Today I’m speaking with Shannon Mattern, a pro in teaching solopreneurs how to build their websites from scratch. Shannon also mentors web designers on how to package, price, and position their web design services without burnout.

In this episode, Shannon will talk to us about how she leverages other people’s audiences to benefit her business, and how she uses social media to connect with other people and get on their radar for potential collaboration.

But the main topic of conversation in this episode is how her freebie offer has been incredibly successful – so successful she was making enough money to pay off her mortgage.

If you want to learn how she transitioned away from her 1:1 service-based business to utilize her free challenge to make money, grow her email list (for free!)  and leave her day job, then this episode is for you.

Read the full transcript

Meg Casebolt 0:01
You’re listening to social slowdown a podcast for entrepreneurs and micro businesses looking for sustainable marketing strategies without being dependent on social media. Social media is a double edged sword. It’s a wonderful way to stay connected. But it also can feel like an addictive obligation. And it’s even more complex for businesses, your audience might be right there, but you’ve got to fight with algorithms to maybe be seen by them. So whether you want to abandon social media altogether, or you just want to take a month off, it’s possible to have a thriving business without being dependent on social media. This podcast is all about finding creative, sustainable ways to engage with your audience without needing to lip sync, send cold DMS, run ads or be available 24/7. Let’s get started.

Hello, friends and welcome to the social celadon podcast. I am so excited to share this interview with you today I am speaking with Shannon Mattern. Shannon is a friend of mine who teaches solopreneurs how to DIY their websites. She also mentors web designers on how to package price and position their web design services without burnout. But we are going to be spending most of this conversation speaking specifically about the ways that she shows solopreneurs how to start their businesses online how to build their websites. And specifically we’re going to be talking about a freebie that has been incredibly successful for her she has a free five day challenge all about how to build your WordPress website from scratch. And we I wanted to talk with her specifically about how she made the transition from being a one to one services business into using this free challenge in order to both make money so that way she could stop offering those services and could leave her day job and feel like that was a sustainable choice. And also how she’s been able to grow her email list for free and actually get paid to grow her email list because of the way that she’s set up this challenge in order to be able to grow her business and be able to help more people. So I hope you enjoy this episode. Enjoy. Hey, Jen, and welcome to the social slowdown podcast. I am so excited to have you here today.

Shannon Mattern 2:14
Thank you so much for having me, I’m super excited to be here.

Meg Casebolt 2:19
The reason that I wanted to have you on is because we’ve had a lot of conversations over the past few episodes about people who are providing high touch services, and being able to use the networks that they’ve already created and leveraging referral sources and kind of doing that personalized outreach. I know your business kind of started in that space and evolved into being a little less high touch and a little bit more leveraged, but still not necessarily becoming dependent on social media as the way that you’re getting your leads. So I would love if you don’t mind, if you would start with that story of how did you get started? And then how did you make that transition into not necessarily providing one to one services?

Shannon Mattern 3:03
Yeah, so I started out as a web designer doing one on one services on the side of my day job. And I quickly discovered that that was a full time job, especially the way I was running it, which was undercharging, over delivering, treating my clients like, you know, they were my boss, and I was their employee. And just like, you know, it was very unsustainable for me, it’s the way I was doing it. A whole nother podcast thing fixing that problem.

Meg Casebolt 3:36
That one too, I definitely hit all of those same, you know, stepped in all those same puddles?

Shannon Mattern 3:42
Yes. So I remember thinking like, Okay, I like this is not sustainable. I can’t do this anymore. I’m going to finish up these clients, I’m going to quit, and I’m just going to be an employee for the rest of my life. You know, I tried it, it’s not working, you know, whatever. And then I was listening to this podcast called smart, passive income with Pat Flynn. And I remember him saying, telling the story of how he makes money by teaching people how to set up a blog on WordPress, through hosting affiliate commissions. And I was like, What are you talking about? Wait a second. It was like the record scratch moment. I’m like, You mean that companies are paying you to show potential customers how to, like, set up their tools and use their services. I’m like, What is this? What is this? I’m like, I can’t do this. And then I also had this moment of Wait, like, Wait, you mean all those tutorials that I watched and all those blogs I read to figure out how to build websites. All those people weren’t just doing that out of the goodness of their heart. They’re like making money off the back end of it. And I was like I can do that, I can do that. And I can do it better than anything else that I have found to help people like me who I’m a techy person, right, but I also don’t think that way, right? I’m gonna like take all of the techy information and synthesize it into, like, normal conversation. So I was like, I can do that. And I want to teach people like my clients that I’m working with how to build their own website, because I’m like, WordPress is easy. To me, if you learn like if someone teaches it to you in the right way, right. So there are so many different ways to learn it. And people want to teach you the difference between a page a post the plugin, a widget, and all of this stuff. And I’m like, the people who need to build a website for their business literally don’t care about all of those nuances, they need the end result. So I’m going to create a free training that teaches them click by click what I would do for them if they were paying me and show them how easy it is. And then when we get done, and they want to change their font color 17 times, they get to do that themselves. Because they have they have DIY. So I start Googling affiliate programs. And I’m like, this plugin I bought has an affiliate program, this hosting company I use has an affiliate program, and I just started amassing a list of all the tools that I already was using signed up for their affiliate programs started outlining my training. And, you know, taught, here’s how to set up your hosting, here’s how to install WordPress, here’s how to, you know, here’s this premium theme that I love. here’s this, here’s ConvertKit. Here’s, you know, and the tools have evolved, you know, over time as I’ve as I’ve changed, but and then I’d say and I’m an affiliate for these. So thank you so much in advance for using my affiliate links. This is what allows me to keep this training free, right. And I built it and had no audience. That’s all done. And it’s awesome. And of course, I was brand new. So I edited all the videos 1000 times and tried to make it perfect. And you know, all of the imposter syndrome that comes along with with that. And then I’m like, Oh, how do I market this, like, I have no idea how to even start, but I knew from listening to business podcasts and stuff that’s like build an email list. Like everyone’s like, build an email list, even if you don’t know what you’re going to use it for. Like just start. And I was like, I’ll give this training away for free in exchange for an email address. That’s what I’ll do. And so that’s what I did. And that’s how I started the free five day website challenge. I called it that because everybody else was calling their thing a challenge. It’s funny 15 2016. So I didn’t know what else to call it. But the whole premise of the training is like over the course of five days, I will show you how to build your entire website, start to finish all the things you didn’t know, you needed to know, as if I were doing it for you. But I’m not doing it for you. So I did that. And I Googled how to build an email list.

Meg Casebolt 8:23
And ConvertKit was one of the, you know, affiliates that you were using in the course. So you’re able to say, Okay, how do I set this up on the tool I’m already using that I already have familiarity with, and you’re able to then also display to the people going through that training. You know, I use ConvertKit, too. This is just me like picking things out of the air because they have an affiliate program. These are the exams that I use to run my business. If you go look up where my domain is hosted, it’s going to be at the place at the site that I’m telling you to use. So having that credibility, I’m not just kind of picking things out of the air because they have the best rates and payback. No, I actually use all of these tools.

Shannon Mattern 9:04
Exactly. I mean, there were tools with better affiliate programs that sucked and I’m like, I’m not going to tell people to go use this because it’s it’s not the best tool. And even at the time I don’t think ConvertKit was a thing at the time I started it I picked MailChimp even though I could have done Infusionsoft or you know something with a with a beefy payout. But I’m like, No, I want to help you get started. So there were times when I’m like, This is a free tool. I could have chosen a paid tool and made some money off of it. But ultimately I was thinking about, you know, the needs of of the person.

Meg Casebolt 9:42
Right, especially you as a side Hustler, speaking to people who have not, maybe it’s side hustles or maybe starting businesses, but they have some time but they don’t necessarily have a budget and so they have the time to go through to DIY their website and then when they’re ready to invest in what whatever the next thing is for them, they feel that like reciprocal calling of like Shannon helped me so much just to get my feet underneath me. You know, there is a debt of gratitude that is there that they may want to repay in the future.

Shannon Mattern 10:14
I love that you brought that up. Because what I came to learn was like I created a shareworthy freebie, this is what I call it. So because it was so good, and it delivered so much value, those people that felt that they owed me a debt of gratitude, the way they did it is by telling everybody else in all of the Facebook groups that they were in learning how to build their business to go take this free training, and it like took off. So I was trying to figure out how to get it to take off. And I discovered this thing called Facebook groups. That was the CIA’s 30 day list building challenge, where she’s like, make something awesome. And give it away for free. I’m like, check. And then it was like, okay, but to who? Who do I give it away? You know, how do I

Meg Casebolt 10:59
get in front of the people who actually want this? Yeah. And so

Shannon Mattern 11:03
she literally had like, it’s Freebie Friday and my group, show us what you’re working on. And so I was like, Oh, this is what I built. And people were like, wait, what? You’re gonna teach me how to do this for free? Like, you mean, I don’t have to spend hours Googling and trying to figure out who’s full of crap. And who knows what they’re talking about? And you’re just gonna tell me and I’m like, yeah, so it took off from there. I want to

Meg Casebolt 11:24
really quickly go back and say, I’ve also done Natalie Lucy’s 30 day free list building challenge. And I love that challenge, because it really is step by step for 30 days, but you can also pay like 100 bucks and get it all at once. Right? So which I didn’t mean to. So even when you’re thinking about, you know, I want a freebie that’s really great that I can give away that will help grow my email list. There are ways that you can use a freebie and even make money from the freebie I did the same thing with my sir, I have a 30 day challenge. It’s called SC October, we run it every October. And I would say you know, you can get it, I think it was 25 bucks, you know, you can you can wait for it. It’ll rip out to you. It’ll show up in your email every day. Or you can get it all at once for 25 bucks. Like it wasn’t a huge moneymaker for me. But it also indicated to me who are the people that are ready to binge. So when the time came to offer another product at the end of it, you know, to have the offer of great you went through this free challenge. Now what I knew the people that were willing to invest in Yeah, it was just 25 bucks. And a lot of them didn’t even invest in like the $1,200 program on the other end of it. But though some of them did, some of them were ready. And and, and some of them got what they needed from the free or $25 challenge. And the next time it opened, they shared it up with their friends. So again, we’re not always talking about what is that like? The sales cycle of it and people who are like joining your five day challenge there, they might not leap into then going okay, Shannon, I’m tired. I don’t want to do this. Can I just pay you $10,000 for a website? That’s not the goal? Sometimes,

Shannon Mattern 12:58
sometimes they did. And that was that was crazy to me. And I was like, No, I’m showing you how to do it for free. Why do you want to pay me? I don’t want to do it because I couldn’t figure out how to do it and make it sustainable. And then thank goodness, I had a business coach that was like, You’re crazy. It’s the business model. So you can say yes to these people. Because if you really want to quit your day job, that’s gonna help you get there faster. And long story short, I did. And that’s like how my web designer Academy was born of like, Oh, so many other people struggle with all these things that I did at the beginning, I fixed it, I was successful. I also had these like this scalable, like passive, not passive, but like scalable piece of my business, and the one on one services together for a while and so they you know, the one was like consistent steady when I was you know, in the famine of the the web design clients, right? So, it all did end up working together not through any like intentionality of of like in spite of me.

Meg Casebolt 14:09
What your what your business coach said to which is like the when you have people who are coming and wanting to hire you figure out a way that you can sustainably say yes to them while you’re also building up this email list while you’re also building up what that next phase will be. I think a lot of people think like, I am a service provider and I want to grow a program where I can help more people than that kind of go from that one to one model, one to many model, but they feel like they have to lean on the one to many model to grow really rapidly in order to get there. And you and I both went through that transition point of providing those one to one services, creating the freebies building the audience of people who aren’t quite ready for the one to one services or who don’t necessarily want to engage In one to one services, they want to learn it themselves. And letting almost your if you’re a service provider, letting your services direct services business, be your your primary and then have your leveraged offer be the side hustle, it’s almost like we’re creating multiple businesses, for ourselves in our businesses sometimes. And our services can give us the stability of income. So that when you do have, you know, a launch, or a lot of people come into a program or something like that, you can ease back on the services, but it doesn’t always have to be a direct cut, you know, like a slice in time where you stop offering services, and you move only to leveraged offers. For a lot of us, it ends up being much more of a slow spectrum transition, as opposed to a, you know, quitting, and completely changing everything.

Shannon Mattern 15:54
Yeah, and they really feed each other. I mean, like, a lot of the ideas that came for how I would serve clients came from questions people would ask me in the five day website challenge, or vice versa, things that I realized I could teach in the five day challenge came from things that I was working on with clients. And so they, they really can feed each other. And if you’re patient enough to like, let it unfold, and you’re not trying to explode your traffic overnight and doing like, things that just take. So like the opportunity cost of those things are so high. And I did. And that’s why I’m saying like I did, I went down that road of like, I need to explode my traffic overnight. And I need to like go do all of this stuff. That thank goodness, behind the scenes, what was working was my five day website challenge was still being shared. And like, you know, people were telling other people, because all of the crazy things that I went off and did, did not result in more email subscribers, the challenge itself, and how generous and helpful and just thorough it was, it’s like I’m giving away all my best stuff for free. That is what grew my list. And so it’s fascinating to me to think like, again, in spite of myself, I created something that worked, I totally discounted how it was working, didn’t think it was good enough, went off and spent a ton of time and money trying to learn all kinds of crazy, you know, social media, traffic explosion strategies that did not work. And really kind of came back full circle of like, oh, it’s relationships and value that are building this thing, not hacks, strategies and gimmicks. And so that lesson appeared, and I ignored it several times until it finally stuck.

Meg Casebolt 17:58
Here where it’s like, oh, I need to have X amount of followers, I need to have, you know, I need to have 5000 people on my email list before I sell them anything. No. And when people come into that challenge, yes, you’re giving it away for free? Yes, you’re making some Commission’s on those affiliate products that you’re recommending, but you didn’t have to wait until you had, you know, 100 people through the challenge to be able to say, and here’s what comes next or and here’s how I can help you moving forward where they can pay you directly to, you know, growing the email list, you don’t have to wait until you hit some magical threshold in order to feel like you’re legitimate. And I think a lot of people have that sort of like milestone, roughly in their heads of, well, it’s not even worth it to email 100 people. So how did you get over some of that piece?

Shannon Mattern 18:46
So here’s the thing, I put this free challenge out in the first Facebook group, and I got my first subscriber. So I got that notification from MailChimp that someone signed up and I’m like, what, somebody signed up for this thing. They’re gonna find out I’m a fraud. And then I had set up a Facebook group to answer people’s questions. I’m like, she’s gonna know she’s the only one here she’s gonna know like, she’s gonna join this Facebook group and it’s just gonna be me and her how awkward is that? Her name is Jen Walker wall, by the way where we still talk. I’m like, she was my first subscriber and my first person in my Facebook group. So as a business like she’s amazing. Um, and then like an hour later, I see a like an email that said, teaching you how to have an affiliate commission. I’m like, she bought something like she signed up she joined the group, she bought something and then like another hour later, another commission. I was like, this is happening like this is for real. Yeah. So my first subscriber first affiliate commissions, like I’m that’s how I got over it, because I was just like, it’s happening. It’s happening right now. And I remember like, she had a question in the Facebook group. And I’m like, Well, let me hop on a call with you. And I’ll walk you through that, like, you’re the only one, why not? So I had this unwavering belief that it was going to work. Like, I know that that sounds crazy. But I was like, I didn’t know how I deviated from a lot of things that were working, but I never gave up. And I knew the moment that I got that first commission like I could, I could really scale this thing. And like you said, I didn’t have to wait till I had 500 or 100 people on my list to make an offer, you know, I was delivering value right then and there. And I was getting to the point where I’m making like 1500 2000 a month in affiliate commissions. That’s I don’t know where you live, where I live, that’s my mortgage payment, because I’m in the Midwest, you know, at the time, that was my mortgage payment, it’s like nothing to sneeze at. Right? So

Meg Casebolt 21:00
from something you created once, and then other people are sharing it for you. Yeah, that’s the other part of that piece is you’re not even taking money directly from people, it’s things that they would have wanted anyway, you don’t have to create something new for them every time. Like, yeah, you created it in 2015. And people, I don’t know what year was.

Shannon Mattern 21:20
It was 2015. Oh, yeah, that was a good guess.

Meg Casebolt 21:24
And people are still using it and still buying from it. And some months, the the Commission’s might be up, some they might be down. But in general, you have kind of a study space upon which to build.

Shannon Mattern 21:35
I need to look at it, but it’s made hundreds of 1000s of dollars. You know, I need to look at the numbers, but it has and yeah, it’s just it’s it’s one of those things where I just knew, I knew that was going to be like the foundation of what was to come. I didn’t realize that it was actually the thing. I deviated for a long time trying to sell like, Well, how do you mark it? Like, how do you market your website like all of these all of these different pathways off of it? But like, I didn’t, I didn’t have to? I had I had the thing. So had the hook really interesting. Yeah,

Meg Casebolt 22:16
yeah. Yeah. And then how does the podcast now fit into the promotion of the offer? So you have a podcast called pep talks for side hustlers. So we’re talking to the same audience of people who might be DIY on their website? This is separate from web designer Academy. That’s a totally different offer to a different audience. Exactly. I want to talk about people who are our side hustlers and the ways that you’re able to bring more of them in through the podcast.

Shannon Mattern 22:43
Yeah. So the idea started way before the podcast ever, ever happened. I remember thinking like, okay, posting in Facebook groups is cool. I went made a list all the ones that had like, share your freebie, and I literally did every single I had a spreadsheet with the days and the threads. And I consistently, like shared my freebie in all these Facebook groups. And, and then I was like, Okay, how do I get in front of other people who are teaching online business. So like Rebecca Tracy with uncage life. As one that stands out to me very early on, I’m like, I should start a blog, that interviews, other business owners who teach my ideal clients and ask them questions all about themselves and their business. And, you know, their early years and how they got started, did they DIY their website, what challenges they have? What would they tell somebody who’s in their same position, and I called it the Women to Watch series and I like wrote up this long blog post. And like, these people, Becca Tracy didn’t know that I had like a readership of zero on this blog that never existed before. But I wrote up this awesome blog post made all about her links to her freebies, like everything. And then when it was done, I was like, Hey, this is this is done. And if you want to send it out to your audience, here’s everything that you need to, to send it out. And she did. And then people will come and read her thing. And then my join my free five day website challenge was right there on on the like, the sidebar, yeah, of the blog post. And then also, I asked her, who else do you follow in the online business space? And then I would like go reach out to them and interview them and just do that’s how I did it. The impatient version of me did not think that was good enough or real marketing. So I did that for a while and then I went off into webinar, Instagram land or whatever. But I came back to the podcast because I was like, Oh, the like having a podcast. were interviewed these guests, and then make it super easy for them to share my podcast with their audience, where at the beginning, I talk about who I am, and I have this free training, and if you need it, go here. And at the end, I, you know, do that, but I also make the episode all about that guest. And, like, promote, I like I would get on and be like, tell me what you have coming up, we’re gonna promote the heck out of you like, and that’s how I grew. My audience. And I call it it’s like, relationship building. And when I say leveraging other people’s audiences, it sounds very, like cold and heartless and whatever. But it’s really about like, How can I deliver? Like, how can I deliver tons of value for you? And then reciprocity becomes really easy.

Meg Casebolt 25:54
Yes, it’s so true. And, you know, it feels I’ve heard people say, like, you’re borrowing someone else’s audience, you know, and that that is sort of how it feels to an extent, especially if you go on someone’s podcast, and then they share it with their audience. And they’re, they’re tweeting about it, wherever they’re sharing it, maybe they’re sending out an email to say, like, Hey, I had this great conversation with Shannon. You know, I was on your podcast, and I think December, yep. And so we’ll link to that. So that way people want to hear that conversation. You know, it’s, it’s, it’s not necessarily like, I’m stealing your people, because they’re still yours, but they are, they already respect and, like, I have given you an endorsement by having you on the podcast, and the same is there too. So if they’re curious about that topic, they know that you’ve vetted your guests, they know that when you were writing that blog post about Becca, Tracy, it was because you admired her, and therefore they might learn something from that, right? Like, there’s a certain level of credibility that comes with sharing about other people’s stories and their expertise, that you’ve already done the legwork to find the right people for your audience, and you have your audience’s best intentions in mind when you’re doing that. So just trying to figure out, you know, what does your audience need? How can you deliver them the right people? And how can you show up for those people’s audiences, it’s not fast, it’s like creating a web of trust, and relationships, that, that goes deeper. And it’s, it’s really hard to track.

Shannon Mattern 27:28
It is very hard to track, you know, when you’re talking about like metrics and analytics, and and all of this stuff like it is hard to track, when you mark it organically like that, where the where people come from, and what’s working and what’s not. And you said earlier, like borrowing or stealing, and when I said leveraging, I really love to think about it as like, I am just delivering value to you, I’m delivering value to your audience, you’ve delivered value to my audience, we are just like collaborating to serve. And we also benefit from that as well. And so it’s like a win win win all the way around. To to do it that way. And, you know, sometimes I had to, like get over this scarcity mindset of like, especially now like, Oh, if I collaborate with other people who are also teaching web designers, how to market and like all of this stuff, like, what if they buy from them, and then they don’t buy from me, and then I just, you know, I need to keep my audience close. And it’s like, people learn from way more than just one person, you cannot control who they are finding and introducing and talking to online. And you’ll always like, lose out because there’s a person in their audience, that’s not the right fit for them, but it’s the right fit for me. And so I was

Meg Casebolt 28:54
not gonna share them. It might not be the right fit for them now.

Shannon Mattern 28:58
Yeah, or ever. And we’re just, we just need to, like, introduce you to other to each other to help that person.

Meg Casebolt 29:04
Yeah, like, by the, by the time this goes live, we will have just finished both being in a summit together where we are sharing, you know, it’s a collaborative opportunity, where you’re sharing about the summit with your list, and I’m sharing about the summit with my list. And you know, Christa, who’s running it and sharing it with her list, and then people can kind of get to know the opportunities and the messages that resonate with them. You know, we’re going to both be in front of a couple 1000 people, you’ll have some people sign up for your website from it that won’t sign up for mine and vice versa. And it’s like, well, they just might not want SEO, or they might not be a web designer and therefore it in need of the services that you’re talking about in the summit, but they might get some resources about accessibility or about proposals or about some various you know how to run a summit, right? Like there are a lot of, of ways that our audiences can be mutually benefited from having these relationships and collaborative opportunities that may or may not actually result in sales, but it may just, you know, people might go to that summit, see my training, not sign up for my email list. But the next time that they’re thinking about what it is that I do, they’ll remember and they’ll come and they’ll seek me out. So it’s not always these direct correlations of you do the thing, you get the leaves, you turn them into sales. It’s it for those of us that are and you said earlier, like, I had to have the patience. And I had to believe that the things that I were doing was making a difference, even if I didn’t see the direct results of it, which in your case, there was that direct correlation of like, they joined the challenge, they bought the the tool, I made some money on that. But in the bigger picture of it, you don’t know who’s sharing that free challenge, you don’t know where everyone’s coming from, there’s no way that you can track back which of those podcasts or which of those Facebook groups posts of the day, we’re going to work for you, you just kind of have to, to release, give value and believe that, that you’re doing the right thing, even if you don’t see it right this second. Oh, my

Shannon Mattern 31:03
gosh, yes. And I, you know, I would think about my email list, right. And it’s like, oh, I have 1000s of people on my email list, only a small percentage of them are ever going to become my customer. But the rest of them are just as valuable, if not more valuable, because those are my like, brand ambassadors. Those are the people who they might never buy a single thing from me. But when they talk to somebody who needs a website, they are gonna send them my way immediately. So those people have tons of value as well. And then there’s also the concept of like, I am going to plant a ton of seeds. Yeah, so many seeds, conversations, relationships, summits, like all of these things. And I don’t, I can’t keep track of which ones are going to grow when or how or whatever. And just even like, you know, people are going to see us on the summit. And then they are going to, you know, maybe they didn’t even see your presentation. They knew you’re there they come they find me. They listen to my podcast, and then they see Meg on my podcast. And then they’re like, oh, like, where else has she been? And then they see her on this other podcast in this other podcast. And maybe it’s something she you did four years ago? No, and they but they’re just getting to know you. And it’s because you have patiently planted all these seeds without expectation that it’s going to be like I posted in a Facebook group, and I got my first subscriber and I can track everything all the time. You’re creating this wave of momentum behind you that you don’t even know. And there will come a day where you’re like, I just don’t even know where all these people are coming from. But I’ve done the work to get them here.

Meg Casebolt 32:45
Yes, I love that vision of like a wave of momentum behind you. And you don’t you don’t know what the you know, the final Jenga piece is that builds the tower. It’s just every, every day you’re adding to the tower. And you’re you’re putting yourself out there. And I think that because social media is so immediate, it gives us the feeling that we are doing something that is a, that’s making a difference, because we can post something and get that dopamine hit of a like or we can see who’s sharing. It feels important. And it feels like we’re doing something that’s that’s valuable and trackable. And there’s a lot of it that is valuable and trackable. But it’s also very short lived. And you have to keep going back to the font in order to continue to post all the time. And then the I find that a lot of people who are focused on social are like, Well, I have this many followers and I have this many links. And I’m like, Yeah, but or How deep are those relationships?

Shannon Mattern 33:45
Yeah. Are they seeing your content?

Meg Casebolt 33:47
Yeah. Is anybody actually seeing it? Are you because just as much as we can’t control which of those seeds that you’re planting are going to grow? We can’t control the algorithms, you know, and it’s hard to figure out what is going to work for you. And that’s why we have to diversify our marketing in a lot of ways and lean on relationships and long term value, like you said, you know,

Shannon Mattern 34:10
yeah, and I think about social media. It’s like, man, the keeping up with the content creation, hustle, I just can’t and I and I really haven’t been able to, and I have a presence on there. And I definitely have a team that like, I’m like, Hey, we have this podcast episode coming out, like you do all the things to put it out there. But here’s how I think about social media. I am going to promote my podcast interview with Meg like crazy because I want her to get a ton of exposure for being on the show. And if that’s happening, then she’s sharing and I’m getting in front of her audience. So that’s how I use social media. I like to think of it as like, oh, I use it like way back in 2008 when Facebook came out like how we connected with each other as real people. So I like to use it to kind of get on somebody’s radar who I might want to collaborate with, like, like their stuff, leave some comments, engage with them, and then you know, pay attention to what they’re doing so that when I email them and say, Hey, I loved your post about this, they know I’m paying attention. Like, that’s what I like to do. I like to use social media that way, not necessarily, I don’t even know or care how many followers I have on Instagram. Yeah, literally not about that for me. And I have had to wrap my mind around the idea that like, there are people that do care about social media, and they do want to go to Instagram and find you and scroll through and look at look at your things. And I’m like, Okay, I’ll create content, like, I’ll put content there for that purpose. But it’s not so that I can grow my followers or get likes, or get, you know, all of this stuff. It’s like, I’m just going to plant lots of seeds, use it to build relationships. And it’s worked out really, really well. So,

Meg Casebolt 36:11
so where can people if they want to come and get the five day challenge, or if they want to check out how all of it works, like, Guys, I’m gonna encourage you, if this is something where you’re like, Oh, I could create something like this, go over and sign up for it. Even if you don’t sign it, you know, buy the the affiliate deal, just go look and, and do a little bit of like digging and research and we call it funnel hooking, you know, like, just see how this works. Because it is working even you know, seven years later, people are still going and finding this. Go check out chambers podcast, how else can people kind of get to know you? How can they work with you if they decide they want to take that step?

Shannon Mattern 36:48
Yeah, Shannon mattern.com is where all of the things are. And I definitely recommend just like go sign up for the challenge. See how I do it. See how I upsell things off the back end, reverse engineer all of that. That’s the fun part. And then yeah, just go like make some cool business friends like Meg and like, do fun stuff to market. It doesn’t have to be tedious and you know, a hustle all the time. So you

Meg Casebolt 37:16
don’t have to have some crazy framework where you have to follow every step and post this thing on this day and follow the rules like go have fun.

Shannon Mattern 37:23
Go have fun. I love

Meg Casebolt 37:25
to have fun.

Shannon Mattern 37:26
Please don’t need to know what time most people open my emails like I just don’t.

Meg Casebolt 37:33
Well, thank you so much for coming on and sharing what’s working for you. I really appreciate it.

Shannon Mattern 37:37
Thank you so much for having me.

Meg Casebolt 37:42
Thank you so much for listening to the social slowdown podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe or come on over to social slowdown.com and sign up for our email list so you never miss an episode. We’d also love if you could write a review to help other small business owners find the show you can head over to social slowdown comm slash review or grab that link in our show notes for easy access. We’ll be back soon with more tips to help you market your business without being beholden to social media. Talk to you then.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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