Episode 102: The Content Creators Planner With Jodi Hersh and Kim Doyal

Show Notes

Episode 102 The Content Creators Planner With Jodi Hersh and Kim Doyal

00:00

Al Robert Cairns here, I’m the CEO Founder and chief creator of mazing ideas that stunning digital marketing. In this week’s podcast, I sat down with my two good friends, Jody Hersh and Kim Doyle. And what we talk about is content creation. They’re amazing newsletter and the content creators planner. Grab yourself a drink, sit back, relax, and enjoy this week’s episode.

00:37

Everybody, Rob Cairns here, I’m here with two really good friends of mine today. Jody Hersh. And Kim Doylal. Good morning. Ladies. How are you today? Good morning. We’re

00:48

doing great.

00:49

So what we were going to talk about was the content creators planner. And even more specifically, to go with the planner is the newsletter these wonderful ladies are putting out. And what I wanted to start with is how did this sort of develop? You both had your own businesses? You both were doing things? How did this marriage to people across the country happen?

01:12

You want to tell God?

01:15

Sure. So Kim and I met? Gosh, I mean, probably close to seven years ago, I think I’ve kind of lost track. Exactly. We met online, through I think I’d heard Kim on somebody’s podcast. And you know, like, what she was about and followed her on social media probably downloaded something. And we ended up connecting and chatting a few times over Skype and just, you know, the typical friendship, develop that, you know, we all form in this online community. And we, you know, over the years, we just started helping each other with various things. And then summer of 2018 I was actually on a cruise for the one and only cruise I’ve ever been on. I’m like floating around the British Isles. And Kim messaged me at like, 130 in the morning for me asking me if I knew InDesign. And one thing led to another she was looking for somebody to help her create this planner. And so of course, I said yes. And we just started working on it. As soon as I got back, and within a few months, we launched that kicks are famously failed Kickstarter. Yeah. And it’s been, you know, all ahead. Ever since.

02:33

I just have to add to I asked God, I’m like, Can I hire you to do this? Or you want to do with me? And she was like, Yes. And I’m like, which one?

02:42

I’m like, I’ll be your partner. Of course. I’m not stupid.

02:45

It was funny.

02:46

That’s funny. And you know, Jodie refers to the failed Kickstarter, and those of us in Kim’s community, or Jodi’s community, we all know that story. We we know about the failed Kickstarter. If you’re in Kim and Jodi’s community. Kim, did you want to elaborate what happened with the Kickstarter why it failed? And what you learned from it? Yeah,

03:06

I felt I feel like I’ve got a good cliff notes version of this long story short, I don’t know why I thought it would be a brilliant idea to do a Kickstarter for the planner, when we had people to market to already, especially doing it like December. So we launched the Kickstarter. And it started off pretty good. And then it was probably three weeks in, excuse me, when we realized we were not going to hit the funding goal. It was the week before Christmas. And we said

03:32

oh is the best time to try a Kickstarter.

03:36

Because why not add something else that time? Yeah. Right before we

03:39

like to do things the hard way.

03:41

Like Can I just tell you like Jody had was sick for like two and a half months with one thing after this was all pre COVID. But it was like one thing after another and she was slammed with work. It was I feel like it was a long fuse. I might

03:53

have been patient zero, we really your ears actually. No, that was funny thing

03:59

is it’s your fault. Anyways, so we pivoted and we just thought Screw it. And literally the week of Christmas after Christmas, God was brilliant, got WooCommerce up on the site. And we went in and you know, you can’t get the name and email addresses of anyone on Kickstarter until you’ve successfully funded it. So had to message every single person and say at a time, one at a time. Amen for copy and paste. And we ended up with like 15 $100 in pre sales on New Year’s Eve, which was like, Alright, people still want this. This is great. This is validation, and we just kept going and the pre sales continued to come in learning from it, you know, Kickstarter, I don’t know enough about it. I accepted the fact I think I’ve gotten better. I think God would agree. Like I don’t give myself enough runway for anything. Kickstarter is a different beast. I think it’s you really have to have a super solid strategy and play to get the word out there. And, you know, we were working nonstop for those four months to get the place. planner itself done not to mention looking at sourcing printers and it was just it was pretty crazy. So learned a lot. And I don’t regret the the timeframe that we went from idea to planner. And I actually don’t regret the Kickstarter, you live and learn, I don’t think I would ever do one again now to be honest with you

05:20

know, I mean, I know, you know people do them to basically fund their, their, whatever their project is with pre sales. But you know, when you have our skills, there really was no reason for it. We just should have been doing that on our own website all along, especially since we were leveraging Kim’s existing audience, you know, for our initial launch, I guess, the hope is that you kind of get featured on Kickstarter, and you get exposed to a much broader audience than you would have found on your own. But that definitely didn’t happen for us.

05:58

Yeah, it’s so true. And Kim, you were saying you use WooCommerce? Was there any question where there was going to be a whoo site or something else? Or was that pretty? Well, again?

06:09

No, that was a given? Well, and the thing is, I mean, God has live love dogs. So she had already set up a really nice WooCommerce, you know, an e commerce site?

06:21

for clients too. So I knew it really well.

06:24

And just I mean, it was a WordPress check. It’s like, mind you, you know, I have a tendency to do other stuff on other platforms. But I think for the hub, and we we also knew, Robert going in, we weren’t sure at what point but we both agreed that we would put paid traffic behind this, like we were going to give this a really good shot out at the gate. So and if we’re going to send paid traffic anywhere, why not send it to a property we own?

06:46

Oh, I agree with you. And you and I talked about, you know how you were gonna send paid traffic to it early on, like going back like a year, year and a half ago. So is the only paid traffic traffic you thrown at WordPress, Facebook ads, or views, other paid traffic at this point?

07:07

God, Instagram, also a bit, yeah, Facebook and Instagram. And we looked at another system called programmatic. And we were geared up to give it a shot, but then COVID hit and so we never pulled the trigger on that.

07:25

Yeah, unfortunately, COVID changed a lot of things in the paid traffic space. And then the state of the political mess in the US, as I call it, to be diplomatic, has even impacted more in the paid traffic space. So it’s, it’s it’s a really interesting time. I actually think from what I’ve looked at CPC and hads are probably at an all time low. But what people don’t realize is all these big brands pulling out of doing paid traffic on Facebook and Instagram, they really only account for about 6% 8% of the traffic. So it’s not really impacting as much as people would think. Right. So

08:06

yeah, you know, and we definitely we’ve been through Sorry to interrupt, Robert, but like, we’ve been through our highs and lows with it, you know, having hired two agencies, we have learned a ton. And we just in complete transparency, we just paused we’re taking everything kind of back into our own lap, so to speak. Because the truth is, you know, we did the I call it pre work behind the scenes, whatever the stuff you can’t see in terms of getting really clear on who this is for the problem it solves. We’ve spent a lot of time on that. And

08:40

the creative on those initial ads ourselves. Yeah, we

08:43

did the we did the video, we did the copy everything.

08:48

Looks really good, actually. And getting your customer avatar down, which is what you’re saying your tone is a big deal. Like a lot of people don’t have that actually.

08:58

Yeah, so you know, it’s just live and learn. I am really, I would love to try YouTube ads. I can’t see that happening until 2021. Unless the time lottery falls into both of our laps. But you know, it’s I love paid traffic with content. I just think it all works. You just have to have the time and bandwidth to deploy it correctly.

09:20

No, no question and and the budget to deploy it properly. I mean, I think, personally, I think the days of throwing three or $4 a day at something personal, I think they’re gone. You might disagree with me that that technique worked like 10 years ago, but I don’t think it works as much.

09:38

Now we do our tests. I mean, the smallest we’ve ever done just you know, for an experiment is $10 a day just to see which version of something does better. But, you know, once you know we have a little bit of data, we’re like our lowest spend is like 25 or 50 a day on stuff and at our high point we’ve been up Probably around 15 $100 a day, which I never thought in a million years, I could ever say that we were spending 15 $100 a day at, you know, at our peak. And as long as we’re getting, you know, a good return on that, you know, we will keep scaling. But we’ve learned that, you know, you start at like, 50 a day and you keep creeping up and you’re still getting the good returns good returns, and then when you hit about 1000, it kind of plateaus and you start getting different results. But, you know, doubling your money on $1,000 spend, versus, you know, on a $500 spent, obviously, is better, but, you know, we’ve had to pull our budgets back at different times. And it’s, you know, you have like, one bad day and you start losing money with ads. So it’s Yeah, no, no job in and of itself, especially when you’ve scaled up to like those really big spends?

10:58

Yeah, I think what most people do wrong with the ads is they throw money at stuff, and they don’t know what the numbers say. They don’t know the analytics, they don’t know where the ads are being served. And they just say, Why doesn’t this work? And I always say to people, do you know what your numbers are? No, I spent 1000 bucks. I said, so if you’re gonna do that, write a check for 1000 bucks and move on. Right?

11:19

Yeah, yeah. And

11:21

I think the other thing, Robert, too, is that people when people say ads don’t work, there’s so many moving pieces that you have to look at each one, right? So if you can get someone to click on your ad, well, that the creative is good enough, at least. So where’s the disconnect? Where are they falling off? And too often, it’s, maybe it’s not a message to you know, the, the message doesn’t match the landing page, or whatever it is. But so then people do this whole it doesn’t work, as opposed to what piece didn’t work?

11:49

Yeah. And

11:50

you have to have a lot of patience and just test one variable at a time. Otherwise, you don’t know which change you’ve made. Had the impact, positive or negative? Yeah,

12:01

no, I so I so agree with that, Jody. I mean, I’ve, I’ve run some really creative ads. Couple years ago, I think I shared the story with Kim often one day, I run an ad where I turn something upside down. And I made, I put the ad copy in black and white. And they ran a $6,000 ad campaign. And that turned into an $80,000 spent so you know, that nice Win win. But the problem you got is if you do some, you’re too creative with your ads. Sometimes people just click on them because they’ve got pretty, and you got to be really careful about that.

12:41

Absolutely.

12:44

So beyond that, who is who is the content creators planner gear for like, who should really come out and get this product?

12:54

You want to hit that Jody or me? Oh, you can take it? It’s interesting, because we we created this for no pun intended, but content creators, right? We really thought our, our audiences. Were so smart. And I’m out. drop the mic. Okay. So, but but we thought it was going to be people who would do digital marketing, they’ve got an online presence, they understand content marketing. That’s really who we created. As far as it was more of a, I need to make sure my content has a framework and a strategy. And it’s delivering results, as opposed to just creating more and pushing it at people. And what’s been fascinating is we have people at all walks of life. But every market across the board, we’ve got dentists, we’ve got people who do social media for the local police department, we’ve got, you know, city planners, it’s its floor, it just blows us away. Here’s a great example, within about a week and a half. We got two brokers, realtors, brokers contacting us, one was interested in buying like 75 for all their brokerages, and the other one is interested in us doing a training. And he’s like, I think I could probably get 50 people on a training for you. And, and so it’s fascinating where we were, we start seeing, you know, potential verticals that will test with ads as well. But, you know, like Jody and I are saying and, you know, content marketing is the only marketing left in essence. And so it’s it’s one of those things that everyone is getting it I think COVID has put a spotlight on the fact that you have to be doing this online, you have to have a solid presence, you have to be putting out valuable content for your audience. And so, it’s really been a trip, we’re gonna survey our audience at a certain point here, it’s we’ve just we’re constantly like, we’ve got so much to do all the time. But you know, so it’s, I feel like this is so the non answer, but it’s for anybody who needs a solid content marketing strategy. And I know you’re not supposed to hold niche role of niche down, it’s like, well, you know, everybody needs to sell the content marketing. Yeah.

14:57

I think one of just to add to that, I think one of the That’s been interesting to see like, I mean, we don’t have a lot of information on all of our customers, but we have some. And it’s interesting to see there’s a lot of solopreneur types that are doing something on their own. And you know, those people especially wear a lot of hats. So they tend to not have time to they don’t get to their content, or they always feel stressed about it, because they’re juggling too many things. So we have a lot of people like that. And we’ve had surprising ones, like a police department, I remember when I was handling the shipping, I remember shipping to some police department, and some universities, I mean, it’s just been churches, churches, and a lot of you know, like artisan crafter, type people, whether they’re photographers or, you know, like all the typical things like designers and stuff, but all kinds of like, crazy other things. And then, you know, the affiliate marketer, blogger type people. So I mean, it’s really, like, it’s interesting, like, we’re gonna try to focus on some verticals, because we can target for that with our ads and stuff. But, you know, it’s, it’s just been surprising, and we have a lot more beginners than we expected. Which we know that just from the questions that we get asked a lot. So you know, every once in a while, we end up jumping on zoom with somebody to really just help them get started, because they’re just even overwhelmed by the plan or sometimes. But yeah, so I think it’s kind of evolving, I think we have probably need to do another six hour zoom kitman. Some of the newer avatars that have emerged.

16:40

Yeah, I know, when I talked to my clients, and they say, I struggle with content creation. And the first thing I tell them to us, you need to look at the planner, and, you know, and I’m not just saying that they, it’s well put together and, and some of them don’t know how to plan, like, it’s what it’s designed for, right? They, you look at your content strategies, and they kind of what I call half hazard, oh, today, I’ll throw the tweet, we’re out, wrote an Instagram post, tomorrow, throw the Facebook post, and there’s no plan in mind of where those are going. It’s just a beat,

17:18

or why they’re even doing it,

17:20

which is noise, by the way. You know, I actually was showing off the, the Trello board the other day to interest in going to a member of Toronto Police. And I was kind of hoping to get them interested in them for you guys, because they’re actually one of the most connected police departments on social media in the world. And, and they, they always struggle with their content. There are people in their corporate comms department that says, and you kind of I kind of look at this stuff and say, wait a minute, why do you Why are you guys doing what you’re doing? You know,

17:59

it’s going to be timely, not that to go sideways. But police departments. I mean, a solid content strategy would probably be really beneficial and timely in the us right now.

18:11

Oh, yeah. No, no question. One of my good friends just retired. And he was one of the big reasons Toronto Police are where they are in social media to consider the world leader. And, and he said, you know, the bridges and the stuff that they had to break down to make this happen. And with what’s going on in the US, there’s a multitude of things, one, are you putting out the right content? And to even if you’re scheduling content, do you know what content you’re putting out? So if you have to pull back content, because of the situation in the US on a daily basis? Can you do that?

18:51

Well, you know, we’ve had people ask us to, and you know, Jody and I are big proponents obviously have a 90 day plan. And I think that if, in addition to the rest of you know, what we’ve learned this year, 2020 has shown us that, can you imagine if you had planned out your entire year of content in January, you’d be like backpedaling every other day. And so it’s super important that people think about content as something of value for their audience, not something they have to do and get off their plate. And they set it and forget it, it doesn’t you know, you’re literally wasting your time if you do that. So, you know, it’s really important to be able to keep it to a certain extent fluid with a with a strategy.

19:34

No question. So cam and Jody, since we’re talking content, what type of content that’s working really well these days, and what type of content Do you see not working so well.

19:46

Jody’s had some, I was going to swear some kick butt content, really. So she can I think I’m gonna let her into that.

19:54

Yeah, I mean, most of the content that that I’ve been creating, and I’m nowhere near as prolific as Kim has been. But I’ve been writing some fairly in depth pieces, you know, helping people with things like consistency and productivity. And I wrote a tremendous long post on performing a marketing checkup, which you can sort of flip that on its head, and it’s basically everything that you would need in a marketing plan. But, you know, people generally don’t know what KPIs to measure, and why those matter. So I, I tried to make it as simple as possible, but it is very comprehensive. And we’ve had really good success with those like, and I know that they’re successful, because we get comments on the blog posts, which is always shocking to me. And I’m always excited when it happens. And when we share it on social media, we’re getting posts and stuff. And when we include it in our emails, we usually send out two different types of emails one, once a week, it’s usually more of like a story form kind of email. And then we have our, our weekly newsletter. And we encourage people to hit reply, because it’s just Kim and I, are Kim and me. I mean, we, it’s us. So we answer. So when people hit reply, you know, they tell us what they think about things. And it’s usually very positive, and occasionally not so much. But just the engagement is is, you know, shows us that it’s working. So, you know, these are pieces that I mean, I could turn any of them into, you know, an opt in download, or something that you pay for, like maybe as a course, but just giving it away to help our people with problems that we know that we can solve. So I’m finding that those types of things are really working well.

21:45

So true, Jodi, and I have to tell you, one of the things I look forward to regularly is your newsletter. There’s always tips in there. Yeah, there’s some stuff in there. I don’t always agree with. And that’s normal. But I mean, generally, it’s well put together, it’s well thought out, and it’s well laid out. So I think anybody that’s not subscribing to the newsletter should because for me, it’s like a must read on a weekly basis. So now I’m doing really well with it.

22:15

Yeah, thank you.

22:16

Yeah. Now, the other thing you said, and I really liked what you said, you said, we could turn this into a content book, but we just put it out there. And Gary Vee said in one of his recent podcasts about a month ago, he said, you know, information is all there, all we have to do is use this magic tool called Google. It’s the people you pay for and the results, not the information you pay for now. Which is really interesting, because I think we’ve shifted so

22:45

yeah, one of the something else I’d like to add. And I learned this from Kim, I mean, like, we all hear it and know it, but until you actually do it, and she models this wonderfully is to share more of yourself in your content. Like I mean, Kim, has been wildly transparent, we’ve, you know, most of us have, you know, heard her personal story, and how you know, how she got into information marketing and content marketing in the first place. And, you know, she’s just very revealing about where she is in her journey, and it helps people connect. And while I understand that, intellectually, I tend to shy away from it a little bit. And, you know, I share a little here and there, but you know, recently she, I, I was stumped as to what I wanted to create. And she’s a wonderful content coach. So we just ended up having a chat. And I’m like, Oh, yeah, okay, you know, thanks for like, five minutes. And I wrote kind of a story based email, which I sent out to my personal list is actually going to go out to CCP after this recording, and CCP being content creators planner list. And, you know, it’s like, it never occurred to me to share that much of my personal journey. But it helps people connect with you so much. And I think I’m gonna be doing more of that, too.

24:10

Yeah, I, I tend to agree with each other. I tend, and you’ve seen how I write, I tend to be a little more transparent than some people I’ll share. I think I was sharing your story last week, after my third wedding anniversary, and I was very transparent, and I was using it as an example to say some of the best things in life are worth waiting for. And those who know, Joe, and I know we knew each other for 19 years before we got married, and I share that story pretty publicly. And the reason I do is not to say Look at me, it’s you know, if you wait patients in life and business, you’ll get what you want. It just takes time sometimes. And so I’m pretty transparent that way. I I talk about you know, life in general and, and and there’s, but you can be transparent and have the Filter two, which most people don’t realize, if you know what I mean. So

25:04

you know what I always tell people and it’s funny I caught into I don’t want to say it, a heated debate I was on a live stream a few years ago. And and it’s funny because the person that I was kind of debating it with was like in or maybe late mid to late 20s. So I think there’s a little bit of life experience that takes into this. It’s not a judgment on younger people. But there’s value in sharing, when you can do it from a place that you’ve got a little bit of an objective perspective on it, when you’re in it, you know, like, people who do the, the ranting and the dumping of their personal stories online. And, and I know a lot of people do that, who are not necessarily marketers or entrepreneurs, but there’s not a whole lot of value for the other person. And it’s just so when you’re coming from a place of being on the other side of it a little bit, like I really don’t, with the exception of, you know, losing my mom, which is just grief is a process. But other than that, I always try to wait till I’m sort of on the other side of it. And I can ask myself, what did I learn? can this help somebody else, you know, so it and it’s something you just you step into sort of slowly would be my recommendation, get comfortable with it? Yeah,

26:12

like before you send that flaming email, you should probably sleep on it, and then not send it in the morning, but it feels good to write it.

26:19

You know, it’s funny, you say that, Jodi. And that’s always been my policy, you write it, you put it in a draft box, and you sit on it. And generally, I’m pretty good about doing that, until this past week, when somebody decided to get passive aggressive and send me the flaming email before I sent mine. And then, then then the word, then you open the world, and I just push send, and I was done with it. You know what I mean?

26:49

Totally.

26:50

But I agree, you take the time. Once you created the physical planner, one of the things you ladies did, which I really liked was you created some Trello boards, which I’ve seen, I’ve tested, I like them. Why did you go from the physical planner to Trello? And why Trello? and talk a little bit about that?

27:11

Well, the Trello came about because people wanted it. So we also have it the digital, right, the PDF. And the thing is the PDF is not fillable. And that was a conscious choice, right? I mean, Jodi, and I’ve gone back and forth. So many times, she’s like, I can make this fillable. It’s not a good user experience to do that. And so what was happening is we had people telling us, they wanted a way to be able to collaborate with teams. And you know, we went back and forth. I was it was just sort of a, let’s just get started on this. And since it was surprising, it was just one of those things people asked for, we teased a little bit. People said they were interested. And, you know, I think people tend not to do this, we send on an email to our list, and ask people to get on the early notification of the Trello. And it’s just a way to get data, right? So they clicked through, it wasn’t so much that we were like, Oh my god, like, we didn’t have like this huge launch strategy behind it. But we needed some validation. And you know, the first morning, we sent out that email, we got a couple 100 people saying, Yeah, I want to Trello version. And so just kind of went to work doing it. And it’s done really well. And we literally just tested ads, which we’re going to do new ads for it. But we weren’t even driving traffic specifically to Trello. Which when you look at with ads, even you know, we look at cost of goods, which it seems like our ad agencies never did. Looking at the cost of goods with a physical planner, as well as the different digital assets we haven’t. So we’ve got you know, we’ve got Asana planned, potentially clickup. We’ve had people asking for more. It’s just a bandwidth thing in terms of the boards or not. The boards are done. We can import them, but it’s redoing the training for each one.

28:58

No, I agree with you. And

29:00

I think it will be next. Asana.

29:03

Asana is very popular. Yeah. I agree with the Kim in a story, I’ll share a personal one was, at the time, I was looking at a multitude of project management tools. And you know, I was like trying some out. And when you guys switched to Trello. It reinforced with me why I use Trello just because of the number of boards out there and other boards. And I thought I’d share that with you that kind of switch me back control.

29:37

A little bit of that, too. So that’s great.

29:39

Yeah, so I I like Trello I’m very much a visual guy. So for me, it’s you know, I’ll show it to me in front. I’ve played with Hydra platform so I could come by play with the mall. I’m the PMI by trade actually and I have a film that boards That kind of fortunately, you guys creating the troll boards forced me back to travel. So, interestingly enough,

30:07

I love it.

30:08

That’s really cool. Um, you guys are talking ladies are talking about doing some workshops down the road, I know you’ve kind of asked if some ladies would like some workshops, what do you what are you planning around there?

30:25

We have no shortage of ideas. Yeah, we both have idea for you. But we have a few things coming up. So first is something that we’re calling creative kick. And it’s going to be a monthly subscription type thing where we help people with content ideas and accountability. And so each month we’ll send out a new prompt to help you create a new piece of content with like a framework. So there’s, you know, the focus, what is the thing about? And then the format, what what type of content would you be creating, and we give examples, and we’re gonna give tips on promoting the content. And also, we’re going to offer a monthly live session, we can come up with a name for that yet, Kim, like a ask us anything kind of thing for the members of this. And that. I think that’ll be launched. Maybe some, probably early September, we keep moving the date, but I think by early September, it’ll be launched. And then we were bouncing around the idea of doing bash, I don’t even know how to describe it, like masterminds not really the right word, but we’re to sort of have a hive mind group where we work directly with people to plan and execute their content strategies, probably over a 90 day period. And it could be recurring, because we’ll do it every 90 days. And that that was the thing that at the time, when we posted that survey, asking if women in the group would prefer a women’s only group or with you know, do they like, you know, the the mix with men, simply because we tend to get more engagement in general, from the women on our list. So we were just kind of curious if that was a thing or not. And I say we got more people wanting it MCs than women only. But I don’t think we have a lot of data on that.

32:42

Well, in the group,

32:43

I’d love to know.

32:44

Yeah, and, and it’s interesting is the difference in the group versus our email list. Because obviously, everyone on our email list is in the group. And so it’s what’s been fascinating. And I just want to point this out to listeners also is that all of these things are coming about because of the content we’re creating. And so there’s this content is not this passive thing, Jody and I have both hopped on zoom calls become consulting kind of gigs, for lack of a better term, from our email list where people reach out and because it’s, it’s the two of us answering those questions, and we create content showing our expertise. People trust us, we have a relationship with that list. And so even to do you know, something that might be, you know, like this, this 90 day hybrid where it’s gonna be more high ticket because it’s us personally working with people and, and to do that it’s but that came about because of the rest of the work we’ve done, if that makes sense. And so it’s really allowing things to organically evolve while you while you have a strategy and a framework, but using fluid again, to kind of go back to that place and see what is our audience need next. And it’s,

33:53

it’s really a natural. It’s kind of a natural shirt dress shirt. guys think about it. I mean, a lot of people are afraid to create and put out, you know, how to do what I do content, because they want people to hire them to do it. You know, they like I would want to get hired to design someone’s website, why would I want to teach somebody how to do their website, but the funny thing is, is you do the teaching, and most people, some people will take it and run with it. But most people are going to take it and realize I don’t Yeah, great, but you know, can I just hire you to do it for me because they don’t want to do it. And what what Kim was just describing is kind of why we’re going to be creating, you know, a higher ticket offer because what we’re finding is you know, people we’ve got this strategy and a book or Trello board or digital PDF that helps you create your, your plan, but you still have to actually fill it in. We don’t do that for you. And some of the people that we end up engaging with on support emails and chat You know, they’re, they’re looking for a lot of extra help there. And, you know, we can’t do it for everybody one on one, there’s only two of us. And I, you know, by creating some sort of a, an offer where we can actually do this one too many, a small many, but one to many, I think we’ll be able to deliver a lot of a lot of value for those people and actually help them do it. And then beyond that, you’d have to hire someone to do it for you. You know, and the other

35:34

said about people saying, just, you know, can you do it for me? Or can you teach me that happens, like, all the time, that’s the value of helping people and giving them the tools and then they, I think it’s really important for people to understand what they what they need, and then say, Okay, now get somebody to do it. For me, I think that that has value in itself. And, yeah, I really do. Kim, sorry about that. What were you gonna add to that? No, that’s,

36:06

that’s okay. I was just gonna say, you know, the other piece of this, that I personally, like, I really, I miss the collective of like, intimate groups, right, I love the Facebook group, you know, we are going to be doing a reboot of that. But, and, obviously, it’s still content creators, but we’ve got some fun stuff planned, it’s really going to be an extension of content creators planner. And, but that being said, there is something you know, about a smaller, intimate group, whether it’s through a course, or a mastermind, or whatever, we’re gonna call this thing. There’s value. And that’s relationships are what has grown my business. And so, you know, if we can help facilitate, additional, you know, connections and relationships, while teaching and being a value, it’s like, it’s a win, it’s gonna be fun.

36:58

I agree with it. Relationships are the key to any business. As we, as we move forward. I think people want to work with people do like they want to work with people they trust, they want to work with people they know. And I think it’s really hard to go to XYZ company and say, by the way, I’m pitching you on the 20th.

37:25

Know what I mean? They’ve been people really want to say, I’d rather sell 20 grand at somebody or no,

37:33

I think, yeah,

37:33

I think we’re there. So Oh, and I think relationships are important. I mean, I mean, I looked at, you know, book, you too, and I, I’m really lucky to have good relationships with both. And I appreciate that. So, James, so we’re, we’ve talked a lot about the planner, we’ve talked a lot about, you talked a little bit about the face, Book Group. One of my favorite Facebook groups, actually, I mean, probably way too many than I can count. And that’s probably one of the two or three that I’m commenting in pretty regularly, just because the people that both Kim and Jodi attract, which is a big deal. I mean, I’ve got a lot of good friendships that have come out of that group over the last three or four years. So that’s really good. Where do you guys go from here, besides continue to increase the planner increase to grow, increase? what you’re doing? what’s what’s, where do you go? Well,

38:37

I’ll just, you know, to Jodi’s point, like there is no shortage of ideas. Yeah. And it’s, you know, we both have personal brands that we are making sure that we’re putting time and energy into as well. And it’s, it’s like, I couldn’t ask for a better situation, we support each other completely. And that is, well, like, we go back and forth with ideas on, you know, like, I was just saying to God, I’m like, I think I need to kind of resurrect my YouTube channel, and I’m not sure how I want to do that. And so, you know, she’ll kind of coach me and brainstorm with me on that, and vice versa. You know, so like, we’re smart, we’re going to have a version two of the planner, which will probably be 2021. Obviously, I’m just adding a few things to that. And we like we’ve got these things planned. We’ve got, you know, the monthly subscription coming, we’ve got the the higher ticket thing for lack of a better word to it’s like a hybrid to work with us personally. And I think we’re just, I don’t know where to good place. Well, like we’ve been at this for two years. And it feels like we’re in constant project and get this done and get that done. But I think we’re sort of, and correct me if I’m wrong, God that we’re sort of on the precipice of having just a foundation dial then I’m actually excited about us taking the ads back over to see what we can do. You know, and then, like, we’re good for the rest of this year, like we know what we’re working on.

40:00

Yeah, so, you know, to just to add a little bit. So, you know, we like Kim said, you know, we each have our personal brands. So, you know, Kim just recently relaunched her list explosion course on Kim doyle.com. And, you know, we promoted that through the content creators planner list. Not sure if and I guess it was in the group too. And she’s got some other things cooking similar to that. And I do as well, I still do a lot of client work. And I’ve been working on, I’ve been talking about a course for bazillion years, and actively working on it now. So I’ll be putting out a course, as well. You know, apart from content creators, planner, and, you know, it’s just the two of us. So, you know, I think everything that we’re doing all kind of works together. And you know, that that’s why we are cross promoting into the content creators planner list, if it was just completely separate, personal things that wouldn’t make sense. So, you know, one of the big things that Kim has always wanted to do with some sort of a big live event. I’ve always been apprehensive about it. introverted, and busy and just sounds exhausting. I’m sure it would be great. But um, you know, with the pandemic happening, you know, we’ve kind of thought about that, and, you know, virtual events, I think everybody’s kind of sick of them at this point. Oh, yeah. But that’s where, you know, with the idea of like, craving some sort of a collective mastermind type scenario, I think that is still something aside from the work with us high ticket thing that we talked about, I think there might be something else, you know, coming behind that that just doesn’t have a timeline attached to it just yet, where, you know, we’d be helping ourselves and others to grow our businesses as a collective.

41:56

And the world opens up, we will get together.

41:59

I have to tell you, God, I’m, I’m pretty drained with virtual events right now. I mean, between the constant zoom calls, meet calls for clients on the phone. I think your game when you do virtual events has to be even higher than in person. It shows up and more. You know, notwithstanding the gentleman and his wife or girlfriend who decided to make sure curriculum on the zoom call yesterday.

42:33

Yeah.

42:38

Zoom. Right.

42:39

Yeah, to do is right. And then I just find I’ve done days, because some of the brands I work with, where I’ve come off, and I’m like, I’m done. And it’s so I mean, I, we all know, wordcamp, US got cancelled because of zoom burnout. I think people are just tired. And I honestly don’t think we’ll be getting together much before next summer. Personally, I mean, I don’t know where you’re out. Right. So I want to thank both you ladies for joining me. Jody, how does somebody get a hold of you if they want to?

43:14

You can reach me at Jody at content creators. planner.com. And, you know, my personal website is orange. star.com. And of course, I’m on all the social channels just as Jody Hirsch.

43:27

Yeah. And Kim

43:30

Kim at content creators planner.com or Kim Doyle, calm and that’s DIY al. Yeah, and same. I’m Kim Doyle on all my social platforms.

43:40

And we we actually managed to get to a podcast without any vendor would be disappointed. I mean, for those who don’t know Jody’s got a couple of Kim’s got a couple and I’ve got three and they’re all quiet. This is like

43:55

it behaved I locked him.

43:58

Yeah, I locked mine in my I want to make

44:02

one of mine sitting right behind me and he hasn’t moved in the last hour. So but I want to thank you both very much, and all the best here and the content creators partner and have a great day.

44:15

Thanks, Robert.

44:17

A special thanks to Jody Hersh and Kim Doyle for joining me on this week’s episode. For more episodes, as well as digital marketing information, please head on over to our website at stunning digital marketing comm you can email me VIP at stunning digital marketing comm if you want to follow me on Twitter or connect on Twitter or ask a question at Rob Cairns I can also be found on our other social media platforms, which can be found on our website. As always, this podcast is dedicated my late father Bruce Cairns, I miss you and I love you very much. Keep your feet on the ground. Keep reaching for the stars make up 60 Bye for now