is in starting to really integrate well with

Jen:

YouTube.

Jen:

Yes.

Jen:

They're starting to integrate well, Everything yes, they

Jen:

do have new YouTube stuff.

Jen:

They've bolstered their integrations with MailChimp.

Jen:

They're really trying to become the place for small business or small

Jen:

business owners who wanna create.

Jen:

I have also heard about restaurants creating Shopify websites, which I

Jen:

don't really recommend, but they're trying to be like everything.

Jen:

So you have to be careful about Shopify.

Jen:

Their best thing is helping people manage inventory, helping with things like they

Jen:

also came out recently with an email.

Jen:

I think they have a partnership now with Clavio, which is one of the

Jen:

email marketing providers for Shopify.

Jen:

It's a really good platform.

Jen:

It's great.

Jen:

When you're getting started, not super expensive.

Jen:

Now Shopify also does digital products.

Jen:

Now, when people talk about online businesses, a lot of times they're

Jen:

talking about digital products.

Jen:

So these can be your opt-ins.

Jen:

These can be your eBooks courses, a membership audio like I do.

Jen:

I have licensed IP, so that's licensed intellectual property.

Jen:

That's a fully passive income stream that I have when we

Jen:

talked about income streams.

Jen:

Last week, we talked about that a little bit, so you can be creating

Jen:

products and selling them online.

Jen:

So de depending on the type of online digital product that you

Jen:

are selling or in the case of an opt-in, you might be giving it away.

Jen:

How you build that.

Jen:

Really depends on the rest of your services.

Jen:

If it's only digital products, that could be one, one way of doing it.

Jen:

But if you also have online services like Shelley and I do, where we help

Jen:

people online with paid services, in addition to digital products, then you

Jen:

have to be looking at ways that you can both be offering things like eBooks and

Jen:

courses, and then moving into online services like workshops, webinars,

Jen:

group programs, taking appointments online is just not optional anymore.

Jen:

you have to be able to take all of that.

Jen:

Maybe you're gonna do quotes.

Jen:

Maybe you have a customer portal and building out a community.

Jen:

So you need to have platforms that can handle the full scope of what

Jen:

it is that you're offering online.

Shelley:

That's right.

Shelley:

And then of course, the hybrid, which just combines all of

Shelley:

the, all of these products.

Shelley:

Online services, the digital and the physical products.

Jen:

Yeah.

Jen:

Would you say that you're a hybrid?

Shelley:

We don't do that much with physical products.

Shelley:

So I would say we're mostly digital and online services digital

Shelley:

products and online services,

Jen:

except for the physical products are the books.

Jen:

But then, but that's drop shipping,

Shelley:

that's drop shipping.

Shelley:

So it comes from our brains.

Shelley:

It goes up in, into the cloud on Amazon.

Shelley:

And then if you want a paperback, then you buy the paperback

Shelley:

and they'll send it to you.

Shelley:

So it can become, a 3d product, but you could also just buy the

Shelley:

Kindle and it's still digital.

Shelley:

Yeah.

Shelley:

Yeah.

Jen:

So this is where your entire eCommerce strategy starts from.

Jen:

You have to be clear about.

Jen:

What it is you're selling.

Jen:

If it falls into one of these categories before you even get started building

Jen:

out like, oh, and I'm gonna have this website and I'm gonna build this

Jen:

sales funnel, and I'm gonna, this is the beginning of the whole thing.

Jen:

What are you offering?

Jen:

because then the whole rest of your strategy, because as we've talked about,

Jen:

the whole rest of the strategy is tech.

Jen:

So there are different tech tools that are created based on what

Jen:

it is you are trying to sell.

Jen:

You don't want a Shopify website, unless you're selling physical products

Jen:

and having to track inventory, you might need a WordPress website.

Jen:

If you're doing a ton of content, like I moved to ghost, it's

Jen:

also a content heavy website.

Jen:

If you are selling digital products only, then you might have, there's

Jen:

so many different ways that you can do that you could do.

Jen:

You could do things through things like send Fox or you could use like I

Jen:

think there's so many, my brain just exploded with options for like how you

Jen:

could build out a digital, only service.

Jen:

If you wanna have a courses and a community in some online services.

Jen:

One of the easiest platforms for people to get into right now is Squarespace.

Jen:

They have done a tremendous amount to make it easy, to be an online

Jen:

creator and have all of your things, including group programs

Jen:

and communities all on one platform.

Jen:

So you need to be aware and clear about what it is that you're doing so

Jen:

that you can build out the business side of your eCommerce strategy in

Jen:

a way that's easy for you to manage.

Jen:

That's the number one thing I think.

Jen:

But you also have to think about the budget yes, because eCommerce isn't free.

Jen:

There.

Jen:

I know there are a lot of people out there who say eCommerce is free.

Jen:

Like you can do this for free, get your free WordPress website.

Jen:

There's no such thing as a free WordPress website.

Jen:

There's no such thing as a free eCommerce site.

Jen:

Like you are paying fees, whether you're using shop Stripe or PayPal, you

Jen:

have to have some way of getting you through your support around like tech

Jen:

apps, admin, marketing, sales, product development, and product development

Jen:

is not just for physical products.

Jen:

You have to have some sort of product development strategy, because even

Jen:

if you're downloading it from your brain and selling it online, you have

Jen:

to start thinking about how much time that's gonna take, how hard it is

Jen:

for you to put those products online.

Jen:

What's the sales and marketing strategy behind that.

Jen:

And then if you're shipping, if it's

Shelley:

easy for the customer to find, purchase and use.

Shelley:

Yeah.

Jen:

Yeah.

Jen:

So I'm not sharing this to be discouraging.

Jen:

That's absolutely not.

Jen:

It I'm trying to set you up for success.

Jen:

And I think that's what Shelley is all about too.

Shelley:

That's right.

Shelley:

Yeah.

Shelley:

And we're trying to give you some, we've done this ourselves so we know how

Shelley:

difficult it can be and how alone you can feel when you're in the middle of trying

Shelley:

to choose platforms and trying to decide what, how much money to spend on those

Shelley:

platforms and then going back and forth.

Shelley:

And no, I have my course on here.

Shelley:

No, I don't like it anymore.

Shelley:

I wanna move it over here.

Shelley:

And there's it's such a heavy lift sometimes to move things

Shelley:

so we wanna get it right the first time, whenever possible.

Jen:

Absolutely.

Jen:

And I say that as someone who's had, I think four different domains and

Jen:

three different platforms and yeah, , we've all kind of been through it.

Jen:

I had my WordPress website for years and then I was like, this

Jen:

is not giving me joy anymore.

Jen:

I do not enjoy updating WordPress.

Jen:

I don't like having all that.

Jen:

So I found what was easiest for me.

Jen:

And you need to find what's easiest for you.

Jen:

Yeah.

Jen:

Because it has to be tools, especially if you're online only, you have to

Jen:

have tools that are easy for you to use and that work with other things.

Jen:

Like in eCommerce, it's absolutely essential.

Jen:

Everything has to be integrated.

Jen:

You do not have time for when orders start coming in and clients and all

Jen:

the things you don't have time for.

Jen:

Oh, somebody signed up now I need to like, go do the thing.

Jen:

Like it has to , some automation is good and you have to build that in.

Jen:

Yes.

Jen:

And the, and what I always say is you automate, so you can be

Jen:

more human in your business.

Jen:

Yes.

Jen:

So you automate, you have to think about it, like what has to be automated and

Jen:

then the rest of it, like I said, as a small businesses, you have to think

Jen:

of it as a concierge type service.

Jen:

so set up a whole budget and understand too.

Jen:

I think Shelley will agree with me on this that you can have, like my good

Jen:

enough, I work on with clients on this all the time start good enough.

Jen:

And then you can branch into what.

Jen:

What the next 2.0 is

Shelley:

that's right.

Shelley:

Don't wait.

Shelley:

Don't put it off.

Shelley:

Don't procrastinate because it's not good enough.

Shelley:

It is good enough.

Shelley:

Yeah, it started.

Shelley:

And then you can make it better.

Jen:

Yeah.

Jen:

Get it out there.

Jen:

And then you can make it better for sure.

Jen:

One of the things that we said we would talk about is when you're

Jen:

talking about one of the things that's really important to think about as

Jen:

you embark on any project in your business, but especially e-commerce

Jen:

because there's so many moving parts is something that we call a SWAT analysis.

Jen:

And I have written about marketing SWAT analysis.

Jen:

That's it?

Jen:

womenconquerbiz.com/swot that's S W O T.

Jen:

You have to plan, define success, work on where your blind spots are

Jen:

and then seize the opportunities.

Jen:

So what SWAT means are strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

Jen:

So when you look at this, the top part, the strengths and weaknesses

Jen:

are within your own organization.

Jen:

What is it that you are really good at?

Jen:

That you are a hundred percent always gonna do every time.

Jen:

And then under weaknesses, it's what is it that doesn't bring me joy?

Jen:

What is it that I don't enjoy doing?

Jen:

What is it that I'm never gonna do when you have that little honest

Jen:

conversation with yourself, these are likely things that you need

Jen:

to hire for, you need to plan for.

Jen:

We all have things that we don't like.

Shelley:

Yes, exactly.

Shelley:

Yeah, Toby always takes care of the taxes and the finances and cuz that's his thing.

Shelley:

He's like I got this, he's been, he's a, been a small business owner since 1979.

Shelley:

He went through the small business administration to learn all about it.

Shelley:

And he's always had an accountant and a lawyer and an insurance

Shelley:

agent that he worked with.

Shelley:

But so he knows what needs to be done and when it needs to be done

Shelley:

and he takes care of all of that.

Shelley:

And I take care of the things that I'm good at, which is the content creation

Shelley:

and the outreach and things like that.

Shelley:

So it works really well.

Shelley:

When you have a partner who compliments your style.

Shelley:

If you don't have a partner, you can either find one or work with a mentor.

Shelley:

Or as Jen said, you can hire out or Toby used to do, he had an insurance agent,

Shelley:

an accountant and a lawyer that he always worked with when he needed that.

Shelley:

Yeah.

Shelley:

Yeah.

Jen:

A hundred percent.

Jen:

A hundred percent.

Jen:

So that is the strengths and weaknesses.

Jen:

We've got half the SWAT, the bottom of the SWAT are opportunities and threats.

Jen:

These are things outside of your organization that can either

Jen:

help you or hinder your success.

Jen:

And it's really important to think about these.

Jen:

I think that a lot of times we think I'm just gonna do it all.

Jen:

It's all gonna be great.

Jen:

We don't think about things like strategic partnerships.

Jen:

That's something we talked about.

Jen:

Last week, we were talking about additional revenue streams

Jen:

and how to build out and make your business more resilient.

Jen:

Who are the people who can help you?

Jen:

Those are opportunities.

Jen:

Where are the people who are your biggest fans?

Jen:

Are you paying attention to what is going on outside of your business that can

Jen:

really help you, for example, starting this show that had not been going for a

Jen:

while with Shelley was an opportunity.

Jen:

And we saw it as a way to help both of us.

Shelley:

That's right.

Shelley:

And it has we've had, and it has, and then again, it's a partnership where

Shelley:

Jen's good at things that I'm not, and I'm good at things that she's a

Shelley:

hundred percent she could be better at if she had the time to spend on it.

Shelley:

I will put it that way.

Shelley:

It's not that she's not good at it is that she doesn't have the time for it.

Jen:

I think I, I think there are things that you're good at

Jen:

then I'm not, I'm in a hundred.

Shelley:

Stand, there are things that I like to do that you don't like to do.

Shelley:

So a hundred percent, it's a complimentary partnership and those are ideal.

Jen:

Absolutely.

Jen:

Yeah.

Jen:

Threats are things that can upset your apple cart.

Jen:

These are forces outside of your control outside of your organization

Jen:

that can make things go haywire.

Jen:

Okay.

Jen:

So one of the things that everybody should have on their SWAT right now

Jen:

is, economic disruptions can happen.

Jen:

There could be a recession COVID could come back.

Jen:

Hardcore monkeypox could be another global pandemic.

Jen:

Like you have to think about the forces outside of your control.

Jen:

And the reason that you do that isn't to freak yourself out so you can.

Jen:

Other examples of threats that could be happening that could make it harder

Jen:

for you to succeed are what are going on, what's going on in your industry?

Jen:

What's going on in like direct competition.

Jen:

Yeah.

Jen:

Okay.

Jen:

So these are all just things to think about and they can help you really

Jen:

find success because in order to succeed, you have to clearly define

Jen:

what success looks like, so that you can figure out what your business

Jen:

needs when you've been successful.

Jen:

what it is that you're trying to do.

Jen:

And one of the ways that we do that is through strategy, thinking about what it

Jen:

is that we're selling, figuring out who can help us, what forces can make it more

Jen:

difficult, what we're never gonna do.

Jen:

And then that clearly defines for us a path ahead so we can achieve our goals.

Shelley:

That's right.

Shelley:

And I don't think they can always, be focused on money because you can't control

Shelley:

money as much as you can control some other things you can say as a coach, my

Shelley:

idea of success is that I help somebody to improve their lives by using my methods.

Shelley:

And that is, that's always gonna be a winner for you if you're a

Shelley:

coach, because , then you're always looking out for the other person and

Shelley:

their wellbeing and in, and that's just gonna pay dividends for you.

Jen:

Absolutely.

Jen:

Yeah.

Jen:

A hundred percent agree if you enjoyed this training.

Jen:

Look at that.

Jen:

My shiny little face.

Jen:

If you enjoyed this training I encourage you to do the marketing

Jen:

self-assessment checklist.

Jen:

It's helping you close the gaps on some of the things that you have out there.

Jen:

You can go to send fox.com/.

Jen:

WCB like it's for like women Macer business, send fox.com/wcb.

Jen:

Get your marketing.

Jen:

Self-assessment what do you have Shelley for your call to action today?

Jen:

Oh,

Shelley:

I'm going to encourage people to go check out my LinkedIn article and

Shelley:

subscribe to my LinkedIn newsletter.

Shelley:

I put it on a LinkedIn newsletter every Monday.

Shelley:

I let you know what's going on in my life and how that affects my business.

Shelley:

And it's really good if you are a content creator or a small business

Shelley:

person and you're feeling alone and you're feeling like I'm the only one

Shelley:

that's ever happens to, you can go read my LinkedIn newsletter and say, oh,

Shelley:

okay, maybe I'm not alone after all.

Shelley:

And if you go to L I, which is LinkedIn, L I dot Sheey, carney.com,

Shelley:

it'll take you right to my newsletter.

Shelley:

And then you can subscribe.

Shelley:

Look at you in

Jen:

Fancy little,

Shelley:

Otherwise the link is like a mile

Jen:

long.

Jen:

it is a mile long.

Jen:

Yeah.

Jen:

And we'll put a link to the article in the show notes.

Jen:

Yeah.

Jen:

We only have five minutes left cuz once again, I talk too long

Jen:

and I do that lets tweak of the

Shelley:

week, man.

Shelley:

But

Jen:

the week do you wanna do the tweak of the week?

Jen:

I can.

Jen:

. So the tweak of the week Shelley, do you wanna talk for a second about

Jen:

what happened this week with your.

Shelley:

Oh newsletter.

Shelley:

Yeah, so I think I made a mistake and somehow I screwed up my email

Shelley:

letter to where it was delivering it to people's spam boxes, including

Shelley:

my own spam box and Toby's spam box.

Shelley:

So we knew

Jen:

that my spam box, I checked last night.

Jen:

Yeah.

Jen:

And

Shelley:

we are active peop active subscribers, so that's wrong.

Shelley:

So I thought maybe it was the title because I had originally had the title

Shelley:

as con are you a content creator?

Shelley:

We want you.

Shelley:

And I thought, oh they thought it was something sexual when, because

Shelley:

it said we want you or something.

Shelley:

So they put it in spam and then I resent it and I think it still went to spam.

Shelley:

So maybe it was too many pictures or I don't know exactly what was wrong.

Jen:

So there are a couple, so that brings me to the other one.

Jen:

So if you're

Shelley:

on my email list, please check your spam post check your spam

Jen:

box.

Jen:

So there are a couple things I'm gonna use.

Jen:

I'm gonna do this for my newsletter this week.

Jen:

I usually tackle one big marketing problem every week.

Jen:

So if you are I have been dealing with this too.

Jen:

So emails landing in the spam box.

Jen:

One of the things that you can do that I think is really cool

Jen:

is you can warm up your inbox.

Jen:

That's what this is called.

Jen:

Something that people don't talk about as much.

Jen:

So the things that Shelley was talking about around like the titles

Jen:

and the content, all of that, that is one way that you can do it.

Jen:

And you can, there's a free email tester on mail genius, and you can

Jen:

test your email before you send it out and it will give you a score to

Jen:

see how well your email is testing.

Jen:

And that will.

Jen:

Help with all the things that Shelley is talking about.

Jen:

If it's likely that, apple, Google, all of the things are gonna say that it's

Jen:

spam and gonna end up in the spam box that will tell you that too many pictures, not

Jen:

too many links, not enough written words, all of that is what male genius will do.

Jen:

And there are a lot of ways that you can test it.

Jen:

And I can put that was a spur of the moment thing to add in here.

Jen:

So I have a couple of other links for how you can test that, to see how likely

Jen:

it is that it will end up in spam.

Jen:

The other thing that you can do is warm up and inbox.

Jen:

So I was landing in spam because I created two new email addresses to send

Jen:

my newsletters out of when you have a new.

Jen:

Or a new email address or a dedicated email address where all it is

Jen:

doing is sending out maybe cold sales, emails, or email marketing.

Jen:

Some of the, one of the things that you need to do is you can run these tests.

Jen:

So warmup inbox.com is one of them.

Jen:

It's the cheapest one, which is why I used it.

Jen:

I think there might be a couple of free ones out there.

Jen:

And what it does is it's constantly sending out emails back and forth.

Jen:

It's all filtered.

Jen:

So you don't see it to test where your emails are going.

Jen:

Are they landing in spam?

Jen:

Are they landing in the promotions tab?

Jen:

are they, where are they going?

Jen:

So what this does for you is it can be, it'll be sending

Jen:

it if it lands in a category.

Jen:

So by category, it means if it's in the promotions tab, if it's in

Jen:

SP if it's in the promotions tab, what's the other one social tab.

Jen:

Then if that's where these emails go, then it will market as important and put

Jen:

it in the inbox so it can help prevent it from landing in those extra tabs.

Jen:

If it lands in spam Using their automated service, then they do the same thing.

Jen:

They move it outta spam, they market as important.

Jen:

And what you can see on this chart here is that in the beginning, when

Jen:

I started using the service I had a lot of things ending up in spam

Jen:

and it has slowly decreased the use.

Jen:

So you can look and see like your reputation score, and then it

Jen:

goes through all of the different metrics that it's looking at for

Jen:

whether or not it's a viable email.

Jen:

Service.

Jen:

So there's all these indicators on the back end.

Jen:

They're the techy bits for whether or not it's likely to land in spam because of

Jen:

how it's set up in your techy back end.

Jen:

I'm not gonna show all of that because it has some things about my email that

Jen:

I don't wanna share publicly, but I will say that warmup inbox has a free

Jen:

seven day trial and it will display your reputation and a reputation report.

Jen:

So it tells you about all of the different key metrics the techy bits, that can

Jen:

mean that your message lands in spam.

Jen:

So you wanna kinda look at this from two different angles.

Jen:

One is the technical side and the other one is what are the actual words,

Jen:

pictures, links that you are sending out.

Jen:

And there are a couple of different tools for that.

Jen:

The warm up email thing is new to me.

Jen:

I didn't even know about it.

Jen:

That was like, people were talking about it on Twitter.

Jen:

Like they had a new product and they were like, how do I need to warm it up.

Jen:

So this also is very effective if you are sending out a lot of cold emails.

Jen:

So there's limb list.

Jen:

There's a few others.

Jen:

I think instantly is another one where if you're sending out cold

Jen:

emails to people like you have a list and you're sending out cold

Jen:

emails, these email warmup inboxes are sometimes built in to things like lend

Jen:

list and instantly that will help.

Jen:

You like stay out of the spam inbox.

Jen:

If you're sending a lot of cold emails, these are emails to people.

Jen:

You do not know who are not subscribed to your list.

Jen:

So there are a lot of little tricks out there to try to keep you in the inbox.

Jen:

I think it's what everybody wants to do because email marketing is

Jen:

one of the most effective methods of marketing available for small

Shelley:

businesses.

Shelley:

Excellent.

Shelley:

I'm looking forward to trying those things.

Jen:

They're fun.

Jen:

Yes.

Jen:

Okay.

Jen:

So are you ready for inspirational nugget?

Shelley:

Let's quickly give you your very quick little inspirational nugget here.

Shelley:

Even one minute without playing the blame game is progress in the art of living.

Shelley:

And I equate making excuses with blame because you're blaming

Shelley:

circumstances or other people for your inability to get something done.

Shelley:

I do this a lot.

Shelley:

I have these wonderful coaches.

Shelley:

They put out these great programs and I know they exist and I still

Shelley:

don't get myself to go there and watch those courses and take

Shelley:

advantage of them, even though I can.

Shelley:

And I know I should.

Shelley:

And so I come up with all these excuses, why I can't, and that's the same

Shelley:

as blaming circumstances where other people, but if you sweep away all of

Shelley:

the blame and you look at the real.

Shelley:

Cause the root cause of why am I not doing this?

Shelley:

It's because I'm usually, it's almost always, I'm afraid.

Shelley:

, I'm afraid that if I go in there and work on this and I try it, it's gonna cost me

Shelley:

time and money and it still won't work.

Shelley:

And so I'm afraid of that.

Shelley:

And so I make excuses not to do it.

Shelley:

So for the next week, let's try to sweep away all of the excuses

Shelley:

and all of the blame and get down to the root cause of why it is.

Shelley:

We're not doing something that we know we should.

Shelley:

What do you think.

Shelley:

That

Jen:

sounds great.

Jen:

Absolutely.

Jen:

Thank you.

Jen:

I needed that.

Jen:

Yeah.

Shelley:

thank you.

Shelley:

Thank we all before.

Jen:

Thank you for watching and listening to the women conquer business show.

Jen:

It was so great to have people on.

Jen:

If you have any questions or comments, you can message us@helloatwomenconquerbiz.com.

Jen:

I'm a real human, you just saw my inbox warm up, so you know that I

Jen:

will get it and I'll reply to it.

Shelley:

That's right.

Shelley:

Thank you all for being here and we'll see you again next week.

Shelley:

Thank you for joining the women conquer business podcast, hosted by

Shelley:

Shelley Carney and Jen McFarland.

Shelley:

Please subscribe and leave a comment or question regarding your most challenging

Shelley:

content creation or business problem.

Shelley:

Then share this podcast with family and friends so they can find the support.

Shelley:

They need to expand their brand and share their message with the.

Shelley:

Check the show notes for links to valuable resources and come back again next week.

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