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In today’s Q&A, we are helping Laura figure out what she needs to create to be successful (even though she’s shy on camera) in her online business.
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Resources Mentioned in this Episode
- Today’s Expert is Kate Erickson of EntrepreneurOnFire.com
- Check out Kate’s podcast
Let’s dive into this week’s question!
JOCELYN: Hey y’all! You’re listening to an expert Q&A with S&J. Today’s expert is Kate Erickson of Kate’s Take, the Entrepreneur on Fire audio blog.
Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast where life always comes before work. We’re your hosts, Shane and Jocelyn Sams. Join us, each week, as we teach you how to flip your lifestyle upside-down by selling stuff online. Are you ready for something different? All right, let’s get started.
SHANE: What’s going on guys, welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle Expert Q&A with S&J. Jocelyn and I always say, we do not have all the answers and you send us so many questions, sometimes we just scratch our heads. So we wanted to start bringing on some experts to really give you guys the best answers to the questions that you send us. We are really excited today, to have a special guest on our show; it is Kate Erickson from Kate’s Take, the Entrepreneur on Fire audio blog and Entrepreneuronfire.com. Kate, welcome to the show.
KATE: Shane and Jocelyn, thank you guys so much for inviting me on, I’m stoked to be here.
JOCELYN: Yeah, we are very excited to have you and I know that our listeners will love your advice for them.
SHANE: That’s right.
JOCELYN: So, let’s start out with today’s first question; this is from Laura and Laura says, “I’m so confused about what to create. Everything I hear and read online says I need a blog, a podcast, a YouTube channel, a webinar to speak live, etcetera to be successful. Where should I start? I’m a little scared because I hate talking and being on camera. Do I need all that to make it? I’m a little overwhelmed and would love some advice.”
SHANE: We get this question all the time Kate, because you know, people, I think they see a lot of people doing all these things and so they think they have to too. So what’s your take on that? What do you think about this question? Where do they need to start at?
KATE: Well, I can totally relate to Laura and I think this is such a timely question because there’s so much information out there and Shane to your point, there’s a lot of people who are able to do it all, but that’s because they have built their business over years of work and so they are able to dabble in all these different areas. But, my best piece of advice for Laura would be to focus. So, you really wanna start by figuring out what are your biggest strengths, how can you best deliver value to your perfect customer. So is that through a blog, is that through a YouTube channel, is that through a podcast? You wanna just start by figuring out how you can best deliver that content and focus on that one medium and then after you’ve gotten to the point where you are actually delivering consistent, valuable content through that one medium, then you can start to kinda look out at all the other options that are out there for you.
SHANE: So let’s look at that, just maybe, as an example; let’s say you were starting out, okay, what medium would you choose to communicate with, and maybe, what’s the one social network that you would focus on, if you were just starting out today?
KATE: Yeah, well, I can take it back to the day I joined Entrepreneur on Fire and it was very clear to me that writing was a strength of mine and it’s also something that I was also really passionate about. So the very first thing that I did when I started here at Entrepreneur on Fire was I started writing our blog and that’s how I started out. I didn’t launch my podcast until probably eight months after that, or actually even longer than that, over a year. And so you know, I really focused on the blog and improving my skill as a writer before I did anything else. And I would say for a social network, you know, I think that when I first started, Facebook was probably the biggest. Twitter was around, but I wasn’t really seeing a ton of traction over there and so I really kept my focus on Facebook for some time and that’s gonna evolve though. I mean, you are gonna start to recognize where most of your customers are hanging out at and I think that at that point, you can kind of test and tweak and jump on a couple of different platforms to try and see where are most of your people at and where are you building the strongest connections. For me at that time, it was Facebook and now, I would say probably I find myself on Twitter more often because I found that you know, I’m getting more engagement and more feedback from my audience on Twitter than I am on Facebook. So I spend more time there now.
SHANE: Another thing too for everyone listening, it’s cool that this question came into – it sounds like it’s before she started trying to get into all the places, you know, but like if you are out there and you are trying to do a hundred things, you can totally just stop some of the things and it’s not going to kill your business. I remember, when we first started, I started a podcast for football coaches because I love to talk, that’s my strength, you know, but Jocelyn, she was like well, ‘I’m gonna start a podcast too for librarians’ but I’ll let her tell you, she actually cancelled that podcast quite a few episodes in and Jocelyn can tell you why.
JOCELYN: Yeah, I was sort of like Laura a little bit; you know, you see all these people who are successful and you’re like, ‘Oh, they’re doing all these things so I need to do all these things too.’ But a podcast was not the best way for me to communicate with my audience.
SHANE: And it takes a lot of time to make a podcast. Like people don’t realize.
JOCELYN: Right, and it’s funny because, you know, I sort of, I did a little survey and I’m like, ‘Do you listen to the Elementary Librarian podcast?’ And people were kinda like, ‘Eh, yeah.’ Like a few people and the funny thing is that since I have stopped recording it, I think I can remember only one email being like, ‘What happened to the podcast?’
SHANE: Yeah, but then she totally focused on blog content and the brand grew, and grew and grew because like you said, focus. She focused on one thing and once that happened, now she can do other things.
KATE: Yeah, super-smart to ask for feedback; I mean, once you’ve started, you know, and you feel like you have some people following you whether it be on your blog or your podcast, just ask them.
SHANE: Yeah, so the moral of the story here is, you got to be somewhere before you can be everywhere so you better go and figure out what you’re good at and try that first and then you’ll have a chance. That was a great answer to that question Kate; could you tell our listeners where they can find out more about you, what you do, and maybe how they can reach out and contact you?
KATE: Absolutely, everything that we create and put out there can be found on Eofire.com and I’d love for people to reach out via email if they’d like to. I’m Kate@entrepreneuronfire.com.
JOCELYN: All right, awesome. Thank you so much for that awesome answer, I know that people are going to love it.
SHANE: And for everybody out there, go out there, take action, flip your life. We’ll see you next time.
JOCELYN: Bye!
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John Lee Dumas says
This ep is da BOMB!
Shane Sams says
You know it JDL! #Fuse #Ignite #BOOM
Kate Erickson says
So honored to be invited on the show to help out on a Q&A session with S&J 🙂 Thank you both for having me on!