Hey everybody! Today on the show we are giving you a very important lesson, so listen up! We learned this lesson just the same, so the sooner we can get this through to you the better: content creation will not get you more clients. Yes, we said it. We used to blog five times a week sometimes, and saw almost zero increase in clients from it. In this episode we will be breaking down why exactly it just does not work as a strategy and what you should be doing instead. In fact, we are taking it as far as to tell you why you should stop building an online business altogether and instead focus on growing your local reputation, which can take you further, grow you faster and make you more money! This episode is perfect for service-based biz owners, so copywriters, photographers and designers, we are talking to you.

We have to admit that we do love content but if you think that it will land you new clients, you are sadly mistaken. New people will not just magically find you on social media or your blog and want to start paying you money out of nowhere. We hope you can see that this is a ridiculous idea. One issue here is that we see our heroes creating great content and we want to mimic this, but we have to remind ourselves they are serving an established customer base through that content rather than building one from scratch. The clients we are looking for out on the internet are usually waiting on our very own street, we just have to go out and get them!

Today on the podcast, we have Dr. Beth Brombosz. Beth is an author, copywriter, content creator, and the host of the Blogger to Author Podcast. In 2015, she turned some of her own blog posts into a book titled Yoga for Runners, which is now available on Amazon. Beth’s book has helped her build a platform as an expert in her field. She is passionate about helping fellow bloggers turn their content into books so they can build authority in their niche, share their passion with the world, and earn passive income.

In this episode, you’re going to hear all about that process. From repurposing your content to creating a book, to self-publishing, pricing, layout and sales, Beth really breaks it down into an easy step-by-step process. She self-published her book in just 30 days! She proves that it’s totally doable, with no publishing experience needed. If you’ve never written a book in your life, but are thinking about it, then today’s podcast is for you.

Blogging may be one of the things at the top of the list in our business. The blog was part of the early stages of our business, and existed pre-TCC. We first started blogging before we were even in business together, when it was still just a passion project of Abby’s to educate small business owners on growth strategies. She was blogging five days a week, and literally never skipped a beat. After we met, we then decided to see if we wanted to work together on a longer-term basis. We decided that Emylee would guest blog for what is now the TCC blog, to essentially share the platform, and continued to put out content five days a week.

Together we would brainstorm ideas for the blog, browse Pinterest, ask our audience what they needed help with, and write about exactly what we had just learned the week before. It definitely was not any of this big picture concept stuff yet because we just weren’t in that place in our business at the time. We kept blogging five days a week for almost a full year, at which point we had significantly grown our website traffic, but we were feeling burnt out. In this episode, we walk through exactly how our blog has transitioned into what it is today, and the strategies we used along the way to get there. So tune in to hear all about our ever evolving blogging journey!

We hope you have some pink on, because we have Melissa Johnson of Best Friends for Frosting on the podcast today. This woman is bubbly and sparkly, and she loves all things sugarcoated and confetti covered.  Melissa started her blog after realizing the earning potential of the industry, and found herself best-suited to the role of creative director of this lifestyle business. With Melissa, you will get a peek inside a successful lifestyle brand. We’re talking four straight years of making six figures! She doesn’t mess around. She is working on sponsor content, surveying her audience, expanding her team, and we’re talking about all those things in today’s episode.  

For those of you who think that a money generating lifestyle blog or brand is out of your reach, we would love for you to sit down and give this one a listen and maybe learn that with some strategy and the right tools, you can actually make it happen.

We first discovered Jeff on Instagram. Jeff is a photographer who loves to take a lot of architectural images, and so, naturally, we fell in love with his work. Not long after, we discovered his wife, Kelly, and we just absolutely had to follow them both! We followed their work for a year and a half before reaching out to them, and it’s been such a fun journey getting know them on a more personal level, and getting the inside scoop on how their business actually runs.

If you know of Studio DIY, you know that they have hundreds of thousands of followers on Instagram, and that their DIY blog is pretty outstanding. In our talk with them, we discover more about their journey, what the early days of Studio DIY looked like, how they built sponsorship and affiliate relationships, and how they decided what to charge for those sponsorships (everyone’s burning question!). They also share what it was like branching out and creating their own physical product line.

Since then, they’ve grown a lot and implemented tons of incredible strategies in their business to make it what it is today. So, if you are a DIY’er yourself, you absolutely have to give this one and listen!

Today we’re getting real with blogging. Every time I say the word “blog” I can see the cringe on people’s faces (yes, even through the computer screen). We get it, for some, it isn’t your favorite thing. That is A-okay. But you can’t just assume you are going to escape it. Today, we are going to talk to you about why it is important, how it has been super incremental to our personal growth, and our business growth and some hints and tips for you to make it a bit easier on yourself so you can enjoy it a little bit more.

People get caught up on wanting to see quick results. Like anything else, they think blogging is the quick way to see financial gain. However, blogging is not a get rich quick scheme. Blogging is a totally different world than it was five or 10 years ago. It’s an entirely different strategy with an entirely different marketing game plan, and in order to get paid from your blog, you have to have a different mindset. You must get in the mindset that blogging is 100%, straight up, no joke a long-term game. So if you are looking for some guidance and motivation to grow your blog, then this is the episode for you! Are you ready?