Behind-The-Scenes of a Full-Time Influencer with Liz Rishel of Within the Grove
Episode 496: Show Notes
Today on the show we have Liz Rishel from Within the Grove. For the last five years, Liz has grown her blog and Instagram to become an influencer to watch! We have loved observing her journey since she was a Strategy Academy student who accomplished amazing things and, in this episode, we pick her brain about what she has done to get such phenomenal results.
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We’ve often talked about blogging and making money from working with brands and have given our listeners some insights into how this all works, and Liz is here to give us her perspective on the whole thing. She gives us a peek behind the curtain of her growth over the past five years, getting into when it became a full-time job, how many hours she had to put in before it became a viable financial option for her and her family, how she collaborates with brands, her engagement with followers, and creating amazing products in her own home. Be sure to tune in for an episode that might just inspire you to start your next DIY project or finally get that online business of yours off the ground!
How Liz Started Her Blog and Business and How It Has Grown
Liz started her Within the Grove blog in 2015, when they bought their first home and moved to Orlando, Florida. She was suddenly surrounded by bloggers and decided to start writing about their renovations, as people were frequently asking them about it. She saw the blog as a way to communicate their journey, but it has long since turned into her full-time job. Now she teaches others to renovate and decorate their homes by showing them the processes behind what she is doing. She never imagined that what started as a journal-style blog would evolve into a successful online influencer business. Before this, Liz was a kindergarten teacher for eight years and resigned from that role three years ago, and she wouldn’t trade her decision to go full-time into her business for the world! In the beginning, her blog had all sorts of content, from recipes and craft projects to things to do in Orlando. She used to be much more general and all over the place in terms of focus, but a real shift came when she had her son. She took a year off teaching and grabbed the opportunity to start building towards monetizing her blog. The biggest reward for her has been the chance to be home with her son while also doing what she loves.
Steps For Turning Your Side Hustle Into A Profitable Business
When Liz decided to take a year off, she wanted to see first whether she could make money from her blog. She still remembers the first time she got paid $150 to write a blog post. At that point, she had about 3000 followers and perhaps 500 views on her blog a month, and it was a big deal to her. From there, she kept pushing herself and, by the second year, she attempted to pay the bills with the money she made from the blog to figure out whether leaving education permanently would be a smart move. It’s easy to get bogged down by the numbers when we want the followers and all those glamorous figures, and we keep comparing ourselves to others. When you are on social media, you are constantly confronted with what other people are doing. For Liz, the biggest challenge has been sticking to her lane and finding a network of people who could uplift her in business. The turning point for her was narrowing down her niche and zoning in on renovations, as this is the area she was most passionate about and skilled in. It took some time for the followers to show up, but they did.
The Instagram Strategy That Makes A World of Difference
Instagram is where Liz hangs out most of the time, and this is where people find her. Even though they read her blog on her website, Instagram has always been the biggest source of traffic. It is here where her biggest community is gathered, to the point where some people don’t even realize she has a blog! She has been fortunate enough to witness phenomenal growth over the past year, starting at the beginning of 2020 with 34,000 and having grown to almost 90,000 followers. She ascribes her success to the fact that she has shown up consistently on Instagram stories. Her feed is beautifully curated and the place where she showcases her projects, whereas her stories involve the real messy, behind the scenes bits. It can be difficult to strike a balance between staying in your lane versus showing yourself as a passionate human being with other things going on, but when you stray too far from your main topic, your growth slows down and your engagement may drop off. Liz’s feed and stories on Instagram are almost exclusively DIY, which is hard, since she doesn’t work on a new project every single day but still needs to keep producing content. She wants to stick to her topic, though, because this is how she has presented to her audience for so long, and this is what they have come to expect of her. She is sure she will lose followers if she suddenly starts talking about things unrelated to home renovations. Liz has also been good with setting boundaries for herself, so she doesn’t post in the evenings and over weekends to give herself some time to come up with fresh ideas, be inspired, and just live her life.
Planning and Organizing Content When Your Studio is Your Home
When a brand approaches her with a product and asks her to incorporate it into her content, she plans for these and puts it down in her calendar. These posts are thoughtfully planned out, and then she goes in and fills in the days between those projects with more random items. If she doesn’t have anything on her calendar, she might wake up and decide what kind of project she is in the mood for. It also makes a difference because her canvas is her home! Unexpected things come up, so you cannot always plan for projects. It was especially difficult to do projects at home in 2020 since her son and husband were both home full-time. Now that she doesn’t have those spaces to escape into and clear her head, she likes to plan things with her girlfriends or take a drive by herself. It’s hard enough to work and live in the same space, but add to that the fact that your home is your business! When you create content around making things, it can be easy to forget that it requires you to purchase things. It requires that you know the difference between a budget for your home and your business. Liz likes to include the things they do in their home in her business budget since it is part of what drives more business. While they may not be able to afford everything they do in their home personally, it is often a good business move since the content she will get from the project makes up for the expenses. Although they get some sponsorships, not everything she does is sponsored, making her process totally relatable.
Phases of Working with Sponsorships and Brands and Where to Find Them
When she started, she was working with middle-man companies and pitching herself on these websites. As the years went by, it transitioned to where she started pitching herself directly. If she has a project coming up, she considers the products she will need and then proceeds to email a few companies informing them of her plans. Where she is now in her business, brands more often pitch to her than she does to them, and then the negotiation phase begins. Nowadays, Liz is comfortable with the back and forth negotiations. She is part of several Facebook groups of business bloggers that she has gotten to know and, within these groups, they share contacts for companies that members want to pitch to. She also follows brands she likes on Instagram to keep updated with what they are doing. Later on, she will send them a DM, introducing herself and asking for the contact details of the person she can pitch to. She then sends the formal pitching email to the right person. When you are starting, you can turn to communities of bloggers and influencers for guidance and for making meaningful connections.
It Takes A Lot of Time and Patience
In the first year when she was home with her newborn son, Liz spent 40 to 50 hours a week working on her content and hustled hard for three to four years. Building an influencer business does not happen overnight and requires a great deal of hard work. Liz still puts in 40 to 50 hours a week, stays up till late to get things done, and gets up early to start. It took about three years for her to get comfortable and replace her former income. It is so enticing to think about the idea of getting paid to blog and post on Instagram, but that is just the tip of the iceberg. There is a lot that goes into getting to the point where it becomes lucrative and sustainable. You have to put in many hours a day, not just evenings, to get your blog onto other people’s radars. It will be tempting to give up, since it takes so long to see results, but Liz kept going and, even if she had failed, was going to do so trying her best. When she started seeing a little bit of success, it fueled her to push on and pursue bigger goals.
Quote This
The turning point was really narrowing down my niche. And It doesn’t happen overnight. It is a lot of hard work.
Highlights
How Liz Started Her Blog and Business and How It Has Grown. [0:05:48.1]
Steps For Turning Your Side Hustle Into A Profitable Business. [0:10:37.1]
The Instagram Strategy That Makes The World’s Difference. [0:14:12.1]
Planning and Organizing Content When Your Studio is Your Home! [0:20:13.1]
Phases of Working with Sponsorships and Brands and Where to Find Them. [0:32:39.1]
It Takes A Lot of Time and Patience. [0:37:04.1]
#TalkStrategyToMe [0:43:48.1]
Break your content down into digestible bites.
Share with the mindset that people don’t know what you are talking about.
Be the student and keep listening and learning.
ON TODAY’S SHOW
Liz Rishel
Within the Grove
Website | Instagram | Facebook
Liz Rishel is the creative director and writer behind the scenes of Within the Grove. She has a passion for living creatively and inspiring others to do the same. As a former teacher for nearly a decade, she can truly connect with her readers when showing budget-friendly ways to decorate. When she is not thrift shopping with a coffee in hand, you can find her enjoying everything Florida has to offer with her family.
KEY TOPICS
Blogging, Influencer marketing, Brands, Sponsorships, Content, Budgets, Work-from-home, Followers, DIY, Growth
