328: Chalene Johnson On How To Build A Loyal Audience On Instagram

00:00
You’re listening to the My Wife, Quit Her Job podcast, the place where I bring on successful bootstrap business owners and dig deep into what strategies they use to grow their businesses. Today I have Shailene Johnson on the show. If you’ve never heard of Shailene before, she is the queen of fitness videos and she’s built several multi-million dollar lifestyle companies over the years. And in this episode, we’re going to learn how she achieved her success. But before we begin, I want to thank Clevio for sponsoring this episode. Now it’s safe to say that most of us have been doing more online shopping lately.

00:28
And if you’re an ecommerce brand, that means you might be seeing more first-time customers. But once they’ve made that first purchase, how do keep them coming back? That is what Klaviyo is for. Klaviyo is the ultimate email and SMS marketing platform for ecommerce brands, and they give you the tools to build your contact list, send memorable emails, automate key messages, and more. A lot more. And that’s why over 50,000 ecommerce brands like Chubbies, Brooklinen, and Living Proof use Klaviyo to build a loyal following.

00:53
Strong customer relationships mean more repeat sales, enthusiastic word of mouth, and less depending on third party ads. So whether you’re launching a new business or taking your brand to the next level, Klaviyo can help you get growing faster. And it’s free to get started, so visit klaviyo.com slash my wife to create a free account. That’s klaviyo.com slash my wife. I also want to thank Post Group for sponsoring this episode. If you run an e-commerce business of any kind, you know how important it is to own your own customer contact list.

01:21
And this is why I’m focusing a significant amount of my efforts on SMS marketing. SMS or text message marketing is already a top five revenue source for my e-commerce store. And I couldn’t have done it without postscript.io, which is my text message provider. Now, why did I choose Postscript? It’s because they specialize in e-commerce stores and e-commerce is their primary focus. Not only is it easy to use, but you can quickly segment your audience based on your exact sales data and implement automated flows like an abandoned cart at the push of a button.

01:50
Not only that, but it’s price well too. And with the holiday season rolling around, SMS is the perfect way to engage with your customers. So head on over to postscript.io slash Steve and try it for free. That’s P O S T S C R I P T dot IO slash Steve. Now onto the show. Welcome to the My Wife, Quit Her Job podcast, where we’ll teach you how to create a business that suits your lifestyle so you can spend more time with your family and focus on doing the things that you love.

02:18
Here’s your host, Steve To.

02:23
Welcome to the My Wife, Quit Her Job podcast. Today I’m thrilled to have Shailene Johnson on the show. Now Shailene is someone who I met at Social Media Marking World, where we were both speakers. She’s a New York Times bestselling author, lifestyle expert, and top health podcaster with over 20 million downloads. She also holds the Guinness Book of World Records for having starred in the most fitness videos ever. And together with her husband, Brett, they have built and sold several multi-million dollar lifestyle companies and help others do the same.

02:51
So accolades aside, I actually didn’t know about Shailene until Pat Flynn mentioned her to me a while back. And I still remember the first time I heard her speak at Social Media Marketing World. And I was thinking to myself, man, this woman has got a ton of energy. Now the room was packed and I was actually very uncomfortable standing there. So I was actually about to leave her talk when she cracked a random joke and did one of her patented one-legged kicks in the air. And for some reason, that one power move convinced me to stay and I’m so happy that I did.

03:20
Shailene is truly an inspiration to us all. And in this interview, we’re gonna learn how she achieved her success. And with that, welcome to the show Shailene. How are doing today? I’m awesome. Thank you so much. I appreciate that intro. It’s pretty funny. My signature. I love that one. Like, I don’t know. I crack up every time you do it now. So that’s so funny. And the last talk I saw you at social media marketing world, you did this funny thing where you tried to hop around the mic on the stage. And for some reason, I lost it there too. What did I do?

03:49
What you did, like, there was this mic podium, and then there was like this half a foot space between the podium and the stage, and then what you did is you tiptoed around it just randomly. You don’t remember that, do you, Well, you know, I just posted to my Instagram stories today a few random things that have happened when I speak from stage, and I said in the clip that my absolute favorite thing to have happen is something that I’m not expecting.

04:16
because it gives me an opportunity to break character, to be funny, to roll with it. And so I’m always praying that something really unexpected will happen. And you were wearing heels too. I was actually worried that you were gonna fall. You’re heels, I sleep in heels. So, Shailene, for those listening who have never heard of you before, please give us your back story on how you got into fitness and then later decide to teach entrepreneurship and health and wellness. Sure. Well, I started off in entrepreneurship, went to school at Michigan State, put myself

04:46
through college, having started a private auction for private owners and sellers of vehicles. It was called the All Michigan Auto Swap Meet. That was my first successful business. And after that, probably like most serial entrepreneurs, did like 90 different things, usually all at once, waiting for something to pop. I just love entrepreneurship. love going like, oh, okay, this is a problem. I bet other people have this problem. I should solve this problem.

05:15
And I worked like a fiend, like I defined the word hustle in those early years, but I never really could find success. kept seeing sparkly things and trying new businesses. And it wasn’t until listening to a mentor that I realized my biggest Achilles heel, the thing that was my greatest obstacle or challenge was that I couldn’t focus on one thing for fear that I would pick the wrong thing.

05:44
But that if I didn’t do that, I was never going to experience the kind of success that I longed for and that I really deserved. So I made a decision to kind of put everything that I was excited and passionate about aside and just focus exclusively on fitness and try to make my mark in fitness. Cause I saw this opportunity at that moment. And so I really became, as they say, I broke through she hands wall and became known if you will, for

06:14
fitness, but I often will, you know, very transparently explain to people it’s not because I’m the best at fitness or I know the most or I’m an expert at fitness. It’s because I really study marketing. And it was once and only after I became really known for fitness that I began to slowly put those other passions back on my plate and create additional streams of income from those other interests. And now I pretty much would say I spend the majority of my day teaching

06:44
entrepreneurship and online marketing. Did you start the fitness business while you were working? You were paralegal from what I understand, right? Yeah, I wouldn’t say it was a, had a couple of different businesses at that time. And I was a, an employee for 24 hour fitness teaching a fitness class at the time, and also trying to do my own seminars and, trying to, you know, write eBooks. was doing all these things, but I was teaching this fitness class and I realized that

07:12
there were so many really talented fitness professionals who were making less than minimum wage because they spent so much time creating great playlists and then choreography that went with the playlist. was, you know, it was, you were working for pennies. And I thought, I’m good at that. I know how to match music to movement. What I’m going to do is market these pre-choreographed routines that coincide with the music. And I’m going to market those to fitness instructors so that they can just

07:41
do what they do, which is bring their personality to class. And I saw that opportunity. saw group fitness exploding at that time. And so that was the business I decided to focus on exclusively and stopped working as a paralegal and put aside my plans to go to law school and just focused on that exclusively. can we talk about prison real quick? And just for the audience, Shailene never went to prison, but she talks about prison. The first business, fitness business that you created.

08:10
Yeah, compare it to a prison. Can you kind of talk about how that happened and why you ultimately decided to sell that business? Yeah, it was a mindset that I had. The prison was really when I created in my own mind where I believed that nothing was ever good enough that there always had to be something more. And in order for it to be done well and done right, I need to do all of it. So I

08:35
learned the hard way what it meant to be overworked and exhausted and making a lot of money, but not enjoying any part of my life. I mean, I didn’t sleep. I was never satisfied with what I accomplished or what we accomplished, I should say, because my husband and I were working together at that time. It was never enough. I always felt behind the gun. I always felt like I had to do more. This is going to go away. I never celebrated any win and

09:04
It just got to a point where I couldn’t breathe and it was affecting our marriage tremendously. And I couldn’t get out from underneath it because even to sell the business in the moment when I had the realization, I was the business. I was the face of it. I was the person who was doing all of the pieces. I was in the videos. I was marketing the videos. was writing the copy. was writing emails. So once we decided like, okay, we have to get out from underneath this, it took a transition of about

09:34
I’d say four to five years to brick by brick kind of take apart the prison I had built for myself and allow other people to take the business to the next level. And eventually we were able to sell it. Yeah, I was just about to ask like today, it seems like you have lots of free time to spend with family. Could you have replicated what you have now back with your other fitness business before you sold it? Yeah, I absolutely had I learned

10:00
the lessons that I learned in those four years of transitioning. But by then, you know, that was part of the process was realizing that fitness wasn’t ultimately what I wanted to help the world with. I think it’s a gateway drug. think like once people realize like, hey, you know, if I get disciplined, if I could change my body, if I could change my health, I could probably change my income. I could probably change my family’s legacy. I could change

10:29
a lot of things. And so I think a lot of people realize from fitness that that’s a gateway to personal development, which I believe is a gateway to business development. I could do those things. I could have a much better experience today because I had to learn the hard way how much of my ego put us in that position. But I think the business is very different today. You know, it’s like I wouldn’t I wouldn’t sell VHS cassettes anymore. You know what mean? Like different and

10:58
And even group fitness in since the pandemic has like, has completely changed. I have so many students who really have to change who it is they’re marketing to because a particular industry has like dried up or there’s so much uncertainty that it’s really a call to expand and look at other things that you’re passionate about. Absolutely. You know what’s funny about fitness?

11:21
is I feel like I became a lot more productive business-wise once I got into shape myself. So they are definitely intertwined. You can’t like avoid, you can’t just do one and not the other. It’s interesting. And I know you’ve interviewed so many successful people on your podcast. I’m a subscriber, by the way. Thank you for all the great content you provide. you so much. That means a lot. Yeah, great guess. And I love your solo shows, but you know, one thing you do find successful people have in common, you know, of course, depending on how you define success, but for me,

11:50
I want to look at someone who’s well-rounded, who’s a happy person, who enjoys life, who helps others, who has a lot of options, a lot of choices. And those people tend to have a lot of balance. in order to have a healthy, I think to be a healthy leader, to be a healthy individual, to have a healthy business, you’ve got to be healthy. Absolutely. You know, what’s funny is for a while, I think I fell into your trap.

12:16
as well, where I was just focusing on growing, growing, growing, but my wife wasn’t happy with it. And then we just kept fighting. And it was only after we remembered why we started our businesses in the first place, that things kind of got under control. Took me a lot longer to figure that out than you did. Does she still keep you in check? Like who keeps who in check? She always keeps me in check. I have no power in this relationship. I mean, do you have more of the tendencies to to work? Yeah.

12:44
Yeah, I have more of that tendency and the way we kind of, we kind of created this pack where we’re just trying to grow the business that we run together at a gradual rate. Because we deal with physical products. So anytime there’s a huge influx of orders, it’s actually physically painful. It’s not like that with digital products. anything that I work with her, we kind of, you know, take the pedal off a little bit and anything that I work on by myself. So my wife, quitterjob.com is kind of like my business. I’m free to.

13:10
put the pedal down in the middle on that one because it’s digital products. I’m curious in one of your episodes, and now I’m interviewing you. I heard you say, I will never start a business that I don’t want to run forever. Yes. And I went, was interesting to me because I have almost the opposite perspective now, which is I’ll never start a business that I don’t have some kind of an exit strategy.

13:40
and thinking about that as I build it so that should I decide I don’t want to do this anymore, I don’t have to spend four or five years restructuring. Yeah, I mean, that’s not to say that that I wouldn’t ever want to sell it. But going in, so I’m mainly talking to people who haven’t gotten started yet. You should go in with a long term plan, because everyone’s looking for that quick buck, you know, at least at least a lot of my audiences are the emails that I get. And so that’s why I say what I say. That that makes total sense. Yeah.

14:09
Alright, back to you, Shane. This is about you. It’s not about me. So one thing that I admire about you is that you are awesome at building a large and loyal audience of followers. And part of that is definitely your personality. But I know like behind the scenes, are you’re like a you have all these strategies in place. And one thing I did want to ask you is, by the time you started selling your online training, you kind of already had a large audience with

14:37
with the fitness stuff, right? So what I was hoping that you could do is take us back to the old days of Shailene. I mean, now what? You’re in your 30s and I want to hear about the 20s Shailene. How did you get traffic early on and how did you build up your name? You’re hysterical in my 20s and 30s. Yeah. So I am 51. I prefer that people act shocked when I tell them that. That’s my pet peeve is when I tell people I’m 51, if they don’t act shocked, I’m like, come on. Rude. But so here’s the answer to that question.

15:07
I learned the hard way when I devoted myself to fitness and we sold our fitness business. I didn’t maintain any of the email lists or customer lists. went on to do consumer exercise videos with the company that we sold to, which was Beachbody. And I did three number one fitness infomercials, had sold tens of millions of exercise DVDs, but I did not have one email address.

15:35
And I didn’t have much of a social media following. The people who were following me were interested in fitness, not in business or personal development. So I hired a coach and he basically said, here’s what you’re going to do. You need to, said, you know, I’m, true. I am an entrepreneur who became successful in fitness, but I’ve always wanted to teach entrepreneurship. I’ve always been someone who loves marketing and the behavior, psychologies of the consumer.

16:04
And that’s what I want to do.” he said, but you can’t, nobody knows you for that. You have to be known for that. And so I had a proposal to write a book about personal development. And he said, I won’t even allow you to shop the book around until you have at least a hundred thousand people on an email list. And I was like, oh, okay. So I took every course that I could find every weekend seminar. did, worked with everyone I could think of to figure out how do I build an email list? And I did it.

16:34
Over the course of a year, I built it to a hundred thousand word. How did you do that? a lot of was timing so I The cornerstone to my success was I created a 30-day challenge now today that wouldn’t work because no one has the attention span of 30 days You need the 32nd challenge, right? But so this is in 2010 I started a 30-day challenge that taught people how to be more productive and how to create

17:01
a very carefully crafted to-do list that only had three things and a very specific way of doing it. And I taught them one little thing each day for 30 days. And I did that on video. So each day you woke up and got a new video to your inbox. It just a couple of minutes long. And this is like before everybody was doing that. I had a hundred over, gosh, I don’t know how many people, but within probably about six months, we had over a hundred thousand people who had signed up for that. And what was really powerful about that, Steve, is I was,

17:31
I was the first thing people saw every day. This is like in 2010 when people weren’t doing a lot of video yet. And so they really felt like they knew me and I filmed everything very raw on my laptop, like horrible, you know, camera work, but in my home. And it was very personal and they spent 30 days with me and they, they got a lot accomplished. And so it created a really loyal group of people who really knew me well. And that

17:59
helped me to, I mean that is what launched my personal development and then business development career. So I had to do it very slowly, very, very slowly and always kind of balancing what it is people want from you and what it is you want to give to people. And sometimes those things don’t match up. were those people? How are they finding your email list? Were you running ads or? No, not at that time. It was word of mouth. So when one person would sign up,

18:28
I would encourage them to immediately find an accountability partner. That was like lesson number one, first assignment. So it just quickly started doubling. Um, I launched it in December. So it was a lot about good timing. And again, at that point, everyone’s doing a challenge now and they still, they still work. I’m in the middle of doing a challenge right now for Instagram, but it’s different. Like now I’m doing a five day challenge. There are so many challenges that if

18:54
I still believe that they work. think they’re a wonderful way to serve an audience and build an email list and build rapport and build reciprocity. But I think you have to factor in how much time people have. And I also think another really important lesson in how we’ve changed is that that first 30 day, it was called 30 day push. That first 30 day challenge was free. Today, I’m a bigger fan of a paid challenge. Can we comment on that? Because I run challenges myself and they’re always free.

19:24
I’ve always been, know you run, what do you charge like 20 bucks or something? I’ve always been a little hesitant to do that because I feel like some of the free people I might be able to convert over. Can you kind of comment why you change it over? Well, we still do a lot of free, right? Like, so we still do it. I think my social media, my podcast very much like yours is hours and hours and hours of free content. We still use freemiums, lead magnets, et cetera. But when I’m doing a challenge, I have just found that

19:53
because lead magnets and freemiums, the things that we sign up for for free, they have a much lower open rate. So if I can’t even start the relationship with you because you’ve just given me your quote, you know, spam email to receive this free challenge and you haven’t paid for it, you don’t care. But if you paid 20 bucks, it’s crazy how people will be like, it’s 501, why have I…

20:22
And it’s and we will we just blow them away and over deliver. We get a higher conversion rate. So the people who because we are always looking at like, OK, we’ve got this group of people who converted and they came in on a free offering. And then we have this group that came in on a paid offer. And that that group rates so much higher. I mean, it’s it’s it’s astronomical. It blows my mind because it’s a it’s a different.

20:49
Qualified customer someone who’s very serious about it. It’s someone who’s already taken out their credit card and said, okay I’m gonna give you a shot So you already have a pain paying customer and you’re just taking them to the next step and I just I just I really like the Adherence I like the people get a lot more out of a paid challenge. I think There’s something about putting some amount of money down that makes you take things more seriously as well So that’s why I’ve been kind of debating to myself

21:19
Just curious though, do you know like what the numbers difference was going from free to paid? Off the top of my head, I don’t. And I’m happy to report back to you because I’ll maybe include that in the show notes. I’ll check with our campaign manager. Yeah, I was just kind of curious because there’s for some reason it still affects me like just the numbers, know, like the vanity numbers always affect me also. the vanity and by vanity numbers, what are you referring to? The sheer number of signups for like the The signups are always smaller for sure.

21:49
for a paid challenge, right? So for a paid challenge, might get, if we’re promoting it for this last paid challenge, we promoted it for four days and we had 2200 people sign up. If I were doing a free challenge, we’d probably have in the neighborhood of 12,000 sign up, I would guess. Right, right. No, but it’s just a far more qualified lead, especially when what it is ultimately, they will be put into a funnel for my marketing academy, which is a $2,000.

22:18
So it also has to do with the entry level, like what is the price that we’re going to offer them eventually to get a different type of customer. And we will do both, right? So before our next launch for the Marketing Impact Academy, we’re doing a paid challenge and we’ll also do a free challenge. Interesting. And how are those two challenges different? Is it the same content more or less? No, different content. The first one is obviously for

22:45
people are trying to grow their Instagram for business. And then the second challenge is for people who are trying to figure out, and you did an episode on this recently, how do I make money if I don’t have any money and I really am not sure what it is I have that I could sell? So I call them the no idea, no business people, right? But they know they want to be in business, so they know at least they want to make extra income, and we’ll do a free challenge for those folks.

23:14
If you sell on Amazon or run any online business for that matter, the most important aspect of your long-term success will be your brand. And this is why I work with Steven Weigler and his team from Emerge Council to protect my brand over at Bumblebee Linens. Now what’s unique about Emerge Council is that Steve focuses his legal practice on e-commerce and provides strategic and legal representation to entrepreneurs to protect their IP. So for example, if you’ve ever been ripped off or knocked off on Amazon, then Steve can help you fight back and protect yourself.

23:42
Now, first and foremost, protecting our IP starts with a solid trademark and Emerge Council provides attorney-advised strategic trademark prosecution, both in the United States and abroad for a very low price. And furthermore, the students in my course have used Steve for copyrighting their designs, policing against counterfeits and knockoffs, agreements with co-founders and employees, website and social media policies, privacy policies, vendor agreements, brand registry, you name it. So if you need IP protection services, go to EmergeCouncil.com and get a free consult.

24:12
And if you tell Steve that I sent you, you’ll get a hundred dollar discount. That’s EMERGECONSCL.com. Now back to the show. You know, it’s funny, I just listened to your last episode on the upsells and downsells and it just kind of made me think like I have this one big monolithic product and I should be breaking it down to downsells and some upsells as well. Yeah, we’ve learned that the hard way. So Shailene, you seem to put out endless content.

24:40
Like every time I’m opening Instagram, you have more stories, posts, videos. I’d like to talk about your content strategy and how you were able to do this. Because it seems like you’re posting all the time and clearly you have some sort of machine that allows you to do this on all platforms. So I’d like you to talk about your strategy there. That’s great. Well, I do have a great social media team that works with me full time, but they don’t do my personal.

25:05
Social media, I do have someone who helps me on my Facebook page. Instagram, my personal Instagram is all me and I do stories throughout the day and try to do at least one post a day to my feed. Aside from that, I have 10 other Instagram accounts that I call feature accounts. And by feature account, mean it’s not me that the account is about, but it features a particular type of content. It’s a niche content aimed at targeting a very specific type of customer.

25:34
And so I have 10 of those accounts and I have a team that manages those niche accounts are a wonderful way. They grow much quicker, especially in today’s culture and environment. And they’re really easy to manage. So I know you have multiple podcasts and you’re putting out videos all the time. And I know you repurpose a lot of that content. So I guess the question is, what do you start with and then how do you repurpose all that stuff on down? Like what’s the process? Yeah. Okay.

26:04
Sure. my podcasts are the intention is that they’re every single episode is fresh. If however, because I’ve been doing it now for I think five years, if there’s a week where I’m just like, oh my, just can’t, there’s just too much going on and to spend another three hours in the podcasting booth I meant to, but now I’m tired and I just need to take a nap. My team will be like, oh, no problem. We have this episode. They always have like a backup episode just in case.

26:30
And it’ll usually be something that is no longer showing up on Apple iTunes, but it was a great timeless interview or a great timeless topic and that will get repurposed, but that’s pretty rare. So the podcasts are, we do four a week. We do two for the Shalene show, which is a lifestyle program. And then I do two for build your tribe. One that’s a quick topic. And then the other is either my son Brock, who’s the cohost with me or we’re interviewing someone.

26:59
Those are, you know, I just have an endless amount of things I want to talk about. So I find that to be the most enjoyable thing ever is doing podcasts. I love teaching when it comes to content for Instagram. I have a monthly, what do you call it? A monthly calendar that I look at for inspiration, but I always say to myself, is that what I feel like posting today?

27:28
And so my calendar is kind of like a backup. And I use it in the event that nothing has inspired me. But I would say 80 % of the time I go off the calendar because I’m like, oh no, I know what I want to talk about today. Like this is on my heart. And I find that an easier, it’s easier copy to write for me. And it’s easier to find that content. And I love doing IGTVs. IGTVs are a great piece of content for people to.

27:57
to repurpose. if I can share this with your listeners, now that Instagram has offered or the feature is that when you go live on Instagram, the moment you finish, Instagram will say, hey, would you like this to be an IGTV? And you want to say, yes, turn that live into an IGTV. Now you’ve gone live, which is going to get you some traction with the algorithm. And then you create that IGTV. Instagram is really favoring anything related to IGTV right now because they’re coming for YouTube.

28:27
So use those IGTVs to your advantage. Create a great thumbnail just before you go live so you can update your thumbnail. The second Instagram gives you that option too, because you can’t change it at the moment that we’re recording this. Also use hashtags in the first comment, not in your description or caption. And again, that’s based on case studies of the students that we’ve had test us both ways and we’re just seeing amazing traction on hashtags.

28:53
for IGTV better than any other type of post on your feed. And then I remember when I heard you talk, I think you did a leg kick when you did this, you said you could actually include a link, right? On your IGTV? That’s right. Yeah, everyone can. You don’t have to have 10,000 followers. You can put a clickable link in the description of your IGTV. The only way that I should mention, it’s a little tricky because if you’re watching my IGTV on the feed, meaning the first one minute

29:24
preview that Instagram shows you. That link isn’t clickable until you tap on the IGTV and you’re watching it full screen as an IGTV. And I’m not sure if that makes sense, but then and only then is the link clickable. So I will sometimes mention that in my IGTV. Do you purposely leave a cliffhanger? What is that? 10 seconds or something? Because I always find myself clicking on them. Is that intentional?

29:52
Whenever I can so, you know, I love to tell you I’m always that in time so many things I tell people to do I’m like, you know, this is what this is best practices but the bottom line is you want to get content up, right and and so when I when I can remember to do that when I’m that strategic sure But I’m not often that well thought out a lot of it and I’m just like, oh this is funny I’ve got to post this and there is no cliffhanger. I’m just hoping that it’s captivating enough that people will continue to watch

30:20
I notice you do a lot of Instagram. Are you doing the same thing on Facebook as well with the lives? To be very honest, I haven’t. I use my Facebook groups a lot. haven’t grown my actual Facebook page, I’d say in the last like four months, maybe even longer than that. I think I’m stuck at like a million, which is great. I’m not like knocking it at all. I just have so much more success on Instagram. even though have a smaller following there, it’s a very engaged.

30:50
It’s my target audience hangs out on Instagram. My target audience wants to learn more about Instagram and So I would say I spend a lot of time on Instagram and inside my Facebook group So in fact the current challenge that we’re doing right now is you know, we’re we’re serving them that content inside of a Facebook group Hmm interesting And then for for Instagram

31:12
I know a lot of people want to hit that first 10K followers. Like if you were starting from scratch, what would be some of the things that you would do like best practices on posting and tagging and that sort of thing? Okay. So if I were starting from scratch today, I wouldn’t start as a personal brand. I would start a themed account. So in other words, if I am someone who offers interior design, virtual interior design services, I wouldn’t start

31:42
a personal account with me as a brand or even my company as a brand, rather, I would start an account that just features beautiful interiors and get a ton of people following where, and it’s the type of customer who’s looking for this particular type of designer design style that I specialize in. I think it’s easier to find that content. You’ll grow it much faster. The content will be much more shareable. When we’re posting content, there’s only two things that make you grow.

32:12
Only two things, shareable content and hashtags. Right. That’s it. So if you’re not posting stuff that people are like, Oh man, I should share this to my stories. It’s, it’s a slow agonizing process and it’s getting harder and harder and harder because there’s so much great content out there and everyone has not just one is their account, but maybe 10. So I really,

32:40
highly recommend people consider starting a feature type account. Let me give you a few more examples. I have an account that all that we feature is workouts that you can do at home, but they’re not me. They’re any other fitness professional who’s using that tag and then we feature their content. And because they’re great ideas, people share those to their stories. And that account has grown to over a half a million followers in a very short period of time. It’s called Home Workouts For You.

33:10
And that helps me target someone who’s really interested in fitness. Now I can use the bio. can use anytime we’re doing a sale. So for example, when I was promoting this most recent challenge, then I can go on the stories there. So I don’t take over the feed, but I’ll take over the stories and say like, Hey guys, thanks for following this. You’re obviously very interested in fitness. As you know, the fitness industry has, has really changed. And so many of you use Instagram to promote your business and what it is you do if you want.

33:38
to join me on a five day challenge to grow your fitness business on Instagram, click below. So that’s where I’ll promote is inside my stories. I’ll never use the feed of those feature accounts. Another example is an account that we have that’s called push me daily. And all that that is our daily, again, content that we found that’s already viral, it’s already proven. It’s already the kind of stuff you want to share, but the content all relates to people who are looking for that.

34:04
you know, super motivational, inspirational, get you pumped up, work hard kind of content, because we’re trying to attract entrepreneurs. And that account has also grown very quickly. I think that’s at 50,000 followers. So you’re posting other people’s content as opposed to your own. Like what is the ratio? 100 % 100 % sharing other people’s Okay, maybe 99. Okay. Yeah, so maybe if you looked at those accounts,

34:32
You might once a month see something that’s me, but I’m not even posting that content to drive traffic to my account per se. I’m growing those big accounts because we’re attracting the right kind of target audience. And for the person who wants to go deeper, they’re looking at the stories and they know who owns the account. And then we can speak to them in the stories. I don’t think that we should ever be very rarely. mean, there’s always an exception. I don’t think we should sell in the feed.

35:01
I think our feed is where we can attract people. The stories are where we go deep and the stories are also where we have permission to tell people about what it is we have that could help them. So it’s through the stories that you gather email addresses as well. That’s where we’ll offer freemiums for sure. Yep. Okay. And would you say that most of your traffic is from Instagram? I would say, boy, that’s, I should know the answer to that off top of my head. I would say the majority is.

35:30
probably from Instagram podcasts, maybe pretty close to equal. We do advertising, but the advertising usually is just based around when we’re doing a launch, and we’re usually launching like once, maybe twice a year. So the rest of the time, I’m just building that reciprocity and just serving the audience and trying to give them things that I think are really useful for them and then segmenting our list, because we’ve got a bunch of different types of businesses.

36:00
Oh yeah, yeah. And they all go to the same account and you just segment them out based on where they came from? what challenge or group? Yep. And then in terms of content frequency, you mentioned on Instagram, you’re posting at least once per day and then… Yes. So of those 10 accounts that we have, the rule is that we always want to ring around the circle. So we always want there to be an active story that tells people when they look at your profile that this person is active.

36:27
And then on top of that, the rule is that we post at least once to each of those accounts. And currently we’re experimenting with some of our feature accounts with twice a day, posting twice a day to see how that impacts followers. And so far, thus far, it seems to prove to be beneficial. You know, anytime you post, you’re to get some people that you’re going to get a certain number of unfollows and a certain number of new follows. Sure. Right. But you’re losing people every day if you’re not posting.

36:54
Just because people, go to their list of the people they’re following and go, do I know this person? You know, they just try to clean house. Some of them are spam accounts or bot accounts. See, all of us are always losing a certain number of followers. The way that we gain followers, again, is by using carefully selected hashtags and engagement, obviously, and increasing our reach. And the way that you increase your reach is when people are like, this is amazing.

37:22
And it’s going to make me look good if I share this. Right? So if I, if I, know that if I post a photo of my husband and I, and just talk about how wonderful our vacation was, mean, see, there’s no reason for you to share that. You know what I mean? Right. It’s interesting to my followers. It’s a great way for me to connect with them and let them know who I am a little deeper, but it’s not the kind of content people are going to share. And so if you’re really in a stage where you want to grow your account,

37:51
which most people when they’re starting out, I mean, if you have an account under 10,000, I think we’re all trying to grow a certain percentage of your content. That should be the litmus test. You ask yourself, are other people gonna see this and think to themselves, this is gonna be a positive reflection on me if I share this to my story? We do this with memes, we do this with text cards, we do this with really meaningful messages where we wanna share it because we’re like, this is what

38:20
What this person just said is what I also stand for. Do you do any share for shares or co-labs with other Instagram folks? I don’t anymore. I did though when I first got on like in 2010, 11, did a lot of that, a ton of that. I haven’t done it probably in the last eight years, but I, you know, I, a lot of people pay for things on Instagram, which I’m not really a fan of. I’m not a fan of paid pods.

38:49
People should be very careful of any third party API that could land you in a heap of trouble. Be careful those DMs you get from people. They’re like, I can help your account grow to, they’re like, I can help your account grow to a hundred thousand. I’m like, well, but it’s at 500,000. So how does that work? They’re so copy and paste. But the hardest, but the most factual thing I can say about growing on any social media platform

39:19
It is just like it takes the same effort it takes to grow your business, which is persistence. You just, you got to stick to it every single day. And there are days you’re not going to feel like doing it. We can’t always rely on our motivation. We have to set up habits so that we don’t have to rely on motivation and we don’t have to rely on discipline that we have these habits in place. And that’s what makes the difference between entrepreneurs who burn out pretty quickly and those.

39:46
who can start to enjoy their life is really focusing on like, what systems can I establish so that these things become habits? Hence you have to be willing to do it forever. Yeah. So it’s funny is I’ve had a number of Instagram folks on the podcast before and I know a number of them say like, you should be posting like six or seven times a day to reach, you know, as much of your audience as possible. It seems like you don’t share that philosophy. Whenever you have something interesting to say, you just,

40:15
at least post once a day, but that sounds like it’s much more manageable the way you do it. Yeah, and I really can’t speak with authority to testing six times a day. We have not tested that. Also have heard people say that to be true. You when I think about the logic behind it, it might make sense if you’re especially if you’re not posting you like I just there are certain people like I don’t need to see why would I need to see your face six times a day? I’m going to unfollow, right?

40:44
But if you’re posting, again, content where you’ve asked yourself, does this serve my audience? Then if every piece of content serves them in that way, then yeah, I would say go for it. I can think of one personal or a couple of different personal brands right now that have, it looks to me like they’re experimenting with this. And they’re not posting multiple times a day their picture or their video, but they’re posting content that’s

41:14
related to their brand message. If that makes sense. I haven’t seen someone who’s like posting, okay, here’s, know, other than maybe the Kardashians, here’s six images of me today. Like that feels like it’s more about me and we want to make our posts about them or when they are about us. It’s like, like, so for example, my post today is about me, but it’s about me for you. In other words, I’m saying here’s what I’ve figured out. Now tell me what this looks like for you.

41:45
And in terms of your video content, you seem to always do lives. Does that just generally work a lot better as opposed to just uploading a video for IGTV? For my lifestyle, does. extemporaneous. So I tend to do better in a live setting. I also tend to if I record something with the intention of editing it later, that goes from being, you know, a 30 minute live into a

42:14
30 minute, no, then the video itself is gonna take twice as long. And then instead of sending it out to get edited, I’ll decide that I only, I can edit it the way I want, you know? And so it just eats up more time than is necessary and it doesn’t feel as authentic. I really love video that doesn’t feel produced. The infomercial that I have on TV right now, I just finished filming it four weeks ago. The reason why

42:44
it works is because you can tell it’s not scripted. You can tell it’s not produced. And I think we as consumers have become very leery and suspicious of things that look overproduced. You know, I try to teach my students to move away from the overly curated, perfect Instagram with all the same presets and everything is kind of the soft cloudy pink with a splash of orange.

43:13
You know what mean? And that’s an idea photo and there’s that orange cup and there’s that orange pillow like I just don’t feel like that’s real life and I I want people to know that we relate and I don’t find those types of accounts relatable I’m like, oh man, I gotta go on a vacation and get a big floppy hat now, you know what I mean? They just don’t feel authentic to me and and I think that the consumer I look I was just doing a study last night I was taking a look at

43:43
the growth rate of accounts where they’ve really, really locked themselves into that preset, where the colors are all coordinating and the branding and the theme that you just look at the page and it’s a beautiful page. There’s no doubt about it, but it just all kind of feels the same. So I started looking at a bunch of very popular accounts that sell those presets and have been really well known for doing that Instagram preset look. And they haven’t grown in the last three years.

44:13
You know, so that’s, they look beautiful, but the question is how are you connecting with people? And we want real. We want real. I mean, that’s definitely one of your strengths. I always feel like when I’m watching one of your videos that you’re actually talking to me. Wow. Yeah. One thing I want to touch on is I actually love how you and your family work together. And I was kind of curious. So my wife and I, we actually do not work that well together. So that’s why we keep everything separate. Like we mentioned earlier.

44:42
Just curious, like what the dynamic is like with you and Brett, because you are kind of like the face, right? Yeah, I would say so. It didn’t work well at first. Okay, that’s for sure. Yeah. He’s, you know, an alpha male. He’s quarterback, head football coach, you know, all those stereotypes, you could picture them. And when we first started working together, it was, it was really awkward. It was really hard because I was treating him like

45:11
an assistant because I didn’t know what to have him do because I knew he didn’t know any of the things I knew yet. So rather than like teaching him those things or even recognizing the skills he already had, which were really financial and strategy and operations, I would whatever I didn’t have time to do, I’d be like, okay, okay, do this. Oh, give that back to me. I’ll know that’s not right. I’ll do it. You know, like really very passive aggressive. And it did a number on our

45:41
Marriage for a while. They’re like we didn’t it was not fun. So we went to marriage counseling I guess you’d call marriage counseling, but we really focused on how to talk to each other in that environment and It was there where he was most comfortable telling me like you make me feel inadequate. You make me feel like I’m Irrelevant unimportant. I want to be the provider. I don’t want to feel insignificant and

46:06
when you say this and he would give me specific examples, like when you would say, I need you to go do this for me or in, my business, you know, it was a language that I was using and, um, and you’re not recognizing the strengths that I have. And, and so that once we kind of realized like, Oh, we just need to be in very separate lanes and he needs to work in the lane. Like he is strong where I am weak. And so it was just honoring those areas where he’s really, really strong. And

46:35
And then eventually he started learning all of the everything that I know about marketing. now knows, and you know, we really do run the company together in that way. I think I am the face of the business more so, but we do our events together. He does a lot of the teaching. He teaches in a lot of our coursework. I just tend to be more extemporaneous and more, you know, about content and social, but it wasn’t, it wasn’t comfortable at first.

47:05
But now it’s just from learning to really communicate and remembering every single morning, the business is irrelevant. The only things that matter is our relationship and our family. So what can I do every single day when I wake up that he knows none of this matters, only you matter. Like you are my everything. And that shift has made us so much closer and it’s so much more fun and we have the same perspective.

47:34
You know, people just want to feel honored and important and significant and no one wants to feel bad about themselves and not every couple can work together. I’ll say that I know that not every couple can work together, but I do believe all of us, if we learn to communicate, it’s easier. I think everything that you mentioned there are mistakes that I’ve made. I think working with my spouse, I think it was also a matter of figuring out what the love languages were like hers is actually appreciation.

48:04
Mine is, it’s a good question. It’s physical and it is probably acts of service. Like I don’t need appreciation at all actually. Yeah. Yeah. Funny. Interesting. I also want to ask you how you got your kids into your business. Like Brock and you do a podcast. That’s awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Both of them are entrepreneurs.

48:28
In the truest sense now, when they, when I was young, I’ll start there because this is really something I learned from my own father, who’s a serial entrepreneur. When we were growing up, I didn’t know that we were poor. I didn’t know that we were broke. We, my dad had a million different businesses. And so I grew up watching him do everything from having a motorcycle shop to an antique shop, to selling tools, to doing large scale events and flea markets and.

48:56
I mean, you name it liquidations. So I learned very young that you just experiment. Also, when we were very broke, my parents were really great about the language they use. They would never say things like, uh, money doesn’t grow on trees or you, can’t afford that. Or what do you think we’re made out of money? You know, they would say to whatever request I had, that’s a great idea. Let’s figure out a way that you can make the money and then decide if you want to buy that.

49:24
So was also like, okay, you’re gonna make the money. And then once you have the money, you’re gonna have to ask yourself, do you really wanna spend your money on that? And so I had a great childhood learning how to make, how to hustle, how to make money. And that’s what I did. I paid my own way through college, obviously, and paid for everything. And I was so proud of the fact that I bought my first car when I was 15, that…

49:50
And I knew what that did for my confidence. And I told that story to everyone. Like it made me feel so invincible that I had the money to pay for college, that I had the money. Like my friends, all their parents bought them beaters. And I was, I kept upgrading cars and upgrading cars and upgrading cars because I knew how to buy and sell cars. And I bought them with my own money. And I wanted to tell everybody, I just felt invincible. I felt so great about myself, that confidence.

50:20
affected every area of my life and I thought if I can give that to my kids then I’m gonna win and I need to do that because We’ve got money my kids are not gonna think we’re broke, but I need them to know that’s my money That’s not your money, honey But I’m gonna teach you how to make money. And so from the time they were very young We told them as soon as they were able to understand like all this gonna be so exciting. Guess what? We’re not gonna pick out a car for you. You’re gonna be able to pick out

50:49
car you want because you’re gonna buy it yourself and we’re gonna help you got all this time to raise as much money as you can to do that and so they from the time they’re really young would have I I shouldn’t call them businesses because they really weren’t businesses but they would have money making ideas that would keep their interest for a couple of weeks they’d make some money and then they’d be done with it for a little while and then they come up with another idea and then another idea and we just kept accumulating their savings

51:18
I love it. Like we tried to start a t-shirt business with my kids and we actually made close to $1,000 with it. But like over time, they’ve kind of lost interest and I find myself like, I don’t want to have to push them to do stuff. Yes. Yes. That’s a great point. I don’t think that we should teach our kids to be adults. I think that we should teach them that they have the power to be resourceful, to solve a problem, to find something they’re interested in, make a little bit of money and then be done with it. I think it’s

51:50
unrealistic and probably detrimental to ask your child to run a business or to keep have that be their interest, you know, for more than a couple of months, really. I mean, nothing that my kids did were they interested in for more than a couple of months, but they were, but they loved the idea that they’re like, I’ve got an idea. And, know, then we would put up together a balance sheet and figure out how much money they had to start it and what it was going to cost them and what they could make. And so because of that, they realized

52:18
My interests are going to change all the time. And if an idea strikes me, I can sit down with a pen, a piece of paper, can crunch the numbers and see if this is a good idea and I can make some money and then I can be done with it. And that’s exactly what they did all through high school. Both bought their own vehicles and by my son’s sophomore year in college, he was he just graduated from UC Davis, but he was a scholarship athlete.

52:47
which means you’re going to be very, very busy. So he’s a scholarship athlete. That’s a full-time job. And on top of that, running his own private business online, he made over a hundred thousand dollars by his sophomore year. Wow. Which is great. Then he upgraded, know, he’s here. He’s a sophomore in college, um, buying his own Range Rover. Mom and dad are not paying for insurance. I’m not paying for car payments. I’m not paying for his travel and paying for nothing. And, and he loves to tell people.

53:16
That that’s his doing because it gives him such confidence Not that his parents are taking care of him, but that he knows how to take care of himself and my daughter the same thing I’m trying to do the same thing, but I also got grandma giving them like these large checks for Christmas. It’s hard. Okay, that’s okay My kids got that too from you know family and but that’s okay it what you really what we’re teaching them is you have the ability to solve problems

53:45
and create income and everybody does. So many people today, the thought of starting a business is intimidating. And I always tell people, don’t worry about starting a business, but you need an additional stream of income. One stream of income, whether that’s from a job or even one business right now, especially in this pandemic, we’re realizing more than ever is about the riskiest thing that you could do. So what would you say, Shailene, you got no money, where would you start?

54:14
I would market my skills. think there’s no cost of investment. You can do so today for nothing. mean, you know, you can start a MailChimp email list for free. can use social media to find customers for free. Almost every service that you and I originally had to pay tens of thousands of dollars for to offer people our services, they’re free now.

54:42
You can literally start today and it’s free. And no matter what it is, I guarantee there’s someone who is like, man, I’m in the middle of this. if I would just pay someone who would give me the shortcuts and tell me how to get through this divorce, I would pay someone who would tell me how to get my child through or organize their day so that they could really excel.

55:08
learning online. I would pay someone to help me figure out how to organize or redecorate my living room with the things that I already have in here, but I just need to stage it differently. Like anything that you’re thinking to yourself, oh yeah, but there’s a YouTube video that teaches that. It doesn’t matter. People want to learn it the way you offer it. Expertise is an intimidating word, but we all have knowledge and experience that other people can benefit from. And that’s where I would start. Absolutely.

55:38
For myself, when I started the e-commerce store, I wasn’t an expert. just literally just documented what I was doing and people read it. And then they treated me like an expert just because I was documenting myself. So that just kind of naturally happens. Yeah. And I don’t know why it is, but we’re so reluctant to charge for things if we feel like, but there’s somebody out there who knows more, right?

56:03
But we really shouldn’t because you know, you’re you’re just trying to help that person who maybe you’re just a couple of steps ahead of them. You don’t have to be the ultimate expert. I mean, I even today I think to myself, everyone knows more about fitness than me. I just know more than someone who’s just starting and I know how to have fun. And you don’t have to be the best. You just have to be a few steps ahead of somebody who needs your help.

56:32
No one else does a leg kick though. Pretty sure. Shailene, I don’t want to take up too much of your time. Where can people find you? Yeah, yeah. My website is shaleene.com. C-H-A-L-E-N-E.com. And I’d love for you to take a screenshot of this podcast and tag us. I love resharing that and finding out where people, that people listen to.

56:59
to podcast, that’s like a different type of individual. And those are my favorite people. So be sure to tag me on Instagram. I’m at Shalene Johnson. My mom was always like, how is your podcast successful? Like, why would people listen to you for an hour? And what was funny is I actually had my mom on the podcast. She actually is really impressive. She discovered a cure for a very rare disease. She came on and she got so many emails, like they emailed me and I forwarded them on to her that she was just so happy.

57:29
be recognized because before she didn’t think that what she was working on was that important because it really only affects like 10,000 people every year. Oh worldwide. So yeah, I gave it a little taste. Your mom and my mom must hang out because that’s my parents who are like, wait, you doing a what? I cast what? Yeah, but I was destined to be an engineer. So so funny. All right, Chailene, I really appreciate your time. Thanks a lot. Absolutely. It’s been my pleasure. Thanks, Steve.

57:59
Alright, take care.

58:02
Hope you enjoyed that episode. Now Shailene is one of my favorite influencers in the world and she’s incredibly down to earth, motivational, and she knows her stuff. For more information about this episode, go to mywifequitterjob.com slash episode 328. And once again, I want to thank Postscript.io, which is my SMS marketing platform of choice for e-commerce. With a few clicks of a button, you can easily segment and send targeted text messages to your client base. SMS is the next big own marketing platform and you can sign up for free over at postscript.io slash Steve.

58:31
That’s P-O-S-T-S-E-R-I-P-T.I-O slash Steve. I also want to thank Klaviyo, which is my email marketing platform of choice for eCommerce merchants. You can easily put together automated flows like an abandoned card sequence, a post purchase flow, a win back campaign, basically all these sequences that will make you money on autopilot. So head on over to mywifequitterjob.com slash K-L-A-V-I-Y-O. Once again, that’s mywifequitterjob.com slash K-L-A-V-I-Y-O. Now I talk about how I use these tools on my blog, and if you are interested in starting your own eCommerce store,

59:01
Head on over to mywifequitterjob.com and sign up for my free six day mini course. Just type in your email and it’ll send you the course right away. Thanks for listening.