I love doing business coaching. I do it really exclusively on the side. It’s not a main part of my business. I’m very focused on motherhood, minimalism and my courses. But I have learned so much from turning my blog into a multiple seven figure business in a very short amount of time. And I think there’s something to be said for that.
Recently a woman reached out to me on Instagram and wanted to learn all the business things. We were messaging back and forth and I had the thought, “What if I just got her on and gave her a free introductory business coaching call and we made it an episode?” So, that’s what we did.
Amelia has three kids and a fourth on the way, and she’s running a business with a similar model to mine. This is a super interesting call and I really hope that you get some golden nuggets from it. Let’s jump in!
In This Episode Allie Discusses:
Prioritizing in business
Monetizing your blog
Shifting from audience to tribe
Growing your tribe
Growing your business
The negative side of affiliate links
Creating content
Growing your email list
Mentioned in this Episode:
Allie’s Facebook group
Allie’s Courses (Use the code PURPOSESHOW for 10% off!)
I believe you can make money (and lots of it!) doing what you love and teaching people to better their lives.
If you’ve got a business and a dream, but you need some guidance in moving it forward, I’d love to talk to you.
Mom life. We are surrounded with the message that it’s the tired life. The no-time-for-myself life. The hard life. And while it is hard and full of lots of servitude, the idea that motherhood means a joyless life is something I am passionate about putting a stop to. I’m on a mission to help you stop counting down the minutes till bedtime, at least most days. I want you to stop cleaning up after your kid’s childhood and start being present for it. Start enjoying it. I believe in John 10:10 “that we are called to abundant life” and I know mothers are not excluded from that promise. Join me in conversations about simplicity, minimalism and lots of other good stuff that leads to a life of less for the sake of enjoying more in your motherhood. I’m Allie Casazza and this is The Purpose Show.
Hi, sweet friend! Welcome to another episode of The Purpose Show! I’m so glad that you’re here. I’m so glad that you have put me into your day and that you are spending time refilling yourself a little bit and taking time for you because that is what we need to do in order to show up for our families and those who need us the most in the best way that we possibly can. So, “good job!” If no one’s told you today, you are beautiful! You are doing an absolutely phenomenal job. Even in your messiness and your mistakes, you are doing great!
This episode is different than anything we’ve done before on the show. Essentially, I am doing a business coaching call with somebody and we recorded it and did it for the podcast live. This person is somebody who reached out on Instagram when I was taking questions for the podcast and she wanted to learn all the business things.
We were messaging back and forth a little bit and I had the thought, “What if I just got this person on and gave her a free introductory business coaching call and we made it as an episode?” So, that’s what this is and I think it’s pretty cool.
I love doing business coaching. I do it really exclusively on the side. It’s not a main part of my business at all. I’m very focused on moms, motherhood, courses and all of that. But I have learned so much in the last few years of my business turning a blog into a business and turning that into a multiple seven figure business in about 18 months, so I think there’s something to be said for that.
I have a lot of things that I do differently than most people, a lot of things that I believe. “I love to balance strategy and spirit,” is what I like to say. So, there is strategy that needs to be in place. There are things we can do to increase your engagement on social media, grow your email list, convert people to customers, and all that good stuff.
But there’s also a spiritual side to running a business, especially as a female entrepreneur. There are money blocks, success blocks and things that can come up that you need to take care of in your mindset and your inner person, your spirit. And that’s how I approach business coaching.
I love the few clients that I do have time to take on. I love working with them. Whenever I have spots open up, I always want to fill them right away because I love this side of what I do.
So, we’re going to dive into this live free coaching call with this amazing mom who’s running a business. She has three kids and she’s pregnant with her fourth, and she’s running a business with a similar model to mine. This is a super interesting call and I really hope that you get some golden nuggets from it and you enjoy it.
ALLIE: Thank you for being here with us.
AMELIA: I am so excited!
ALLIE: It’s going to be good!
ALLIE: All right, so tell us a little bit about what your business is. I’ll get you to the point of your actual business now, but I know that we were talking before we hit record that you had started as kind of a lifestyle/faith blog. Just the same as me. I don’t know if you guys know this, but I had a blog called The Purposeful Housewife that I stopped and shut down because it just wasn’t aligned with what I wanted to do.
And Amelia was sharing that that was her story too, and just not really knowing what to do with all these ideas and content stirring up in her heart, and knowing that that wasn’t really it.
So, tell us about what you’re doing now. And I love what you said earlier about your heart for women too. So, share that.
AMELIA: Yeah. So last December, right after Christmas, I had been thinking about starting a blog for probably a year and lots of people had told me, “Oh, you should start a blog!” And I’m like, “Yeah, it’s just terrifying a little bit to put yourself out there.” But the day after Christmas, I finally was like, “Okay, I’m buying a domain. I’m doing this whether I’m scared or not.” And at the time I was going into it—and I feel like this is still kind of what is on my heart as far as my blog and business is—just helping women who are struggling. At the time I started a blog, it was called The Glorious Mess, which is pretty ironic since now I’m talking about getting rid of mess.
ALLIE: I like it!
AMELIA: So that was intended to help women who were in the struggle. I guess because of the struggle I’ve been through, I knew that there were not a lot of people talking about the being in the trenches part.
And I’m like, “I want to give hope to the women who are in the really hard seasons.” I did that for a few months and just wasn’t really feeling it. I knew I wanted to be helping women in this online space somehow, but I didn’t feel like that was where I was supposed to be.
So, like I was telling you before, I think I was watching a webinar or something about finding your niche and blogging, and whoever was hosting it said something like, “What are you already good at? What are you already doing that is working for you?” And I was like, “Well, you know, I’m working on my marriage, but I don’t feel like I have that like, “Oh! I am good at this.”
Then I started writing down areas of my life where I’m like, “Okay, I feel like I’m good at this and it’s something I could help other people with.”
Following you and other people over probably a year or two before that, I had drastically de-cluttered our stuff. I went from being an accumulator—when someone was like, “Oh, I have this, it’s free. Do you want it?” I’d be like, “Sure.” I’d just take all this stuff because it’s free or a good deal or whatever.
I changed my whole mindset in the way I approach stuff and was so much happier with less. I feel like my kids were happier with less. It changed the overall stress of my motherhood because I feel like clutter is a major trigger for me. And I was like, “If this has helped me so much…”
I felt that burden to help women, but I felt like the spiritual way to approach it was: I need to be helping them in their faith walk or their marriage. But I was like, “No, there are other ways to help women. I’m already living proof that it’s helped me, so this kind of just makes sense, it clicks and I love talking about it.” It’s something I love talking about and actually doing myself.
ALLIE: When you have a revelation like that…what you’re describing is that entrepreneurial spirit—“I learned that helped me, now my life is better.” I think this drive to help, share, and spread is a huge part of the entrepreneurial spirit, if not the whole thing.
I think it’s beautiful and I think it’s something that God gave you because He needs people like us to take what we learn and change the world. We’re figure-out-ers. You’re a 1 on the Enneagram; I’m an 8. We are the figure-out-ers, the not-stop-til-it’s-fixed people. And we have that drive to share. See how that so perfectly goes together? You are beautifully and wonderfully created to do that and to change the world. That’s amazing.
And I think that from a spiritual faith perspective, it’s a religious thing to you to feel like, “Oh I should be talking about this.” But listen, nobody is going to give a rip about reading their Bible, praying, or making time for that if they have too much clutter in their life. So, you are making a way for them to be more of whatever their faith is. And that is such a huge gift. So, I just want to encourage you in that.
AMELIA: I love looking at it like that.
ALLIE: Yeah. You are just paving the way for other people to have more of that. You are a simplifier. You are a problem-solver and a figure-out-er, and then they can go and they can live more of their faith.
If that thought ever creeps back in or people start to message you things like, “I know you’re a Christian, why don’t you ever…” Just say to yourself or to them: “It’s not my niche. That’s not what I’m here to do and it’s no your place to tell me what my place is to do.”
AMELIA: I love that perspective.
ALLIE: Let’s get into the nitty gritty business stuff. Tell me about where you’re at in your business right now. I know that’s a loaded question, but as briefly as possible, where are you at right now? What is your thing you are trying to teach right now? Because you’ve got to start to niche down to one thing, then you can expand. So, where are you at with that?
AMELIA: I made a new blog and told people, “You know, I’m kind of pivoting. I’m going to move more towards this.” Which I was already talking about anyway just in stories or whatever because it’s what I like to do. I feel I’m still in the baby stages of making this a business in that I’m not monetizing yet. I feel like I’m not at that point obviously because people don’t trust me yet and I don’t feel like I’ve given them enough reason to have a reason to buy from me, if that makes sense.
So, right now I’m trying to lay the groundwork of putting content out there that people are going to connect with. I’ve switched from blog more towards YouTube just because I figured out I liked making videos more than I do writing.
I’m very new to the YouTube side of things and just trying to figure out, “Okay, I know I want to be putting consistent content out there.” My biggest goal right now is just getting that out there so that it gives people insight into what I do so that they’ll one day be at the point where they’re like, “You know what? She’s helped me with this stuff, so I want to go and buy this because I know it’ll help me because she’s already helped me in these other things.”
I would eventually like to do courses. My goal is to have passive income where I’m not having to necessarily coach individually, that kind of thing. I don’t know, maybe down the road I would do coaching. I feel like that does gives you good experience, but eventually I want to be doing something that can make me money while I’m not even at the desk and l don’t have to be head down, focused.
ALLIE: You want to be making money while you’re living your life.
AMELIA: Yeah. And I don’t want to lose my life to my business. That’s huge to me. I want my priority to stay, “My family is first.” That’s what I’ve always admired about you. I feel like you’re really good about prioritizing, “Okay, my husband and my kids are the most important and my business comes second.” But then I see you also doing amazing things in your business, so I’m like, “Okay, she’s on to something.”
ALLIE: Thank you. That means a lot to me.
When we talked in the beginning, before we hit record, and we’re going to say it again for the listeners: there’s front stage and backstage. That’s how I see my life, really, but specifically my business.
So, front stage is what is the finished product. The things that the audience is aware of, that they are seeing like, Instagram stories and posts, live streams, launches.
On the back end, it’s like the head of an avalanche and then you look under the water and it’s a thousand feet deep. You would see that I have been planning that launch for a year. I have been making that course for six months. I took two hours to craft that Instagram post because it was particularly hard for me. But you’re not seeing all of that.
I think the backstage stuff is also the heart stuff, like my balance between family and marriage and business. That is a decision that you need to make, which you already have because you’re talking about it. What are your priorities?
Greg McKeown says, “If you don’t prioritize your life, someone else will.” And I think if you don’t prioritize your life, everyone else will. Because then people just walk all over you.
Once you build a tribe, people begin to think that you owe them something. And that pressure to cultivate that tribe is heavy. But you need to decide, “No, I don’t owe my audience anything. I’m here to help. I’m here to serve and my priority is my family.” That’s just a simple decision.
Then you’ve got to set up regular check-ins for yourself. Is that how I’m actually living? Because we all say our priority is God and then our marriages and then our families, but then we live our lives stalking everyone else’s life on Facebook. And working on our businesses because money. And not going on a date night, not playing with our kids, not even knowing what’s going on in their week because we were so wrapped up in all the other things.
What do you, Amelia, need to check in on that? For me, it’s a weekly thing. I gotta be on it. Every Sunday, I sit, I connect with my husband and we go over the week and I do a gut check.
Which kid out of the four do I kind of feel like, I always ask like, “Do I have their hearts?” And if it’s a “no,” what am I going to do that week to get her heart or get his heart, to get closer to him, to know what’s going on in their life and to connect?
And so the decision is, “This is my priority, then my business.” And I have to have that because I freaking love my business. I love working. It sets me on fire. It lights me up. I love it. So, it’s very easy for me to like…”Whoops!…I switched it.” But I’ve got to check in. For me it’s weekly check-ins.
For my friend, it’s yearly. She can go a year and know, “I’m living in my priority.”
That’s a preference. As a woman and a mother, it is so important that you feel aligned because people will start to say things like, “I see you on Instagram doing all of these things, and so that obviously means I know everything about your life, everything that you ever do, and I don’t see you very much with your family.” They’ll start to poke, say things, drop thoughts in your head and you’ve got to know, “You are just seeing the front end. You have no idea.”
People think I share everything and they actually really don’t know very much at all about how I spend my day. It’s amazing. It’s a facade and it’s not that I’m being fake, it’s just that I’m having boundaries. I don’t want to share that part. It’s not your business. It’s not moving my business forward, so why would I share that? Having those boundaries will look different for you than for me, but make that decision.
Let’s talk about money and passive income if you’re okay with that.
AMELIA: That would be awesome.
ALLIE: I want to know how long you’ve been, as you said, “cultivating the relationship” with them and putting out free content.
AMELIA: Probably three to four months, so definitely still in the baby phase I feel like.
ALLIE: I think that you can establish expertise in a couple months if you are putting out regular content. Let’s just use me as an example since everyone here knows what I do and you know what I do. My expertise is simplicity. My expertise is removing clutter from home and life and calendar.
I started, though, with one thing. I started with just home and then I added the other things in from there. Laser focus in on what your one thing is. Not on, “I want to help women who are struggling,” But with what? Who is she? What is she struggling with? What is she crying about? What is she Googling? What are the thoughts in her head? Get in there so much that she finds you and she’s like, “This person must have a camera in my house. She knows everything that I’m thinking, saying, and worrying about.”
Then spend a few months like you have been. Maybe you might even want to add another month if after what I’m saying you’re like, “Oh, I haven’t been that laser focused. I want to spend a few more weeks laser focused on that thing.” So, spend a few weeks just laser focused on cultivating that for her.
For me, that was when I turned my blog into more of a business focus. And I didn’t have any way of monetizing or know I was going to. But I switched focus because I knew I wanted to grow something else and something different than what I was previously doing.
I started sharing my home and sharing, “This is a before and after…This is my kids’ room…This is how we purge the toys…This is what I’m learning…My daughter’s obsessed with stuffed animals and thinks everything is a baby, has life and personality, and this is why that’s hard… This is what I’m learning in this study that I found that shows that that age automatically gives souls to every inanimate object and it’s normal, and this is what I’m doing to wait it out…And how I’m not going to damage my kids with what I’m learning…This is my depression log and it’s totally cleared up since I started decluttering. Look at that!”
I shared that process that I now tell as my “back-then story” with that small tribe. Those people, those 50 people that read my little blog. I don’t even know why they were there, but I know who they are. I know them by name. I still see their profile pictures pop up. They are so precious to me. I showed up for them and served them.
So, when I was ready to say, “Hey, what else can I do for you guys?” They told me what they wanted and I made it a course and they all bought it for $40. And now they still have this $300 program that they got for $39.99 four years ago.
As you’re thinking about it, what’s coming up for you that you’re not doing? From what I just said, is there anything that came up like, “Oh shoot! I’m doing that wrong.”
AMELIA: I feel like I’m doing what you’re saying. Maybe not enough. I guess my big thing is l don’t have a big following and I don’t know how big your following was when you launched your first paid thing. But I’m like, “Okay, if there aren’t many people here already, how am I going to get the people to come?” I guess I would love to hear more about when you switched to, “Okay, I’m gonna make money now.” How did that come about? The first step that you took, was it a successful launch? If it was a course or whatever it was. Just getting from, “Okay, this is something I want to do,” to “I’m doing it, I’m making money.” Even if it’s not a lot, I’d love to make a dollar and feel like this work I’m putting in is coming back.
ALLIE: Turning into something.
AMELIA: Yeah. Yeah, for sure.
ALLIE: Okay. Yes. So, the way that you get more people to come is showing up for the people that are already there. And that’s not a sexy answer, but it is the truth.
Whoever you have…I’m sure you can think of some people that have given you a little feedback or comments on your posts or your YouTube videos or whatever…those are your evangelists. And if you don’t cultivate them, show up for them, love them, respond to them, and message them, you should. You have no excuse to not respond to every single comment, every single message right now. This is your business. That is a big deal. You’re small and you’re mighty. This is a precious time you will look back on and be like, “Remember when I could respond to everything? Those were good times.”
You have a connection. Don’t be afraid of it. Run toward it with open arms and show the heck up for them. When you do that, you are taking people off the internet and into your heart and your life and you’re building a connection. They tell their friends about that connection. Then it’s such a cool feeling to hear that somebody went to their Bible study and they told all their mom friends about you, they started scrolling through your stuff and they were talking about you. There’s nothing like that. That’s how you do it is you show up for the five, for the six, for the two, for your mom and her neighbor. You show up for whoever will watch you and you pretend like you are Oprah. Like you are talking to them like, “Oh, there’s a lot of people listening. I have a lot to say.”
Because one day, girl, people are going to go back because they’re so obsessed with what you put out that once a week episodes—or whatever—is not enough and they’ll go back. And your number of views on your YouTube channel that you have right now is going to have two zeros after it because people are so obsessed with what you’re doing that they’re going back. Do your best right now for the few. If you don’t do that now, nothing is ever going to change where magically you’re like, “Oh, now I have a big following so I’m showing up for them.” Because there’s always going to be a next number you want to get to like, “I have 69,000 but I really wanted 109 by now, so I’m just going to Google ‘how to grow my following.’”
It’s never going to be enough. Show up right now. That will grow you like crazy. You literally don’t need to do anything else. All of my growth has been organic. I just recently started doing Facebook Ads to add onto what I was doing. You don’t need to do any of that. I’m never going to tell an entrepreneur to go and pay for stuff. We can do this almost free, totally organic. If you show up for people, they show up back.
Okay, let’s move into when I turned this into a business from a hobby. I think it’s important to keep in mind that not everyone’s story will be the same and that I was a psychopath with growing my business. I literally was like, “We have no food. We have no money. Brian’s job sucks. We moved away from our friends and family for this promised new position in the same company you’d worked for all those years and it was a total sham. They completely lied.” We were abandoned. We were stuck. We were losing our apartment. We were losing our car. I woke up one morning and my car was getting towed out of the driveway by the repo guy. There was no choice.
I went “ape” on my goals. So sorry guys…I hope you have headphones in…but I was like, “I gotta go balls to the wall and get this done now.” That’s where I was at in my life. I was in a point where it was like, “There is nothing else that I can do here.” And that’s very extreme.
My results were extreme because I was pushed up into an extreme corner and I don’t like being pushed into a corner. I don’t like being out of control, so I freaked out and I got maybe 7-8 years ahead in a few months because that’s what I decided. I think the hope in my story is that if you really want to, you can do that. Anybody can do that.
I had four kids, one of them was still a baby that was breastfeeding. I had no friends and family around. We had moved to this new place. I made this happen and it was very hard. But I did it.
You can do it. If you have more support, a little bit more of a setup than I did, if you have a little bit more money and life isn’t so crazy, you can. It’s right in front of you. It’s just a strategic grasp of that thing that you want.
Having said that and given that kind of disclaimer, I had almost no audience. It was very small. It wasn’t even a thousand.
I’m talking about reach. My reach now, everyone that’s visiting my website, Pinterest, YouTube, Instagram, everybody that’s like, “Oh yeah, I’ve heard of her.” It’s in the millions now. I’m talking about general reach, not even a thousand. Like nobody. Let alone my email list, which was basically non-existent. My social following…I made myself a cake when I hit 50 followers on Facebook…it wasn’t good.
At this point I probably had a couple, maybe a few hundred followers on social. You wouldn’t look at my page and be like, “Oh wow.” It was like, “Oh, is this even a business or is she just a person?” That is when I launched my course.
I had been cultivating this relationship with that tiny amount of people. I knew their names. I knew how many kids they had. We talked. I was messaging them back and forth. I was really involved with my audience. On the comments instead of, “Thanks Sharon! Have a great day,” it was like, “Thank you so much for this! What exactly about this was helpful for you? What could I do in the next post to dive into this deeper?” Then Sharon or whoever would tell me and say like, “I loved it, but I just wonder how did the conversation go with your daughter about her stuffed animals?” There we go, that’s my next post. I was going back and forth with them.
These people are making your content. You’re not making your content. These people are making your content for you so you better take care of them, right? I did that with them and eventually I had so many blog posts. I had essentially made my course on my blog without all the super details. When you’re voicing something, it’s so much easier to explain than when you’re trying to write, like a book.
They were asking for me to collect my stuff in one place for them. After conversating with them about, “What would that look like? What would you prefer?” They wanted audio and they wanted video—and this was after I had done an ebook that totally failed. I had made an ebook and it was all my blog posts together basically and sold it. And it didn’t even make enough to pay one of my utility bills. I thought, “I’m rich! Everything’s great!” And it was terrible.
I don’t know how you feel about intuition and gut feelings or if you’re really in tune with that in yourself, but I had a gut feeling that I wasn’t supposed to push through with that and make it better. Everything else I’ve pushed through and I’ve been like, “Well, let’s just redo how we’re doing this and make it better.” But I just had a gut feeling that that was a swing and miss and it’s not where I belong.
That’s when I started researching and I found courses. I launched my course for $39. It was pre-sold. It didn’t even exist yet. I didn’t even have a Teachable account, which is where I now host my school because I couldn’t afford it. I think it was like $19 a month or something back then, and I was like, “Whoa! No.” So, I just pre-sold it to see what would happen and it made some money. I made a couple thousand dollars and I was shocked by that. I had never made that much money myself. Like ever. Especially on something that was my idea.
So, I took that money and I bought a ticket home to California. Instead of using it for all the bills we needed, I bought a ticket home because I knew people there. People were investing in me and when they’re investing in you, you better show up. And I was shocked that they would trust me and want to learn from me. I decided I was going to use this money to go and learn how to serve them even better. So, I bought a ticket home to California and I purged a bunch of rooms in people’s houses that I knew back home.
I went to this woman who was a widow and I helped her purge her bedroom. I did an office of my mom’s friend who was like a hoarder. It was really alarming. I did that. I did a friend’s playroom. I did a couple other rooms in my mom’s house. I studied my craft and physically went and did it as if they were clients and it was great. I felt like I learned so much more than I already knew.
Then I made the course and I delivered on time to the people who paid me for it. It didn’t make a bunch of money, recurring. I had to get it up. So, I got the course up with no recurring revenue and then, once it existed, I began to study marketing and telling people about my amazing product because I believed in it so much now.
It’s easy to sell something when you’re not “selling.” When you’re just talking to them about what is going to change their life because you know it is. It was about four months of that, of no money, and of thinking: “Oh, I got to get this thing going,” before it really started to carry itself. I had enough reach where people were talking about me all the time because I was the girl that showed up for people. I connected. I still respond to everything that I can. That’s how you got here. That’s how I was known as. I’ll come in and I’ll try to touch you in your life, look at you, talk to you, instead of just commenting back “heart.”
So that reputation and my courses being good and actually working carried me and grew me. Is that overwhelming? Does that make sense?
AMELIA: Yeah, it totally makes sense. I guess it’s just the thought of putting something out there and it flopping or two people buying it because they’re my friends and they feel like they want to support me. I feel like if I put it out there and it flops, it’s just going to be very deflating. I feel like I’m pretty good at picking myself up and keeping on going. I guess I’m just scared of it not working out the way I see it in my mind, hoping that it will.
ALLIE: Now that you’ve said that, I want to get into you asking me a question about you and I’ll answer. We’ll get into the business coaching part of this because I really want you to leave feeling lighter.
All right, beautiful. I want to pause here for a second and get real with you for just a quick sec. I know that some of you are out there and you’re listening to this episode right now. Maybe you’re washing dishes. Maybe you’re folding laundry. Maybe you’re driving. Maybe you’ve got your headphones in and you’re trying to tune the kids out for a second. But you have a business and you have a dream and it’s not aligning.
It’s not growing the way you want it to grow. It’s not going the way you want it to go. But you believe in it. You’re in the hustle phase. You have goals of making this something that sustains your lifestyle, provides for your family, fulfills you immensely and goes along cohesively with your personal life and your family. And you don’t want to sacrifice your family for growing your business and vice versa.
I want to encourage you. I have walked this road before and I have walked it with a lot of mistakes and a lot of crazy speed bumps I didn’t know I was going to hit, but I ended up walking it successfully and I want to encourage you that you can absolutely have both.
I can confidently say that I have an amazing marriage that I work very hard to cultivate positivity in. I’m present in my marriage and my relationships. I’m present with my kids and my family. I don’t work very much and yet my company is quickly turning into a very powerful empire that I am so proud of.
I want to work with you. I want to work with women who have a dream and a belief in their purpose, but are struggling to know how to make it profitable and to make it a profitable reality that will serve the world, fulfill them and align with the lifestyle that you want.
I want to help you build a business around the life you want, not the other way around.
I did that. I took an idea. I mixed it up with my passion and I turned it into a multiple seven figure company in less than two years and I am ready to guide you down that same road with a lot less speed bumps and hurdles that I hit.
Like I said in the beginning of this episode, I really believe in the balance between strategy and spirit. There is strategy that you need to implement that we can tweak to make things better logically, but also there’s mindset work, money blocks, fear, and things like that that we’re going to need to work through.
I want to do this with you. I want to be in that with you. I want to do this together. What I want you to do is go to alliecasazza.com/businesscoaching and just check it out.
I invested in multiple coaches on my path to growing my business and it is only when you invest that you truly begin to grow because you’ve got skin in the game. You did something freaking scary.
One of my clients that I’m about to wrap up with in the next couple of weeks, she took out a loan to work with me. My previous client cleared out her savings to work with me and they are both turning their businesses into profitable realities and that makes me so happy.
If you’re willing to show up, do the work, listen and learn, you are going to love working with me and I want to work with you.
alliecasazza.com/businesscoaching. Let’s see if we can work together, if we’re going to be a good fit.
Listen, at this point I only have two spots open because, like I said earlier, I don’t do business coaching as a sustaining thing for my business that I rely on. It is on the side. It is extra.
I have significantly high fees because I am one of the best and I am confident about that. I can lead you to where you want to go. I know what to do. I know how to balance this entrepreneur thing with motherhood, which not a lot of people get that. It is different. It is harder.
I’ve got two open spots to clients that I have wrapped up. I’m ready to fill their spots with you, but you gotta be ready. You gotta say yes. You gotta fill out the form. You’ve got to get in touch with us so we can hear from you and find out if we are meant to work together.
alliecasazza.com/businesscoaching
ALLIE: Okay, so answer this from your gut: What does it mean about you if you launch a course and no one buys it? What does it mean for you?
AMELIA: I guess it feels like failure to me and it says that it wasn’t good enough. I feel like I would have the information. I’m not not confident in what I could do. I’m just not confident that people would show up and pay. That’s the biggest thing.
ALLIE: It means failure and it means that your idea isn’t good enough to be profitable. Is that feeling right?
AMELIA: I think so, yeah.
ALLIE: What was the general money story when you were growing up? As quickly as you can, was there a lot of money? Was there lack of money when you were growing up? What was your money story as a kid?
AMELIA: It was very tight. My dad has always been an entrepreneur and he had his own business that growing up he struggled with and now it’s really taken off. But really just in the last 10 years. He’s doing amazing now, but it was tight growing up for sure.
ALLIE: So, your dad had his own business too, just like you. It was a lot of struggle before and now you see him being successful.
This is okay if it’s a “no.” You don’t need to satiate me in any way by giving me an answer because we’re recording. Just forget we’re recording. It’s you and me, okay? Is there anything in you at all that comes up when I say, “If you have immediate, fast success and you become wealthy from this idea that you will be making your dad feel dumb?”
AMELIA: No.
ALLIE: Good. Okay. Is there anything in you that’s like, “Okay, well dad had to struggle this long to get to that point, so I do too.”
AMELIA: I don’t think so. I don’t know. I’m seeing the front end of everybody’s stuff, but I see people doing what I want to do and they did it somewhat quickly. I guess I just don’t feel like I have the capability to do it as quickly. I don’t mean like in a month, but it just seems like a huge mountain that I don’t even know how to climb.
ALLIE: Okay. Well the ones of us who have done it didn’t look at the huge mountain. We focused on the next step. So, the ones that are even literally climbing mountains, and you can read articles about this and it’s very inspiring, if they look at the entire mountain, they’re the ones that they don’t make it, they pass out, they faint, they get frostbite, there’s a problem. They eat all their food ration. They have to go back down the mountain.
But it’s the ones that are one step at a time. The ones that ask, “Can I go a little further without digging into my food? Can I go a little further without taking a break? One more step. That’s it. That’s the only thing that exists.” Those are the ones that make it.
I encourage you to journal. There’s something in you about “success equals doing this really fast” or “success equals making a lot of money.” There’s something there. I want to get into more of your questions so I don’t want to spend our whole time on that, but there’s something there about why you view success as speed. That is not true at all.
Everyone’s story will be different. If I did this in a year and you do it in six years, that doesn’t mean that I’m smarter or better. It means that my story was different. It went different. That things aligned differently for me.
At the same time, if speed is important to you, if you are just like, “Look, I’m driven. I’m an entrepreneur. I am an amazing, strong woman and I want this now.” Make it happen. Set that intent. You can make that happen.
I woke up every day not knowing how I was going to feed my kids lunch. We had breakfast, but it was like, “We got to figure this out.” I was trying to stretch $20 for six people over a week. It was really rough. I woke up every morning and said, “I am open to extreme wealth and it’s already in existence. Money is flowing all around me so then, I am already extremely wealthy; I’m just grabbing onto those dollars. I am successful. That success is assured.”
Set that intent, because when you think things like that, your brain responds as if they’ve really happened.
So, looking at that next step, your next step is niching down and focusing on her. That woman. That one that you are like, “Sister, if I was with you in real life I would buy you coffee. I would come over and we would work this out together.” You’re doing that for four more weeks before you began to cultivate what your first program might be and what that might look like. That’s your next step. Nothing else. There’s nothing else.
Is there anything in terms of money blocks or success blocks that is coming up in your head that you wish we could talk about? Or do you feel okay?
AMELIA: I think it’s okay. Yeah, I love what you said about that.
ALLIE: Good. Okay.
And I just want to encourage everyone listening, and you. Your success is assured if you keep going. It’s not like an “if.” It’s there. It’s only up to you if you keep going enough.
What is it, ninety something percent of entrepreneurs fail? It’s because they don’t keep going. You can’t stop. It’s gotta be a nonnegotiable. If it’s not, that’s okay, but call a spade a spade. Walk away because you don’t really want it that bad.
AMELIA: Yeah.
ALLIE: What else do you want to get into in terms of courses, your business, being a solopreneur. What do you got?
AMELIA: Let me look at what I wrote down…
Would you think when you are starting out that a good thing to start monetizing with is a course? I know this is what you did, but maybe looking back you wish you would’ve done something different.
ALLIE: Yes and no. I think that there’s a lot of value in coaching. I hate when I hear entrepreneur teachers saying like, “Charge what you’re worth.” Girl, you just started three months ago. You’ve never coached anyone. You shouldn’t feel good about taking 15K from somebody. I’m all about charging what you’re worth, but that’s robbery.
If you’re new, practice. Do some free coaching calls. One of the best pieces of advice for new entrepreneurs that I have is this: go on whatever social platform you prefer, make a post with a scroll-stopping picture and say something like, “This is my heart for women.” Insert your niche person. “This is my heart for you. If you feel like this or this or this, I want to help you. I want to give away a coaching call. If you had an hour with me, what would you ask?” And then read their answers. That’s your content. And then pick one person and really give them a coaching call. Get on the phone with them, block out an hour at least and just listen to them, coach them through. What would you say?
It’s free, so there’s no pressure. Learn. And then maybe in a couple months you grow and you start to charge a little bit. You do these hundred-dollar coaching calls. Girl, you are fine tuning that muscle that you need to make a difference in the world with every single call you make. That is huge.
Also, record them. That can be your course if they’re good. There’s so much out there that you could do right now.
So, that’s my advice. Then maybe make the course from there. You can do both at the same time. I did a course first, but what did I do with the presale money? I went and I coached. I think there’s so much value in coaching first for free and honing in on your craft so that like now when I charge money for my course, I am so confident. I feel like people are robbing me because the course is so good. It should have another zero at the end of the full price. When I give a sale on it, I’m like, “You guys are robbing me and I love it. I feel so good. Your life is about to change for so cheap.” That’s how I feel. How can you feel that way if you’ve never coached anybody through that stuff? You can’t.
AMELIA: Yeah, that’s definitely where my mind was. Last month it kind of hit me, “I’ve done this myself but I need to get into it with other people.” I feel like that’s a huge way I can learn how to help other people is when I see that, “Okay, maybe you struggle with this and I didn’t in my journey.”
One question I had for you is: I know you don’t do sponsorships or paid ads or anything. Was there a point when you did consider that or have you always known, “No, I don’t really want to do that.” —Which I love personally, because I feel like we’re kind of bombarded with posts like, “Everybody’s been asking me about this product!”
ALLIE: Yeah, no one asked you.
AMELIA: Do you feel like not doing that has helped or hurt you? Or you don’t know because you haven’t done it?
ALLIE: It’s only helped that I don’t do that. In the very beginning days on my blog, I did do some of that. Then there was a point where I was getting five figure offers from companies that just wanted to put a banner at the top of my site. And that is hard to say “No” to. Once I started growing, I still wasn’t making a ton of money, but I was really growing a lot and that was very difficult. But I made a decision about that because first of all, it’s my personality. It goes against my personality. It’s only fake for me to be like, “Hey guys! Oh my gosh, these shoes! Everyone’s been asking…” No, they haven’t. I’m not gonna do that.
Anytime that I do share, like I got this amazing t-shirt from a local woman-owned business and I freaking love it and I’m gonna take a picture in it later and share because it’s a female owned company. It’s Local Love and it’s so cute. It says girl power on it, but it’s not a cheesy pink “girl power” shirts you would normally see. It’s got this Eagle on it and it’s charcoal gray and it almost looks like a Moto shirt or something. It’s just so unique. I love it. I’m going to post about it because I want to support her and because I really love it and that feels so good.
That’s what I want to do. I have a whole podcast episode about what I would put in my wardrobe if I was starting over. Intentional pieces. That is how I want to share. I don’t want to be coerced.
And I’ve got to say that I have been on the receiving end of the pitches for companies that do things like that, and it’s very slimy. It’s a complete lie when somebody is like, “This is my favorite automated toothbrush.” Or whatever it is. It is disturbing what they’re allowed to get you to say. It’s legal to completely lie. I just don’t feel good about that. It doesn’t align.
I also like the minimalism thing. I’m going to tell you that something is really cute or really helpful or really comfortable if it’s like, “Guys, I’m freaking out about this for real. This is not an affiliate. I’m just freaking out that this is such a good product.”
My friend Angie Lee (we’re not friends, but I want to think we are) she’s an amazing business teacher. She has The Angie Lee Podcast, which if you’re learning about marketing, go listen to her. But she owns Soul CBD. It’s CBD drops and bath bombs and things for anxiety. She created a product that I use. I got my period when I was 14. I’m 32. It’s the only time in all of those years that I have not had to take painkillers during my period because of the CBD cream. You bet your butt I have it on my to-do list to go and become an affiliate for that product because I’m going to be shouting that from the frigging rooftops. So, you see how that works?
AMELIA: Yeah. And I guess that was my question. I didn’t word it right, but things that you actually do love and that you know you bought it first, that they didn’t approach you.
ALLIE: Yeah, I bought it because I wanted it to solve a problem for me, for real, and I didn’t want to do the coercion thing to get to me. I delete those emails. I never even respond to that.
AMELIA: But do you get affiliate links or anything?
ALLIE: I don’t really. I have an Amazon affiliate account. If I’m ever like, “Hey, these are the shoes that I was mentioning that saved my life and help me run better because I have feet issue.” Or whatever. I’ll go to link them on something and I’m like, “Nah, just forget it. I’ll just put the regular link.” And my team is like, “What is wrong with you? You could have made hundreds!”
I just don’t really care because my head is just not there. I’m just not focused on that. I would rather spend my effort and energy just helping people because I love the crap out of them and I want them to stay on my website. I don’t want to send them away with affiliate links for a couple of dollars. I am here to help you change your life. And I know that my courses are the best. So why would I send you away? It’s just not my brand. It’s not my personality. It’s not where my focus is.
I don’t think that affiliate marketing is evil. I just see a lot of slimy people doing it.
AMELIA: Yeah, for sure. I don’t love it either.
ALLIE: But I think the minimalism thing can tie in really well with products you really believe in like with the CBD thing. If that was you, you could say like, “Oh affiliate marketing is 30% of my business. I really want to go become an affiliate for that because I really use it.” Fine. Just know that almost no one’s going to believe that you actually use it because they have become so jaded, and you want to deal with all of that. I just don’t like to deal with that.
AMELIA: Yeah, I get it for sure.
Looking back from when you weren’t making anything to now, what would you say the biggest thing you have done to benefit your business and grow your business has been?
ALLIE: Give me a little bit more context. What are you looking for? A strategy?
AMELIA: Do you look back and kind of see, “Oh, after I did that I saw a ton of growth.”
ALLIE: I hate to be repetitive or cling to this one thing (I don’t know why I feel like that because I should because it’s everything) but really it was making the shift from putting out content from this wall where I’m up here and they are down there and I’m just dropping down treats for them. Then climbing down the wall, getting on the ground, sitting criss-cross-applesauce with them, looking at them, hearing them, speaking to them, making my tribe feel like a tribe. Moving from audience to tribe—that’s when I started making money. That’s when I started to grow.
And it’s every time, even now. The last few months I have been doing Instagram stories but not really anything else. And Instagram stories do not grow you. Only the people that already follow you see that. They don’t grow; they just cultivate, which is important. It’s good. But Instagram stories come very natural to me, so I don’t really have to think or try. I have set times of the day where I share things and upload things and then I’m off of it for the rest of the day.
But I wasn’t doing any Instagram feed posts. I wasn’t doing any growth or involving myself in other people’s accounts to really support them and grow that way. I just wasn’t. And my growth remains stagnant. Then the last couple of weeks I got back into my flow. I’ve been posting every few days and really engaging people and caring. Not teaching or talking at them about me, but talking about me as it relates to them. Helping them, creating those engaging posts, and really showing up, doing my IG TV posts that I love to do on weekends, doing all of those things. I thought that somebody famous must have tagged me and I missed it because the growth was so insane. I had like 600 new followers in two days, the last two days. I looked back and it wasn’t that, it’s just that I’m showing up.
And so, the more you up level, when you show up that growth explodes bigger and bigger. So, at this level, 600 new followers on one platform in a couple of days, that’s just because I’m at this level. If you do that now it’s gonna be like 10 people, then 15 people, then a hundred, then a thousand.
At every level you’ve got to show up and that doesn’t mean that you’re never present for your family or whatever. It just means that you’re intentional with the time that you’ve got that phone in your hand.
That was the big difference maker. I stopped saying, “Oh, I have an audience,” and started looking at it like, “This is my tribe.” I sit with them. I look at them. I am hugging them—digitally— anytime I can. And just encouraging them. Like if she’s not doing okay, I’m not doing okay. That is a totally different thing.
Think about Oprah versus Ellen. Oprah is amazing and we all love her. I look up to her so much, but she has a vibe where it’s the audience members and her and that’s really it. Ellen gets in the audience and she’s dancing with them, being ridiculous and having them play games with her. It is just a different feel. And when I made that shift, growth happened.
AMELIA: Yeah, I like that. So as far as list growth, what has been the biggest thing that has helped you grow your email list?
ALLIE: Okay, so for me, creating content is constant. I literally always am creating content. This ties into email list growth, so just follow me. I never, ever am sitting at my desk like, “Okay, I’m supposed to create Instagram posts. I’m supposed to create a new PDF. What could this be?” I’ve never, ever sat down and done that. It’s in my life, on the go.
Here’s an example. I’ll be doing my thing. Living life. Driving. The kids are talking. Do you know what Voxer is?
AMELIA: Yeah.
ALLIE: I have a Voxer account just so I can talk to my own self. It literally is my own name on there and I talk out ideas to myself so that I can save it in a voice memo form. I’ll open that up and be like, “I want women to know that when their kids ask hard questions this is how they can respond.” Or, “When you decluttered your closet but it’s still a total crap shoot and it’s disorganized? What are the best tips for that? Here’s my top three.”
I’m creating content in my life all the time so that when I go and I sit down, the content’s already done. I’m just putting it down on paper and making it into that PDF in Google Docs or whatever. Or I’m sending it to my team now, whatever it looks like at different seasons.
And so, the email list growth—There are people that are very famous for teaching email list growth and their lists are half the size of mine, or they’re triple the size of mine but they’re not real followers; they’re dead subscribers. They are not opening their emails. They are not active. They have very low open rates.
My email list at this point is 150,000 highly engaged women. They open my emails. My email open rates are high 20% and 30% most of the time. I have a great email list. I delete dead subscribers. You don’t open my emails for a couple of months, you’re gone because you want to be gone. You told me that, right?
The biggest thing I notice between people over here teaching this and then me is that they have one, two, or three opt-ins and that’s it. I take a lot of my free content and I turn it into an opt in. An opt-in is: “I’ll give you this if you give me your email.” If you are interested in this enough, you will give me your email and say like, “Yeah, I like you. I want to hear from you.”
I’m just gonna show you right now, literally, because we’re on a coaching call for you. I’m going to share my screen with you. This is a list, a Trello board of all of my free content and content upgrades. It is literally so freaking full. These are all free. These are all things that I have created to grow my email list. It’s so freaking full. This is not like your sister’s, “Oh, I have two opt-ins, one for motherhood, one for home.” All of this is free and every single one of these things has literally given me tens of thousands of subscribers because I teach so many things.
I have so much to say and so much to help. I have A Guide to An Uncluttered Life. I have the Clear the Clutter in Your Home Starter Kit. I have the 20 Things You Can Get Rid Of Right Now list. I have The Minimalism and Christmas guide. I have the Purge The Toys Guide. I have the 20 Texts To Send To Your Husband After A Fight Guide. I have all of that because that’s where I’m at now.
What I would suggest to you is to create free opt-ins based on the content you already have and pump those out. Why would you only have one or two free opt-ins? Give them everything for free. Generosity begets generosity. Create multiple opt-ins.
Let’s take Sally and Cheryl for an example. Sally needs your help, but this one particular free opt-in that you had really didn’t resonate with her. You know it’s amazing, but she’s like, “Oh, the title, I don’t really understand what this is. I don’t really need it.” But then she goes and sees this other one and she’s like, “Oh, that!” It’s really about the same thing but that particular title 20 Things To Get Rid Of Right Now really spoke to her because she’s just that overwhelmed. She goes and gets this one.
But Cheryl might see that one that Sally really loved and is like, “20 Things To Get Rid Of Right Now,” I don’t want that. I’m looking for the big guns here. But the other one that you had, the “Let’s Clear The Whole House Clutter In Two Weeks,” class, that was the one where she was like, “Yes! I am all in. I want that!” You would’ve lost either one of those if one of those was your only opt-in, do you see?
My opt-ins are all very strategically differentiated by the amount of effort it’s going to take to bring that into your life. I have super easy checklists, 20 Things To Get Rid Of Right Now. And then the big mamas like The Clear The Clutter Starter Kit, the two weeks class like, Declutter Your House In Two Weeks, I’ll give you the kitchen for free but you got to sit with me for two hours. This class is a lot. So, that will appeal to somebody and not the other person but I’m sure to help all of them. They’re all my target niche. They just are at different points in their life.
I think the secret to my email list growth is having a lot of opt ins.
AMELIA: Yeah, that’s good. Hearing you say that, I’m like, “Oh yeah, she does.”
ALLIE: There’s so many. And I’m already creating that content anyway. This is content that I’ve posted on Instagram, in my podcast, on old blog posts that I’ve pulled down and turned into PDFs and now you can get it for free with your email. It’s not like, “Oh my God, that’s so much time.”
You’re already creating content for your platform. Just repurpose it.
AMELIA: Yeah. Turn it into something that can go out and draw people in.
ALLIE: Yeah, and be condensed into one pretty package that she can download to her phone and scroll through instead of having to look like, “Wait, where was that post? Which episode was that?” Just give it to her, “Here I packaged this for you. Download it to your phone.”
There are times where I will have a podcast episode that’s like “15 Steps To Something” and I’ll be like, “Hey, I already condensed this. You don’t need to take notes. Just enjoy your drive. I condensed it into a PDF, you can go and get it for free.” It’s literally the episode, the same content, they know that. But those ones have the most downloads because people will consent to you giving them something that’s easier. It’s not extra work or a ton of extra time or creativity. It’s just repurposing.
AMELIA: I’m guessing with your different opt-ins you also use different media to get it to them? Some might be a PDF, video—just depending on what it is?
ALLIE: Almost all of them are PDF. The only ones that aren’t are things that were already recorded as video. And I was like, “I’m re-purposing that.”
I never make people give me their email for a podcast episode. If something is a podcast episode, I’m like, “Nope, you go over here. You need to see if you even like me.” Because I don’t want those people on my list before they even know if they like me. So, I only put the option to give me your email on something that it’s like, “You already like me, I think. If you don’t, you’ll click away and you won’t opt-in. If you are here and you listen to this or you read this and you like me, you will give me your email.” So, the people that are on my list are like, “Yeah, I want to hear more from this girl.”
You’re doing an amazing job. Your heart shows through your face when you’re talking on Instagram stories. I’ve been watching you. You’re doing an amazing job. Your message matters. The fact that other people are doing this at larger scales ahead of you means nothing because no one can be you. You have something worth fighting for and continuing with. Please don’t stop.
AMELIA: Thank you. That means a ton, coming from you.
ALLIE: I’m really glad that we did this. Thank you for showing up and being here with me.
AMELIA: Yeah. Thank you so much.
This was an episode of The Purpose Show. Did you know there is an exclusive community created solely for the purpose of continuing discussions surrounding The Purpose Show episodes? And to get you to actually take action and make positive changes on the things that you learn here? Go be a part of it. To join go to facebook.com/groups/purposefulmamas.
Thank you so much for tuning in. If you are ready to uplevel and really take action on the things I talk about on my show, and get step-by-step help from me, head to alliecasazza.com. There are free downloads, courses, classes, and ways to learn more about what the next step might look like for you and to focus on whatever you might need help with in whatever season you are in right now.
I am always rooting for you, friend! See ya next time!
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