Ep. 9: Scaling up & Down as Your Business Evolves With Lacy Boggs

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.

Hey there, everybody. I am so excited to share this episode with you. I am interviewing Lacy bogs from the content direction agency. Lacy and I have worked together for gosh, six years I’ve been a member of her team, I started as her graphic designer. And now I work and do SEO for some of her clients. But I’ve also seen the evolution of Lacy’s business over that amount of time. When we started working together, she was mostly doing all of the blogging for her clients herself as a ghostwriter. And she has moved into creating courses and then also running group programs. And now she has an agency where she has hired a number of writers to help her with the delivery of blogging services and different writing services. And so we talk in this interview all about the different ways that those different offers that she’s making have turned out and the things that feel easy for her to sell and deliver and how her marketing has evolved as she’s figured out what it is that she wants to sell and who she wants to work with. And, you know, she’s built a lot that she’s had to burn down over time. So we talk about so much of this, I am thrilled to share this conversation with you. And without further ado, here is my chat with Lacey bogs. Hello, Lacy Boggs. I’m so excited to have you here on the social slowdown podcast.

Lacy Boggs 2:14
Yeah, I feel like this has been a long time coming. And I’m excited about it.

Meg Casebolt 2:17
Yes, this actually, this is a domain that I purchased probably two or three years ago. And then it was in a conversation with you that I went, oh my god, this is supposed to be a podcast. Nice. Because sometimes you have an idea, but don’t always know how it’s going to play out until you’re in conversation and going, huh, I wonder what that’s gonna be? Right. So tell me a little tell our listeners a little bit about your business? Who is it that you work with? Who do you serve? How do you help

Lacy Boggs 2:48
them? Sure. So I run the content direction agency. And we help high ticket coaches, course creators, membership site owners, people like that, create a strategic content marketing strategy, and then actually do the writing. So we have different offers based on where you’re at. But we help you create the strategy for your content marketing, what are you going to write about when and how, why and how. And then I have a team of crack writers who can actually write the words for you should you desire it. So we help people uncomplicate their content marketing.

Meg Casebolt 3:24
So what percentage of people that work with you just get the strategic plan versus those that are actually having your team of writers create for them?

Lacy Boggs 3:33
Yeah, I don’t know, the actual like percentage, that would be interesting for me to run. But roughly, I would say it breaks down a lot of the times based on where they’re at in business. So somebody who’s more of a solopreneur, or maybe just has a VA that’s helping them out, they’re more likely to just get the calendar, get the strategy with me that sort of thing, and then make it happen on their own. And then somebody who’s a little bigger business, who’s maybe crossed that quarter million, half a million mark in revenue, they have a slightly larger team, they’re more likely to say, Cool, this is awesome. You make it happen, right? Like I love it, great play on you do the work. And that’s just I think that’s just about like, you know, where you’re at in your business, in terms of where you have the time and energy to spend and the money to invest.

Meg Casebolt 4:24
Right? I think it’s really a resource management piece. It’s like if you if you have time, but that money, you write it yourself and if you have money or not time you have Lacey’s do

Lacy Boggs 4:34
for you. That’s right, that’s exactly what it is. And

Meg Casebolt 4:37
do most of the people that you’re working with, already have a blogging experience, or they have already built email sequences into their plans, or are they fairly new to this process?

Lacy Boggs 4:51
Yeah, typically, I would say they are. They do have something in place already. So we did run these numbers and like on average, our people have been in business For four years or more, so they’re not brand new to everything. I feel like, probably my strategy session would be like drinking from a firehose, if you’re brand brand new.

Meg Casebolt 5:11
Yeah, I think.

Lacy Boggs 5:15
But, you know, they’ve been around for a little while, maybe they couple things I hear frequently is like, Okay, I’ve been doing this myself for a while, but it doesn’t feel strategic. It feels like I’m just throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what happens. Or they’ve been doing this for a while. They’re like, I don’t know what to say anymore. I feel like I’ve said everything. They need new angle on things, things like that, that tends to be the point at which they’re like, I could use some help.

Meg Casebolt 5:42
And so it’s not just about the blogs, right? Oh, no. So talk to me about how an entire marketing system plan comes into play.

Lacy Boggs 5:52
Yeah. So you know, when I first started, I wanted to make it just about the blogs, because I felt like that was my zone of genius. But it doesn’t make sense to talk about one piece of your marketing, without all the other pieces, because it really is an ecosystem, right? At least when you do it, the way I do it. It’s an ecosystem the blog feeds into, you know, what you’re going to post on social media, which feeds into what you’re going to send out in your emails, which may be feeds into what you’re going to say, on your podcast, and so on, and so on. Right? They all inner work together to create a system. So when we look at a strategy, I always ask the client, you know, how do you like to communicate? That’s always the first question. And you know, if they’re like, Well, I really just like to talk I don’t like to write, then we talk about, okay, great. Do you want to have a podcast or a video, no, really don’t want to do that. Okay, that’s okay, we can interview you, or you can get on Voxer and just talk and then the writer can turn it into an article, right? There’s so many different ways to win. But we want to start with what the client is most comfortable with, because that’s where we’re going to get the really juicy thought leadership nuggets. And then we can trickle down from there to create all the rest of the content they need, you know, so I’ve started calling that, that place where they are most comfortable creating ideas, their power platform, right. And once you know, your power platform, you can figure out what all the other pieces are, that support it. And, and it really makes it much more simple for a team to support them as well. So like, if we know, Meg, that you love to do podcasts, here we are. I happen to know you already have a team, but you know, we would say something like, okay, so Meg is going to get on and talk on the podcast. And then her team is going to take that and they’re going to do the show notes, they’re going to write the email that goes out, they’re gonna pull out three to five quotes every week that she can share on Instagram, they’re gonna write, and then all of that comes from the same source material. So Meg only has to show up once to share her thoughts. And it gets distributed a bunch of different times.

Meg Casebolt 7:57
Yeah, and I love that because it’s a really good use of your time, as opposed to, you know, creating one thing that goes up via email and another thing that’s happening on your social and you have to approve all of these different ideas, and they’re not kind of a coherent pattern that you can track back.

Lacy Boggs 8:14
Right. And I think you really brought something up there when you said the word proof. Because as businesses get bigger, right, if you do have a team that’s supporting you, what I’ve seen happen is that they’re like, Okay, go create all this content for me. But then the business owner feels like they have to read every little thing that they have to edit that they have to change this word, because it doesn’t sound like them, or make sure there’s a Oxford comma there, whatever. And that can, that just eats up your time, right? That doesn’t really help you, it takes away the whole benefit of delegating, if you have to approve everything, so if you create this system where they’re using your words, they’re using your ideas, then really, you don’t have to be approving it in the same, you know, really micromanaging way.

Meg Casebolt 9:02
Yeah, it’s so true, especially if you have an eye No, this is really important to you. brand voice guidelines. These are the things that we say I said to my content marketing coordinator today, I was like, I don’t use the word furbaby to talk about my dog. Let’s call him my dog. You know, they’re these things they don’t even realize are part of the way that you talk or the way that you explain things. But if you start from a place of here’s what the you know, whether it’s the CEO, or whoever that leader is, and they create something that can then be repurposed and reused and all of these different places, then you’re starting from the voice of the person who has developed the brand boys.

Lacy Boggs 9:42
Exactly. And so that’s so important to have like, I think most of us when we get to a certain stage in business, have a brand style guide like that says, here’s my fonts, and here’s my colors and my logo, but we forget that voice is part of brand too. And so you need to have somewhere where you can record that information like don’t use furbaby so that, you know, future people can know that too, right?

Meg Casebolt 10:05
And that we always use the Oxford comma,

Lacy Boggs 10:07
always

Meg Casebolt 10:10
should say here that I’ve been a part of Lacey’s team for many years now. And so I’ve seen so many, like, many iterations of the question of APA style guides, whether or not to use the Oxford comma. That’s right.

Lacy Boggs 10:24
You’re in our Slack, where you get all this nerdy writer questions about what does where does the comma go in this section,

Meg Casebolt 10:33
exactly. Where in this process of figuring out what to create for your clients, just thought leadership come into play here, you know, and if you kind of explained to me your definition of what thought leadership is, and how it fits into our roles as entrepreneurs and business leaders, I would love to hear that,

Lacy Boggs 10:55
right. I have sort of a democratic definition of thought leadership, like some people will say that it’s only if you have a book or have a, you know, an audience of a certain size, that you’re a thought leader, but really, to me, anyone who is trying to influence the conversation in their space with their content is a thought leader, they have something to say. And so that includes all of my clients, you know what I mean? That includes everybody, because they’re all they all have something that they want to say, and that they want to communicate and that they want to change in their industry, or maybe not even change, but like redirect change in opinion, that kind of thing. So we often try to talk to our clients about, you know, what sets them apart? What makes them different? Where do they Zig where the rest of their industry Zags, I’m a big fan of the Blue Ocean Strategy. When it comes to marketing and content, you know, if everybody is doing X, you do que, because that way, you’re gonna stand out more, right? So and this goes for both, like what type of content you’re producing, in terms of like, the, the thoughts behind it, but also which channels you’re on, you know, if everybody in your industry has a podcast, maybe that’s not the best place for you, you know, maybe you should do something different. So just considering all of those things, but, you know, we tease out thought leadership, a lot of times by interviewing our clients, I find, I wonder if you find this too. But when I’m doing an interview, I say things and I’m like, Oh, that was good. Where’d that come?

Meg Casebolt 12:29
From? My best ideas come from is once a question that I wasn’t expecting. And I’m like, Oh, I have to, on the top of my head, come up with an answer to this. And that opens new doors for me that I’m just sitting and talking to myself or writing to myself, it’s not going to come out.

Lacy Boggs 12:45
Exactly. So a lot of times we interview our clients in that way. And it does it spurs them to say something in a different way, or a different metaphor that’s like all of a sudden, like, Oh, that’s really good. And then, you know, thought leadership to me is all about getting it out there. So what’s the best platform to reach the most people? Obviously, it depends on their goals for their business and their content. But you know, how do we get this message out so that it does change the conversation.

Meg Casebolt 13:12
And I think also it can fit into, you know, the structure that you were just talking about, where it can start the all of the things that you are creating for your business, the entire marketing ecosystem that you’re creating, can start from that one idea, that one game changing idea, or that one, you know, I am standing up and saying something about this industry isn’t quite right, or here’s a way that we could do something differently. And then letting that guide all of the rest of your marketing channels for a certain period of time, you know, so it can be a thought leadership piece that you’re publishing to a larger publication, you know, your, your pitching ideas out to, you know, if you’re in the online business world, maybe you’re talking to Forbes or entrepreneur or some of those online magazines. Or if you’re in the health and wellness space, maybe you’re pitching out to Huffington Post or mind body green, but you’re creating something that is on a platform where your ideal clients already hanging out. And then you’re driving that into your own content marketing strategy. So your blogs, your podcasts, your emails, like those are all being driven from that key place. And it can also help you with your credibility on social media to say that you’re on these platforms. So I think that one of the things that I like about your approach to it lacy is that it doesn’t have to start from social but it can trickle down into social,

Lacy Boggs 14:37
right. And I think honestly, for probably most of my clients, that’s how it works. I think it’s a rare bird where social is their first channel, their top channel, and one of the reasons for that is, you know, I you probably have noticed this to Meg like, I think a lot of people think that social media is a Discovery Channel still that new people will find you It’s really not like unless you, you know, managed to go viral or get retweeted by somebody famous or you know, something like that. It’s very unlikely that new people are going to discover you on social media unless you’re doing something specifically to find new people like running an ad campaign, having a really strong hashtag strategy, something like we’re getting on of it, like having a, an influencer or partner campaign right to get in front of other audiences. If you’re just, you know, just straight up posting to Instagram, straight up posting to Twitter, or, or Facebook, that’s not a discovery channel, you are preaching to the choir friend, you are preaching to people who already follow you. And so that’s more of a nurture channel. And that’s a shift. Like, I know, you and I, we’ve been in the internet marketing world for a while. And it’s like dog years, like one years, like, so true. But when we started this social really was more of a discovery channel, there was more of an opportunity for people just to find you. And that’s not true anymore. But I think a lot of people are still treating it, like a Discovery Channel, when that’s really not what it is anymore.

Meg Casebolt 16:09
I think there’s also a low barrier to entry. Totally idea, because it’s like, you can set go and set up a Facebook business page, or a Facebook group or an Instagram account, you probably already have a LinkedIn, that’s your personal LinkedIn that you’ve had for however many years since before you started your own business. So and they’re free. And so we feel like because it’s easy, and because it’s free, it will work for us, which may or may not be true, right? And because these platforms already exist, because our audience may already be on these platforms. There is a feeling like, oh, well, they’re just there waiting for me. And it’s right for the taking. But what I like to remind people of is not only is it not a discovery channel, but these are channels for entertainment. Right? These are not for education, these are not, LinkedIn is a little bit different, because it’s built for networking, right. But this is not a place where people are coming specifically to learn something from us or to hire new contractors, or whatever that looks like. This is a place where people want to be entertained. And so in order to create social media that is going to hit those algorithms. It might not be to the benefit of your business. You know, if all you’re doing is dancing and pointing in a screen, how much value can Yes, well, and not to show them that you have something worth reading or worth learning about.

Lacy Boggs 17:31
This is so true. I I saw that there’s this woman I follow on Tik Tok. And she’s amazing dreams. She Adani and she is a Latina living in Canada. But she’s a musician. But what she The reason I found her and the reason the world has found her now is because she did these hilarious tiktoks called glam kitchen where she wears this giant hat and a feather boa and like make salsa or something. And it’s hilarious, but it has nothing to do with her music. Yes. Now she’s been able to translate that like her 30,000 followers, 30 million followers, whatever it is, into, like people want to buy her music now because they’re aware of her. But like, that’s not what made her go viral. Right?

Meg Casebolt 18:13
And often there is this disconnect between what you have to do in order to get noticed by these platforms, and what it is that you’re selling. Yeah, exactly. And if you want to pursue the strategies of the influencers on these channels, then you have to change your offers or you know, change change the ways that you are marketing. Right, totally. So where do your clients come from Lacey? Since you’re the one who’s talking to them about all their marketing, I always wonder how that works in terms of, you know, how are they finding you? Because obviously, you’re doing some of the strategies that you’re helping them to do. So I’m always curious what where that aligns.

Lacy Boggs 18:56
It’s really interesting, because I’ve seen a big shift over the last year for sure. But in general, most of our business comes from referrals, just generally, like it’s 70 plus percent of our business comes from referrals, we do get a significant percentage that comes from Google people find our website on Google. And, in fact, our longest running client, I think he’s been with us for eight years now. found me on Google originally. So like, there is that as well. But but in terms of like getting attention and things like that, I’ve seen it shift dramatically. Over the last year, I started using my personal Facebook page, and I used to have this really strong aversion to this. I felt like my personal profile was for personal shifts where I put, you know, baby pictures and whatever, stuff like that. And my business page was for business. Well, I mean, y’all know,

Meg Casebolt 19:53
I mean, what’s your personal page just so that way I can see all the recipes that you’re

Lacy Boggs 19:58
Yeah, that’s where I put my lunch. Pictures and so, um, but the reach of business pages has dropped off so dramatically that, you know, I was posting on there I have, I don’t know, 2500, something like that people who follow my business page and like, I would get 12 people to see it, not even like it, but 12 people saw it in the feed, you know. And so I started, just, you know, accepting friend requests from anybody who friended me, basically, on my personal page. And that has been a real shift. I don’t post over there daily, I’m a little more careful about spamming that page with business stuff. I still share pictures of my lunch, and my kid. But you know, it’s, it’s been an incredible shift to watch and go, oh, like, actually, people are paying attention to this channel.

Meg Casebolt 20:55
Yeah. And so when you’re offering different services, do you feel like, like, you just said that you’re most of your agency clients, the people who are working with you long term or referrals. But I also know that you have some more kind of short term, like incubators style offers, and those tend to sell more to your warm audience of people that you’re cultivating on social and an email, right?

Lacy Boggs 21:22
Mm hmm. Yes, absolutely. So we did a we did a group program this past year, and it was I was selling a lot of that through Instagram, through my personal Facebook page through DMS, you know, talking to people social selling in that way. And that was a much better way to do it. And then we just wrapped up a Black Friday offer. And that was almost entirely through social like Facebook and Instagram. We did have an affiliate who brought in a little bit of traffic. And I sent out an email, which I think resulted in two sales. So hey, you know, but it’s so interesting. Yeah.

Meg Casebolt 22:03
Do you find that for your business? Like the high touch high ticket offers tend to be more referrals? And then you find that the the lower price kind of leveraged offers? Like your, your Black Friday offer was a planning tool kit, right, like 30 bucks. Like, yeah, yeah. So do you find that there seems to be the the higher price offers tend to be more referral based. And then for the lower priced offers, you can tap into the more like public options?

Lacy Boggs 22:37
Yes. And I think that’s generally the case. That tends to be what I see, you know, I have found recently that I’ve been selling more VIP days, just over social, like, they don’t even need to get on a call with me. But those are almost always warm leads, like they’ve been following me for a while, or we know each other through a different context. And they’re, they feel good saying yes, in a DM, right. And then people who are colder leads or don’t know me as well, might need to get on a call for the same offer. Right, that’s around. That’s a that’s a mid ticket. Well, I don’t know what mid ticket is anymore. But like $3,500 offer, you know, and it was actually really surprising to me that I could start selling those in DMS, because I’d never done that before. That people would just say yes. But again, those were warm leads. And I think then, you know, if you’re sending ads to cold traffic, for example, they’re not gonna buy a $3,500 product. If they don’t know you from Adam, right, like they need there’s a lot more warming up that needs to happen. But somebody might be able to say like, yeah, 30 bucks, that sounds great. And buy a $30 product from a cold traffic. So I think that’s pretty generally true.

Meg Casebolt 23:49
Yeah. Is that you know, the, the warmer you need people to get in order to? Yeah, exactly. Like, I will happily spend $30 on something from somebody that I’ve been like, sort of maybe following for a while, but something that is 100 times the cost. I’m going to make a little bit more about that today. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. It works out. Sure, you’re right. So we have kind of this low ticket high price, you know, $30 offer that you can sell pretty easily. And then we have more of the high touch $3,500 Plus option. But what about that middle ground lazy, like how do you find it is for offers that are courses or, or things that have a bit more heft to them than just here’s a planner?

Lacy Boggs 24:42
Yeah. So I’ve actually really struggled in that middle ground. I’ve really struggled over the years to make that work for me. And you know, I think probably like five ish years ago, there was all these messages out in the online business world that if you wanted to skate Your business, you needed a course that was the way, you know, don’t do one on one, don’t build an agency don’t do that. You need to have a course. And man, I drank the Kool Aid, I bought that line and sinker, you know. And I remember talking to a coach, and we were talking about this, and I said, I wanted to increase the percentage of my revenue that came from courses, products that I could sell. And so you know, we made this plan, and she’s like, Okay, you need to triple your list. Minimum, if you want to, you know, do get these email lists. Yeah, my email list. Yeah. And so I was like, great, you know, somebody sends me a challenge. I’m like, Great, I’m gonna get an A plus, I’m gonna go Goldstar go do this. So I did, you know, I was able to triple my email list. I think I went from about 1800 to 6000 people on my email list in under six months, it was like four and a half months. Yeah. Um,

Meg Casebolt 25:53
what were the strategies to get you, you know, journalist.

Lacy Boggs 25:57
So the first thing I did was optimize my site for opt ins. So I put opt ins everywhere.

Meg Casebolt 26:03
Everywhere, I got so many opt ins. How many options do you have on your site right now?

Lacy Boggs 26:08
Okay, we’ll get to that. And I don’t mean like the boxes. You know what I mean, I went through and what was the best practice where to put the boxes, I had a Hello Bar. I had a, you know, a polite pop up when people were leaving that kind of thing. And then to your point, because you know how many

Meg Casebolt 26:25
because I was still working as your designer.

Lacy Boggs 26:32
Every single blog post I wrote for a year, had a content, different content upgrade that went with it. So a different lead magnet. So usually, it was just like maybe a one or two page PDF that went with it. But so I ended up with I think I have right now something around 52 opt ins, yeah, different things that people can opt in for. So that was one strategy. But really, the one that brought me the biggest numbers in bulk was doing partner webinars. So I’d find somebody that I thought had an audience I wanted to reach, I’d offer to do a webinar, I would take the signups so they got on my list, and then I would do a teaching webinar to their group. And that’s really what the that was the needle mover. I mean, I certainly I don’t know, I think I at least 3x My opt ins just by adding more boxes. But um, and I definitely saw my traffic go up when I was blogging more and all that kind of good stuff that you do. But the biggest needle movers The reason I could do it so quickly was those webinars that I did,

Meg Casebolt 27:32
because that’s something that the amount of time that you put into those relationships, you know, if you if you spend time writing a blog post, and then you send it out to people, you’re going to hit your existing audience. And over time, you’re going to start to get some search traffic for it potentially. But you can’t guarantee that you’ll get a return on investment within a certain amount of time of new opt ins, because the people who are going to be reading your blog are probably people who are already on your email. Right? Right. So you know, putting time into the blog is not going to turn into subscribers as quickly as you know, going and saying, Hey, Meg, can I present to your audience, and I will, you know, I as your partner would be able to then send out emails and say Lacey’s gonna teach us about ABCs of copywriting. And so by leveraging those relationships, you’re able to tap into an audience of people who are already trusting you because they have that partner relationship. Or you kind of have a referral from that person who says, I trust Lacey already. But you’re also tapping into people who are probably similar in their stage of business. So if you and I were to partner on something, we both have lists of people who are online business owners, who are, you know, a couple years in or whatever that looks like. So you’re a little bit tighter in terms of the people that you’re, you’re targeting and reaching there.

Lacy Boggs 28:51
Right. And that’s definitely one of the key lessons I learned is that you have to be discerning about the audience’s like the number isn’t necessarily the only factor. Right? So I did one webinar with a woman. And it was my biggest webinar I’ve literally ever done to this day. I think there were 800 some odd people who signed up for it because she had a huge list. And I mean, I had a great show up rate people were engaged, they loved me, you know, was great. But they were all teachers who were trying to do a side hustle on this site called Teachers Pay Teachers were they sell worksheets for like $4 a pop. So even a $59 works shop that I wanted to sell them. They were like, Oh, that’s too expensive. I can’t I can’t do that.

Meg Casebolt 29:42
I would have to sell 15 worksheets to pay for that works.

Lacy Boggs 29:45
Yeah, exactly. And so even though they were engaged, and I got a huge number of people and they loved what I had to say, they weren’t ideal customers for me, because, you know, I was trying to sell a $300 course, and they all went what no You know, they didn’t, they didn’t feel like they just weren’t in the right mind space for that. So it was it was a big learning process. At the end of the year I launched that course, it was about $300. And my goal was to sell 50 I think I sold 44. And I was ready to shut down like I was mad. So pissed, because I done it. All right, quote, unquote, right? I had the right numbers of people on my list, and I had the right launch. And I did all this. And, you know, what I realized was that like, that was not the way I wanted to the hustle behind all that that was not how I wanted to grow.

Meg Casebolt 30:40
Right, you made I just did the math. And with a calculator, it didn’t fit on my head. So you made like, $13,000 from that, but in the same breath, you know, the amount of time that it took you to make those 44 sales, you could have gone out and made three sales of $3,500. Right,

Lacy Boggs 30:55
exactly. Or sorry, or like our retainer is 12,000. So I could sell one retain one client. Yeah, instead of like hustling all year, to sell whatever, 44 spots, whatever it was

Meg Casebolt 31:06
4044 $300 courses. It’s, it’s a hard price point. Yeah. 300.

Lacy Boggs 31:11
Yeah. And so then well, and so then the upshot of this was the next year, I was like, Screw it. I’m done. Record, I don’t want to do this anymore. I’m going back to one to one, I pulled my list, I sent them a survey and said, How many of you would be interested in it done for you service? You want to guess how many 1% 40? For one thing, some people out of 6000. Now, obviously, not everybody responded, but 1%. Right, was interested. And so I had spent a whole year growing my list doing all this stuff. And I had attracted really the wrong audience.

Meg Casebolt 31:47
Yeah. And if you had 60, people who were interested in a done for you service, and even 10% of those had signed up, then you would have made more than the 6006

Lacy Boggs 31:58
sales

Meg Casebolt 32:01
would have made you you know, if they all went for a $12,000, that’s $70,000. Right. Like, that’s, that’s it, you know,

Lacy Boggs 32:11
the math just is different. And I’ll tell you right now, I think my email list right now is 320 people.

Meg Casebolt 32:19
So you were at 1800, when you said I want to do classes, you triple it up to 6000, you sold, you know, 40 of those courses to those 6000 people. So we’re talking about a 1% conversion rate, which is about right, about what we can expect from this was a lot of hustle, we got about a 1% conversion rate. And then you had a list of 6000 people that weren’t gonna buy from you. And you were paying ConvertKit for that 6000. Actually, whereas now, if you have the agency model, you’re making more per client, but your cost of marketing is going to go down because you don’t need as many it’s the cost of delivery. Yes, that is going yes. Because you have to have a team of people to do the writing, or you have to spend your time doing the right, right, exactly. Right. And it’s like a we also have to figure out like, who are we as humans, right? Which would we prefer to do if you had been lit up? Yes, by that launch cycle. and been like, I loved getting on and teaching all those courses, I loved growing that email list, this is my favorite thing to do. This is what I want to do all day. And I’m gonna, I’m gonna do this lead generation thing so that I can, you know, make 2000 People join my list every month, then great, go for it. But if you’re getting to the end of that cycle, and going, I want to burn this to the ground.

Lacy Boggs 33:42
I was done, man.

Meg Casebolt 33:45
Like, that’s okay. You can be an introvert you can be as with you know, knowing who you are knowing how you want to work and what you want to spend your time doing, which for you is writing

Lacy Boggs 33:56
well, and here’s the other thing is like, I think it really taught me that there’s more than one way to win, right? Like the message out there, at least from the people I was following at that time. Was Nope, this is the way to go that that work from wherever, you know, passive income. I don’t think people talk about passive income so much anymore, but

Meg Casebolt 34:17
we just were all poking holes, right word passive. We all figured I just don’t want

Lacy Boggs 34:22
one. That’s That’s fake fake news. But I figured out there was a different way. You know, a lot of people are like, Oh, I don’t want to run an agency. That sounds gross, you know, but it really seems to be where I thrive. So it’s just about finding, you know, you need that permission sometimes to say no, I need to find my own thing.

Meg Casebolt 34:41
And I think also knowing what trends are happening. You know, a couple of years ago when you were when you were doing this and I was starting to build up my course portfolio about the same time knowing that you have different levels of service for different audience understanding and that you don’t have to serve everyone who is potential have, you know a possible client for you, you can just say, I’m not going to serve the beginners, I’m not going to serve the buyers. But also knowing that people change. You know, one of the things that I’ve noticed in my business is that in the past three years, I’ve seen three very hard trends hitting my sales cycle, you know, in 2019, people wanted a course and they wanted to learn it, and then they wanted to go do it themselves and not get support. In 2020, it was very much you know, the pandemic hit, and it was like, we’re all in this together, we need a membership we need. So we want to do everything, like we’re missing the conversations that are happening in the workplace. So now we’re taking them online. And then there was this burnout that happened from that, where everyone was like, Oh, my God, I cannot be on another zoom call. And now, you know, we’re recording this in like, 2021, it’s going to come out in 2022. But it’s like, I’m seeing the opposite end of that, which is, please just tell me what to do. Please just do it for us.

Lacy Boggs 36:01
I’m just done. I’m tired. Do it for me. Yeah. What’s interesting, too, is like, so I’ve kind of, I wouldn’t say come full circle, but like, offering a group program this year was new for me, right, it was a higher end mastermind style group program. And then offering this $30 bundle is also you know, kind of new for me. But what I’ve discovered is that I’m getting smarter about making sure that the really lower ticket products are still going to attract the right people. So for example, this $30 bundle when I was talking about it, I’m like, it’s so that you and your team can get organized with your content marketing. Because it sure somebody who doesn’t have a team can absolutely buy it and use it and, and would be fine. You know what I mean? Like it would be useful for them. But I really want to talk about the people who need help getting their team organized, and all this, because those are the people who are gonna hire us, you know. So even if they buy the $30 thing, and then say, Wow, this is great. Can you fill it out? For me? That’s kind of what I’m hoping for.

Meg Casebolt 37:06
Yeah, especially if you have, you know, some examples in the training materials that go with it that say, Here’s how our clients that we’ve done this strategy session with have used this resource, like giving them the tool, but then saying, if you need help with this, here’s how you can hire us to help you with exactly,

Lacy Boggs 37:22
exactly. And just being a little more strategic that way. Instead of just like, you know, when I was putting out all those content upgrades, it was like, here’s how to write a great blog post. Here’s how to brainstorm all these ideas, because these were things I knew how to do, right? And so this is what I was teaching, but it was it was attracting people who wanted to learn how to write a blog post, which is not the person who’s going to hire you to write the blog posts.

Meg Casebolt 37:49
Exactly. And I think that’s kind of the biggest takeaway I’m getting from this is making sure that if you have a suite of services, or you know, like a product letter, whatever we want to call it, making sure that the audience is the same, even if their level is different. Yeah, exactly. Knowing that the the people who right now have the, you know, multiple, six figures, early seven figures, they’re ready to hire somebody, where were they two years ago, and creating something a little bit, a little bit less intensive for them, which might just be the strategy session, and where were they two years before that, okay, maybe they were starting to think about their own content marketing, planning, knowing that they’re going to build into a team, right, but thinking the whole way through about what that particular person needs, and what they needed before that, and before that before that, but these people don’t want to DIY long term, so stop giving them.

Lacy Boggs 38:44
The other thing that’s kind of just sinking in for me. So let me shortcut this for everybody is that the price point doesn’t actually make that much difference. Like, I can look at my list of who bought that $30 thing. And I can see seven figure business owners who purchased that, right. So it’s not necessarily just attracting, you know, brand new people who can only afford a $30 product. And the same is true, like I have a book on Kindle, it’s 99 cents, it’s been 99 cents since I launched it. And I’ve had at least two people come to me and end up buying retainer services, who told me, I read your book three years ago, and I just wasn’t ready to work with you yet. And it just it made such an impression. I knew you were the person I wanted to call. And like that’s, it doesn’t matter that it was 99 Right now they’re gonna spend $1,000 with me,

Meg Casebolt 39:37
right, the value of those services, the value of the knowledge of you and it comes back to thought leadership. It’s like you wrote this book. It doesn’t need to be this fancy, expensive, you know, publish or distributed book. For it to be thought leadership. It can be a 99 cents on Kindle that people can get to know you they can vote Your perspective, they can see how your approach would apply to their businesses. And then when they’re ready, they’re all in. Yeah. And I think the I forget that, that sometimes it can take your I think you even said to me before, like somebody told you that your name was on their vision board for when my business hits this milestone, I’m going to hire Lacey. But you can’t, you can’t know what’s happening in the lives of the people who are ready to hire you.

Lacy Boggs 40:24
Exactly. And I know for a fact that I have a very long sales cycle. For a lot of people like they do put, they do put me on their quote unquote, vision board, whatever that looks like, they’re like, I’m not there yet. But when I get there, and that’s really actually makes me feel really good. I feel really honored that they that they think that but it’s also something to consider with my content, right? Like, I’m not necessarily writing for the immediate conversion, I’m writing to create long term fans, who are gonna think I’m putting out on a post it and when I’m ready. That’s what I’m getting. You’re not

Meg Casebolt 40:57
You’re not writing for today, you’re not expecting that when you put something on a blog post or in an email or in Instagram, that that person is going to reach out and be like, I just found this where the contract? Yeah, it really is longer experience with you. But because you have retainer clients who’ve been paying you for years, you have the benefit of having time on your side? Yes.

Lacy Boggs 41:21
And that’s it, that’s a business model thing. You know, obviously, when we’re working with clients, if they’re selling a widget for, you know, $10, that’s a very different marketing strategy than if they’re selling a $10,000 coaching package, you know, but um, you know, you and I were talking before we hit record, that people will ask cleaner, well, what’s the ROI on this? How can you show me what kind of results you get for XYZ? And it’s like, I don’t know, like, sometimes people say, like, if everybody did exactly what I said, I could tell you what my exact results are. But you know, everybody’s a little different. And if you’re buying blog, post writing, or content marketing in general, and want to see like the immediate, as soon as I publish this blog post, my sales are going to triple well, doesn’t usually work that way. It is a long term. Strategy.

Meg Casebolt 42:13
Yeah. And if I recall correctly, one of your early blog posts that took off on on Google is how much does a blog post cost? Yeah, how much should a blog post cost if you want someone to, to hire from you, and it’s getting you good traffic, but it’s not the right people? Because the the positioning that you’ve shifted to over the years is not just let me write a blog post for you. Because you can go on Upwork and get someone to write a blog post right for $10. It’s more about what is how does the work that we’re going to do together in your marketing, bring in more leads for you? How does it fit into an entire strategy versus just one single blog post and one drop in a buck,

Lacy Boggs 42:57
right? And that post is so interesting, too, because it’s still my highest ranked Google post and still sends me the most traffic organically. And what’s interesting is over the years, what I found is the people who comment and leave messages on that post, nowadays tend to be writers. And they’re asking, Where do I start? How much should I charge for a blog post? What you know, do you charge by the word do you charge? It’s fascinating, because at first it was it definitely was people who were looking to hire. And now at least the people who comment are saying, well, what if I have this experience? How do I chart and I’m like, I don’t I’m not your business coach. I don’t know. But the other thing too, that this product for me is like, I think when I started this business, I’m it’ll be 10 years in April of 2022.

Meg Casebolt 43:44
Wow, I know, right? That’s

Lacy Boggs 43:47
70 I’m so old, big. I’m so tired. No. I think my my competition really was Upwork in Elance. Back then, and then it was Fiverr. Right? Because somebody was gonna post that they could write your blog post for $5. You know what it is today? It’s aI copywriting tools.

Meg Casebolt 44:06
I was just gonna say if the automation Yeah. And

Lacy Boggs 44:09
it’s really interesting, because I was fascinated by I got a couple different ones to try out to see what they were like. And at first, I was so excited. Like, I was so impressed. And I was so excited by what it was spitting out, I was like, Oh, my God, this is really good. I can use you know, I can use this to do this and that the other thing, but the more I thought about it, I was like, Yes, I can use it to do XYZ, because I’m an experienced copywriter. And I know what to do with these little snippets, it’s churning out and I know how to massage them and put them into something that makes sense, right? If you’re a beginner, if you’re not a great copywriter, if you’re just doing this to try to like, you know, I’m a terrible copywriter, so I’m going to buy this Jarvis or whatever. It’s not actually going to be that good because you’re gonna You won’t know what to do with it with what it spits out, you know, and I think that’s

Meg Casebolt 44:58
true for any tool. You know, if If you don’t know what you’re doing with a tool, if you go try to do keyword research exactly, I’m gonna buy the most expensive keyword research tool, it’s not gonna help you, if you don’t have a strategy.

Lacy Boggs 45:08
It’s just a tool. It’s a great, great example. And

Meg Casebolt 45:11
the same thing with like a project management tool, you can get like a really fancy, expensive project management tool, but if you don’t put in your tasks that you need to do, or if you don’t look at it, when you’re thinking about what you need to do that day, no amount of tool is going to make you productive.

Lacy Boggs 45:25
I literally just wrote a sales email for a client that made that comparison because she teaches people how to have a business that runs better and like how to delegate better and do things like that. And so I wrote this email, like, yeah, they have all these bells and whistles, but if you use them, and you still haven’t figured out how to delegate, you’re just gonna be drowned in task alerts all the time.

Meg Casebolt 45:45
Yeah, so many tasks. Well, thank you so much for your time with us today. How can people get in touch with you and find out more about putting you on their vision board or working with you?

Lacy Boggs 45:57
Yeah, so my home online is at Lacey boggs.com There are nine plus years of blog posts on there you can read if you want the free stuff. And then another great place to start is you can go to Lacey Boggs comm slash power platform and take our Find Your power platform quiz. And that will give you a really great start. If you if you’re interested in that strategy, like where do I share my thought leadership? And then how do I distribute it to all the different channels efficiently? That’s a great place to start.

Meg Casebolt 46:27
I’m going to go over check that out. Now. I haven’t yet. Do it. It’s cool. Thank you so so much for being here, Lacey. I really appreciate

Lacy Boggs 46:33
My pleasure. Thank you.

Meg Casebolt 46:37
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.com/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

Please forgive any typos as this transcript was automatically generated by otter.ai.