Getting to the Bottom Line: Conversations to help business owners maximize revenue, profit, and cash flow
Whether you're looking to boost your profits or simply gain a clearer understanding what drives business success, "Getting to the Bottom Line" is your ultimate guide to unlocking the strategies and secrets behind sustainable growth and the financial freedom you deserve. Tune in and discover how to turn your business goals into tangible results, one insightful conversation at a time.
Getting to the Bottom Line: Conversations to help business owners maximize revenue, profit, and cash flow
From Social Media Overwhelm to Strategy Success with Kate Gilbert
Unlock the secrets to social media success with me, Stephanie Smith, and our dynamic guest, Kate Gilbert. A social media virtuoso and compassionate coach, Kate transitioned from running an online knitting magazine to coaching entrepreneurs through the digital landscape upheaval during the pandemic. We'll unpack her transformative 30 Day Sprint program that helps business owners effectively navigate platforms like LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook, promising to turn social media from a stressor into a strategic asset for your business.
Get ready to rethink your approach as we tackle the dynamic world of social media content. Like a game of Candy Crush, mastering social media algorithms requires a curious and analytical mindset. We'll explore the art of repurposing content and prioritizing audience engagement over vanity metrics. Elevate your social media strategies by focusing on what truly matters: authentic interactions and meaningful engagement. Kate and I share insights on how to build a robust content library while saving time, drawing parallels to efficient batch-processing tasks.
Finally, we'll discuss the profound impact of genuine conversations and the joy of building connections in a digital age. Reflecting on the power of dialogue, we underscore the importance of concise and impactful content that resonates with your audience. Whether you're enhancing your social media presence or seeking to foster deeper connections, this episode is your guide to reshaping your digital strategy. Join us as we continue this journey towards impactful social media engagement, setting the stage for more insightful discussions to come.
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My name is Stephanie Smith, owner of New Light Financial Solutions, and we help business owners walk the one clear path to generating more cash in their business. To learn more, visit us online at https://newlightfs.com/
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Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Getting to the Bottom Line.
Speaker 1:I'm your host, stephanie Smith, owner of New Light Financial Solutions, and my goal here is to help you see in a new perspective things that impact your revenue, profit and cash flow.
Speaker 1:So, as a business owner myself, what I do is we offer CFO services and we look at a business's drivers financial drivers of revenue, profit and cash flow the different things that impact your bottom line to see what's working and not working and really identify what areas we can pull and levers we can pull to make the most impact to your bottom line. And so I am excited here today because, while we look at very specific drivers, there's a lot of things that impact your bottom line, and one of the things that we're going to talk about today is social media, which, of course, can help generate leads and get you business. So I am glad to have with me today Kate Gilbert. Clients affectionately dub Kate as a hand holder, butt kicker, for her unique blend of compassionate support and a can do attitude. Her 30 day sprint program is known for transforming social media struggles into enjoyable, effective strategies, helping business owners free up time and build momentum towards their big goals. Thank you so much for coming and speaking with me today, kate.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:Social media is such a big topic, right? Because we're all online for the most part, and to be online, you have to put yourself out there, and social media is hard, and I'm going to be the first one through this conversations to say, like I don't do the things I probably should be doing. But before we get into all of that, why don't you tell everyone a little bit about yourself and your business and what you do?
Speaker 2:Okay, I'm going to start a bit in the past. I actually started my first business when I was 15 in my parents' garage and then, when I was in my 30s, I started an online magazine and I ran that for 10 years. After that, I wasn't quite sure what I was going to do with myself, and then the pandemic hit and my friends started calling me saying how do I go online? How do I change everything to be online? I don't know what I'm doing Like just freaking out, understandably. And so I found myself on phone calls pretty regularly with people coaching them through what to do, giving them like next steps and talking about, you know, a lot of emotions, especially that go into things like social media. So finally I realized that was my favorite part of each week. Uh, one of my friends thankfully said why aren't I paying you for this?
Speaker 2:and I said oh yeah, that'd be great, thank you that is awesome.
Speaker 1:What kind of magazine did you have? It was an online knitting magazine oh fun, I assume you're a knitter then uh, I was.
Speaker 2:I rarely knit now because not anymore now you're an online social media person. Sorry, what did you say? When you turn your hobby into your job, you just uh, you know it kind of sucks the fun out of it for a little while, giving myself a few more years before I start knitting again oh, that's a little bit of a bummer, but you found a new passion now, right, yeah, I love my job awesome.
Speaker 1:Well, I am glad that you've done that. I'm sure during the pandemic there were a lot of people trying to make that transition right, like so much stuff went completely online. So tell me more about what it is you do with your clients and like your main area of focus.
Speaker 2:Well, I do business coaching and you know, a lot of times people who've already been through my program, they know me, they know what I'm about and they contact me and they say, hey, I need help, I want to plan a course or I want to launch a new offer. I'm feeling kind of lousy about this right now. Can I book a call? And so I'll work with them. But I also I have a program called 30 day sprint, which is about social media and it's platform agnostic, so you can use it for LinkedIn, you can use it for Instagram, Facebook, you know pretty much anything, because really the concentration of the program is on messaging, like effective messaging and super efficient systems, so you're creating really good content that you can publish consistently and, with it, not taking up all of your time.
Speaker 1:Well, that sounds wonderful, right, I also get that program in the context of like VIP days.
Speaker 2:So sometimes people like don't want to do the group program and if you come and do it as a VIP day then like I can get you through the program faster and I do some of the things for you. Oh, that sounds even better.
Speaker 1:You know, we all start a business because we do something we love and then we realize we're wearing a million hats doing all the things and I'll be the first one to admit, like, social media is like not my strong suit, right, and you know, you have to do it. So I feel like you do what you can, and having that guidance along the way has got to be really helpful. I'm sure you've seen some people really transform what they're doing just by going through your program or working with you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I mean, my first workshop, my first live workshop of each session, is called social media group therapy, because even those of us who like social media, we still have like it happens to me too. I still have like icky feelings about oh you know, I worked on this post and nobody liked it, or you know I worked on this post and nobody liked it, or you know, it didn't get the response I wanted and and things like that. So as I was building my program, I realized that I really had to set up a workshop around the way we feel and think about social media and the way we think about our results. And my goal in that is to like completely change how people are thinking about their social media so you can stop like blaming yourself and beating yourself up and you can just like get on with it.
Speaker 1:I mean that makes a lot of sense because I feel like, while not everyone has tons of followers right, it's still really vulnerable to put yourself out there in a certain way and you know, like certain messaging and stories and the things that would help tell your, tell your story personal stories is sometimes really hard to share with the world.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I mean, one of the things I talked about in that workshop actually is that. So I'll tell you a little story. So, after my magazine closed, I was kind of like trying to figure out what to do and I started giving online baking classes and selling like cupcakes, okay, like true story. So I had about 1000 followers on my account and at around the same time, there was this woman who had 2.6 million followers. Okay, okay, she was like one of those like instagram influencer, kind of gals, um, and she wanted to start a clothing line and the minimum order she had to place was like 35 t-shirts. So, like, 2.6 million followers, 35 t-shirts, no problem, right, like she should be. That's like one in I don, 27,000, if I remember the numbers correctly, like it's not that many people had to buy one. She could not sell 36 t-shirts. So me, with my thousand followers I was, I could sell, like you know, a hundred cupcakes in a weekend. I was actually way more successful than she was.
Speaker 2:So we can't get too hung up on numbers and also we can't make assumptions about how someone else is doing. It's really easy for all of us to like go look at, you know, your competitor or somebody big in your industry and be like, oh my God, they're, they're doing so much better. We actually don't know. You know, we really don't know. And the other thing we don't know is who's watching, because I can't tell you how many times I get like a message being like, hey, when are you running sprint next? And I'm like, oh, wow, okay, you're a person I did not even know was paying attention. You know, I did not know you even followed me. I'd never seen you like a single post. I'd never seen you, you know, comment on a post, and yet this person was willing to sign up for my program and pay me money. So we just don't know.
Speaker 1:Yes, I am guilty of being the long time lurker.
Speaker 2:No time poster or commenter Long time lurker, first time buyer.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, I've done that. So I mean, that's totally true, and the only way you can get those lurkers out there is to have yourself out there to begin with, right? So nobody knows that what you do unless you put yourself out there to begin with. So what kind of tips do you have to offer to people that are wanting to get started Putting putting together more social media posts and and everything?
Speaker 2:Well, I think that you know most people wake up and they're like what should I post today? Oh no, I haven't posted. What am I going to say? And then they're like I have so many other things to do, so they either put it off till the next day or they come up with, like the fastest thing they can come up with and just post it right and move on. The problem with doing that is you're only looking post by post and you're not looking at the larger picture, so you don't have a clear picture of the messages that you're sending as a whole to your potential customers. So my suggestion is sit down and write down like okay, this is who my audience is and this is what they need to know, and then start making posts that hit all of those topics and try not to like make posts for the sake of posting, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So, um, long-term vision versus just what, what am I doing today? That makes perfect sense, right? And um, I, I think too related to that is it's it's not into instantaneous, right? We all hope that we just make one post and like that's going to be the post, that's for everyone, right? But there is that mindset of like it's not, it's not every post is going to be the post, but you have to have a set of posts, right. So what? What are your thoughts around? Like that, it's a long game, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, like I said, you just don't know who's watching. Like you could really be surprised at the people who are actually paying attention and who, all of a sudden, are going to be like OK, that's it, it's time for me. I'm buying it.
Speaker 2:The other thing is everybody tries to say too much in a post and if you think about like, think about when you're scrolling, like what are you doing while you're scrolling? You might be like watching a movie. Your kids might be playing on the floor in front of you saying, hey mom, look at this Lego castle I built. You know like you might be distracted with other things. It's not like a super attentive focus. So we have to keep in mind like we cannot write the next great American novel in a Facebook post, right, we have to give people like small bits of information, because they're only going to remember like one to three pieces of information and, on top of that, not every person is going to see every single post you make. So you should actually repeat the heck out of yourself to the point that you think you're annoying everybody, because I guarantee you you're not even annoying people and that they're going to be like a bunch of your followers who are going to say wait what you're doing, what Like? Because they won't even have seen it.
Speaker 1:That's interesting and I do feel like sometimes it's like okay, well, I made this one post, I'll post it again, like six months later or never. Yeah you're right, Like you never know what what people see of yours and, of course, the algorithm never gets you to see everything. So I think that's important takeaway is you need to post more than once and you probably already have the content right.
Speaker 2:So yeah, I mean because you can. That's the thing also is like you can do so much less work if you're. I mean you don't have to necessarily repost exactly the same post, but you can probably make a variation on it. You can change the words a little bit, you can change, like, from a video to a carousel or you know, you can. You know, depending on what platform you're on. But, like you can change the way you're presenting the information, you can change how you're saying the stuff and it will appeal to different people. It'll show up in different people's timelines.
Speaker 2:And also, since you brought up the algorithm, because everybody's always talking about the algorithm, I want to make the point that there's actually more than one algorithm. There are, like you know, like you are in a different country than me right now. Your algorithm is not the same as my algorithm, and my friend, who has like 100,000 followers, has a different algorithm than me. Like she lives by different rules than I do. Lucky her. But you know.
Speaker 2:And the other thing is is people are we can't entirely blame the algorithm Like your content has to be good, right, and the thing I always say to people is your content's not about you. Stop posting for yourself, like, post what your audience needs to hear. Post you know, things that will be of value to them, because if you're, if it's like me, me, me, me, me, nobody cares and they also aren't going to trust you. And furthermore, if you'll allow me to keep rambling, so you know, have you ever played like Candy Crush or you know a phone game? Oh, of course. Right, like, when you lost a level of Candy Crush, did you walk away thinking like, oh, I'm garbage, I'm not very smart, like, I'm kind of crappy.
Speaker 1:No sometimes, but no right, it's more like I got to get it done Right.
Speaker 2:But, like, if you posted and like nobody liked your post or you didn't get a lot of comments or nobody bought the thing you were trying to sell, you might judge yourself right. Yeah, well, guess what? Candy Crush and social media? They're both algorithms and, just like Candy Crush, social media platforms will sometimes make it easy to win, put you in front of a lot of people. Sometimes they'll make it harder to win to the point that you think you have to pay for exposure. I mean, that's how they make their money. So you can release a bit all that and be like okay.
Speaker 2:And if you can start to come at the results of your posts in a more like curious way and a scientific way and be like okay, I'm like this mad scientist like putting these posts out into the world, and you can look at it and be like okay, I'm like this mad scientist like putting these posts out into the world, and you can look at it and say like okay, I wonder if that didn't do well, because I posted it at like two in the morning, you know.
Speaker 2:Or I wonder if that didn't do well because the way I explained it wasn't clear or it was too long, or I wonder if it didn't do well, because that's the day Biden dropped out of the race, so everybody was talking about that. You know, like there are things out of your control and then there are things within your control. So we have to, like, really think about what we can actually control, take control of those things, and not beat ourselves up about the things that are out of our control, because we also, we can't control what somebody does on the other side.
Speaker 2:I can't control if you like my post and I can't control if you're going to comment on it. All I can do is create content that would be interesting to you, that you'll want to read and hopefully think oh this Kate chick's rad, Like I want to hang out with her.
Speaker 1:I love that. I love that concept of curiosity, right Like, be curious. I think that applies to like life in general, right, Like we should be curious about everything that's happening and if it's not exactly what you're thinking, be curious, ask questions. And I also love that you touched on, you know, figuring out what's working and what's not working. So my follow-up question would be like how do you help people decide if something's working or not working? Right, Because, are we looking for likes? Are we looking for comments Like what's what's, what's your I want to say KPIs or or things that you would recommend for people to track for that kind of stuff?
Speaker 2:That's kind of a huge answer, but I'm going to do the best I can. So it kind of depends what you're looking for. But I'll just say in general, how many people follow you and how many people like posts are vanity metrics and we don't care so much about that. Yes, it's nice to have a lot of followers. Yes, it's nice to have a lot of likes. I will tell you, for most social media platforms right now, or most social media platforms right now, having comments or saves or shares is much more valuable than likes and follows.
Speaker 2:So I would concentrate on those things and try to set up content that encourages people to either want to save that post to remember it for later because it has really useful information, or say, oh my gosh, I know who needs to see this and send it to their friend, so, or answer a question you asked, you know, make them want to have a conversation with you because, like social media, it's right in the name, right, social, it's supposed to be social. So I think we actually have a huge opportunity right now. You know, in the age of AI, you know, influencers like people showing up and just completely fibbing about what their lives are like or what their businesses are like. We have the opportunity to show up as like ethical business owners who care about our clients and be authentic, and I think that's the winning strategy right there is like caring what your audience needs and trying to give that to them.
Speaker 1:I love that, yeah, and I I feel like, on this, on the note of tracking, right, like we're not looking for likes or follows, but even just the curiosity and looking back and not just posting me like, all right, well, that didn't work or did work and right, that's big on my side of the world. I want to track, I want to see what's working to make changes. Right, let's figure out the strategy to improve. But I love all of what you're talking about, so it makes perfect sense. I want to hit on. I know you have strategies for making your workflows faster, right, like spending less time doing the things you do. So if you were to give someone a tip on how to make it easier, what would you tell them?
Speaker 2:I think I know what you're referring to, because you've heard me say this, but do your social media like you do your laundry, right. You're not going to like wash a shirt and then dry your shirt and then go hang it up and then wash a pair of jeans, dry the pair of jeans and go fold them and put them away. Right, you do a bunch of laundry all at the same time. So do it that way. Try to monotask. Think about what your messages should be. Try to write your posts or create the graphics or videos, whichever one you prefer to do, first one or the other and then batch schedule them. And if you can set up a system for yourself where you're doing that on a regular basis and you're doing it often enough that you're not running out of content before you do it, then you end up with, like this growing pile, like this growing library of posts you can make. And also you can go back and look at your old posts and think, okay, how can I repurpose that? I mean, that also goes for, like, any assets you create, like photos of yourself or videos, like see how many you can shoot in one sitting. You know, change your jacket, maybe change your, change your necklace, change your glasses or something, so all of them don't look exactly the same, but you can definitely make systems work better for you where you're not spending all your time.
Speaker 2:But beyond that, say less. Like seriously, I know I already said that, but say less. I see too many people like trying to say too many things that people aren't just aren't able to take in. So see how small you can make something. And then, instead of having like one long post, you actually have like 620. I've seen people make posts that I was like 123. And I can count, like I'm like there are 22 topics in here really, if I really wanted to, or 22 ways I could expand on this really, if I really wanted to, or 22 ways I could expand on this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I am. I am that person that's like if your Facebook post is like 18 paragraphs, I'll get through the first one and then realize how long it is and like that's it I will not read it personally. There's so many people that post like that, which must be successful for some people, but I know for me and and my personal usage of social media I just don't have the attention span or the time.
Speaker 2:Well, and also, are you more likely to read 18 paragraphs of text from someone or listen to 18 paragraphs worth of talking from someone?
Speaker 1:I do like to. Weirdly, I feel like I'd rather read them talking like read them read the video on the captions person right so my phone's on silent and I'll watch the closed captioning on the video, but I do like videos, right?
Speaker 2:yeah, I mean I like to read videos too, and actually, in particular, I really like how, on TikTok, you can play things at double speed, because, like me too, I'm kind of a fast processor and fast listener, so I just play everything on double speed and like, whereas on Instagram you can't watch videos on double speed at this point and I'm just like oh my gosh, this is so slow.
Speaker 1:Everyone's talks at different speeds.
Speaker 1:It's, yeah, that's true for courses too.
Speaker 1:I love courses that I can, you know, speed up a little bit for myself, but unrelated.
Speaker 1:So I love this because we're in the concept of impacting your bottom line, right, like that's the whole point of my podcast is I see a couple things at play here. Right, you can save time by doing things like batch writing stuff or being more strategic about what you're writing about, and doing your social media, like doing your laundry it's not one at a time while you're spending less time on that one post, right overall, but doing it as one is actually more beneficial in the long run. And then, of course, putting more quality posts out there is going to get more people to know about you, engage with you and, of course, make them lurkers of you and potential buyers to buyers will all impact the revenue that you have coming into your business, whether the revenue from the social media and people knowing about you. And then saving time, your valuable time that you could be doing something else by systematizing things. So what's your take? Obviously, I kind of summed that all up, but have you seen like success with people improving their business doing these kind of things?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. I mean I've had several people go through my program who've had pretty great results. I mean it varies from person to person according to, like, the field they're in and what they're talking about, and then what things they put into practice and how they do it. But there's one woman I'm thinking of in particular who she came to me and she said I have 8,000 followers.
Speaker 2:I've been steadily like losing followers I mean not like mass amounts, but she wasn't gaining them and her goal was to really get above 10,000 because she had been denied, like, a professional opportunity because they said she didn't have a big enough following. Wow, you know, bummer. So she was like I need to hit 10,000. So I said, fine, and actually the first piece of advice I gave her before she even signed up for my program was your social media is not about you Immediately. When she put that into practice, she hit 10,000, like pretty quickly, and then putting all the other systems in play, last I looked she was at 27 something thousand, and those opportunities that were passing her by she now has. So yeah, so I mean I that's that's a big example, like that's a particularly big success story. But I have seen other people just like show up when they weren't showing up at all, you know, which is also a big success. It's just, you know, a different scale, and that's fine.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, I mean, it's like the difference between me and my husband run our business together and he's more behind the scenes. So everyone's like, well, say to me, like you're the face, I'm the one doing these podcasts and stuff like that and it's like he'd be that person, Like it's a success that you're showing up Right and I see your face and you putting yourself out there, and I think it is. And I also feel like we should. We should celebrate those things within ourselves, all these things that we're doing. This is unrelated, but we it's hard, it's hard to be a business owner, it's hard to put yourself out there. I think we should all celebrate the little wins that we have along the way when you do things that are uncomfortable, especially in the business. But all right, Kate, so if, if everyone listening could take one, if there's one takeaway you wanted to share with them, and maybe how to get started or whatever it is, what would you say it is?
Speaker 2:I think I've already beat the horse pretty hard on most of the things. So I'm going to jump off of something you said about how you like to like look at the data and stuff like that. And I want to say, if you know some people I work with, like just don't look at their data and that's fine, you know, if that's what works for them and if looking at it makes them feel bad. But if you are going to look at your data, one way to think about it also is not just what time did I post and what was I talking about, but you can also start to think about what kind of graphic was this? Did I show my face?
Speaker 2:One of my clients was trying to figure out what kind of posts were actually resonating with her audience, and so we created a spreadsheet which I'm sure is not none of you people are strangers to spreadsheets and we created a spreadsheet where we listed the posts she was making. We listed, you know, the likes, comments, shares and saves and we marked down like, was her face showing or not? And was it a quote, like an inspirational quote? You know, we had a few different um things we were measuring and we went and marked those down and then we sorted according to um you know, shares, saves, comments.
Speaker 2:We started resorting it different ways to see and it became extremely clear people wanted to see her face and her best performing content was when she would just sit and talk to the camera and she was doing these videos where she would sit and talk. So it was. She was like great, that's the easiest content for me to make. So it was really easy for her to then put that into effect at that point. I love that, and I was really easy for her to then put that into effect at that point.
Speaker 1:I love that and I was because I and what I was gonna say my takeaway like my takeaway from this conversation is so related to that is approach it with curiosity, right, like everything you're doing. It's not just that your didn't work, it's just you know what? Ask more questions, what's working or not working. So I love that and both of those things and everything that you've talked about today. I love it all. If someone wanted to learn more about you or your program, where can they find more information about you?
Speaker 2:They can find me at kategilbertcom or on Instagram at Kate GI. Like the first two letters of my last name and on my website there is a it's called a content creation roadmap, and what it does is it takes you through the process of, like, really streamlining, creating your assets, writing your content, all that stuff, and then repurposing it takes you through many of the things that I teach in my course.
Speaker 1:I love that and I'll put that in the show notes for everyone if they want to find you and if anyone's looking to find more about me and what I do, you can find me on my website at newlightfscom there and all the links are there for everything for me, and I just want to say thank you again, kate. This was such a great conversation. I'm so glad you came and talked to me today.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for having me and I hope I get to see you in real life soon.
Speaker 1:One day again. But that's it for this episode of Getting to the Bottom Line. I hope you all join me for the next episode. Bye everyone.
