I’m answering your questions about business today! I love to help you guys start and grow your businesses, and I love getting your questions about how to do that. So this episode is really, really good! Let’s dive in!
In This Episode Allie Discusses:
Startup School
Up and Up Academy
Identifying your target audience
The number one strategy that skyrocketed her business
SEO
Blogging
Mentioned in this Episode:
Courses (Use the code PURPOSESHOW for 10% off!)
The Purpose Show Facebook Community
Hey Business Babe!
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Mom life. We’re surrounded by the message that it’s the tired life. The no-time-for-myself life. The hard life. We’re supposed to get through it. Survive. Cling on by the last little thread. And at the same time, Carpe Diem—enjoy every moment because it’s going to go by so fast. The typical mom culture that sends us all kinds of mixed, typically negative messages. We shouldn’t take care of ourselves; it’s selfish. The more ragged you run yourself, the bigger your badge of honor. But also, ditch your mom bod and work out. Don’t yell. Make more money. Show up. Be better, but not at the expense of time with your kids. I am putting a hard stop to all of this. While being a mom, running a business, and whatever else you might have going on is hard, it is a lot and there’s lots of giving of yourself, the idea that motherhood means living a joyless, nonstop-hustle-with-zero-balance kind of life, where you give and give and give and never take, needs to stop.
I’m on a mission to help you stop counting down the minutes till bedtime (at least most days). Stop the mom guilt and shame game. Stop cleaning up after your kids’ childhood and start being present for it. I want to help you thrive in work, home and life. I believe in John 10:10 that we are called to living an abundant life and I know moms are not excluded from that promise. Join me in conversations about simplicity, some business and life hacks, spirituality 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.
Hey guys! Welcome back to The Purpose Show. Thank you so much for being here. It’s always such an honor to be a part of your day.
I’ve been getting a lot of tags of you guys walking your babies in strollers, going for runs, and doing laundry while listening to the podcast and it’s my absolute favorite thing because I get to see how I’m a part of your day. It feels like we’re friends and we’re doing life together and that’s my favorite thing. Thank you for always tagging me.
We’re going to talk about business today and, even better, I’m going to answer your questions about business today. I love answering your questions. I have pulled some of the most asked questions from everywhere—from the Facebook community, from my DM’s, emails, and from the survey that I did recently on Instagram asking what you guys would want to learn from me about business on the podcast.
We’ve got a few really good questions today. There were so many, and there were so many good ones, so I’m probably going to have to do another follow-up “Ask Me Anything About Business” episode, because there’s just too many and this episode would be really, really long if I answered them all.
In case you don’t know and you are looking to start or grow your business, I just want to let you guys know that on top of working with mothers and women to simplify their lives, get clutter out of their home, out of their way, and really make their lives feel lighter, I do love helping you start and grow your businesses. If you want to work with me, I would love to hear from you. I would love to come alongside you.
I have Startup School, which is exactly what it sounds like. It is a program that I created earlier this year. It was so good. It was so fun.
It’s literally every single thing that you need to go from an idea to a fully formed business launched in just a few weeks. You can go slower if you want, but I will help you do it in just a few weeks if that’s what you want to do. It’s everything that you need and nothing that you don’t. I don’t spend time on fluff.
I don’t spend time walking you through anything that you could just Google. This is high quality, high value stuff. It’s every single thing that you need to launch your online business.
I also have Up and Up Academy, which is a membership for online business owners who want to grow. If you already have your business formed, you’ve been making money, but you’re stuck and not growing the way that you want to grow and you want to boost, come to Up and Up and join the members. We have an amazing time.
We do two training calls every month, a hot seat call, and then we have implementation week. It’s so fun. So good. Really active. Really engaged.
Everyone is so helpful in the community there. You can trust that you’re going to get an amazing answer. You get behind-the-scenes of how I run my business, the different tactics and strategies that I love, how I make intuitive decisions, and all that good stuff. Everything that you’d want to know you can ask in there.
I do have a wait list for One-On-One Coaching. I’m not really doing anything like that right now.
I want to let you know and call you in. If you’ve been feeling like you want to grow, or you want to start something and you like the way that I have set up my business, my life, and how I’ve built my business around my life and not the other way around, I would love to help you with that. I definitely have ways to do that.
For startup school, it’s alliecasazza.com/startupschool.
For Up and Up, it’s alliecasazza.com/upandup.
They may be waitlisted right now. You can get on that waitlist, or you can email us and let us know what you need and we can guide you in the right direction. I want you to know that you’re supported, I love you, and I would love to work with you!
Let’s get into some of your questions about business. The first one that I want to tackle is amazing, basic, and very foundational. I think it’s important to talk about that here today.
Q: How do we identify and find our target market?
Here’s the thing: we have to go backward. We have to think about your message or your product? What is it that you’re going to be calling people to purchase?
For me, these are my digital programs that I create that are teaching how to change something about your life. How to get to a certain place in your life that you’re not right now but that you want to get to.
That is what I’m selling. That is what I am inviting women into. That’s how I help them change their lives.
For you it may be selling essential oils, selling handbags, or something like that. Whatever it is, what is it that you are going to be selling?
Now think, “Who is the type of person that would most benefit and love what it is that you’re creating or selling? What is the ideal type of person?”
I want you to get really specific. Who is this person? What is their gender? What is their age? Are they married or single?
Do they have kids or not? Where do you think they might live? What kind of money do they make every year? What’s their lifestyle? What do they like to do?
It feels silly to get this specific, especially if it doesn’t really matter for some of you. For me, it doesn’t matter if this person has one kid or four kids. It doesn’t even matter if she has no kids. I can still absolutely help her. But it helps me to create an ideal customer avatar.
She’s my person. This is the person that I’m talking to when I create podcast episodes. This is the person that I’m writing to when I write emails to you guys, even though everyone doesn’t fit her exactly.
My girl’s name is Jessica. I’ve made her up in my mind. She is based on a real person that I once knew in real life. I still know her. She’s not active in my life anymore since we live in different states now, but it’s based on a person that I actually know.
She has two kids. She’s feeling really overwhelmed. She is starting a business but she feels stupid for doing that because she feels like she’s drowning in her regular home life, so why bother?
I know how much money she makes. I know that she’s married. I know her kids’ ages. I’m speaking to this person, Jessica, that I’ve created when I’m creating stuff for my business, when I’m creating my content.
Get super specific. What does she like? What does she dislike? What’s her sense of humor?
In your business, you need to be yourself. Your business and your brand need to be you, especially if you’re a personal brand like me. That’s my expertise—personal brands that are online, especially message-based brands. But it’s okay if you have a product too.
You’re going to want to be yourself in your brand and in your business. When you are being yourself, when you’re out with the people who love you, you’re out with friends, you’re having fun, maybe you’re having drinks, dinner, or out for coffee, you’re being yourself and whatever your sense of humor is, however you talk, whatever your belief system is, who are the people, the personality types, and the kinds of people that you feel totally get you?
They understand you. They laugh at your jokes. They know what you mean. You don’t feel like you have to tippy-toe around them because they totally vibe with you. They are your people. They get you.
Who are the types of people that maybe never get you? That you feel like you don’t really understand? They don’t really seem to like you too much, or if they do, they just don’t really get your jokes? It feels like you’re not clicking no matter what? They are not your people.
Think about those things in real life. That’s going to be reflected in your business, especially if you are a personal brand. Create your ideal customer person around those qualities. It can help you to know who you’re not going for and to get clarity on who it is that you are going for.
There’s a lot more to that but I’m gonna just stop there and let you guys start with that because if you just have the answers to those questions, you prompt yourself in those ways, and create something, that is a huge leg up. That’s a massive, massive start.
We go way deep into all of this stuff in Startup School. It’s a really long training because there’s a lot to it, but that is an amazing start. Thank you for asking such a great question.
Guys, I fully and truly, truly believe that business does not need to be complicated. Like everything else that I teach, I’m all about teaching simplicity, focusing on what really matters.
Let me tell you, if you believe that you need complicated formulas and crazy detailed strategies, you have to do something in the exact order and with certain steps, you have to do it a certain way that somebody else told you, it is going to be overwhelmingly difficult for you to make progress and actually move the needle forward in your business.
It does not need to be that way. There is so much that I can teach you to help you release all the overcomplications you’ve brought into running your business and simplify everything, so you’re making money and impact with ease.
I can help you shift these limiting beliefs that are coming up for you right now, even if when I say that you’re doubtful or you have resistance coming up.
There’s this brand new—basically it’s a mini course because it’s small, affordable, and crazy packed with information and help—called Business With Ease. I put it together for you because I want to help you really simplify and streamline.
Here’s what this Business with Ease mini course is going to do for you.
First of all, it includes my most requested business training videos and a workbook to help you do the inner work while you go through it.
This is a weekend project, maybe even one day. If you feel like your mindset is off, you don’t really know where to go in your business, you don’t know what to do next, you feel really overwhelmed and you just want to completely bring your mindset, bring your perspective, bring your whole self back to where you feel like you really need to be in running your business, get this course Business with Ease.
You’re going to uncover and overcome self sabotage.
You’re going to specifically identify and change your limiting beliefs that are holding you back in your business.
You’re going to finally say goodbye to the feast-or-famine cycle in your business where you have bursts of revenue and then no revenue.
You’re going to make more money by working less hours.
You’re going to become a content creating machine.
You’re going to get my affirmations for business and success. I use these every morning and I have since I lived in Arkansas and started my company. These are literally the statements that I spoke out every single morning in the beginning of my business that built it into the empire that it is today.
Words are powerful. You are powerful.
You do not need to follow complicated strategies that somebody else says is the only way to do something.
You can do this with ease.
Business should be fun. It should be easy. It should be light.
It should be empowering, not disempowering.
It’s only $99! Go get this mini course while it’s this price! alliecasazza.com/bizwithease.
I love you so much! You’ve got this!
Question number two: What is the number one strategy that you would say skyrocketed your business?
*Note: The special offer on Business With Ease has ended. The regular price for this product is $197.
This is an amazing question because everyone thinks that my feature on Huffington Post or the virality that occurred was the start of my business. And that’s just not true at all. I had my business for a while before either of those things happened.
My connection to Arianna Huffington when she emailed me and I shared that on social media and my being featured there and becoming a core writer for them and then the virality that happened, neither of those things was what skyrocketed my business.
They certainly helped. But before that, there was something else that I did. And that was what skyrocketed my business. That was what absolutely caused this massive eruption of a fan base, having people that were actually getting eyes on me, actually being seen, actually getting engagement, instead of feeling like I was talking to a wall or talking to a very small group of people.
That thing was I went live every single day for a while. I was learning from somebody named Zach Spuckler, who is adorable and amazing. If you’re not following him and you have business, I would go in and take some tips from him, for sure.
This was back in the days of Periscope. Does anyone remember Periscope? Periscope was so cool and amazing, and everyone was flocking there. He challenged the people that were listening to him to go live every day for 30 days and just see what happened.
I was creating my course. I was ready to go. I was trying to make money. I was trying to sell it and really wasn’t getting a lot of traction. So I figured, what the heck? I’ll try it.
I challenged myself to go live every day for 30 days. And I did it. Some of them were just five minutes long. Some of them were longer; they were more like 30 or 40 minutes because I was on a roll and it felt good.
I did go live every day for 30 days. I didn’t do Sundays. I loved it so much!
I started to get eyes on me. People were starting to come. They were starting to listen. They were starting to engage with me.
I kept going. I went 40 days and then I went 60 days. I don’t remember if I went 60 days or 90 days, but whichever it was I went over the 60 days or over the 90 days. I don’t remember exactly, but it was a long time. I just kept going live all the time.
This was the real thing that skyrocketed my business and created my fan base so that when I wrote that viral article, there was a loyal, engaged fan base already listening to me that shared it and helped everything go viral. Does that make sense? Because it’s such a key thing to recognize.
I think a lot of the time we want to look at a person and think, “Oh, well they had virality, so that’s why. I can’t do that. They had this happen. Well, Arianna Huffington emailed her and posted her thing and that’s why. That’s not going to happen for me.”
Our ego minds want to overly simplify and make an excuse for why we can’t have something that we want because it feels really big. And the truth is that all I did was commit to showing up. Even when there was no one to show up for. I just show up and people come.
If you go live on Instagram, the algorithm will favor you. You can use hashtags. You can try strategies.
That’s fine. It’s extra though. You don’t even have to do that. If you just show up with good content, you’re connected, you’re engaging, you’re consistent for a long time…
It was weeks before anyone was really engaging with me. It felt like I was talking to a wall. All I got on there were weirdos and trolls that were commenting really weird and inappropriate things while I was trying to pretend like I wasn’t noticing.
If you want to make it, you have to have what it takes. And what it takes is painfully awkward consistency before anyone’s looking at you. That is what skyrocketed my business.
That is why I create challenges to go live in that same way for people in Startup School and in Up and Up Academy,, because it works.
I do that still now. Every once in a while, I’ll tell myself, “I’m going to go live every day for the next 10 days. I’m going to do a series or something and just see what happens.”
And every time it gives me a huge boost. My audience loves it too. It’s good on both ends. Live is king.
Not everyone is willing to go live because you have to show up. It’s a video. It is live. It’s a little nerve wracking, but if you can be the brave one and you can show up, you’re going to gain from that for sure.
Next question: How important is SEO?
SEO stands for “search engine optimization” for those who don’t know. Basically, it’s searchability—people being able to find you on Google and stuff like that.
Here is the extent of what I have poured into SEO at all over the course of my entire business. Let me just say, I do not have anyone who’s in charge of SEO in my company, or on my team. I have not paid money for anyone to come in and make SEO better.
I just don’t care. I don’t think about it. The extent of the energy I’ve put into SEO is as simple as this: I just don’t give my content fluffy titles.
I title it what it is. I title it what my ideal customer would maybe be Googling about that topic. I don’t come up with these eccentric, beautiful, amazing titles for my podcast episodes.
Here are some examples: “How To Show Up Authentically And Effectively On Social Media,” “How To Make Sales On Social Media,” “How To Help Your Kids With Their Emotions,” “How To Take Care Of Your Mental Health When You’re a Mom.”
It’s literally a lot of “how to” and a lot of easy, simple things that people are going to be Googling. The only exception is episodes like this. I don’t really care if this is searchable.
I know that people who follow me are looking for opportunities to learn about business from me. When I create an episode like this—Ask Me Anything About Business—this is for people who are already in my fan base. Not every piece of content is intended to blow up and be super searchable.
Most of my content titles are very SEO friendly and so are the URLs. SEO is really the main reason that I have show notes and a transcription for every single episode, because putting that content on the internet makes it way more searchable.
That’s literally it, you guys. I think that people who hyperfocus on SEO are focused on the wrong things, and that energy would be so much better spent being poured into the heart of your content, the purpose in your business, you caring about your audience and creating really helpful, amazing things for them that they want to share.
There are so many better things to put your energy into that are going to give you way more return on an investment in terms of your time. I’m never going to be the kind of person that says, “Yeah, you should focus on SEO. Here’s this formula for this or that.”
I just don’t vibe that way. I think that if you want your business to be really complicated then it’s going to be, and I don’t have a desire for that so I don’t overcomplicate it. I just know and trust that the right people who need my message are going to find it.
I just don’t give my videos, my podcast episodes, and my blog posts stupid titles. Remember, let it be easy. Let it be easy. Don’t worry about it. Don’t obsess over what doesn’t really matter.
Next question: Is blogging dead?
I get this question all the time and here are my thoughts. I don’t think that blogging is dead. I don’t think it’s dead at all, but I do think that it’s more difficult to get people’s attention and to get them to really read your posts.
Having said that I’m also going to follow up and say, nobody actually reads blog posts; people skim them. So, it’s more competitive. It’s harder to get people to really pay attention to what you’re saying. I’ve been engrossed in a great article recently, but you know, that’s pretty rare. Normally I’m skimming for the main points.
Blogging is also more time consuming than creating a video or a podcast episode. It’s much more time consuming. It’s also a little bit complicated because it’s more difficult to get your point across when you’re writing than when you’re talking.
For me, being sarcastic and funny sometimes (or I think I’m funny. If you don’t think I’m funny, this is literally incredibly awkward, but we’re going to blow right past it), I’m often misunderstood when I’m writing. I notice that I have to work a little bit harder.
It’s not that I can’t write them because I’m misunderstood. It’s just that I have to work a little bit harder to get my point across. I have to also work a little bit harder to get people to stay engaged.
Blogging is not dead. I still blog. Several times a month I publish a blog post to my blog, separate from my podcast episodes.
It’s not dead. It’s just that it’s more difficult. It’s more competitive. It’s different.
And if you can’t adapt as times change and things shift in the industry, then that’s what’s going to be dead? You and your reach, because you’re not adapting.
Adapt. Blog differently. Ask what people want. Ask what they need.
Ask the people who read your blog what would be more helpful for them? What could you do to make it to where they can’t wait to read your stuff because they’re so excited? You have to just come at it differently.
Actually there are benefits to blogging. In a blog post, you can just click right over to your paid course or your paid essential oils or whatever you’re selling. It’s very easy to just click.
On a podcast, they have to go to a separate link and it’s just a couple extra steps. You always want to minimize the extra steps when you’re trying to get people to take the next step with you and pay you for your work and your expertise. There are benefits to both.
I don’t think blogging is dead. I just think that it’s shifted and it’s changed and people who are not adapting are dying out. That’s what I think is happening.
And we cannot ignore the fact that podcasting is queen right now. All of these people who have money and influence are investing in podcast platforms like Spotify and iHeartRadio. That’s where they’re dumping their money.
And that speaks volumes. We need to pay attention to that. It’s the future and the present. That’s what I think.
Okay guys, that’s it for today. I don’t want to go too long. I am for sure going to do a follow-up episode answering more of these questions.
Thank you so much for wanting to learn from me and asking me these amazing questions!
If I can help you start your dream, start your business, grow your business, and really get the kind of engagement, the kind of revenue, the kind of impact that you really want to have. If you want to have control of your hours, if you want to have control of your money, please, please get in touch with me and find out how we can work together.
I want to work with you. I would love to help you. I love you guys so much. You’re so special, valuable, worthy, and supported. Please remember that. Have an amazing day.
Thanks so much for hanging out with me! In case you didn’t know, there’s actually an exclusive community that’s been created solely for the purpose of continuing discussions around The Purpose Show episodes. It’s designed to get you to actually take action and make the positive changes that we talk about here. I want you to go and be a part of it. To do that, go to alliecasazza.com/facebookgroup.
Thank you so much for tuning in! If you’d like to learn more about me, how I can help you, how you can implement all these things and more into your life to make it simpler, better, and more abundant, head to alliecasazza.com. There are free downloads, online courses, programs, and other resources to help you create the life you really want.
I am always rooting for you, friend! See you next time! I’m Allie Casazza and this is The Purpose Show.
Hey mama! Just a quick note, this post may contain affiliate links.
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